Athena/Ares Rework Idea + Overall Rework Plan

Passive: Commanding Aura / Burning Aura: Athena shields allies within 35 feet for 5 (+ 2.5% of bonus protections) per second for 1.5 seconds, up to 50 + 25% bonus protections. Ares deals 10 + 2.5% of his max health as magic damage to all enemies within 35 feet. (Ares gets a Mystical Mail knockoff, Athena gets a permanent shield.)

Q: Shield Rush: Athena dashes forward with her shield raised, dealing 60/100/140/180/220 damage (+75% of your magical power), knocking back enemies. Cooldown: 8 seconds. (Bleh.)

Q: Shield Bash: Ares' next basic attack strikes around himself, dealing 70/120/170/220/270 damage (+50% of your magical power) and knocking back enemies. Cooldown: 8 seconds. (Boring, I know. But it's a basic attack reset, which means you can deal a good amount of damage if you use this right.)

W: Rally: Athena raises her and her allies' protections by 15/20/25/30/35 (+15% of your bonus protections) and grants 50% CC reduction for three seconds. Cooldown: 15/14/13/12/11 seconds. (It's a good amount of protections, but it's mainly to survive CC and burst damage.)

W: War Cry: Ares raises his own physical power by 15/20/25/30/35 (+15% of your bonus protections) and his move speed by 10/15/20/25/30% for six seconds, sharing half this bonus with allies within 35 feet. Cooldown: 15/14/13/12/11 seconds. (Assuming you have 200 armor, that's about 65 physical power you are giving to yourself. Even without crits or pen, that's going to hurt.)

E: Reach: Athena's next basic attack is ranged, dealing 100/150/200/250/300 damage (+50% of your magical power), piercing enemies. It taunts the first enemy hit for 1 second. Cooldown: 7/6.5/6/5.5/5 seconds. (Ohai, Athena's ranged basics actually have a purpose now. They should deal more damage, too.)

E: Shackles: Ares throws a chain that binds the first enemy hit, dealing 25/35/45/55/65 (+15% of magical power) damage per second and slowing (15%) and crippling them for 3 seconds. Cooldown: 12 seconds. Holds two charges. Hitting the same target twice will pull and root/cripple target for 1.5 seconds. (His old ult, put in a more counterable package. Some things are only usable in a more compressed form, like computers.)

R: Defender of Olympus: Athena dashes to target ally structure or god within 45 feet, blocking the next ability to hit them and blocking the next two basic attacks to hit for 2 seconds. Cooldown: 30/27.5/25/22.5/20 seconds. (You can make some amazing-looking plays with this.)

R: Inferno: Ares deals 20/25/30/35/40 damage (+3/3.5/4/4.5/5% of the enemy's max health) (+15% of your magical power) per second as magic damage in a 45 foot aura for ten seconds. Cooldown: 100/90/80/70/60 seconds. (Super Mystical Mail, acts as damage and zoning tool.)

Athena is a skirmisher. Her CC and buffs aren't long. You play by letting your shield build up, poking and dealing damage, wearing the enemy down over a series of short engagements. You have the advantages of range, mobility, and free CC reduction, which accumulates in your ultimate, which can be used to follow up on someone's initiation, protect an ally, or to retreat.

Ares is entirely different. He excels at punishing the enemy with long damage over time, with his long-lasting buffs and devastating damage auras, as well as his tools to keep enemies in the fight. His strengths are in the massive damage he deals and his strong pushing power - at the cost of higher cooldowns and less range compared to Athena.

If you haven't noticed, there's a general trend of weaker CC, skillshot dependency, and conditional damage. Ares can't just burst someone down after blinking, nor can Athena taunt an entire team for 2 seconds anymore. If these god reworks came to pass, would Smite be improved for it? What if reworks like these affected all gods?

