Hi-Rez Balancing is Black and White

Usually, i'm not one to complain about balancing issues since the vast majority of the time there is a counter to the "OP" god. However, I have noticed a pretty sad trend in the balancing. Hi-Rez seems to only deal in the extremes, with trial-and-error methods. For example, lets take Poseidon. When he was first released, we can all admit, he was pretty awful. In the recent patch, however, he is now unreasonably strong. His whirlpool, which everyone agreed needed a buff, was buffed through the roofs. Now the radius is huge, the pull-in is as bad as Hades' ultimate, and the damage is incredible. Did I forget to mention it has a cripple effect as well? His passive is very easy to manage now, his ultimate does a large amount of damage(However, I won't complain about the ult because it IS a "skillshot" and is avoidable). Lets take another god for example. Hel. Hel has gone through so many changes because she is a difficult god to balance. She was OP, then disgustingly weak, then OP again, and now she is back down to pathetic. I am no expert on balancing myself, but I feel like maybe the changes Hi-Rez does are a bit drastic, and if they were toned down a bit the balancing would be much more...well...balanced. Just my two cents.

Sadly, I must agree. Hel is utterly atrocious, but I'm not sure about Poseidon. He's not OP, but he's a bit on the strong side. An excellent God, nevertheless.

Thor is always a problem. He's been broken for awhile, as I believe is Ares.

This has been something I've been ranting on for months now. The Gods are certainly not balanced, but I can understand that doing so is not an easy feat so trial-and-error is one of the few ways to accomplish this. Gods are buffed according to player feedback and from observation on Hi-Rez's side.

My biggest pet peeve is that the tanks have as much damage as they do, like that little baby-thing Vamana. His damage is insane, and I don't understand how tanks, who are defense-based, can have as much AP as say Swagni. Completely gob smacking.

My two cents. Prepare for the counter arguments.

While it seems really easy to just points fingers and say "That god is OP!", I've known for some time this isn't always the case: there are a lot of other factors that can contribute to OP besides the gods themselves.

Lets take Hel, for example, as Nogglez kindly reminded us. A lot of people considered her to be broken before the cooldown changes because she could do too much. Most of these complaints seemed to be directed at her support ability moreso than her damage as it is very easy to punish a Hel that tries to go on the offensive due to her lack of escape moves.

Was her healing too strong? The answer isn't a simple yes or no. I will explain why: there are items that counter healing: Brawler's Beat Stick and Divine Ruin, which apply a debuff to healing upon using basic attacks or skills. Alone, they negate 50% of healing with two stacks, but when combined (either from two gods or the same one), they completely nullify healing on that target! It sounds awesome, but there were some glaring flaws with these two items, and that was their viability. They just didn't provide enough worthwhile stats for their cost to be worth building (costing 2300 and 2250 gold respectively), so it became a situation where in order to counter Hel, you had to gimp your build.

Meanwhile, other items designed to counter certain playstyles don't suffer the same flaw. Lets take a look at one of the most hotly debated items currently on the HiRez forums: Hide of the Nemean Lion. For just 2250 gold, you get the most Physical Protection out of any item in the game (not counting Sovereignty with it's aura bonus) and a decent amount of health. The cherry on top? It even reflects back 30% of the unmodified basic attack damage back at your enemy. It is designed to counter physical carries and builds that rely on lifesteal to survive, but unlike Beat Stick and Ruin, Nemean Lion actually provides good stats and is very cheap for what it rewards you with.

So no, Hel wasn't broken because her healing was too good, she was broken because the counterbuild goes against how players want to build their gods. Building Beat Stick and Ruin meant sacrificing DPS and holding back the rest of your stats, which in turn hurts your overall performance against everyone else you didn't need those items for. Sadly, nobody realized this, and instead of making those items viable, they chose to nerf Hel to borderline uselessness, and with the continuing trend of powercreep gods being released every two weeks, she continues to fall further into the depths of obscurity.

Well, I agree with you about poseidon, he's not op but he is at the stronger side of things, but as I main tanks I can tell you they won't dish out as mutch damage as agni. Tell me whitch tanks you have problems with and I will tell you how to counter them ;)
Btw: I don't wanna say to mutch about hel since I have no clue about how good she is

Hel has been tossed to every side of the spectrum. In the PAX trailer you saw her dealing 1k plus laser beams that could heal or damage. On her release she was not played often, and when she was she just recognized as a cool looking support. Then she went on her free week, and every scrub with bans in casual banned her because they heard rumors that she was a little OP. Rumors that were not totally true, she was just, to quote a certain Bacchus player, "On the stronger side of things". Then they nerfed her, and the global CD on her light/dark stance ruined her completely. She is now trash, and they will be reworking her eventually.

I really want to play against poseidon again to see how he is now facing him.
I'm not 100% sure on this because my memory isn't too clear but I think yesterday I got into a game with a poseidon. I forgot which god I was playing as but I could swear I remember getting stuck in a damn whirl pool that I couldn't get out of.

Like I said maybe I am trippin but I could swear I remember thinking to myself why is this whirl pool so damn strong with the pull in to where I can't even escape it at all.
Can anyone like re-ensure me I was not losing my mind if this was real or not?

I'm going to get on smite later maybe I will play a Poseidon to see if that really happened or not.

Ya better start believing in ghost stories, ICEN; You're in one.

In other words, yes, Whirlpool is that strong.