Regal, powerful, the Dragon-God of the Eastern Sea commands storms and tides with the flick of a claw, yet he seethes with rage for past humiliations.
As one of four Dragon-Gods, Ao Kuang demands tribute from those along the Eastern shores. For their worship, tides remain calm, rivers contained, and rainfall for crops plentiful. It was not always like this, however. Long ago, Ao Kuang grew greedy and expected greater sacrifices. When they were not given, he sent floods, tidal waves, and devastating storms, striking so much fear into the people they dared not speak of this violence to the Jade Emperor. Ao Kuang enjoyed his total control.
Then came Sun Wukong to his undersea palace seeking a weapon for his famous journey to the West. Despite the offer of other weapons, Sun Wukong took the Ruyi Jingu Bang, an immense pillar that aided in controlling the tides. It was believed none could even lift it, but Sun Wukong spun it with ease. As if this were not humiliating enough, Sun Wukong demanded other gifts of armor, shoes, and helm, all of which Ao Kuang was forced to supply.
Next, the demigod boy Nezha, playing in a stream, inadvertently shook Ao Kuang’s palace. Annoyed, the Dragon-God set forth his favorite scout to kill the child, but Nezha defended himself and the scout was slain. Furious, Ao Kuang ordered his third son to destroy Nezha, yet Nehza slew him as well. Completely outraged, Ao Kuang went to Nezha’s father and threatened to take the issue before the Jade Emperor, but Nezha tackled the Dragon-King and forced him to submit.
Such repeated shame and humiliation have both humbled Ao Kuang and tempered his fury to steely resolve. Long has he awaited his chance to rise again and exert dominance as a great Dragon-God of the Sea.
Ao Kuang's sword can hold up to 3 Energy Charges, and regenerates charges while out of combat. Each time Ao Kuang casts an ability, an energy charge will be consumed if available, increasing the damage of the ability by 5%. If Ao Kuang is out of mana, he will use Energy Charges to cast abilities instead.
Ao Kuang teleports forward into stealth, leaving behind a watery form of himself. He remains in stealth for 5s or until he attacks or takes damage. Ao Kuang may activate this ability again to detonate the watery form, dealing 90/140/190/240/290 +70% of his Magical Power as damage to nearby enemies. Cost: 70. Cooldown: 15s.
Ao Kuang summons 6 dragons to his side. For every successful basic attack Ao Kuang makes, a dragon will dive to the target dealing 40/60/80/100/120 +30% of his Magical Power as damage. This ability ends after all dragons are used, or after 10s. Ao Kuang may activate this ability again to send forward any remaining dragons in a ranged attack, dealing 50% damage per dragon and Slowing 30% for 1s the first enemy hit. The slow duration increases +.25s for each remaining dragon that was sent forward. Cost: 60/65/70/75/80. Cooldown: 15/14/13/12/11s.
Ao Kuang unleashes a storm of lightning from his sword, damaging all enemies in front of him for 90/140/190/240/290 + 50% of his Magical Power. This hit is considered a basic attack, and will activate item effects and send forth dragons from Dragon Call. Cost: 60/65/70/75/80. Cooldown: 5s.
Ao Kuang selects a single target in melee range and grabs them, dealing 90/140/190/240/290 +50% of his Magical Power as damage and knocking them up into the air. If the target is under a health threshold of 23/26/29/32/35%, Ao Kuang will instead reveal his true form, becoming a Dragon and executing them. After transforming Ao Kuang remains in the air, and may then pick a new location to land, dealing 100/150/200/250/300 +50% of his Magical Power as damage to enemies within range 20, and fully recharging King’s Sword. Cost: 90/100/110/120/130. Cooldown: 90s.
Ao's 2 can do up to 720+180% magical power if he uses all dragons on one target. I ran him through a practice mode and his 2 was doing 1500 damage total.
I suspect a nerf is gonna happen, that is a huge number.
Passive is disappointing in that it doesn't do much.
His one is better than I thought. An instant, although short-ranged blink, with stealth. It's not broken, exactly, as at least you can't cast or get hit while stealthed, and while playing him, I didn't really use it for the stealth much, but it still is a very bloated skill. Of course, this may change down the line was people begin to learn how to play him and how to abuse his stealth.
