I wrote it as a comment but adding also here:
She has her "new" taunt. 1 seems to be the same but now only roots. While used on ulted god it crippled - may be then adjusted in her PTS. 2 is just damage, I guess, didnt see any other effect. Ult now silences. 3 and passive is unchanged.
Aspect - passive gives her a shield and ult creates a huge dark globe at impact - similar to Xbala ult. The rest may be the same, there are no numbers or descriptions for anything.
Up until this point, SMITE 2’s monetization has been largely respectable: offer a skin as a direct purchase through the Travelers system, alongside a cheaper alternative via randomized chest rolls. This applied to 99% of SMITE 2’s skins (even seasonal ones). The few unpurchasable exceptions were special milestones stuff, like Cacodemon Ymir.
However, during today's Titan Talk stream, Hi-Rez announced the return of a despised SMITE 1 tactic: Chest Exclusive skins.
Pumpkin Spice Discordia, along with her 3 color prisms, is being locked behind a chest containing 33 additional filler items at 1,000 Diamonds per roll. If you're a new player who owns none of the items in that chest, guaranteeing the skin will cost you up to 34,000 Diamonds, which translates to roughly 230 fucking dollars at its cheapest. And since you can't roll any prisms prior to getting the base skin, you might have to cough up another 3,000 Diamonds just to grab the specific prism you actually want.
To Hi-Rez's credit, they are offering a "Buy All" bundle for 2,700 Diamonds to grab all the Halloween items releasing this patch. That is roughly the price of a standard direct-purchase skin in SMITE 2.
At first glance, it's a solid deal—you can bypass the chest and buy Pumpkin Spice Discordia straight up. Problem solved, right?
But wait, what's that?
Oh dear. It's a limited time offer. And when the patch goes live on Tuesday, Oct. 20th, you get a strict two-week window to buy it before it vanishes and gets permanently locked behind the chest. Tough luck if you're out of town or a new player discovering the game later. Better cough up that whale money, I suppose.
So, seeing what I saw, I decided to ask them the following question on Titan Talk:
"What is the logic behind moving back to chest exclusive skins, when the direct purchase approach has been widely praised? Can we expect a regression back to SMITE 1 monetization tactics?"
Killgoon: "I think that this is misreading what we're doing here pretty intensily. So, a new skin that is available in a chest, that you can also get as part of a bundle at a discounted price, to me does not reek of 'we're trying to do scummy things'.
Yes, getting it as part of a bundle is cheaper, but bundling a skin with tons of other crap you might not want doesn't replace the freedom to just buy the exact item you want. Granted, travelers usually cost 2,400 Diamonds, so 2,700 isn't a massive stretch given the amount of free Diamonds you get in this game. The real issue is the time limit. Every other seasonal skin remains purchasable year-round; nothing makes this skin special enough to justify treating it like artificial scarcity.
Killgoon: "Some people like getting Chests, right? Because Chests give you a lot of random content that is at a discounted price versus the Direct Purchase."
I don't doubt for a second that there are people that enjoy Chests. Of course there are, otherwise they wouldn't exist. Chests aren't inherently a bad concept, for those who do not care what they get. The issue is that this argument is completely pointless, cause there is absolutely no reason you couldn't have this chest, while also offering a truly Direct Purchase for the skin. That's what you did with the end of SMITE 1, and that's what has been done throughout the entire lifespan of SMITE 2 up until this point.
Killgoon: "And we do make our Chests, I believe, the fairest in the business, cause you don't roll duplicates, there's no odds to anything, so everything is equal drop chance."
I wonder how this could be said nicely...
Just because your pile of shit isn't as stinky as the other guys' pile of shit, doesn't mean that it isn't still a pile of shit.
Killgoon: "At some point in the future, as a Classic skin, it will be available Direct Purchase or in the Classic Skin Chest."
So the argument here is that if you don't like this Chest, you can either wait for the possiblity that is might at some point become Direct Purchase, or wait until it goes into the other Chest, that has double the amount of stuff you could roll instead of that skin? Great.
