Things You Would Like to See in Season 5

I've come to the tipping point with this game, and now that we hit the mid-season, I feel it's time to discuss what Hi-Rez could do to fix the problems of the current and past seasons as well as some extra things for the fans to enjoy as well.

Topic 1: Reduce the number of Crowd Control
Anyone who plays this game knows what I'm taking about, there are so many gods with a ridiculous amount of crowd control that whoever has the most CC and burst will win the game. Crowd Control changed from a tool used to help out the team my disabling or debuffing the enemy team that had to be used sparingly as you only got one or two (if you are a guardian or a warrior) to now every class has so much crowd control that there are not enough items and relics to deal with being CC lockdowned to death. Look at Ganesha the dude literally has three different forms of hard cc and two debuffs. How I think this issue might get fixed is that we need to rekit existing and have new gods only possess 1 soft CC ability or no CC if they are an assassin, mage, or a hunter, while warriors and guardian get about 1-2 hard CC and no more. This way there will be a lack of frustration during a fight as you won't be locked down and killed when you get ganked or caught out during a teamfight.

Topic 2: Need More Popular Gods in Existing Pantheons
This one is self-evident. There are still so many gods Hi-Rez hasn't added into the game that are well known in replacement for a new pantheon as well as niche gods who aren't as well known. We have yet to see Set, Horus, Jormundgandr, Achilles, or even Shiva. Hi-Rez needs to stop trying spread out until they get the more famous gods out into the game before going for the niche and new pantheons not many heard about.

While this is only scratching the surface on the things that could be changed for the next season, I would like to hear what you think they should do. Leave a comment on what you would like to see for the next season.

I'm not going to give comments on topic 2 as god design etc. could take pretty long, even tho they have themed stuff already.

Topic one is indeed a bad problem. the suggestions you did are a bit harsh overall. IMO even adc etc. could keep hard cc instead of having only soft CC. However it does need to be reworked. Still I would call this part of the problem of overloading the kits of gods. A lot of gods have so many tools. Couple that with certain CC being very long with smite's burst heavyness.

The amount of CC also comes paired with the power movement abilities have and how many gods have them (5 out of 5 of the latest gods has at least 1. LoL also has the problem however in the latest 5 gods only 4 have one and aren't as strong or have "special" requirements (like using a wall))

First of all, the gods are getting more and more ridiculous. Ever since The Morrigan, the Gods have become just so over the top, and difficult to play, that they are not even fun. I feel the game is getting to the point where Older Gods will eventually be pushed out, and potentially not even usable.

Second of all, HiRez needs to learn how to balance Gods and Items correctly. They're method of Increasing Gold Costs/Decreasing Gold Costs is not that effective. They are also, always way too quick to just pull an item out of the game instead of tweaking it. To me, it seems like they are "All or Nothing".

This stems to Nemesis for me. I am a Nemesis main, and she's seen her fair share of Nerfs along the way, but this Patch 4.13 is legit taking her to the ground. I'm not huge into Conquest, but I do know enough that she has been in the META for some of S4. They never have a middle ground when it comes to balancing which is something they really need to practice.

What is the point of Nerfing a God to ground, and then buffing them into the META 3 months later? Because we all know that's what going to happen, happens every time.

[X] God is Popular/In META -> Nerf to Ground -> Why is no one playing this God? -> Buff into META

It's a vicious cycle that HiRez creates themselves, and it really REALLY needs to be addressed by the end of S4 or early stages of S5. Smite has already lost me as a player in S4, I'll admit, I'm starting to get back into it lately, but if things don't really show any signs of getting better by the end of S4...I probably won't even tough a lick of S5.

And all this applies to Items too, I know I mentioned both God and Item Balancing, but I only gave an example of Gods.

Perhaps changing the Mayan pantheon to the Mesoamerican Patheon. You could add Huitzilopochtili and his Xiuhcoatl for example who's unique to the Aztec Pantheon with no other counterpart. Huehueteotl, Tezcatlipoca, Xipe Totec are some more.

