5.17 Update Notes | Hera's Odyssey

NEW GOD SKINS

	Cyber Scythe Thanatos		Cosmic Power Anubis		Pixel Chaos Discordia
	Exclusive | Odyssey		Exclusive | Odyssey		Exclusive | Odyssey
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	General Nosseris Kumbhakarna
	Exclusive
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HERA'S ODYSSEY - INTO THE LIGHT

"This year's Odyssey begins in 5.17 and will span over seven updates! Join Hera as she embarks upon a grand Odyssey to rally the pantheons against a threat great enough to destroy them all. Players can purchase Odyssey items and complete Event Quests to gain Odyssey Levels to move them closer to obtaining a Tier 5 Ares Skin as the Ultimate Odyssey Reward. Odyssey items will be discounted during the first Update they release, so act quick to save Gems!" Odyssey Points and Odyssey Levels Gain Odyssey levels by earning Odyssey points through completing quests and/or buying Odyssey items. Collection Bonuses Players will receive a free item every 3 Odyssey Levels as a bonus. Collection bonus items can be earned by questing. Odyssey Quests 5 quests will be released in every Odyssey update. Completing these 5 quests will reward you with 1 Odyssey Level. Odyssey Lore With every Odyssey, also comes an epic story. This year, the lore is set directly after the events of the Divine Uprising. Odyssey Items Cyber Scythe Thanatos Cosmic Power Anubis Pixel Chaos Discordia Hera's Odyssey Loading Skin Bonus Items Cutesy Hera Avatar Hera's Odyssey Loading Skin

PROJECT OLYMPUS

On Consoles, B or Circle buttons will now exit menus, as long as those buttons have no other function on those menus All platforms now have video links to preview any gods abilities All chests will now list all of their contents Added a controller sensitivity option for PC The rules for how God stats are shown on Loading Frames have been updated God Stats no longer require you to have purchased a Mastery Skin to display on your loading frame, they will show up based on your Hide God Stats option in your Profile loadout. New players will have their Hide God Stats option defaulted to hidden. Mastery Level (I,II,X,etc.) will always display on your loading frame

MISC.

Awesome Chest New additions to the Awesome Chest Geek Beak Thoth Pup Patrol Cerberus Godlike Chest New additions to the Godlike Chest Madame Blade Serqet Beach Babe Aphrodite Monster Trainer Erlang Shen Fantasy points Store New additions to the Fantasy Points Store Cangaceiro Vamana Life's a Beach Geb Hellrider Chiron

BUG FIXES

Design Fixed an issue where a few items did not have the correct "PASSIVE" text Fixed Polynesian pedestal's missing textures Fixed an issue where you could be Knocked Up out of the Assault map UI Players can no longer spam another player with custom match invites, they are now limited to 2 invites per 30s Spectator Fixed a series of issues where certain animations could crash spectator Spectators will now go to the End of Match Lobby properly even if the game ends early in surrender Fixed an issue where spectator camera would have issues if the lobby was not full Console Fixed an issue where the mini map editor could become stuck in a certain position Fixed an issue where players could not create or join parties after leaving the game idle for a long period of time Items Oni Hunter's Garb This Item no longer counts as an Aura item Gods Bakasura Minions from his ultimate will no longer remove backdoor protections Freya Fixed an issue where her first ability was healing for 100% instead of 33%

