Season 5: Patch 5.1 (Round 1 WIP) Showcase - Bran's Thoughts

Completed!


Official patch notes (Showcase) are here: https://www.smitegame.com/news/season-5-5-1-update-notes


Also, r/Smite notes from TripleCharged is here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Smite/comments/7rbdq4/51_season_5_patch_show_notes/


Alright, the big Season 5 update is upon us! Basic plan from Hi-Rez is to roll the PTS today (Thursday, January 18) immediately after the show. If it follows like Season 4, there will likely be 2 additional rounds of adjustments before the official 5.1 Patch that will go live sometime in February.

I'll mostly be concentrating on main overview changes in bullet point format, followed by just comments on some of the key item/god changes.


Season 5 Overview - Conquest Changes:


These have been covered in other posts to some degree, and you can read in-depth notes from the links. These will be main points and my thoughts.

• All map characters remodeled, including lane minions, harpies, buff groups, oracles, GF, FG, and Titans - This is all great.
  
  
• Map size increase: about 20% wider, to slow down rotations and emphasize the need to position well. Lane widths are relatively unchanged, so most of the change is to the jungle. - Now Junglers don't have to sit in lane as much. Maybe Guards will be able to go back to hanging with the ADC for just a bit, hmmm?
  
  
• Jungle changes: more twists and turns and narrower paths in some cases, speed buff moved back, jungle fog of ward, etc. - All great changes. Speed buff far back likely means Jungler starts at their own buff, so they don't stupidly start in lane...? Again, fog of war is probably the biggest and most important gameplay element.
  
  
• Map features and landmarks: map is symmetrical so no undue advantages given, GF / FG landmarks are taller to be more easily seen.
  
  
• Map feedback adjustments: some really nice changes to make things more visually informative, like buff drops not having delays in pickup, phoenixes showing their connection to the Titan's health, camps can be damaged while they're arriving at the camps. - Great great great features that are just gamer quality of life improvements.
  
  
• Gameplay pacing changes: less snowball, reduced XP split bonus from 50% to 20%, minions actually retain a small amount of gold reward even if hit by towers, jungle camp respawns reduced for more consistent activity, conquest start time increased to 90 seconds for better setup and planning. Seriously, this is all great stuff, I think.
  
  
• Jungle camp changes: XP/gold reduced, along with minion base health and protections but increasing over time to scale with player damage output. Yellow speed buff decreased from 20% to 15% MS. Purple buff protection reduction increased by 5% making it more worthwhile.
  
  
• Minion changes: deal less damage but have more health, making it take longer to fight over waves and force people to choose between prioritizing poke vs clear. - This is interesting to me, and I think I like it. Definitely slows down the game a lot though.
  
  
• Tower/phoenix changes: protections reduced, power increased to make it worthwhile to deal some early damage when possible but dangerous to do so.
  
  
• Season ticket / Fantasy points: We'll be able to actually spend some of our gained fantasy points on skins! Nice, this is very much appreciated, HR.

Item additions / changes:





God changes:




Yet again, HR is surprising me overall...I honestly think the game is moving in a pretty nice direction, not only with the Conquest map changes, but also the items and god balances, though of course it remains to be seen how these will all work out as the season goes live...also curious how other modes will be affected, as I'm mostly thinking about Conquest, but I can't say I'm disappointed. =)

Hello Branmuffin!

I'm new to the community since I want to give a little back and write a guide. I am still working out some build alternatives since the S5 change to Tahuti and one thing I keep coming back to is: Soul Reaver or Ethereal Staff. Since i couldn't find anything on the forums (or the internet, really) on the matter, I thoght I'd just ask you here on your "thoughts thread for S5" since you seem to know a lot about the mechanics and how items work.

My question is about Ethereal Staff's passive: I do not understand what the text is trying to convey. "PASSIVE - Your abilities deal an additional 3% of the target's maximum Health as Magical Damage. If the target has over 2000 Health, your ability bonus damage scales up, capping at 10% max Health on 2750 HP targets. This effect can only occur once every 10s, and prioritizes highest Max HP targets." So is it like Shaman's Ring that if I hit one target with an ability they will take the increased damage? Or ist it one hit (whatever ability comes first) per 10 seconds. Because if I hit - say - Raiju first and he procs the passive - my Percussive Storm will do no extra damage. In that case - Soul Reaver will 99.9% of the time be the better pick because of it's flat 10% max HP true damage passive- even with the higher internal cooldown.

I hope you can clear this up a bit for me.
Also forgive me if I am completely wrong here and/or there already exists a thread about this.

Cheers!
/beermachine

If you look at the Ethereal Staff passive:

PASSIVE - Your abilities deal an additional 3% of the target's maximum Health as Magical Damage. If the target has over 2000 Health, your ability bonus damage scales up, capping at 10% max Health on 2750 HP targets. This effect can only occur once every 10s, and prioritizes highest Max HP targets.

When it comes to the proc it self it will proc at the first target hit, so if you are using Zeus and his Chain Lightning and you hit 2 gods it will only trigger on the first target hit even if the second target you hit has more HP. But if you use Detonate Charge with one stack on someone with 2000HP and one target with 2500HP it will proc on the target with 2500HP because the damage hits them at the same time. Would be the same with Release The Kraken! for example.

When you look at the Soul Reaver passive:

PASSIVE - When a god takes damage from your abilities, they take 10% of their maximum Health in additional True damage. If multiple gods are hit, the damage is applied to the one with the greatest maximum Health. This can only occur once every 40s.

the proc is prioritized the same way, but it is true damage as you said.

