Patch 4.14 Patch Notes (Mid Season, Part 2) - Bran's Thoughts

Official patch notes are here: https://www.smitegame.com/new-in-smite-ursa-major-4-14-patch-notes/

New God: Artio. Guardian, eh? Shapeshift at will, most similar to Ullr with a 1 second CD. Some group healing, AOE cripple/power debuff in %, MORE healing (personal) with a slow and potential root in Druid form. Strong base damage Maul, AOE stun and personal protection buff, and more damage and a slow in an initiation/escape ability in Bear form. No ult, but between passive and stance switch's passive, she gets % protection reduction, added move speed and MP5.

She seems like she's going to be super fun. Too much CC for you, Stuke?

Skins: Really like that new Cupid skin. Have yet to see the rest, but the pic for Freaky Tiki Ah Puch looks cool...too bad I don't like the god. Or maybe that's good, since I don't buy many skins anyway. Critical.dmg also looks good, going along with that theme.

• Bracer of Undoing: minor nerf to 40%. Good.
  
  
• Atalanta's Bow: 1 second increase to duration. Seems better.
  
  
• Demonic Grip: 30% AS, WTF? Lower gold?!? Lower power, fine. Holy, this helps.
  
  
• Hastened Ring: 30 seconds down to 25 second CD, 6 second window...at least you get a full ability burst effect. Okay, this combined with Demonic, I'm now okay with Freya, I think...I'll go into PTS Jungle practice to see how it feels.
  
  
• Anhur: So, he's got a pretty strong early game, but falls off late. They increased the damage across the board for an escape/initiation ability, and decreased CD of his ult. Why wouldn't they just give him extra scaling or something?
  
  
• Cernunnos: pretty good nerf. Does this put him in line with other hunters?
  
  
• Freya: Base attack speed increase to a straight 1 hit per second at level 1. Pulse damage increase. HOLY HELL. Okay, I'm starting to feel a bit bad for complaining so much.
  
  
• Osiris: Judgement Tether minor nerf to damage reduction...not a huge deal. This is okay.
  
  
• Raijin: Buffs. Sounds better. The Percussive Storm doing full line damage and passing through everything is huge. Might still need a bit more buffs? Or is this okay?
  
  
• The Morrigan: stealth duration decrease at high end. This is fine to me. Helps by making the mana cost cheaper early.

More to come later, to be edited into the OP. Might record a PTS Jungle practice and see how Freya feels.

Placeholder Raiwho buff
Placeholder Cern nerf
Placeholder Osiris nerf

I love this patch so much tbh.

see bran? you complained alot and they actually listened

what about my Kuzenbo rant, you know, the one that actually matters

This patch is much better to help counter-balance some things, but they didn't address some of the lower tier gods (other than Freya and Raijin). At least they got movement on the higher tier for the most part ( Cernunnos, minor thing for Osiris). Come to think of it...Freya and Raijin were basically the lowest, at least in some opinions.

I think they're not really sure where they want Freya to be. They have made so much more attack speed available to her, that even though her early game still is a bit weak (to be confirmed), she's going to be potentially stronger than she was before, at least situationally. I fear they may have overbuffed her.

Theory-craft:

General list of possible items:

• Movement: Shoes of the Magi (18%), Shoes of Focus (18%), Demonic Grip (7%), Hastened Ring (7%), Toxic Blade (10%), Witchblade (10%)
  
  
• Penetration: Demonic Grip, Spear of the Magus
  
  
• Lifesteal: Bancroft's Talon, Pythagorem's Piece, Witchblade
  
  
• High Power: Rod of Tahuti

So, there's the list. How should she be built?

Starter: Soul Stone still needed as starter? Or does Vampiric Shroud have a say? Soul Stone is nice for the added damage. After getting full stacks, it adds 40 power. What can we see at level 1? Her attack used to be 0.95, + 1.95% per level. This means, at level 1, her actual attack speed was 0.97 (just shy of 1 attack/second), which means she gets 5 Pulse shots off per activation.

With a full 1.0 base attack speed at the same progression, her level 1 attack speed is 1.02, which actually should get her a full 6 Pulse shots, instead of 5. With the damage increase from 20 bonus (+ 15% scaling) at level 1 to 30 bonus, if she gets every shot off in both situations when at full Soul stacks, she goes from 100 damage on a single target (+75% scaling = 145) to 180 damage (+90% scaling = 234). That is a HUGE difference. HUGE. IF my calculations are correct...

