The time has come for the next Season of Year 10: The Season of Souls! This Update will bring heavier changes than usual, and multiple exciting new features, many of which revolve around an Underworld theme!
OUR VISION
Even gods can be slain. They can be banished to the Underworld, stripped of their power, or forced to stare at a gray screen for 10 to 50 seconds. Surtr’s army of monsters has made significant progress, even with Ix Chel joining the opposition. The gods of our story faced a hard loss, and thus have found themselves lost in the Underworld, but a legendary guide will soon help them find their way.
The Conquest Map plunges into the Underworld and all game modes will experience Soul Surges around the death of a god. Conquest is receiving two new strategic objectives: The Stygian Beacon, and The Unleashed Titans. For the first time in SMITE history, the Titans of Order and Chaos will finally meet face-to-face in a brutal showdown for superiority!
Additionally, there will be a game-wide stat decrease across all T3 items. Power items will be nerfed more than protection items, as we continue to work toward adjusting the balance between Tanks and DPS. This Season Update is intended to heavily favor tanks. In addition to their stat advantage, they’ll also be receiving a variety of utility buffs to the passive effects of their items, and there will be 3 new sets of tank-focused Glyphs.
CORE STRUCTURE
A quick reminder on how we define our goals for a new Season launch update:
Season of Souls Launch (June)
- Significant Conquest Changes
- New Environment Art Features
- Jungle Path, or Lane Shape Changes
- New Mechanics or Objectives
- Significant General Gameplay Balance
- Overarching Theme or new mechanic
- Many Items and Gods adjusted
- New Items / Glyphs
- Kickoff of a big SMITE Event
- New Battle Pass
- Ranked Soft Reset and new Split
This is just the first update of the Season of Souls. There are plenty more gameplay features on the way, like Charon, the next God, who will arrive in July.
GAMEPLAY FEATURE - SOUL SURGES
Soul Surges are our new game-wide mechanic, meaning they will appear on every map in SMITE. This new feature creates new objectives that can spawn at any location on the map, creating a vast amount of unique possibilities.
Soul Surges
When a God dies, a Soul Surge will spawn at the point of their demise.
Soul Surges are circular areas of effect that grant movement speed to all gods in the area, and a buff to damage dealt to gods with low health in the area.
While a Soul Surge is active, Spirit Minions will spawn from the center, attacking any nearby gods, and providing XP and Gold when slain.
Any additional God deaths anywhere on the map cause the area to expand in size and extend in duration.
After the time expires, there is a global Soul Surge cooldown for all players.
GAMEPLAY FEATURE - CONQUEST
This all-new Underworld art set features a variety of deadly new assets, monuments, and a different feel throughout the map.
Season of Souls Conquest is all about big objectives. We wanted to introduce more ways to gain a meaningful advantage over the enemy team through clearly visible and contestable encounters.
The Stygian Beacon
This is a Capture Point style objective located just outside the middle of the Mid Lane.
Stand in the area in greater numbers than your opponents to capture it.
The Stygian Beacon will always activate exactly 3 times each match of Conquest.
The team that successfully captures the Beacon will gain a permanent stacking buff that increases their damage dealt to enemy Towers, Phoenixes, and the Titan, as well as team-wide Gold and XP.
The Unleashed Titans
After the 3rd and final Stygian Beacon – The Titans will break from the Binds of Tartarus and become UNLEASHED.
The lane with the most total structure health will be highlighted, and after a slight delay, the Titans will march down it.
The Titans will meet in the middle of that lane, and face off with their melee attacks as well as with 2 new abilities.
Deplete an Unleashed Titan’s Health bar to repel it, teleport it back to base, and then continue to push to victory with the surviving Titan!
Unleashed Titans are symmetrical, and use a fresh set of HP bars separate from the health they have while bound in base. Slay a Titan in the base before or after this encounter to end the match and win the game.
These two objectives create big opportunities for team fights. Both of these objectives favor the teams who properly position the right players in the right areas but knowing what exactly will be necessary is harder than it seems. If a team over-commits to the Beacon, they might leave themselves open to losing a Gold Fury or Fire Giant, which are much more valuable. Using these new objectives in this way and splitting your team effectively will be the key to victory.