But the important difference is the 10 second cooldown vs the 40 seconds cooldown.
So against a target with 2000HP you can theoretically get 3%*4 = 12% instead of 10% but it is not true damage so if someone has magical protection and you do not have enough penetration to counter it the Soul Reaver will do more damage (and it has more power).

I myself like the Soul Reaver for burst, but Ethereal Staff has some decent health and CCR. But I think there are items that are better than both of them TBH, just penetration and damage.

Hey beermachine!

(Firstly, great name hahaha)

Okay, so Ethereal Staff's passive provides explanation in 3 sentences...but (like usual) it'll probably take me many more than that to cover the various aspects of what it means. Sorry in advance.

So it's important to understand how the damage is applied. As long as the passive is available (not recently activated), ANY damaging ability will apply a set amount of extra damage. The application is most similar to the passive from Soul Reaver or Qin's Sais, as it just deals the extra damage at the time of the hit.

Your example of Shaman's Ring doesn't actually apply a set amount of added damage...it just provides enhanced damage for you once the target is affected. So that first ability hit triggers the debuff, and any damage applied thereafter (via abilities OR basics) will damage them for 10% extra, above the base damage it would have dealt.

In the case of Ethereal Staff, the damage applied is dependent on the total health of the enemy that's affected. If they're at or under 2,000 health, it will deal a base 3% of their max health. It scales up linearly until it applies 10% of their max health at 2,750 health or higher.

One big thing to understand is that this damage is NOT true health...it's applied as magical damage, so is subject to mitigation by magical protections. Say your target has a base 2,750 health. At this point, the base damage value would be 275 extra damage, but actual damage is likely going to be lower...mitigation value applied depends on your penetration values and their protection values.

The thing that is nice about Ethereal compared to Reaver is the CD of the passive...10 seconds instead of 40. If you're continually exchanging blows, you'll be able to apply more damage than the 1 trigger of Reaver's passive, especially if the enemies are above 2,000 health.

To compare the two items more specifically, Soul Reaver is a purer burst damage item. As of patch 5.4, it will have 130 magical power and 300 mana. That 10% true damage burst is meant to help you quickly take down a single enemy. After that damage is triggered, it won't really do anything for you in prolonged fights.

Ethereal Staff, on the other hand, has 90 magical power, 200 health, and 20% crowd control reduction. Although the power is less, 40 magical power isn't really all that much, and it provides a much greater measure of utility. The 200 health and 20% CCR makes it nice for survivability, especially against CC heavy teams. And since the passive's CD is only 10 seconds, you'll get much more consistent damage output for teamfights or regular exchanges.

The kicker here is that the passive, not being true damage, means it'll gain more effectiveness if 1) the enemies have higher health (meaning usually more tanky), and 2) you build decent penetration to increase your own damage potential. So it's a solid item to build if facing at least a couple of tankier enemies...if the entire team is squishy, it's still okay but there are probably better items to get at that point.

Honestly though, I still think Rod of Tahuti is a solid item too. Sure, it's not as core, but it's still very functional.

You beat me to it, Marki!

Your explanation was better than mine though.

Also lost 3 ranked games today, so atm I am 1/3 in ranked sober queue :/

Hey guys!

Thanks for both of your replies you really shed some light on the subject.

On Rod of Tahuti: Sure, it's very viable. But the way I see it, gods like Anubis or Ao Kuang - gods that tick the enemies' health away or deal many blows - probably benefit most from it as it helps them end what they started.
If a squishy is below 50% health and you target them with your kit up, most of the time you won't need the extra power from Rod of Tahuti to burst them away anyways.
Haven't gotten around to test it out too much though, that's still pending :P

Cheers!

Actually, one thing you might be mistaking on Tahuti's passive is that if you start attacking a God with a tick/DoT ability above 50% health, and it gets them below, you do NOT in fact get the bonus power until you use the next ability. This sort of means ticking abilities like the ones Anubis has will often not get the benefit...

This applies on both healing and damage as far as I understand, so if you're a healer, and you're healing a teammate that is below 50% health, the bonus also applies, which is sort of nice for Hel or Aphro, or even Ra.

Oh my...
Where do you get all these infos if I may ask. It seems there's many aspects of the mechanics that I am missing. I have read "The Word of Thoth" but still...
The ticking on Anubis is one of those things.

A similar thing I encountered was trying out the Soul Gem passive on Zeus for the healing. Seems the ultimate only gives you one stack, which makes the item on him pretty mediocre. I love it on Agni though. A kill Combo with all three Rain Fire meteors and Noxious Fumes already gives you 4 stacks, which means if you have only one stack on the item, you can be much more aggressive when you dash in for the kill.

Also: seems Rod of Tahuti is a very nice item pick for healer mages then!

You should go into jungle practice in game and test out Soul Gem, because when I read it seems like it should give one stac per hit just like Spear of the Magus:

PASSIVE - Enemies hit by your damaging abilities have their magical protection reduced by 10 for 5 seconds (maximum 5 stacks).

PASSIVE - On successful hit of an Ability you gain 1 stack. At 4 Stacks your next Ability that damages an enemy God will deal bonus damage equal to 40% of your Magical Power, and will heal yourself and allies within 20 units for 40% of your Magical Power and will consume the 4 stacks.

But I hope it is just one stack per ability, or on stack per god you hit. Otherwise it would be really OP.

But the item description should be changed so that it says that you can get one stack per ability. Because that is how ut should work. :)