Hi-Rez Studios Revamps Agni – God of Fire (Video)

Hi-Rez Studios has revamped one of the original gods of SMITE, the company’s upcoming pantheon-based MOBA. The two-headed Hindi God of Fire has received a substantial visual overhaul in the latest patch making him far more fearsome, borderline demonic. Just look at those angry mugs! This is simply the latest in a long run of early god remakes ahead of the title’s release festivities next month.

And yes, all of Agni’s skins have been tweaked to fit the new art direction.

Naturally, a reskin isn’t the only thing to place your peepers upon. The patch is companioned by a new God Reveal video for the one touched by fire. Long-time players will be happy to see the inclusion of Player Icons, an Updated Arena map. The Tribes-inspired Blood Eagle Thor has received his own updates.

Head to the God Reveal video after the cut. It may just be worth your while to dig around for a new skin code!

• General

• Agni’s model, animations, 2D Art, and FX have all been updated.
• Agni’s passive meter has been updated include a timer indicating how many seconds until your next meteor becomes available.

Rain Fire

• Recovery time reduced from 0.6 to 0.4. Should help higher ping players be able to place Noxious Fumes down in time after using Rain Fire.
• Fixed an issue where firing multiple meteors would skip animations.

Skins

• Blood Eagle Thor has had his FX updated.
• Gravehound Anubis has had his FX updated.
• Agni’s Incinerator, Golden and Legendary skins have been updated for the new model.  Agni’s Volcanic skin has kept the same model and animations as previous, but has some FX updates.
• Some Poolseidon FX have been updated to provide better team coloring information.

Updated Voices and Voice Command System

• A variety of improvements have been made to various voice taunts in the game — including some god-specific voice taunts.
• The following new commands and emotes have been added to the VGS system. Please note that not all gods have had their voice packs updated yet, and will use the default voice when using these commands:

• [VAT1] Attack Left Tower! (Phoenix)
• [VAT2] Attack Middle Tower! (Phoenix)
• [VAT3] Attack Right Tower! (Phoenix)
• Special: In Arena [VDM] will say “Defend the Portal!”.
• Special: In Arena [VAM] will say “Attack the Minions!”

General

• The Arena Escort map has undergone additional artistic changes.
• The Conquest map has undergone minor artistic changes.
• A new “Player Icon” system has been introduced. This system is still in an early state and additional changes will come in future patches. This system allows you to select an icon for your player that can be seen by your friends on the friends list. The icon in the future will also be used in additional locations and in additional ways..
• The team balancing algorithm on Assault matches has changed. If one side is randomly assigned a “healer”, then the other side will also be given a healer. The rest of the team formation is random (we are no longer ensuring that each side has one god from each role/class). The currently configured gods considered “healers” by this algorithm are  Aphrodite, Chang’e, Cupid, Guan Yu, Hel and Ra. A couple other gods have some healing but were not included for this purpose..
• The FX that play on and around your character when you earn gold have been modified. Among other modifications, there are now separate FX for last-hit minion gold, as well as the gold fury.
• The friendly /player icons on the top-left of the in-match HUD now give an indication of when your ally’s ultimate will be available.
• A new targeting option has been added.  “Highlight & Bracket 2” uses a bracket inside of the game world.
• Some tweaks have been made to the kill notifications in the game.
• Some fairly major backend changes have been made to the database schema for the game, in order to help support the game’s continued growth. The downtime required for this patch may be a little longer than normal while the database is updated to the new schema.
• Fixed an issue in which the mini-map would not show in the Tutorial.
• The Out of Match Store in the game’s main menu has undergone artistic changes. Additional changes are planned for the future.
• Corrected some HUD scaling issues on resolution resize.
• Implemented a variety of modest performance improvements.
• Fixed a bug with new player creation in which users would be forced to re-login in if they attempted to create a player with a name too long.
• Fix an issue in which melee trails would not scale correctly with faster attack speed. This was a visual issue only: Melee trails would be offset from animation.
• Joust now shows the correct icons for the Titans.
• A variety of minor chat bug fixes and clean-ups have been implemented.
• If a new user tries to leave the Tutorial early, they will now first be prompted with a warning that they will lose out on significant in-game rewards for doing so.
• Custom matches no longer require a minimum surrender time. A surrender in those matches can occur from the beginning of the match.
• Fixed an issue where the camera’s pitch could get locked while stun taunted.
• Removed the option to run DirectX 11 on 32-bit operating systems.
• Assault and MOTD/Custom matches that use an “All Random” picking algorithm now have a 30 second launch overriding the 10 second normal launch. This gives more time in the skin selection phase.
• Fixed an issue in Assault where players were able to be knocked up onto the Phoenix platforms.
• Assault has received minor optimisation adjustments for players running medium and low settings options.
• Fixed an issue in which the minimap was not showing in the Tutorial.
• Some performance improvements have been made for players using the Map Guides in game.
• Fixed a crash condition related to parties.
• Free god rotation updated. Agni, Artemis, Loki, Sobek, and Sun Wukong are now on rotation.

Spectator

• Clicking on wards will temporarily show their area of influence.
• Fixed an issue in which Guan Yu’s horse would sometimes not show up in spectator mode.