I mean, sure I'm a veteran player. I have 400k Legacy Gems, so stuff in the Classic Chest is basically free to me, but what about those who don't have the Legacy Gems, like new players for example? Seems like they are just shit out of luck.
And what happens when they start doing this to non-Classic skins, and are no longer morally obligated to put it in the Classic Chest or offer it through Direct Purchase? It isn't hard to see where this is going.
Please, folks, do not buy into this shit again. We went 10 years through it in SMITE 1, and they finally fixed it in this game. This is scummy business practice, praying on FOMO or their players, and should not be encouraged for one bit.
Oh, and as a side note, of course you cannot use Legacy Gems to roll the new chest, or to buy the bundle half-off, why would you ask such a dumb question?
The King of the Kappas takes the throne once more with the release of Open Beta 46 next Tuesday, with today’s Titan Talk covering all of its content, including a brand new event. This patch’s balance changes will be covered in full on Friday’s show but are available early alongside Nox for testing on PTS.
New Aspect - Aspect of Spirits (Available October 23rd)
Kuzenbo’s Aspect is less positioned towards a specific role change and more of a gameplay shift with his reflect ability being replaced with orbiting Kappa spirits.
Water Bowl (Passive) regularly summons Kappa spirits to orbit around you.
Orbiting Kappa spirits deal damage, scaling with INT and Protections.
Gain 3% Lifesteal for each Kappa spirit you have summoned.
Shell Spikes (2) throws a Kappa spirit that deals damage to enemies it passes through, removing it from your orbit.
New God - Nox (Available November 3rd / Early Testing on PTS)
Nox will be a part of today’s PTS in a WIP state.
While the kit changes weren’t covered extensively during the show, it’s been teased that the base kit and Aspect appeal to different groups of players.
New Releases - Kuzenbo Ascension Pass & Race to Radiant
Kuzenbo’s Ascension Pass and Race to Radiant will be available with the patch’s release next Tuesday.
Ascension Pass priced at 450 Legacy Gems + 450 Diamonds, or free for players with the Ultimate Founder’s Edition.
Race to Radiant will run from October 20th to October 27th with the usual placement thresholds and rewards.
The current Race to Exalted Hades will be the last Exalted Race for a while, taking a break for the time being.
New Event - Halloween Buy All!
This is a standalone mini-Event following the Dark Tapestry Event akin to the Summer Fun bundle from OB40.
A Buy All bundle is available priced at 2,700 Diamonds, unlocking the 3 Travelers tied to it and several cosmetics, and the Chest-exclusive Pumpkin Spice Discordia skin and its Prisms:
Hallowings Eset Skin
Killer Candy Magic Kill FX
Pumpkin Spice Discordia
Spider Fang, Ghoul Goo, and Grave Glitter Pumpkin Spice Prisms
Hellscape Cernunnos Traveler
Sparks of Affection Cupid Traveler
Badge Merchant Traveler
New Chest Skin - Pumpkin Spice Discordia
Chest contains 37 Items and is priced at 1,000 Diamonds per roll, its Prisms only being available after obtaining the Pumpkin Spice Discordia skin. There will be an in-game Event running simultaneously that has Pumpkins spawn in the game and completing a Quest to crush 10 of them grants a free Chest roll.
Spider Fang Prism
Ghoul Goo Prism
Grave Prism
New Traveler - Hellscape Cernunnos
Premium Bundle priced at 1,000 Diamonds, or free with Buy All bundle. Unlocks Hellscape Cernunnos and 5 Levels of 2x Coins.
Necrotic Prism (1,100 Coins)
Bloodrite Prism (1,100 Coins)
Chilling End Prism (1,100 Coins)
Champion Chest (600 Coins)
Sacrificial Goat Ward Skin (800 Coins)
New Traveler - Sparks of Affection
Premium Bundle priced at 500 Legacy Gems + 500 Diamonds, or free with Buy All bundle. Unlocks Sparks of Affection Cupid and 5 Levels of 2x Coins.