His two is ridiculous. As someone else mentioned, it's 720 damage + 180% MP scalings. Keep in mind that Ao's swing chain is designed to abuse this, getting x1/x0.5/x0.5. This make his level 1 jungle clear ridiculously fast, and his damage in general ridiculous. His three is boring and really a part of his two, which feels amazingly pointless.
Basically, if you can get all autos onto a target, he's overpowered as hell, outstripping Freya by a mile. It's hard to calculate exactly how much contributions he has in a gank, but he feels like he deals way too much damage with his 2 in general, definitely for his autoattacks, and maybe the recast, as well.
He can have anywhere from 50% from his clone, 180% from his 2, and 50% from his three, for 280% of his magical power, not counting his execution ultimate. When we add in the 20 + 10 + 10 + 20 + 20 + 10% of his magical power from his six basic attacks, it's 370% of his magical power in a gank.
At minimum, he has 80% from his empowered 3 and 75% from his 2's recast, for a total of 155% of his magical power. This is only his two and three with no basic attacks at all.
The answer is somewhere between the two. A numerical average is 262.5% of his magical power.
But what makes him OP, to me, is his execution ultimate. He essentially has similar scalings to most junglers or mages on the surface, but unlike them, he doesn't have to take out all of their health, and his potential damage is better than anyone else's in the game.
tl;dr: His ultimate lets him afford to deal less damage than other junglers, and yet he still deals more damage than most junglers anyway. He also has too much in his kit IMO, with his stealth and blink. Of course, it's too early to tell since people are learning how to play him, what works with his build, whether to use his ult to engage or not, etc.
I agree, personally I think CC heavy teams and gods with high mobility will be able to counter his sticking potential.
For example, ganking agni would be a waste because the second you appear he can put down fumes and dash away.
I think he is op but I also think some gods and good play will balance him out a bit. While his numbers are insane, he can at least be countered easily enough.
Fatalis+Demo Grip seems to make AK hit a point stronger than freya or chronos or old nu wa with the same items, which does make sense as a melee, but the relative power at that point is so unbearably in favor of AK that it's near impossible to avoid. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you 1 over a wall, the enemy has 0 idea you're there. The clone is at your original location, and you're in stealth. This is basically Shaco 2.0 in that sense (sorry I'm in LoL mode I need to make the comparison). I feel like very few gods, if AK is smart with a timed blink 1, and quick reaction on his ult, will be able to ever fight him. MAYBE bakasura, but I'd have to think, MAYBE nemesis. But the rest are going to have a very hard time outdueling, or rather, even living, against this monstrosity.
The only downside AK has is he has no built in sustain, but killing everything and taking 0 damage because of it is just as good. He has insane mobility and safety, he has a slow, sustained damage, burst damage, an execute tied into an AoE ultimate or guaranteed escape if done right, wave/jungle clear...I'm scared to be honest.
As Sub mentioned, the only thing I find underwhelming is his passive. It's basically just their way of saying "the first time you use your abilities they do a bit more. Then you have no passive". His 3 I find decent in proccing Poly, DG, and Fatalis on, but it's average, not underwhelming. His 1, 2, and 4 are all pretty damn broken imo.
I'll have to test more, but this is my opening thoughts on him. Sidebar, since his 3 counts as a basic attack, does he basically have no way to proc Gem of Isolation unless he's inefficient with his 2 or he somehow gets a hit on his 1?
His stealth is pretty intense, but it's not OP. If you have someone around with Mystical Mail, it'll knock him right out of his hide.
The damage on his 2 is pretty insane. Though I normally don't play CQ, I tried him out in practice CQ, and Sub is right, his jungle clear early game is very good with it. It does a lot of damage, and when I was going against him as Geb with Stone of Gaia, he just melted my health with it. Though it should definitely put a nice dent in someone due to the damage being based off of basic attacks, I still think the damage could do with a bit of a reduction.
His 3 is fine. Does decent damage and has a fairly short cooldown, but it's no worse than HeBo's one, damage/cool down wise.
His ult, I honestly think is okay. Yeah, it's an instakill when he hits someone under a certain amount of health, but a lot of the time, from what I've seen, and I could be way off, if your health is that low when he's that close to you to cast it, chances are, you're already dead unless you're able to pop off an escape really quick.
