SMITE: Season 5 Thoughts

As Season 5 of SMITE nears its end, I'm curious about everyone's feelings on how the 2018 season went for the game.

Here are some summaries on various aspects:

New Gods

Gods have been released much more slowly this season compared to previous ones. This list is thus thankfully short...less time creating new OP gods that need to be nerfed, and more time working on balance.

• Achilles (Warrior): Patch 5.3. Passive shift to be more offensive or defensive.
• Chernobog (Hunter): Patch 5.8. Global offensive ult, high burst.
• Baron Samedi (Mage): Patch 5.11. New pantheon, first god in a long time with no true escape, OP for multiple patches, even with multiple nerfs, continues to be a strong pick.
• Pele (Assassin): Patch 5.14. New pantheon, High mobility, continues to be a strong pick through multiple nerfs.
• Hera (Mage): Patch 5.19. Yet another god with no true escape. Argus is F-ING ANNOYING.
• King Arthur (Warrior): Patch 5.24. New pantheon.
• (No love for guardians this year)

New Features, Adjustments, Improvements

• Patch 5.1 Conquest Map Overhaul: jungle fog, wider map, jungle camp location revision, visual improvements and character remodeling
• Conquest Map Gameplay Adjustments: tower/phoenix protections, minion health, quicker jungle/buff respawn and better overall jungle experience, slower pacing for less early snowball
• New Starter Items (Blessings)
• New Arena Visuals
• % pen ( Titan's Bane / Obsidian Shard) no longer affects towers / phoenixes, less effective overall
• Rod of Tahuti nerf, no longer core on all mages
• Golden Blade (SMH)
• Project Olympus: General Improvements to user interface, commendation system / player behavior, matchmaking adjustments, console full VGS, new player experience improvements
• Timed queues (countdown)
• Only solo-queue Ranked Conquest
• PC integration with Steam
• Player gifting (limited gifting for who knows what reason)
• New UI (consistent on PC and console)
• PC & Console on same patch schedule

Upcoming Goals

• Nintendo Switch: Beta coming out sometime in January.
• Cross-play: We expect full cross-play compatibility between PC and XBox One soon, along with the addition of the upcoming Switch release ...but PS4 owners may be out of luck, due to Sony's strict (read: BS) policies. Here's a statement from Hi-Rez: "We are technically ready to support cross-play on other platforms as the opportunity arises." Yup...that's on Sony.
• Continued improvement via Project Olympus
• Possible Assault map refresh/redesign

In the end, I feel Season 5 brought a greater level of balance overall to the game, at least as the season has progressed. Early on, we saw some stupid buffs to things like Deathbringer, and here and there some gods (mostly release gods but also Freya) were too strong, but at this point, things have settled down fairly nicely.

Although there will never be perfect balance in a game with so many variables as this, I feel it's currently better than it has been in seasons past.

I've been playing the game less overall (a lot of it has to do with when my SMITE friends play at the same time, which is rarer also), but I am looking forward to Season 6. Also looking forward to possibly playing some games with SF members that aren't on PC!

How about you?

Season 5 looked overall solid to me. It wasn't perfect but also you can't say that was awful. I thought it much better than season 4 and the best change of course was the conquest map.

I didn't like the new conquest design at all but it is much better than season 4 (talking about the size, buffs and strategies) and mainly the metas on season 5 were also good.[´

About Gods, I liked only Pele. Baron Samedi is to f***ing annoying and I felt they made him to be something "cool and funny", but it's too forced. Achilles and Chernobog although they are/was very strong they are very boring to play. Hera is just okay, not bad but not good and King Arthur was another disappointment.

About Items, I miss the % pen working on objectives such as tower, but it's okay. Solo ranked queue was a nice change. Now I just pick people from same elo and matches are working as expected. No more higher elos carrying the low elo friend and matchmaking bugging due the elo difference.

And for last but not least, one of the best changes was the same schedule in patches. Now consoles receive the patch only one day after PC instead one week.

I'm excited to see what they planned for season 6 (for 3 days of patch notes, they probably will have a lot of things to say :v )

I find Pele, Baron Samedi, and Achilles could still use some balancing but progress has been made and that's all you can really ask for. As an Xbox player, I am not thrilled by the idea of being matched up against PC players but we'll see. Oh and HR can shove Golden Blade where the sun don't shine :)

Other than the god's in their release states (*cough* Release Baron in casuals *cough*), the Freya Re-work, Chernobog's existence, Merc with Golden Bow and the god-awful healing meta that we had at one point, yeah I think this season was good, definitely better than last season. Achilles and Baron are my favourite gods from this season.


Oh and screw Baka, especially if he uses his ult and has golden blade. After his buffs he is a bit too stompy in jungle.

If you don't mind me asking, why do you have concerns about matching up with PC players? Note that you can play with an even playing field...if you don't have a mouse/keyboard setup on XBox, you can opt only to play against all players that use controller. If you team up with friends that do use different control types, then you'll only be matched against others that are split control types.

@Kriega all good examples. At least they've been fairly good about fixing things, even if it's taken them multiple patches.

If you can get past the advantage of higher frame rate from PC, the only major difference should be a PC player using an ADC vs a console player. I mean there's stuff like juking as well, but not as big a difference as the thing I mentioned.

@Bran I totally didn't realize you would be able to match controller type so thanks for that info but my main concern was the stuff Kriega mentioned about how ADC players may have some advantages. Thanks guys!

Don't worry kriega. Hi rez will focus on creating premium skins and releasing new "gods" (arthur aint a god) with bloated kits rather than balancing their game. We're probably gonna see fenrir get nerfed to the ground for being a good support before we see hi rez fixing those gods you mentioned.

In all honesty I don't think that should be a big concern. Yes, some people have 120-144Hz monitors, and yes, it does make things smoother, but unless you're talking about the highest levels, it's not going to make a difference. You should be just fine aiming as an ADC.

Neither is Medusa nor Achilles if you get right down to it. :P