Items

• Heavenly Agility

• Fixed issue where the duration of the provided buff was not matching the intended 6s indicated by the tooltip.

• Brawlers Beat Stick

• Provides 10/25/40 Physical Power and 5/10/20 Physical Penetration. Cost: 750/1550/2400.

• Rank 3 Passive: Enemies hit by your basic attacks have 40% reduced healing and regeneration for 8s.

• Divine Ruin

• Rank 3 Passive Changed: Enemies hit by your abilities have 40% reduced healing for 8s.

• Pestilence

• Passive Aura increased from 15% healing reduction to 20%.

• Polynomicon

• Passive reduced from +100% to +85% of your magical power added to your next basic attack.

• Eye of Retaliation

• Provides 15/30/40 Physical Power, 5/10/15 Physical and Magical protection. Cost: 800/1500/2700.

• Rank 3 Passive: While over 50% health, you gain +20 Physical Power. While under 50% health, you gain +20 protections.

• Gauntlet of Thebes

• Provides 200/400/600 health per rank. Cost: 600/1100/1850.

• Rank 3 Passive: Your maximum health, including bonuses from other items, is increased by 15%.

• Hydra’s Lament

• Rank 3 Passive changed: For 5s after using an ability, your next basic attack will deal +50% of your total physical power as physical damage. The effect can only apply once every 4 seconds.

• Hand of the Gods / Fist of the Gods

• Will now only affect up to 3 minions or camp creatures around you.
• Will always affect the Fire Giant or Gold Fury (or all gods for Fist).

In addition, we are testing a new kind of item tree, where you can purchase multiple items from it, but cannot own the same item rank twice. The following items have been combined into this test tree. If this test is successful, then additional items will be added in future releases.

• Qin’s Sais, Asi, and Executioner combined:

• Rank 1

• Simple Blade

• +10% Attack Speed. Cost 700.

Rank 2

• Balanced Blade

• +15% Attack Speed, +15 Physical Power. Cost 1250.

Draining Blade:

• +10% Physical Lifesteal, +20% Attack Speed, +10 Physical Penetration. Cost 1075.

Rank 3

• Executioner (No item change).
• Qin’s Sais (No item change).
• Asi (No item change)

• A number of items have been removed from the game as we work to reposition items in upcoming patches. They include:

• Divine Wrath
• Brawlers Cudgel
• Hydra’s Demise
• All Qin’s Blades (Sais is still an option in new tree above).
• Rank 1 and Rank 2 Asi (Per new tree).
• Bracer of Replenishment

*NOTE: As part of these changes, the UI for the item-store received a major backend overhaul from a code perspective. Please report any anomalies or bugs that you find in the item store interface.

Gods – Balance

• Ah Muzen Cab

• Honey

• Damage reduced from 20/30/40/50/60 per tick to 8/21/34/47/60.
• Physical scaling reduced from 20% per tick to 15% per tick.

Ao Kuang

• Fixed an issue in which some of Ao Kuang’s ability animations would not play if abilities fired in quick succession.

Apollo

• General

• Made minor aesthetic changes to his Golden and Legendary skins.

Athena

• Updated targeters for Red Star and Winter Olympian skins to use the correct model and spear
• Confound

• Fixed an issue where the taunt would sometimes not make the victim fire their basic attacks if they were finishing firing another ability when taunted.

Bakasura

• Insatiable Hunger

• Fixed buff icon tooltip text to reflect actual buff values

Chronos

• Stop Time

• The slow-to-stop effect will no longer be applied to targets that are immune to slows at the time of application.

Geb

• Roll Out

• Increased cooldown from 10 to 14/13/12/11/101
• Decreased duration of Roll Out from 7s to 6s. (3s building speed, 3s at max speed).
• Fix an issue in which Geb did not ignore slows when he became CC immune at top speed.

Hercules

• Excavate

• Fixed highlighting issues.

Mercury

• Maximum Velocity

• Attack speed buff increased from 20/30/40/50/60% to 30/40/50/60/70%.

Nemesis

• General

• Updated melee trails and hit impacts for No Mercy skin.

Scales of Fate

• This ability now steals 3% of power from targets hit (stacking up to 3 times). Stolen magical power is converted to physical power for Nemesis at one half the value.

• Example: Nemesis hits a Mage target with 200 magical power one time with a basic attack. She steals 3% of their magical power (6 total), converting it to 3 physical power for herself.

Slice and Dice

• Cooldown increased from 7s to 10s

Divine Judgement

• The movement speed buff and debuff is now 25% (previously 30/35/40/45/50%).

Ne Zha

• Armillary Sash

• Width of sash grab increased from 10 to 12.

Loki

• Vanish

• Updated tooltip to indicate this ability also removes existing slows when activated

Nu Wa

• Flame Strike

• This ability has a new targeter that does a better job of communicating the damage fall off of the ability the further away the enemy is to Nu Wa.

Thanatos

• Hovering Death

• Increased casting time from 1.2 to 1.5s.
• Fixed an issue where Thanatos did not ignore slows while flying.

• Zeus

• General

• Basic attack progression of 1/1/.5/.5 has been removed.

Second half of the skin code: A77B044E