ITEM BALANCE

New Item - Golden Blade "The time has come for a legendary item in SMITE's history to return, but in an adjusted state. In order to understand why, we will need to take a short journey through the history of Golden Bow." "Golden Bow was loved by many Assassin players. The item had seemingly narrow applications so it was buffed (along with its T2 version) to encourage more widespread use.This lead to it becoming a must-buy on all hunters, causing them to blend together in a very harmful way. The item was removed from the game after determining it would not be used enough on Assassins, or too much on Hunters. We try to avoid items that will only be successful on a single god, and we try to avoid items that cause all gods to lose their defining features. Golden Bow violated both of these rules, but at different stages in its life cycle." "After much deliberation and community feedback, the SMITE design team has decided that the Golden Bow effect is worthy of being in the game. Turning your basic attacks into AoE attacks is fun and interesting, and many players of SMITE voiced that they would like it to return." "In order to do this in a more balanced and positive way we made a few tweaks from the old design. First we limited it to our Katana item tree that is only for Melee Physical Classes. This item tree can often make items work that would break the game in other spots. We also decided to remove the Critical Strike % from the item, lowering its overall variance and widening its possible god pool. Finally, we made sure the item was a T3 item at appropriate cost. The largest issues arose when players could start the game with AoE basic attacks on an item that cost under 1500g." "We hope this new iteration of the item will bring a fun and unique passive back to SMITE with many positive results. We want to constantly increase the number of viable gods in the solo role or in other game modes, and we love bringing things back that the community feels passionate about. Thus we have: Golden Blade! -" NEW Item Only available to the Assassin & Warrior Classes Upgrades from Thousand Fold Blade 2200g +30 Physical Power +15% Attack Speed +10% Movement Speed PASSIVE - All Basic Attacks will also hit enemies within a 15 unit radius of the target for 50% of the damage to Gods, 75% damage to Minions and Jungle Camps. Heartseeker "In order to make room for Golden Blade in the Katana Tree, we needed to relocate an item. Heartseeker has seen dwindling usage with the redesign of The Crusher, and is often difficult to place in builds. It also was the Katana that relied the least on Melee only design. We have relocated it to the Morningstar tree and given it some more unique properties. It can now be used on Hunters, giving them another Penetration option. It also has Mana, MP5, and Mana Restore in the passive. This item should be a strong new part of the equation for ability based hunters, while still remaining viable on bursty Assassins. It has will be using a different icon to better fit its new tree placement." This item has been Re-designed and Icon has Changed Moved to Hydras Tree Can now be bought by all 3 Physical Power Classes. Upgrades from Charged Morningstar 2300g (1100g upgrade from T2) +30 Physical Power +10 Physical Penetration + 200 Mana + 7 MP5 PASSIVE - every successful basic attack gives you 1 stack. At 5 stacks, your next ability deals bonus damage equal to 80% of your physical power to the first enemy god hit and restores 10% of your max mana. Ethereal Staff "The redesign of Ethereal Staff and Soul Reaver has been quite successful. It has brought mages to a more fair spot and strongly differentiated the items. Soul Reaver's percent damage is more clearly applicable to more situations, so Ethereal Staff is getting a buff to help it stand more on its own as well. The item is being reduced in cost and its Max Health Stolen is being increased. Ethereal Staff is designed to be a tanky magical item that allows Guardians or Mages to continually increase their health pool throughout fights." Cost reduced from 2700 to 2600 Increased Health % Stolen on passive ability from 4% to 5%

