Patch 6.5, "Sand & Skies" - Bran's Thoughts

Link to the official patch notes is here: https://www.smitegame.com/news/sands-and-skies-update-notes

Skipping skins in general...BUT...I do like the Baron Samedi, Ullr, Hel, and Fenrir skins and their effects. Especially Hel's effects, and Fen's white contrast look. Not bad.

New Gods: Set & Horus

Set: Assassin w/ clones. Expected to be mainly jungler.

• Passive: Relentless: stacks AS, up to 25%.
  
  
• Ability 1: Skewer: line skill shot, pass through and slow targets. Interacts with Spawn of Set, giving a line targeter allowing Spawn to dash. Clones deal less damage than the base Skewer. A bit like Baron's 1 in aiming feel.
  
  
• Ability 2: Spawn of Set: conjurs a spawn of himself made of sand. Stand where summoned, attack nearby targets. Has 2 charges of the ability at once, that can be conjured in quick succession. Can interact with other abilities, commanding them to attack or teleporting to them. Can only have 8 spawns at any given time. attack range 12, damage 20 (scales with power), duration 8-12 seconds, CD 13-11 seconds.
  
  
• Ability 3: Sandstorm: circular AOE around Set providing damage and stacking his passive. Can interact with Spawn by teleporting him to the spawn location. His only mobility ability. Immune to slows while active. Also debuffs physical power and player's vision gets a bit cloudy (pseudo blind).
  
  
• Ultimate: Kingslayer: stim. While active, he gets increased MS, and each time Set damages a god they gain a mark of Set. At 4 marks, they erupt, taking burst damage while Set restores health and gives an immediate charge of Spawn of Set. Excess charges are immediately consumed, causing a spawn to appear near Set. This is how he can get up to 8 spawns.
  
  
• Build direction per Pon Pon: Suggested focus early on ability damage potential with Jotunn's Wrath, The Crusher...moving later into basic attack function e.g. Hastened Katana, Stone Cutting Sword, possible protections.
  
  Seems like a somewhat higher-skill god. Sounds fun.

Horus: Defensive, mobile support Warrior.

• Passive: Resolute: gains stacks by getting damaged by enemy gods. Up to 10 stacks. Each stack provides 1.5 protections, 1.5% CCR. When Resolute fades, heals based on the amount of stacks...2 +0.75 per level.
  
  
• Ability 1: Updraft: damages and knocks up nearby enemies around him (radius 12). His next basic attack within 5 seconds creates a gust of wind that travels forward, damaging (14/23/32/41/50 +100% basic attack damage) and slowing enemies by 25% for 2.5 seconds. Enemies that were knocked up take 1.5x gust damage.
  
  
• Ability 2: Fracture: short dash forward. If he hits an enemy god he stops and stuns the god for 1.25 seconds, followed by a cleave attack (cone) that he can angle, and protections are reduced by 10/15/20/25/30 for 3 seconds.
  
  
• Ability 3: Protector's Surge: ALSO a dash (but considered a leap), can go through walls, but specifically to a teammate (like a limited Da Ji Trickster Spirit). Upon landing, the selected ally and all nearby allies have their health restored (50/100/150/200/250) and gain protections (10/15/20/25/30) for 3 seconds. Mercy-ish feel?
  
  
• Ultimate: To The Skies!: sends a mirror image of himself into the sky that scounts for a location to fly to. (He himself is still on the ground and is damageable, so don't use mid-battle). Upon selecting a ground location, Horus will begin to channel for 2 seconds. Any ally near Horus at the end of the channel are flow to the location. He and allies damage and knock away from the landing location, and gain a protective shield (160/240/320/400/480) upon landing. Okay WTF. Dude...Tank meta is 100% back in full force. Also...this is a total dunk squad ability.

Assault Map: Vital Orbs got nerfed...less healing and respawn changed from 1 minute to 2 minutes.

Item Changes:

• Ichaival (nerf): Cost increased from 2,450 to 2,600 gold. Good adjustment, less rushing potential. Might still need a bit less AS debuff. Maybe even a bit less power?
  
