Design 101: Themes

I think my main disagreement is that making unrepetitive original gods (and notably balanced gods) isn't directly linked to having a strong tie to their theme. While having a theme can help shape a god and give them some distinguishable features, you can still easily make a unique god even without being as tied to it.

However, the case still rests that Smite is lacking both in thematic cohesiveness and in some cases the originality of gods' kits. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see god design improve in both these areas and they can go hand-in-hand, but I'm simply more concerned with the second issue than the first.

If u mean usable as in viable, well, most probably i would say yeah. Poppy almost never see light in competitive but is dominating in most pub games. Each patch also seems to cause every champions to move up and down the tier (like seriously, urgot hecomes god tier from trash tier). However, some champions can also be played in competitive if the group wants too (see Unicorn of Love), but like most games, it is never possible to find true balance.

LoL will never have the rate of used champions that DotA has in a tournament (according to some sites LoL world championship had a pick/ban rate of ~51% of all the characters. While dota had only 10 non picked heroes last TI (and as far as I know this year they are picked/banned already in the qualifiers. another difference in these numbers is that I don't know if the LoL ones are starting at the qualifier)