GOD BALANCE

Athena "Athena is one of the most undisputedly strong Guardians of Season 5. Her setup is amazing and she can rotate across the entire map in a matter of seconds with her Ultimate. Her recent domination of the pro scene has prompted some further adjustments. Specifically her ability to charge into the enemy team and set up kills. The current cooldowns allows her to do this extremely often in the late game, leaving very little window for counter attack. We are adjusting the cooldown of her Preemptive Strike to lower her late game strength." Reach Now properly benefits from Lifesteal at 33%. Preemptive Strike Increased cooldown from 15/14/13/12/11s to 14s at all ranks Cabrakan "Cabrakan has been more of a 2 or 3 on the Richter Scale lately. This god has massive potential but his flex pick status and extreme aggression for a tank can make him tough to balance. To help his impact we are adding a decreasing scaling cooldown to his primary movement ability, Seismic Crush. This will increase his flexibility even further so with this change Cabrakan could be showing up more in Jungle, Solo, or Support, which is quite exciting." Seismic Crush Decreased Cooldown from 18s to 18/17/16/15/14s Cernunnos "Cernunnos has a similar story as Chiron. He launched at a very strong state and was nerfed in many ways. Bramble Blast originally had a lot more utility and CC attached to it, but the true design goal was to create an area of thorns that players would want to avoid. We are increasing the damage pick tick on the Bramble Area to help Cernunnos' early lane clear and to fulfill that design goal through damage, rather than through a slow." Bramble Blast Increased Base Damage per tick of Bramble area from 4/8/12/16/20 to 6/10/14/18/22 Chiron "Our great Centaur is also in need of a slight buff. Chiron launched in a very strong state that caused him to be nerfed in many ways. Now that his kit as a whole is in a better place, we want to bring back up his primary lane clear ability. Training Exercise has a lot of utility in that it can cleanse his allies of CC, and now will also deal a large amount of damage." Training Exercise Increased Base Damage from 70/120/170/220/270 to 80/135/190/245/300 Freya "We are continuing to watch Freya closely as she settles into the meta. Her redesign brought up her power level, but the new design allows for more ways to balance her. Last patch we adjusted her early to mid game wave clear, and this patch we are focusing on her late game burst. This ability may seem low scaling, but combined with other effects Freya can nuke a target for huge damage in a very short time. Cutting that down by 10% of her Magical Power will have a significant effect." Northern Lights Northern Lights Decreased Magical Power Scaling from 50% to 40% Ratatoskr "Ratatoskr has been putting up a very strong showing lately, especially in the SPL. His ability to stay out in the jungle for the entire early game combines with his low cooldown semi-global ult to make him the absolute king of early pressure. His ultimate is being increased in cooldown at the early ranks to give Ratatoskr's opponents some breathing room. With the current cooldown he has very little counterplay, and opposing junglers have very few options except hope that the Sly Messenger makes a mistake. Increasing Through the Cosmos' cooldown should allow for a more fair back and forth between the junglers." Through the Cosmos Cooldown increased from 90s to 110/105/100/95/90s

*Source: The Official Patch Notes

Okay, so I totally forgot again about patch day. This Friday patch thing really throws me off.

Quick thoughts:

• Golden Blade: Okay...this is interesting. Wonder how it'll pair as an early item in the Solo lane. I'm guessing it'll also be nice for Bakasura, Kali, Erlang Shen etc. in a Jungle role. I'm glad it's no longer Bow...I hated it for Hunters.
  
  Big things here that might change builds are 1) the MS means it can pair well with Stone Cutting Sword or Hastened Katana and possibly allow them to bypass boots altogether...and 2) this will allow efficient jungle camp clear without the need to use abilities, freeing them up for immediate use.
  
  
• Heartseeker should be pretty damn nice for Neith / Chiron etc.
  
  
• I'm okay with all the god adjustments.

They are really boosting AA gods these last couple of patches. I do kinda wonder how the new Heartseeker will affect gods that build it now.

Consider it sort of like an old ethereal staff with a passive that only triggers sometimes for extra burst or something.

So it won't hurt them much except now they lose the extra movement speed and gain some mana and MP5? Though now that I think about it, gods that relied on old/current Heartseeker Have Golden Blade now so they might be better off.

To me, it seems that they have more specifically been targeting Physical gods in the Solo lane (for example, Berserker's Shield, which was specifically targeting auto-attack based Physical gods).

With the wide variety of gods that can play Solo effectively, it got to a point where Guardians and Mages were seeing drastically more play than Warriors (and Assassins for that matter).

However, it seems that HiRez usually implements a change to target something, but then something else unintended happens with it due to poor foresight.

In this case, they introduced Golden Blade to help Physical gods in the solo lane:



However, this indirectly (or directly, rather) buffed several Assassin Junglers, who were in no way struggling or in need of a buff, in my opinion.

For Solo laners, I don't see this being built much, and for Junglers, I can see it being built after boots or even as a boots alternative.

*Also: The new Discordia skin is pretty great.

I read that Golden Bow Blade description in Suehyla El-Attar's voice.

I think Heartseeker is transitioning a bit more toward hunter use. No more MS, but hunters don't really need MS as much. Has some pen and power, and the passive will work well since it should be built relatively quickly...any of those hunters that are more mage-like and build high power/pen.

Yes, but a few Assassins should get decent use out of it as well (example, Bastet).

Im really disappointed with this Ratatoskr nerf. Stop killing my rat Hirez >:(

The new Heartseeker looks interesting. Will this item work well on hybrid ADCs? Such as my Cupid? Or it's for only Neith and simmilars?