My favorite gods, Kali, Wukong (Now Hun Batz), Artemis and Arachne are basically " worthless " you could say, since there are just better gods like the new Wukong, Chronos and Mercury for example. Those are not only good, but more than often also overpowered, which can be quite annoying, yet I managed to win almost every game with my beloved gods.
The jungle changes are the most important and basically changed the whole meta, jungling has always been a kinda sideway thingy, but now it is a fulltime-job. To be honest, I didn't really like the map design at first, it is kinda neat, even tho I still like the oldschool look of the map more. The new Assault mode is basically a joke, since it is simply chaos most of the time and gods with a wombo combo dominate even more than they do in arena. I am happy that they didn't change any parts of the domination gamemode, since this is still pretty fun to play.
When I start smite and play a game of conquest I don't have the feeling that I have when I do the same in League of Legends, it feels more casual, more natural and time tends to fly by, which isn't always good. The community is quite " nice " to say the least. People don't understand what certain things mean, sometimes they don't even want to understand them and simply be the worst person in existance by insulting others for no apparent reason.
Back to the game itself. It is fun. It is casual. It is fun. That's basically all I got to say about the new smite. I miss the times I raged in ranked games, because of my horrible teammates, even tho I tended to never rage ingame, since I didn't want to be banned.. well it happened anyway.
Allied is a great player, so is Wolfy, Jerb was always nice to watch and I even remember Chixy getting started and PonPon showed that he actually is a great Kali, but definitly not as good as me ;). Most of them aren't even as important for new smite players anymore, most of them don't care about the competitive scene or even about livestreams. This is because the game became way too casual.
Those are my 2Cents.
You have to learn it to be a decent player, and you have to know how to break it to be good ;)
And yes, there is a ton of changes since you played last silver. Would get how that can be weird or WE and kind of off putting. I myself have been following smite since Cupid release so the changes have been pretty stretched out, so haven't really noticed it all that much. I missed the old map for a few months, but now I don't really remember it that well (yellow buff OP).
I would guess that it's more casual in low lvl games than when you get to >20 games. At least I usually get full on tryhard ragers even in casual queue (some are bady bads, but WE).
In ranked you will be getting more skilled players (at least when you get out of the bronze pool).
And when it comes to streamers taking it more casual, I kind of agree (at least when it comes to the EU scene) but hopefully Tencent can breath some fresh life into the game =)
Back in the days you had so few items that you couldn't really build that much stuff, and ppl went for HS, Qin's, Titan's, Voidblade, Deathbringer etc over Soul eater (devo's was released later if I remember correctly, it was at least weaker than now).
Meta isn't only the god you play, it's the build, it's the type of laning (Like in league, 1 top, 1 mid, adc supp bot and a jungler) and as you just said " No adc skips BT, simply because it is said to be a good item, but what if you can't even get farm or feed horribly and would actually need armor because their team is full ad. But nah, better don't build that, because everybody builds BT. Meta. Nuff said.
What I'm getting out of this, is the theorycrafting in the days of old was very subpar.
I remember when people were saying that lifesteal is **** and you should only play attack speed and damage items on gods like
I'm that guy in the lobby who gives alning assignments and tells people to go certain gods to fit the meta, and rage when it doesn't. Example: I go
idk about the streamrs, I still watch them quite alot and I like the new assault mode and the whole new meta.
BEND MOUNTAINS!!
Random af, but idc
First, Hun Batz (AKA Original WK for you) is slightly buffed from his origins. Artemis has been heavily buffed. Arachne has been nerfed and Kali is roughly the same. But in relation to Power Creeping, I suppose they can seem underpowered now.
I don't know exactly how long ago you 'quit' but Assault isn't new by far.
And while jungling may feel like a job now, it separates the pros from the people who mindlessly wander around the jungle, not really doing anything important.
Anyway, IDK about the streamers not being important. I still watch Lassiz every afternoon and Inuki late into the morning. They may not seem as prevalent, but people who care about the game, or about getting better, still pay attention. DM and DryB can be pretty funny too.
Anyway, that's my two cents to your two cents. I'm still a bit unclear as to what your two cents are, though...