I don't think he's as OP as most releases we've had in a while, and he's certainly not as OP as Nox was underpowered, but yeah, I think the damage on his 2 is a bit too much. I'm sure we'll see some kind of nerf to it with the next patch. At the very least, like Holy said, he's not near impossible to play against.
While I came to the conclusion he was broken at first but he does have some pretty easy counter-play. His only damage really comes from his 2. So either gtfo when he uses his 2 or you can be aggressive af when his 2 is down. And for his ultimate you can aegis or beads for it. A magi's blessing might work but I haven't tested it.
Yeah, that'd be great. Though there's a bug in the PM system preventing you from creating a new message right now that is being worked on. So just send it through any chain we already have open.
As for the other changes, I agree with Aeadar in that they're too small to be effective in any capacity. Freya still gets a free hit. Cupid still is a bad ADC, because having an easily interrupted ultimate was the least of his problems. Mercury is still OP.
What I don't get, is what even if these changes were substantial nerfs, it's easy to see how it still wouldn't fix the main problem. For example, Merc's nerf was intended to reduce the number of free hits he gets when knocking them up a wall (aside from the air time, literally noting was changed). But even with the change, he has the best assassin's CC in the game by far, he's still the best duelist in the game except for Kali, and he's still OP because of everything else in his kit.
Serqet gets 5% less shred and 15% less scaling on her 135% scaling skill, oh noes. Nu Wa's ultimate is still a problem, and I have no clue why they reduced the base damage and contributions, which clearly are not the problem, instead of, I dunno, the explosion damage, or the AoE stun duration, or the ridiculous 75 MR shred, or the KS ult of snowballing.
I don't understand. These tiny buffs and nerfs aren't anywhere near what we need. We can have ten consecutive patches with little changes like this, and these gods will still be unbalanced. Even if Cupid has zero cast time ultimate, even if Freya got zero free hits, and even if Merc's 3 just teleported them to target location instead of having any air time, these gods would still be unbalanced. (In fact, Merc's change wasn't really a nerf or a buff, since having the target move faster is a good thing.)
What's funny about this is how HiRez calls them "a fairly substantial change(s)." As Swampmist said before, Freya only gets more than one hit if getting a completely full attack speed build WITH speed buff. Even with Telkhines + D. Grip + Fatalist + Speed, you still can't get more than one hit. Reducing the air time slightly does literally nothing, because from what I can tell, you need Witch Blade and Winged Blade and Speed Buff and to be at melee range to get two hits.
They think that turning Freya's single free hit into...a single free hit is a "fairly substantial change."
^ Whole patch right here.
tl;dr: Patch changes are too ineffective by far. Wrong things were changed (Nu Wa, Cupid, Mercury) and/or they were changed too little (Everyone). HiRez calls them "substantial changes," despite being anything but.
As for the other changes, I agree with Aeadar in that they're too small to be effective in any capacity. Freya still gets a free hit. Cupid still is a bad ADC, because having an easily interrupted ultimate was the least of his problems. Mercury is still OP.
What I don't get, is what even if these changes were substantial nerfs, it's easy to see how it still wouldn't fix the main problem. For example, Merc's nerf was intended to reduce the number of free hits he gets when knocking them up a wall (aside from the air time, literally noting was changed). But even with the change, he has the best assassin's CC in the game by far, he's still the best duelist in the game except for Kali, and he's still OP because of everything else in his kit.
Serqet gets 5% less shred and 15% less scaling on her 135% scaling skill, oh noes. Nu Wa's ultimate is still a problem, and I have no clue why they reduced the base damage and contributions, which clearly are not the problem, instead of, I dunno, the explosion damage, or the AoE stun duration, or the ridiculous 75 MR shred, or the KS ult of snowballing.
I don't understand. These tiny buffs and nerfs aren't anywhere near what we need. We can have ten consecutive patches with little changes like this, and these gods will still be unbalanced. Even if Cupid has zero cast time ultimate, even if Freya got zero free hits, and even if Merc's 3 just teleported them to target location instead of having any air time, these gods would still be unbalanced. (In fact, Merc's change wasn't really a nerf or a buff, since having the target move faster is a good thing.)