Additionally, Conquest is getting some additional balance and pathing changes to solve some problems we have seen across the Season of Souls.
Shutdown bonuses and Cyclops chests will decrease in value
Gold Buff, Silver Buff, and Both Mid Harpies will increase in value
Fire Giant Respawn will be increased to 5m, and buff duration to 4m
Phoenixes will be easier to kill
Access to nearest buff camps from lanes will be quicker, and paths around back harpy and cyclops camps have been opened up more for faster travel times
Mid lane is significantly wider and shifted more towards Solo Lane (as the Beacon Spawns on the Duo side of the lane)
GAMEPLAY FEATURE - BALANCE
This Season has some sweeping balance adjustments. Nearly every single T3 item in the game is going to be getting changed, and roughly 35 underperforming gods are getting utility-focused buffs.
ITEM STAT EFFICIENCY NERF PASS
Over the years, through many buffs and nerfs, there tend to be slightly more buffs than nerfs, and so items as a whole gain more stats. Additionally, new items are added and have to overcome especially high barriers to get players to break from habit to try them, so items as a whole gain more stats again. We are taking the opportunity this Season to do a game-wide reset on this. It looks like this:
For ALL Tier 3 items:
Decreased the Physical and Magical Power base stats by 30%
Decreased the Health, Physical, and Magical Protection base stats by 15%
Overperforming items may have additional nerfs on top of these reductions
Underperforming items may receive buffs in addition to the reduced stats
Starter Item Upgrades and a few relevant Map effects were also adjusted
Some of the results we expect to see from this:
Harder to Cap – How your god powers up from start to finish of a match will feel different
Decreased Burst – DPS vs DPS god combat will see increased late-game TTK
Tankier Tanks – DPS vs Tank god combat will see increased late-game TTK
Just a few Examples:
Divine Ruin
- Decreased Magical Power from 100 to 70
Deathbringer
- Decreased Physical Power from 40 to 30
Spirit Robe
- Decreased Physical Protection from 40 to 35
- Decreased Magical Protection from 40 to 35
The community feedback and data toward tank balance have been consistent over the past few updates, and so we aimed to build some tank favoritism directly into this system, while also achieving the other goals.
But this isn’t the only tank-favoring feature we have this Season…
NEW GLYPHS
The following items will be getting new Glyphs.
Relic Dagger
- Bewitched Dagger (bet you can guess this one)
- Eldritch Dagger
We won’t spoil much about these yet, but they all bring impactful new utility effects that Solo and Support players should be quite interested in.
ADDITIONAL ITEM BALANCE
There are some additional balance goals hidden within this massive sea of nerfs.
Underperforming Tank Item Buffs (will not counteract 15% stat nerfs)
Underperforming DPS Glyph Item Buffs
Mage ADC Item Buffs
Support Aura Item Nerf/Shifts – the Auras were nerfed more or instead of base stats for their 15% reduction.
Movement Speed Nerfs on various sources
Starter Item balance
% Penetration Cap and Amounts Revert
When we introduce a significant amount of tank strength to SMITE, it is important to always have options to counteract it. For this reason, we decided to revert the % penetration changes back to their 40%, 20%, and 10% values in 10.6.
The previous nerf to these values was indeed effective at the time, we saw tanks living longer and winning more, but the community was still mixed on the concept, and with these new changes, we found it especially important to revert.
We will certainly be looking closely at this dynamic throughout the following updates, and make more adjustments as needed.
This Season is shaping up to be the biggest one yet, arguably larger than 10.1 itself!
Gameplay Feature List
EVERY single T3 item with any power, protection, or HP getting nerfed
6 new Glyphs across 3 new items
Underworld Conquest
Soul Surges, Stygian Beacon, Unleashed Titans
Approximately 35 gods receiving buffs
6 gods receiving nerfs
The Season of Souls will certainly usher in a new meta for casual and competitive SMITE. Conquest objectives, economy, and strategy will be more important – and fights will be less volatile. Careful and consistent control should be rewarded over chance. Will you thrive in the Underworld, or wash up on the shores of the river Styx?!
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