With Vampiric Shroud instead, she won't get the added 40 power boost, so her end damage, instead of being 234, is 198. That's still not too shabby, and a significant damage increase (36%) compared to pre-this-patch. Vampiric is interesting, because it gives her a nice early counter to the enemy hunter, with 100 health, easily confirmed added health from the passive, only about 1/2 the mana as per full stack Soul, but also 10 physical protection. This means, it might be a better option.

So with that clearing boost at level 1, we can now turn to other matters...how do we want to get her move speed? There are so many options that we can even consider NOT getting Shoes, though there are caveats to that route. What do we consider core...that might help.

Core = Demonic Grip and Hastened Ring.

These two give 15% MS. Combined, they cost 2,150 + 2,300 = 4,450 gold. Personally, if we look at a Hunter that starts Warrior Tabi + Silverbranch Bow as initial counter to Freya, that's 3,300 gold, and they'll get Warrior as their first item. With a bit of help from their support, they can probably run you down before you even complete your first item (!) unless you stay very safe or your Support peels well. To me, this is a bit risky. If you're fine staying very close to your tower for the first few minutes, this start can work. However, there's another interesting option...

Witchblade is cheaper than either of these options (2,050 gold, which is even cheaper than when people started her with Hastened Fatalis), and gives some good early health sustain via the 15% lifesteal. It's got a bit higher movespeed (10%) than the other 2, and immediately counters basics by the enemy ADC if they want to pressure. You're still going to need to be careful of CC by the Support (or Artemis' root if you're concentrating on clearing the wave), but it's an option. You're not going to be aggressive at this point anyway, so it can work out.

Safe start: Shoes of the Magi, Demonic Grip, Hastened Ring (or could be Witchblade 3rd). 33% MS by this point, along with 55% AS. I'd finish this with Witchblade, Spear of the Magus, and Rod of Tahuti. I'd then sell Shoes of the Magi and consider Pythagorem's Piece (even higher lifesteal plus some CDR) or Shaman's Ring.

(Possibly) Risky start: Witchblade, Demonic Grip, Hastened Ring. 25% MS by this point, along with 75% AS. Risky again in the fact your movespeed is a bit low. Health sustain will counter-balance. I'd finish this with Spear of the Magus, Situational, and Rod of Tahuti. Situational in this case could be Pythagorem's Piece or Shaman's Ring.

We'll see how those feel.

Yes, Hi-Rez need to knock it off with over-bloating these new gods kits with a ridiculous amounts of hard crowd control. I don't care if she's a guardian, that is too much CC for a single god to reasonably have in their kit. The game has stopped being fun and every teamfight can be won by whoever can CC chain the longest and nuke the hardest which will be typically one-sided and ended in the first 10 minutes of the game.

Forget the time where a teamfight takes more than a few seconds or that a few number of gods on a team and a limited amount of CC making those fights even more of a challenge. Forget the time when you do get hit with CC you had the right amount of options to evade or survive after one CC attack. Forget the times where gods would either have no or very little CC in their kits and made the game more exciting to box or fight without the need to give up when you get caught in a lockdown and have the enemy spam VEL every time it happens.

Oh, and saying stupid pointless **** like "Git Gud" doesn't change the fact that the game is so reliant on CC and Burst to determine who will win the game that it's not even worth playing anymore. It doesn't matter if I have the same tools as these other players do because the **********ers at Hi-Rez don't know what they are doing and think that 2 hard CC is "Not enough hard CC" (Actual quote for Ajax from the 4.14 patch today), then there is no hope for the dev team anymore.

If this rant is a bit too rude and meaty for someone to read...

New God: Seems like it could be a bit overtuned, but likely in a decent state for PTS and will probably be at a better release state. Bearing in mind that as a game designer you generally want release stuff to be a bit above the point of balance to keep people playing and grab as much data as you can about what people enjoy or hate, and what needs a buff or nerf. I can see her being potentially stronger in solo, but I haven't had a chance to play her myself.

Anhur: I'd say it's more of an identity decision. They want him to continue to be that aggressive early hunter with high outplay potential, which hasn't been shining against the likes of other early hunters. The jump combo gives your combo a bit more pressure and increases your presence in lane. The ult is the big thing though as it allows him to both keep up pressure and stay safe as its less costly to burn the ult for immunity or to shove a wave now.

Osiris: This is actually huge and hurts his already comparatively low late game potential. He gets much less tanky in fights and diving into the enemy team has gotten a lot harder. That being said his early game is likely to remain at its very strong state, but with this meta going more late game this could hurt him a decent amount.

@Duo: ah, you're right, that damage reduction at late game will be huge, and is even pretty significant early. 30 going up to 50% at full level, which is some incredible reduction. My bad.

Are you sure you wrote one, Ducks? I can't find it anywhere...