28 March 2013 | |
Mordil
Hi-Rez Studios decided to take a break from love this patch, and moved into dedicating their lives to the beast of music. Apollo, God of Music, joins the Greek roster in SMITE.
Apollo’s skill set looks like a mixture between Neith, Thor, and Vamana. Rocking his ranged physical damage by shooting hand guns, this guy serenades, strums, and charges to victory.
Things to note in this patch:
- A new ability item is being added: Portal - Using this item creates a portal entrance at your spawning location and a portal exit at your ground target. A player standing on the portal entrance will teleport to the exit, consuming both the entrance and exit in the process. Cooldown – 180s
- Zeus gained more survivability as Aegis Shield now provides +20 more physical & magical protection at Rank 5.
- Bastet gained some more mobility functionality with her Pounce ability.
- Hide of Nemean Lion now reflects damage as magical damage, rather than physical damage.
After the jump, you can find Apollo’s God Reveal Video, text version of his abilities, and the patch notes. Continue Reading
14 February 2013 | |
Mordil
Honestly, this week’s patch has been the first one I’ve been the most happy with since back in November.
Neith is one of the most balanced gods right at release – from what I’ve seen. She doesn’t do too much damage, and she’s about as easy to kill as other gods, even with all her utility. Focus is gone, with it’s somewhat clunky mechanic that was changed almost 3 times before being removed.
Along with Focus being removed, every god had a pass through by the designers to re-assign static values for stuns, slows, damage, speed increases, etc. that used to be scaled by Focus. The lengthy list is below, along with Neith’s God Reveal video, her abilities, and the generic balance changes.
Things of note to me were:
- Hel’s abilities share half the CD time in both stances now (Her 1 in Healing Stance is used, both her Healing Stance and Damage Stance go on CD, with Damage Stance only being on CD for 1/2 the time)
- Hercules’ “Earthbreaker” (knockback) ability had the length of its range reduced by about 10ft.
- New Solo Practice Map for Arena: Ymir, Artemis, Ra, vs. Ymir, Artemis, and whomever you choose.
- Advanced Tooltips have been added for abilities now.
- and again, Focus has been removed.
Check out Neith’s reveal after the jump!
Continue Reading
31 January 2013 | |
Mordil
Yesterday morning, we were hit with the latest SMITE patch, introducing the delayed (by only one week) god: Vulcan, God of Lava & Smoke.
This patch mostly introduces the new god, with some welcomed balance changes (Hercules nerf!), a new loading screen (as seen above) and bug changes.
I’m wondering if with each new god, they’ll change the loading screen to show them off. Makes sense with this change not having a static photo background like we used to have with Ole Zeus.
Hit the jump for the full patch notes and Vulcan’s official God Reveal trailer. Continue Reading
6 November 2012 | |
iTZKooPA
SMITE: Demigods, Deities and Gods Explained is a column dedicated to introducing prospective players of SMITE to its massive back story of lore. From the Greek to Hindu, each week we’ll look at two characters from a major pantheon and provide a quick recap of their history and in what capacity their digital incarnation will represent on the field of Hi-Rez Studios’ upcoming MOBA.
Lore: Loki is arguably the best known antagonist of any pantheon. Rarely encroaching upon the gray area of good and evil, The Trickster is the recurring antagonist of the Norse pantheon. Originally a more neutral god, Loki sealed his fate as an evildoer when he arranged the death of Baldr. Capable of shapeshifting, the easier to deceive his prey, Loki has swam as a salmon, flown as a fly and walked the earth as an elderly women.
Loki was not highborn like some others of his repute. However, his seed was sown into history through the two-sided Hel, giant wolf Fenrir and the world serpent Jörmungandr. His laundry list of dastardly acts made his own entry into legend assured.
Continue Reading
29 May 2012 | |
iTZKooPA
SMITE: Demigods, Deities and Gods Explained is a new column dedicated to introducing prospective players of SMITE to its massive backstory of lore. From the Greek to Hindu, each week we’ll look at two characters from a major pantheon and provide a quick recap of their history and in what capacity their digital incarnation will represent on the field of Hi-Rez Studios’ upcoming MOBA.
Lore: Hel is the Goddess of the Underworld, Niflheim, in Norse mythology, a territory that colloquially shares the same name as its figurehead. She was given this domain by Odin, one of the principal members of Æsir, the norse pantheon. Her father is the trickster Loki, a common and incredibly intelligent antagonist in many legends. She was born of Angrboða, a giantess. Hel has two siblings, both incredibly powerful beasts of legends, Fenrir and Jörmungandr.
Continue Reading