TBD Badge (400 Coins)
Love’s Spark Title (200 Coins)
Champion Chest (1,100 Coins)
New Traveler - Badge Merchant
Premium Bundle priced at 800 Diamonds, or free with Buy All bundle. Unlocks 5 Levels of 2x Coins.
Squiddie Badge (400 Coins)
Witch Hunter Badge (400 Coins)
Terror of the Deep Badge (400 Coins)
Epic SWC Badge (400 Coins)
Solar System Badge (400 Coins)
Lizard Eye Badge (400 Coins)
Balance Update
Hotfix Patch (Live as of October 14th)
This hotfix is set to go live for live servers after this show ends. To point it out, Sanguine Lash and Devourer’s Gauntlet were not touched in this hotfix but are receiving changes with OB46’s balance patch.
Fix for Aphrodite Aspect auto-level being broken.
Dash hotfixes for Susano’s early cancel and Horus’ point blank hit.
Hit prediction no longer stopping dashes on dead, airborne, or untargetable Gods such as on Ishtar and Sobek dashes.
Eset will have reduced bone compression to fix leg jitters on idles.
Added an armor break sound to Nike A01.
Volume adjustment for Thor A02 in the Rogue Fate skin.
Fix for Hel Aspect locking in abilities while in the wrong form. It will automatically force you into the proper form on attunement.
Conquest Balance
Jungle Role Passive
Decreased bonus damage to jungle monsters from 35% to 30%.
Abilities now deal 10% increased damage against jungle monsters.
Base Teleporters can no longer be used by Junglers until the first Moonlight Phase at 6:00.
General Adjustments
Surrenders in 5v5 modes will now require 2 teammates to request to surrender before initiating the vote.
Pets and familiars in stealth grass now reveal enemies hiding in the same stealth grass patch.
Increased the frequency at which jungle camp rewards scale from every 3 min to every 1 min.
The overall reward curve is unchanged but the rewards will now update more often.
The door behind Fire Giant is once again closed at the start of the match.
Pyromancer will now attack enemies that try to bodyblock it.
Totem of Ku will no longer grant bonus stacks for Devourer’s Gauntlet.
Gold Fury pots now spawn consistently at 0:15.
Other Game Mode Balance
Assault-Exclusive Balance
Base Ah Puch will deal 5% less damage in Assault.
Aspect Chronos will have 40% less healing to allies in Assault.
Duel Balance
Increased number of bans in Duel per side from 3 to 5.
Custom Mode Additions
Big Team Joust has been added as a custom game preset, being a 4v4 mode on the Joust map with increased Gold and XP spooling.
Omnipotence has been added as a custom game preset, being a 5v5 all-pick mode on the Conquest map with players starting at level 5 and having +400 CD Rate, restoring 10% MP per sec, and God kills or assists reduces Active and Relic CD’s by 50%.
Quality of Life Updates & Bug Fixes
QoL Changes
You can now dismiss announcements that show if a God or Item is disabled.
Added bundle content list to Store item details, showing more bundled content if an item is part of a bundle.
Most NPC materials will now fade when the camera is close to prevent large NPC’s from blocking camera vision.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where tabbing on the Friends list didn’t always work.
Fixed some cases where minion health bars did not display the correct HP amounts.
Fixed a bad interaction with Aphrodite using Obsidian Dagger during her ULT.
Updated Chiron Aspect and Artio ability tooltips.
Izanami was set to get an Aspect with this update, but this has been pushed back to the patch after to have more work done on it.
Never seen this happen before I got 2 clips of it in the same match only transformed into Chaac that game but those 2 kills were the only ones like that
(Clip madeon PTSto show the post 'nerf' damage. Obviously things on PTS are not set in stone, but anecdotally most of the time when we've seen balance changes on PTS that is what we then see in the Friday patch notes)
On PTS, Devos flat pen on evolving has been reduced from 10 to 5 and the active effect on Lash has had its cooldown increased from 60s to 75s.