There needs to be no god in C tier, and preferably all gods to be close together in tiers, no wide gaps like now.

So, HiRez needs to stop making new Pantheons because the existing ones are so empty, nerf cc overall (especially on the newer gods), and stop this painful UP/OP cycle. That about sums it up, right?

Regarding new gods, they can't keep up with things properly as it is. Yes, we can't expect the normal release of gods to change (a main source of revenue), and sure, they could choose better gods in some cases maybe...but they can't keep things balanced as it is. Personally, I would want to see 2 full cycles (2 months) of no new god releases...I want them to take some time to better evaluate and nerf/buff existing gods to create a better balance overall, as Kriega mentions. This time can also be used to quash existing bugs and improve the infrastructure and functionality of the system overall.

Regarding retooling kits, I don't think huge reworks on multiple gods is a good OR feasible idea. Rather, the rebalancing is going to be important, as previously mentioned...S tier gods need to be SLIGHTLY adjusted...and C/B tier gods need to be buffed...also slightly. Minor steps in 4 increments over that 2 month period would do wonders.

And that's the thing...gods that have a lot of CC shouldn't be able to output quite as much damage...gods with high burst should have a tradeoff where they either have to kill or be killed, without being able to just straight up get away every time. Balancing things properly (and it CAN be done, HR) is key. Choosing gods to fulfill the needs of a team as a whole is also a strategy. We already generally know that we shouldn't build 5 gods that are all physical or all magical. We also need a balance of roles (got 2 tanks? We need burst and an ADC for sustained damage). Balance of kit function is absolutely something that really should be emphasized as a strategy...got 2 gods with high CC? the rest of your team had better have good damage output, or you're going to be slowing and stunning people but never killing them.

And they can minimize items to a degree. Just completely get rid of Soul Eater...it's not needed. I also think Oni Hunter's Garb could go and no one would be all that upset. Way too many items.

• The already confirmed new Conquest map (bigger map, better jungle, etc);
• More build variety. Hunters rarely go into crit nowadays, and almost always build Shifters + Qins + whatever; Supports still build Sov and Thebes most of the time, etc. We need MORE items (I'm not talking about those new items that nobody buys)
• Fire their entire balance team...

1. I agree smite is CC heavy but I think thats a bit too extreme. I could see restricting hunters to no hard CC, but the other classes have so much possibly variety in design space that cutting them off would be stupid in my eyes. Nox and Nu Wa are both pretty cool inherent designs that require the hard CC.

2. While there are gods many people would like to see in game that doesn't mean they have to start adding more pantheons. Also just because you haven't heard of a particular pantheon before doesn't mean there isn't a large fanbase waiting for them too be added.

3. Morrigan isn't really inherently difficult to play. She has a pretty low skill floor where you just use the 3 for constant stealth, hit with the 2, stun people, and at certain times turn into another god and vomit their kit. However, she does have a really high skill ceiling to play perfectly at a high level but thats not a bad thing at all. Also, if you go back and look there are very few gods that were released before the game left beta that would be anywhere close to considered nonviable and unusable.

4. I'm not seeing how this nerfs Nemesis into the ground at all.

5. If you really think all Hirez does is adjust gold costs you really need to look at patchnotes more closely. There's frequently times where they adjust stats and the item passives and don't touch the gold cost, like in 4.13. Often when they do just adjust gold costs it deals more with how early yoiu could get something or how long it took being the problem rather than what the item provided itself.

If we take a look at the last items they completely removed golden bow and hastened fatalis there was fairly good reasoning for it. Golden Bow was actually really bad on every god but Mercury before they super buffed it and after they did it had a huge impact on which hunters could and could not be played to an extent where many had no chance of ever making it. Merc hasn't needed and still fulfills his job fine and hunters have been in a better spot as of late. Fatalis was also a huge waste outside of a few gods, kali/freya/baka, for the most part and hunters took a huge dps hit if they built it so they just didn't. After it became dps efficient it started getting abused, for a while if you got fatalis finished first you garaunteed got a solo kill on the enemy hunter and snowballed, and even after the gold increase it was basically a must buy late game. Removing it will be pretty good for overall meta and build variety and the gods and new haste items will be tweaked to account for its absence just like merc and some of the hunters were for golden bow.