What's funny about this is how HiRez calls them "a fairly substantial change(s)." As Swampmist said before, Freya only gets more than one hit if getting a completely full attack speed build WITH speed buff. Even with Telkhines + D. Grip + Fatalist + Speed, you still can't get more than one hit. Reducing the air time slightly does literally nothing, because from what I can tell, you need Witch Blade and Winged Blade and Speed Buff and to be at melee range to get two hits.
They think that turning Freya's single free hit into...a single free hit is a "fairly substantial change."
^ Whole patch right here.
tl;dr: Patch changes are too ineffective by far. Wrong things were changed (Nu Wa, Cupid, Mercury) and/or they were changed too little (Everyone). HiRez calls them "substantial changes," despite being anything but.
As for the other changes, I agree with Aeadar in that they're too small to be effective in any capacity. Freya still gets a free hit. Cupid still is a bad ADC, because having an easily interrupted ultimate was the least of his problems. Mercury is still OP.
What I don't get, is what even if these changes were substantial nerfs, it's easy to see how it still wouldn't fix the main problem. For example, Merc's nerf was intended to reduce the number of free hits he gets when knocking them up a wall (aside from the air time, literally noting was changed). But even with the change, he has the best assassin's CC in the game by far, he's still the best duelist in the game except for Kali, and he's still OP because of everything else in his kit.
Serqet gets 5% less shred and 15% less scaling on her 135% scaling skill, oh noes. Nu Wa's ultimate is still a problem, and I have no clue why they reduced the base damage and contributions, which clearly are not the problem, instead of, I dunno, the explosion damage, or the AoE stun duration, or the ridiculous 75 MR shred, or the KS ult of snowballing.
I don't understand. These tiny buffs and nerfs aren't anywhere near what we need. We can have ten consecutive patches with little changes like this, and these gods will still be unbalanced. Even if Cupid has zero cast time ultimate, even if Freya got zero free hits, and even if Merc's 3 just teleported them to target location instead of having any air time, these gods would still be unbalanced. (In fact, Merc's change wasn't really a nerf or a buff, since having the target move faster is a good thing.)
What's funny about this is how HiRez calls them "a fairly substantial change(s)." As Swampmist said before, Freya only gets more than one hit if getting a completely full attack speed build WITH speed buff. Even with Telkhines + D. Grip + Fatalist + Speed, you still can't get more than one hit. Reducing the air time slightly does literally nothing, because from what I can tell, you need Witch Blade and Winged Blade and Speed Buff and to be at melee range to get two hits.
They think that turning Freya's single free hit into...a single free hit is a "fairly substantial change."
^ Whole patch right here.
tl;dr: Patch changes are too ineffective by far. Wrong things were changed (Nu Wa, Cupid, Mercury) and/or they were changed too little (Everyone). HiRez calls them "substantial changes," despite being anything but.
Hi-Rez calling them substantial changes is sort of deceptive and incorrect, but as we discussed earlier, making too many steps too fast and you get an Ah Muzen Cab situation.
Thanks to Ferrum for making the sig pic! He's beast af people.
IGN: BestJanusNA
What I'm listening to right now: Derp -Bassjackers
SMITEFire is the place to find the perfect build guide to take your game to the next level. Learn how to play a new god, or fine tune your favorite SMITE gods’s build and strategy.
TormentedTurnip
<Retired Moderator>
Awards Showcase
Esteemed (96)
Posts: 2246
View My Blog
TormentedTurnip
<Retired Moderator>
Awards Showcase
Esteemed (96)
Posts: 2246
View My Blog
Greenevers
<Retired Moderator>
Awards Showcase
Renowned (105)
Posts: 2640
View My Blog
TormentedTurnip
<Retired Moderator>
Awards Showcase
Esteemed (96)
Posts: 2246
View My Blog
Subzero008
Renowned (112)
Posts: 4262
View My Blog
Subzero008
Renowned (112)
Posts: 4262
View My Blog
All4Games
Distinguished (54)
Posts: 2513
View My Blog
Reverend Belial
Remarkable (8)
Posts: 474
IGN: BestJanusNA
What I'm listening to right now: Derp -Bassjackers
dacoqrs
Prominent (40)
Posts: 807
View My Blog