  
• Runeforged Hammer (nerf): Cost increased from 2,300 gold to 2,400 gold, power decreased from 55 to 50. Not a huge adjustment, slightly less use seen perhaps, but it's still a powerful item for those that can utilize it well.
  
  
• Blackthorn Hammer (nerf): Health decreased from 450 to 350. Good. 450 health is stupidly high. Still an effective item.
  
  
• Hastened Katana (nerf): 2,200 to 2,300 gold, decreased attack speed from 25% to 20%. This is probably pretty needed. Kali / Baka a bit too powerful right now.

God Changes:

• Bastet (Declaw), Kukulkan ( Zephyr), and Scylla ( Sic 'Em) get QoL improvements by adding AOE indicators to the abilities to better see what will be hit in the area by the ability.
  
  
• Ganesha (buffs): Turn of Fate buff duration increased from 3 to 4 seconds, Ohm now provides magical protections along with the phys prots. Remove Obstacles damage increased by 15 at all ranks. He needed these. Great changes.
  
  
• Hou Yi (QoL improvement): Sun Breaker no longer has Hou Yi rooted. He can now move his camera freely while firing the ability. Okay.
  
  
• Izanami (buffs): Death Draws Nigh decreased threshold of missing health to gain a stack, from 15% to 10% (same max stacks, just stacks quicker). Spectral Projection changed slow duration to be 3 seconds at all ranks. Fade Away lowered travel time from 0.6 seconds to 0.5 seconds and removed the delay at the end of the dash. I see some more hard pushing Iza picks in the near future.
  
  
• Jormungandr (buffs / shift): Basic attacks get increased damage from 9.6 +0.64/level to 11.2 + 0.96/level. Venomous Haze...consuming clouds with abilities now lowers the cloud duration to 8 seconds instead of 5 seconds. Consuming Bellow removed damage mitigations while channeling the ability, but no longer goes on CD if interrupted during the channel. Really not sure about Bellow's change as that partially seems pretty powerful to have the CD reset.
  
  
• King Arthur (nerfs hallelujah): Excalibur's Wrath increased per-slash damage from 10/20/30/40/50 to 10/25/40/55/70, and per-slash bonus damage increased from 1.5% to 2%. Its final hit damage and AOE decreased from 60/135/210/285/360 to 50/110/170/230/290. BUT...true damage throughout that is changed to physical damage (thank god). Damage change: previously 120/225/390/525/660 + 14/16/18/20/22% of HP true damage. Is now 110/260/410/560/700 + 17/19/21/23/25% of HP physical damage. If you Beads early, you'll take significantly less damage. This also deals less damage overall if you have even 20 physical protection (per Pon Pon). He needs more nerfs. This is a start.
  
  
• Xing Tian: Bug fixes, better visual cues on abilities. Sky-Cutting Axe: now functions as a leap and not a dash. Minor immunity frames and can actually jump over small gaps.

Well, interesting. The new gods have some interesting designs, but the threat of immediate balance issues seems likely.

Bran, the item and god balances are all blank?

Why are you trolling him?

Becauuse I can and I want to.
Why do you poop at parties?

Everyone poops at parties sometimes.

You’re the kind of person that finds camouflage “invisible” jokes funny

Never heard of it. But judging by what you told me, it seems pretty lame.

Full notes done.

So besides Set and Horus likely needing to be rebalanced as they get more data, the overall patch seems okay. They continue to ignore Aphrodite, who, of all gods, likely needs a rework/rebalancing. But the item adjustments seem reasonable, if a bit light-handed in some cases. Asi didn't get touched this round. I could see a minor nerf to maybe its attack speed, or its peak lifesteal at low health, but don't think it needs to be adjusted too much. If anything, perhaps a minor power nerf to Transcendence might bring it more in line with Devo's, which seems to be the weaker build path right now.

For Ichaival, couple ways you could nerf a bit differently, if needed. Increase base power by 5, decrease power per stack by 5. Decrease AS by 5%. Decrease AS debuff on enemies to 7% or 8% per stack.

Horus is gonna be funnnn