Patch 6.4, "Darkness Falls" - Bran's Thoughts

Sorry, been busy and sorta forgot about this.

Link to the official patch notes is here: https://www.smitegame.com/news/darkness-falls-update-notes

Skipping skins.

Project Olympus Updates:

Only going over the major things worth talking about.

• UI Updates: Daily rewards no longer reset when you miss a day. But you have to manually claim it in the store. This is a minor inconvenience for much more reliable gem collection, so I count this as a positive.
  
  
• Mixer Store: earn points by watching official HR streams, and you can unlock a rotating set of skins with these points...those that earn 600 will unlock The Crusher Cabrakan skin too.
  
  
• Ranked: Matchmaking ratings will be viewable only to you unless you're Masters/Grandmasters. Duo Queue for Ranked Conquest returns (with limitations on skill differences), which is nice. Ranked progression will no longer need 10 qualifying games, and you just climb the ladder by playing and winning games. Role Queue now provides primary and secondary role choice preferences.

New Assault Map:

"Ragnarok has come and gone, transforming Asgard in the process. The Assault map has entirely new art set and some mechanical changes as well. The main goal for the Assault gameplay changes is to encourage more fighting. Some new areas and objectives have been added to the map to prevent stalemates and ensure the battle keeps raging."

A lot of the art rework for titans/minions etc. have been updated to S5 models. Towers get a bit of a nerf to their power so you can dive a bit easier and try to prevent slow stalemates and tower camping. And there's a new feature called "Vital Orbs."

• The map will start with two of these that spawn in the center of the map, and a new one will spawn in the corner of the map after each Tower destroyed.
• Players only need to walk into these to collect them.
• Orbs Respawn 60s after being collected .
• Vital Orbs provide:
  
  -15% Increased movement speed for the player who picked up the Orb for 10s.
  -15% instant Health and Mana heal for the player and allies within 60 units.
  -A 1% Health and Mana regeneration per second aura for 10s around the player. This affects all allies within 60 units.

This is probably fairly exciting for those who play Assault a lot, and should help speed things along a bit. Will need to see how it plays out.


Conquest Changes:

• Primal Fury: Increased damage dealt to jungle camps from 5% to 7% on the buff gained from killing the Primal Fury.
  
  
• Spirit Minion: 1 Spirit minion will spawn as part of the first wave only in the Duo side, and it's meant to provide just enough XP to allow the duo laners to hit level 2 after the 2nd wave, preventing them from being at a disadvantage against Junglers at that stage, and allowing them a 2nd ability to be unlocked to make more plays earlier.
  
  
• New Jungle Rules: Killing jungle camps on the opposite side now provide less XP/gold up until 15 minutes. Well this makes the jungle a lot less interesting.

Item Changes:

Well WTF.

• Asi (Rework:): Even though it's a lifesteal item, it's being built from the Light Blade tree (same as Exe and Qin's). Costs 2,550 gold, and provides 20 physical power, 20% lifesteal, 25% attack speed, and 15 flat penetration. Passive: If you drop below 35% Health, you gain an additional 30% Physical Lifesteal for 5 seconds. Can only occur once every 15 seconds.
  
  I'm not fully sure, but this seems like massive bloat to me. Even though it costs a lot more, it now has some power, higher base lifesteal, high flat pen, and the passive gives you up to 50% total lifesteal, LOL. This now seems like an absolutely perfect complement to Transcendence, if you can hold out that long for the cost. Trans/Tabi/Asi should be a meta thing, I'm guessing. Also probably drops Silverbranch down the meta, which I'm happy about.
  
  If I were to guess, it's going to see some adjustments in the future. Maybe a price drop, along with a lowered lifesteal amount and lowered pen. Dammit, now I need to redo the hunter builds.
  
  
• Ichaival (Rework:): Now builds from the same T2 branch as Silverbranch Bow and Atalanta's Bow. Costs 2,450 gold, has 30 physical power and 30% attack speed. Passive: Every Successful Basic Attack increases your Physical Power by 15 and reduces enemy Attack Speed by 10%. (Max. 3 Stacks).
  
  Alright, this is interesting. It gained base power while losing all of its pen. It retains its "boxing advantage" purpose, but changes how that works. You still get a power buff (crazy 75 total power at max 3 stacks!), but instead of dropping the enemy's power, you're dropping their attack speed by up to 30%. That's honestly pretty huge. The lack of pen is probably balanced by the power gain, and this will be a good item to pick up when against multiple basic attackers (or 1v1s against Art/Rama and others that rely mostly on their basics). But I'm guessing it'll be more of a late-game item now, as other items with pen function may still have priority. Who's willing to do some theory-crafting with me?

God Changes:

• Ao Kuang (nerf): Dragon's Call gets a minor 5 damage decrease at all ranks. Okay.
  
  
• Bacchus (nerfs): Drunk-O-Meter's damage mitigation droms from 7% to 5% when tipsy, and from 14% to 10% when smashed. Belch of the Gods gets a minor damage drop of 5 per tick. This one was coming. These changes are reasonable.
  