Few questions:

• How far does Athena's knockback on her 1 send enemies?
• Even though it's not exceptionally powerful, isn't a 22 second cooldown ultimate still a bit overpowered? I feel as though 30 seconds ought to be adequate at max rank, unless she doesn't scale to be very powerful/tanky.
• Ares pull in this context is not very counterable. Other supports' pulls either come out much slower (eg: Sylvanus' 1 to his pull) or can be minion blocked (eg: Sobek's pull). Ares' chain comes out almost instantly, making it unavoidable in many contexts. Once you have the first one, all Ares would have to do is back up to get you more out of position and hit his slowed target. The only counter to this would be body blocking by a support, which cannot always be done.
• Ares' ult is crazy, ten seconds of that much damage seems way too much, even with gods' built in protections, as long as you could trap enemies with area control or just use Heavenly Agility and magi's blessing to keep up with enemies, that damage would be inescapable and completely decimate gods.

Overall I will say that the concept of these gods would play much more balanced than Athena at least in competitive smite ( Ares doesn't really have that much competitive viability to begin with. This might GIVE him viability, but it's definitely not nerfing him at all).

Personally, I don't think you would need to rework these gods' entire kits to make them work within the framework of smite. Changing Athena's taunt to first enemy hit by her ranged basic attack would be a welcome nerf, and possibly changing Ares' ult to yours would be a good change overall since it cannot be countered simply with CC immunity.

I cannot deny though that these god concepts are well thought out and do work better than these gods in their present form. The main reason I would want the gods to stay the same is primarily nostalgia, but in the interest of balancing at this point I'd be willing to accept these changes. I have to say though that if you made changes like this to Athena and Ares giving them weaker CC overall, you'd really have to change every guardian to make it balanced, otherwise these guys would be last pick and ban.

Answers:

- Not too far. About as far as Pos' thing. It's not a lot, so I'm considering giving it a lower cooldown. Or is it being a dash enough already?
- Other MOBAs are used to short cooldown ults. Some are low enough to be basic abilities - some are low enough to be spammable. The question is: Is the ult too powerful for the cooldown? I'm actually thinking that it might need a shorter cooldown.
- Don't forget that it doesn't go through minions. It's pretty damn powerful, but you'll need a clear shot first. So in the laning phase, you have the minion wave (a lot like laning against Sobek, actually), and in teamfights, well, there are five people there.
- I'm a little bit divided on this. On one hand, it deals 50% of their health over ten seconds, but on the other hand, if you look at Ares' current Searing Flesh, it deals about the same DPS (24% over 4 seconds versus 50% over ten seconds). And I don't think Searing Flesh does that much damage, honestly - literally, Searing Flesh lasting for twice the duration would deal more damage than this ult, and quicker, too (700 + 48% health over eight seconds versus 400 + 50% health over ten seconds). So I don't think it's really that overpowered.

- Ooh, I forgot about Ares' passive. That does complicate it a little.

And yes, I'd have to make changes to everything. But I'm glad you're fine with tossing out the ol' "spam giant AoE CC to hit stuff" idea.

If you want a god that's pretty much the same, I can provide.

Thanatos: Sustain-based assassin. Designed to still do his job - blowing up squishnuggets - but gets heals.

Passive: Harvester of Souls: Thanatos is healed for 10% of the max health of anything that dies within 55 feet. In addition, whenever Thanatos kills a god, boss, or large jungle minion, he gains 30% move speed for five seconds.

Q: Death Scythe: Thanatos hurls his scythe forward, dealing 70/120/170/220/270 damage (+100% of your bonus physical power) plus 12/14/16/18/20% of the enemy's current health, and healing for half the damage dealt. If this ability kills the target, its cooldown is instantly refreshed. Cooldown: 10 seconds. (You can actually level this first without sacrificing too much jungle clear, and you don't die instantly to minion waves, either.)