6. God meta changes are a lot more complex and feature way more moving pieces then what you talk about. Very rarely are gods nerfed past the points of viability, especially for casual and ranked play.

7. Tierlists have to be taken with a grain of salt and deal more with smaller scale metas and team playstyles than anything else. So long as the majority of gods fall between S and B tiers, based on Diem's tier descriptions, things are generally in a good place.

The CC kills me. Honestly I went "WTF" when they removed Hastened Fatalis for the reason that the "juking power" was too much.

I think the biggest problem is that Hi-Rez doesn't get to the core of their problems. Why did hunters like Hastened Fatalis so much? Dodging, exactly. Why did they want that juking power? You guessed it, SMITE is a CC nuke because every god and their mother has CC nowadays, and there'd otherwise be almost no way for the hunter, and other classes, to evade the CC, especially since a lot of it is so easy to land.

Take the infamous Kumbhakarna for example. As a hunter (using hunter as main example since HF removal hurts them the most, + hunter is my main class), if your escape is down or you have no escape at all, well, better say your goodbyes now because ***ba over there will tank the tower for a whole minute and a half (and get out alive, too), all the while CC-chaining you for long enough you might as well book a vacation because it doesn't end before you're back. Meanwhile ***ba's allies are cleaning you up... Unless ***ba does it himself, because a Guardian who can tank mount Olympus falling straight on their head while being strong enough to demolish Atlas the titan with a swift breeze isn't such a rare occurence these days.

Honestly, the biggest issue is the fact that they don't give many options. I am telling you that without Fatalis, a lot of hunters and some mages ( Freya, Chronos and Sol most likely) will bite the dust. Artemis, Ah Muzen Cab and Medusa will feel these the hardest. Artemis and Ah Muzen Cab since they have no true escape whatsoever, and Medusa since Medusa just relied on this, it's what made her passive turn her into the Medusa we all know, love and hate.

The reason many gods build the same stuff over and over is because if they don't, they'll just get destroyed. Hunters don't build crit? (Exception Izanami) Attacks do jack **** because even with The Executioner you only do 150 damage a shot to a tank, fully stacked as well.

Their META is ****ed right now, completely. The only gamemode I actually enjoy playing right now is Assault because if I **** up I can at least say it was tough luck with the god selection RNG, any other game you're bound to see some ridiculous god like Hercules and the sort: Huge healing, great CC, Hypertank and Hypercarry all in one. It's the same stuff all the time, and it's what made my desire to play SMITE reduce drastically looking from S3, in which I actually enjoyed the game.

It also seems that every god that is released nowadays, has to have some sort of "OP" in them. Cernunnos on release was ridiculous, Cu Chulainn is ridiculous in the early game, anyone who says he doesn't have damage, well, his 1 says hello. Da Ji was practically unbeatable, and still is from time to time. Ganesha was Okay, but he is pretty underperforming (seriously, does his ult even do anything?).

It's like whoever is in their balance team doesn't know what "balance" means, and just throw something on the screen to fill up the patch notes page and making it look like they're actually trying, which they aren't.


TL;DR - SMITE doesn't feel fun anymore. It's almost as if you're being forced to pick said god and build said items or you'll lose no matter what. It's just stupid and having to play the same thing over and over, it's just not fun. The only gamemode I do like currently is Assault because every team is random and if the enemy team just ends up being so much better, that's just tough luck, and you're not forced to play said god to actually be able to win.

Note: There's much more issues with SMITE, but CC is my biggest complaint, just way too much of it. Also, as I absolutely hate CC, and some gods, my opinion may be biased, a lot, take it with a grain of salt. Lots of grains. Also, if my reply triggered you in any way, or awakened the corrector in you (e.g. "but that's not true because this that and such"), I don't care, move on.