  
• Bakasura (nerf): Regurgitate's duration of the cone autos decreased from 6 seconds to 5 seconds. CC immunity decreased from 1.5 seconds to 1 second. I like this. When Baka is on a roll, he's absolutely BS.
  
  
• Fenrir (shift): Unchained base damage decreased by 20 damage at all ranks, and cooldown decrease at full runes on successful hit is reduced from 50% to 30%. Brutalize now will ALWAYS cleave, but cleave damage decreased from 75% of total to 50% of total. At max runes, will deal an additional 15% of your power per hit. The Unchained nerf decreases his overall mobility potential and early damage threat. However, Brutalize gets a very functional jungle clear when not at full runes. This shifts him away from the Support role again, and back into the Jungle. I'm guessing boogie is not pleased, though.
  
  
• Freya (nerfs): Northern Lights decreased base damage at all ranks, decreased slow from 25% to 15%, and decreased minion explosion damage from 50% to 25%. Aurora Blade ranged power scaling decreased from 15% to 10% per hit. Ouch. She's continued to be powerful, but I'm starting to worry they'll detune her too much. They have so many problems with balancing this god.
  
  
• Hun Batz (buff): Sacred Monkey can now hit minions more than once, but can still only hit gods once. Nice QoL for jungle clear.
  
  
• Jormungandr (buffs): Base physical protection increased from 18 to 21. The World Serpent's CD decreased to a steady 100 seconds at all ranks. Okay.
  
  
• King Arthur (nerfs): Overhead Slash decreased bonus damage from 50% at all ranks to 30/35/40/45/50%. Twin Cleave decreased energy gained from 2 to 1.5 per hit. Sundering Strike / Excalibur's Wrath (lol they called it Fury) now costs 40 mana instead of energy. That ult shift makes things more understandable, rather than the specialized energy, but I don't play him enough to know exactly how that will feel. Cost seems a bit on the low side for the Wrath version, though.
  
  
• Merlin (nerfs): Eclipse initial hit scaling reduced from 70% to 60%. Frostbolt's interaction with Gem of Isolation doesn't get the bonus damage unless the target is slowed previously, and bonus damage decreased from 20% to 15%. Flicker gets 2 second increased CD at all ranks. Halle-frickin'-lujah. Is this enough? Probably not...? But the flicker CD definitely makes things more dangerous for him.
  
  
• Ne Zha (nerfs): Wind Fire Wheels initial and landing base damage decreased by 10 at all ranks, and in-the-air damage decreased from 80/130/180/230/280 to 50/105/160/215/270. Universe Ring Toss protection debuff decreased from 15 at all ranks to 10/11/12/13/14. This sorta makes me sad, but it's probably a reasonable adjustment. Really hurts his early game.
  
  
• Pele (nerfs): Eruption inner damage decreased by 10 at all ranks. Volcanic Lightning decreased initial damage at earlier ranks, same at rank 5. Further nerfs. Ouch.
  
  
• Ra (buff): Base physical protection gain per level increased from 2.5 to 3. Meh, okay. Whatever.
  
  
• Rama (buff): Pick Me Up decreased mana cost by 20 at all ranks. Nice for him.
  
  
• Vamana (nerfs): Base movement speed decreased from 380 to 375. Armored Umbrella base damage decreased at top ranks (less powerful late). Umbrellarang decreased attack/MS slow from 30% to 25%. Deserved, as he's been a powerhouse since the buffs.

Well, we'll see how this all plays out. Finally see some Merlin nerfs, though I think some of these adjustments are a bit too much.

Disagree with fenrir having overall lower mobility potential. The unchained nerf is gonna hurt his combo potential. The lower base damage is gonna be pretty big. Also, if you're building max cdr, you may not be able to use unchained twice in a combo... need to test this.

What they should have done with unchained if they really needed to nerf him: lower base damage on initial levels, but keep at the same as it is now (or higher) at level 5. L
Keep the cd to 30% reduction at lower levels and make it 50% (or higher) at level 5.

Against enemies,The brutalize buff may or may not be significant because everyone can either cc him out of it or leap away from it.

Need to playtest all this before making any concluding statements

I only said lower mobility potential due to Unchained losing a bit of its CD potential from runes. Figured the lower damage would be very significant. Agreed with keeping the base damage at max rank.

This looks nice for Aphrodite support - more kisses for everyone ;)

Hi Rez doesen't fail to do some stupid changes I see, like buffing Ra when he absolutely does not need a buff, and bloating Ichaival for some reason (also I guess Hi Rez hate mage adcs by giving it attack speed reduction).

Bran, any idea when this update hits PC? Tomorrow?

I'm not Bran but... Here you go.

Hirez (or Titan forge, idk) confirmed that is tomorrow on their Facebook (on all platforms)

Sorry, I'm super disconnected in wine country. Barely get any signal, but I DO have my laptop (with my **** phone connection hotspot).

Now you know how I feel sometimes.