W: Scent of Death: Thanatos passively gains 30/35/40/45/50% move speed when walking toward a god beneath 25/30/35/40/45% health. When this ability is activated, Thanatos' next ability gains an additional effect. Cooldown: 18/16/14/12/10 seconds.

Death Scythe: Enemies take damage based on their maximum health and you heal for 100% of the damage dealt.
Soul Reap: Enemies are silenced for 2 seconds and your cooldowns are reduced by 2 seconds for every enemy god hit.
Hovering Death: Thanatos becomes immune to damage while channeling.

E: Soul Reap: Thanatos severs the souls of his enemies with a sweep of his scythe, dealing 90/130/170/210/250 damage (+75% of your bonus physical power). Enemies hit are silenced for 1 second. Cooldown: 10 seconds.

R: Hovering Death: Thanatos channels for 3 seconds and ascends for 5 seconds, gaining massive move speed, and can land on the ground to deal 100/150/200/250/300 damage (+100% of your physical power) in a 20-foot radius circle. Thanatos instantly kills enemies below 25% health, and gains 100/150/200/250/300 (+50% of your physical power) in shielding for every enemy god hit, for seven seconds. Cooldown: 120/110/100/90/80 seconds.

Thanatos is a sustain-based assassin-bruiser focused on surviving in the front lines.

In the jungle, he can clear quickly and stay healthy with the constant resets of his Q. Ganking is highly dependent on skillshot accuracy and timing, but it can be done. However, Thanatos is really designed to execute single targets, so expect him often in the mid lane or solo lane, or counterjungling with his powerful empowered Q. His passive, however, makes tower dives painless - if you manage to kill them.

In teamfights, Thanatos changes from a single target assassin to a health-based bruiser. Your sheer volume of shielding from your ultimate and healing from nearby deaths keep you healthy as you spread massive silences and chunk down priority targets. You may not have an escape, but you won't need one, in theory. A few defensive items will help.

For your build, Thanatos can be anywhere from a nearly full-tank to a pure assassin. Pure tankiness will render you virtually invincible as you dish out CC and percent-health damage. Building pure power makes your Q completely disgusting, and you can take full advantage of your shielding to dish out massive damage. Going between the two lets you multitask - you can soak up a few hits, but you can also reliably assassinate enemies.

Why are you reworking the entire god in the first place is the real question

I don't like either of those. The athena one would turn her into the ****test.

That Ares passive. It actually shuts down Ao Kuang, and partially Loki too.

Also, Ares ult, like Ah Push ult, may be not that strong in Conquest, as it is mainly a zoning tool.
However, in Assault and Joust, a large area zoning tool is deadly, as there isn't that much space to escape.

But anyway, I don't think HiRez take other game modes than Conquest into consideration when they design their gods.

@Bullfrog
Ares is already really strong in assault and arena, easily S+ tier. And even with this high area damage ult, it at least doesn't slow like Ah Puch's.

@Sub
As for your responses I agree with them, although you'd probably need to just test Ares ult in game to get the damages just right. As for the Athena knockback that sounds fine, in my head I was imagining potentially having the knockback of Kumbhakarna hitting a minion which while hilarious would be so overpowered.

Ares in a nutshell:

Do you have Beads ready? Then his ultimate is useless
Do you have any other form of CC immunity ready? Then his ultimate is useless.
You don't have any of the two listed above? Well, **** you then. Prepared to be pulled in to his team and get hit by 5 ults and CC locked, with their being no way for you to do anything about it except pray that his teams ultimate's are on cooldown.

To make things even better Shackles as the potential to do over 1000 damage. Because that's totally balanced, right? A tank having a skill that dose more damage then most ults?!?

And the rest of his kit is pretty much useless, at least in comparison.

If that doesn't sound like a god that needs a full rework, I don't know what dose!

Exactly. A lot of the things people are nostalgic about are just bad stuff.

It's sort of like an old man complaining about the "good old days" where people died from uncurable diseases and you worked 14 hours a day with only sundays off.