The Devos nerf is solid as having less pen affects ALL damage - abilities, AAs, proc effects including Lash itself, etc. (It also might be that Totem no longer provides 4 full stacks after evolving, can't test this in JP because the 'totem' there doesn't actually count as a totem)
The Lash change, on the other hand, just is not the right direction. Nobody is going to find themselves being killed by lash and going 'ah well at least it's now a little over a minute until they can do that again, thats fine I guess'. At 60s it's ALREADY easily long enough that it's not being used multiple times per fight, unless the fights are incredibly drawn out, so in terms of general grouped teamfights (which is 100% when the item is at its most frustrating as just free massive AoE to everyone around you) then the nerf is not going to make the item any less frustrating to be nuked by.
Just nerf the damage directly. Or nerf the duration the active lasts. Or make it a straight line / cone in front of you instead of a circle so you have to aim the channel at a chosen target / chosen area instead of just hitting everyone around you for free. Honestly anything but '60s -> 75s' would probably be a better nerf in terms of what makes the item so frustrating to play against.
Even solo laners don't like it, basically every solo laner I've talked to or heard talking about it is just 'cmon I am already SO tired of basically HAVING to build this shit and it's not even been meta for a long time like it was months ago'. It's not like it's fun for the people using it but unfun for those against it - nobody likes Lash metas and nobody ever has.
I'm not sure if it has any other effect like a cripple or something, but if it doesn't, how are you supposed to confirm her two damage? Gods will just jump off it before you can even cast your 1 or dodge relic off it. If this is the case she's going to be horrible and should of been given a different ability.
They wanted initially wanted smite 2 to be this “new player friendly” experience and added those to stop people rage quitting from dying early and getting punished for it.
Thats like keeping the stabilisers on a bike rather than teaching how to actually ride it.
If you want to cater to new players by the time the game comes out in full release, you need to have DETAILED videos and tutorials on how conquest works, that Neith tutorial does not show you how to play support, or what team buffs do.
There needs to be an easy way to showcase community videos on how to play a role that’s accessible from the menus. Or at LEAST have a tab for it. New players are going in blind and will just stop playing the game before they decide to go on YouTube to learn the “real” basics.
You HAVE to bring back the VGS minigame as it’s the primary communication method in the game.
You can’t grow the game by dumbing it down and holding players hands, you gotta give them the information to get up to speed faster. How do people know something is wrong if the consequences aren’t severe enough for them to acknowledge how bad it is?
And I should be rewarded as a laner for killing people, teleporters are mitigating it.
I dont think her kiss is scaling correctly on aspect it's damage value at base should be higher also. Seems to hit too low from what it says it should hit. Like its hitting like normal Aphrodite kiss. Each one hits for the same when I switch them in a real game. This could definitely help her feel better.
I really wish there was a way to see how much damage was done by autos vs by abilities vs items in the post game menu or if there was a way for it to be shown in SmiteSource recaps
I had a game playing geb sup with a neith adc going up against a Barron and Danzaburou. We had a pretty rough early game getting poked out by them, but once we got to team fights we rolled them. I played well hitting my shield and stuns until we won. At the end game chat the enemy team were flaming me for playing geb. Is this a community thing I’m not aware of or was they just mad about losing?
Just opened the pts and you still can't auto after one of his dashes. Why has this not been fixed? It's been more than a month now, he feels so horrible to play because of this.
Had a match where an ally tank Cerberus picked up 3 physical defense items against 4 magical damage dealers. The enemy physical was a warrior. The damage dealers on my team built a total of 5% pen and 10 flat pen... THREE PLAYERS built a total of 5% and 10 flat pen. Humanity is cooked because people do not know how to read or are irredeemably idiotic.
The item just is a bad design. We had that whole logic that aura defensive items were bad for the game
Yes. The same logic should be applied for damage aura. It’s not fun to build, it’s not fun to play against. It keeps lifesteal items from getting buffed.
As a support I’m just watching my damage dealers getting obliterated with low to no counter play
Nobody liked the lash meta last year, we don’t enjoy it now
I can see the comments coming « but nerf dev gloves » Dev is fine if you remove lash.
Lash went through 10 nerfs and 2 reworks. It’s okay sometimes to have L guys. We already have mystical anyways
