Patch 5.9, "Dragon's Fortune" - Bran's Thoughts

I would say yes and no. Say he doesn't need healing. He can use Expose Evil on the wave, and instead of cutting it a bit short (and exposing himself to the enemy to use Exorcism), he can just sit back, let the entire DoT of Evil play itself out. Remember, cutting it short deals only 75% of the remaining damage, so allowing the DoT to run its course will do more damage.

He then gets full damage out of that ability, and in the meantime, if he's level 3, he can also use the extra 50% attack from Book of Demons to help clear the wave, and then use Exorcism once the minions are close to tower to finish them off.

That's only one situation, but you can see even there that it's an example of how he's not necessarily as reliant on the 1-2 combo.

Letting the dot take time though isn't a good idea, especially if it's mid Zhong Kui. It takes away time you could have spent doing a buff or xp camp or even rotate to another lane. You want to clear the wave as quickly as possible. Sounds like a long way to clear the wave. Im not 100% sure but the way you suggested the method of waveclear seems longer compared to the usual 1-2. Your method could be better in the very early levels to reduce damage from minions, but that is the only real advantage I see.

Look, I can definitely agree with your general points. I'm just looking for a bit of reverse acceptance on mine, lol.

If you immediately use Exorcism after using Expose Evil, you're basically cutting the damage from 100% to 75%. The longer you wait, the closer to 100% damage you'll actually deal with Evil. And yeah, I'm talking more early game.

If you can clear the wave with a quick 1-2, then you'd do so. If you're facing a tough matchup in the early game, you do what you need to to take as little damage as possible and still get your farm. if that means you have to concentrate on the wave and lose out on the occasional mid-camp or whatever, that's still preferable to constantly worrying about a gank because every time you use your combo you get chunked for a good amount of your health because you had to go up on the wave just to hit the minions.

In any case, not having to worry about hitting every single minion with Exorcism is nice. I'm pretty sure I prefer this adjustment, but that's just my preference. And you're a better player than I am, so perhaps you just know better and I'm not really getting it.

I don't really play Zhong Kui but im just saying based on how his kit works and how he clears the wave typically. Probably best to test out your waveclear strategy in a match of casual conquest (I think jungle practice minions are outdated).

It's (in my opinion) a quality-of-life change more than anything, especially in non-conquest modes. The protections you get each wave is essentially the same, but you're now less punished for dying or ulting (either of which is kind of hard to avoid in casual modes). I'd also like to point out that it's pretty much only in Conquest that you get to have a whole lane to yourself. In any other mode, you have to spam [VSS] just to get the few measly ghosts that didn't already go to your de-facto adc, which is usually just a couple brutes or three archers.

I'm not saying that it's bad that Smite is balanced around Conquest, but I think it's good that Smite isn't balanced exclusively around Conquest.