Even though it’s now March, HiRez Studios keep trekking along with the theme of love by adding the next goddess, Aphrodite – seen above. Make the first look count; look twice and you’re a pervert, so I’ve been told.
This bombshell jumps right into the foray with the tag of “Support” and she’s every definition of the word. She has 3 abilities that can be used offensively, and two of those are used primarily to help out her lane-mate, called appropriately her “Soul Mate”. Don’t try midding with this goddess, you’ll end up beaten and abused with not so much as a kiss to make up for it.
Up to now, I’ve had decent enough experience laning with my wife playing Aphrodite as Odin, Xbalanque, and Vulcan (how poetic).
Things of note this patch:
- Practice Joust now allows parties of up to 3, just like Practice Arena from the last patch.
- New Practice map for “Jungle” minions only added.
- Ra’s “Celestial Beam” (#1 Lazer Beam) now only ever hits once.
- Poseidon got a decent enough buff all around him.
After the jump, you can watch her God Reveal video, the text version of her abilities, and the full patch notes.
Aphrodite’s Abilities:
PASSIVE (Loving Embrace): Gaining Aphrodite’s favor is a blessing in that 30% of all mana gained by Aphrodite is granted to her soul mate.
Kiss: Aphrodite blows a kiss to an allied god, making them her soul mate and giving them both 4/8/12/16/20% movement speed. If the kiss hits an enemy god, they are stunned for 1 second, and Aphrodite’s soul mate gets jealous, making them deal 4/8/12/16/20% increased damage for 8 seconds.
Back Off!: Agitated by all the attention, Aphrodite commands enemies to get away from her, doing 90/160/230/300/370 (+60% of your magical power) magic damage around her and knocking them back. If Aphrodite has a soul mate, they get agitated instead, and the damage originates on them, dealing the same damage and slowing by 25% for 2 seconds instead.
Love Birds: Aphrodite calls forth a flock of beautiful doves that fly forward in the area in front of her. The doves circle around all enemies in the path, damaging enemies for 10/17/24/31/38 (+15% of your magical power) magical damage every .5 seconds for 3 seconds (6 ticks). Aphrodite and her soul mate are healed for 10/17/24/31/38 (+15% of your magical power) every .5 seconds for 3 seconds (6 ticks).
Undying Love: Aphrodite pledges undying love to herself and her Soul mate. While this is active, her and her Soul Mate are invulnerable to all damage and crowd control for .8/1.1/1.4/1.7/2 seconds. All crowd control effects are also removed when activated.
New Skins:
- Hercules Grand Slam (Baseball Outfit – his ult is also a giant baseball instead of a rock)
- Aphrodite Majestrix (Black robe recolor + white hair)
- Convention 2013 Kali (All red recolor)
- Alienware Ra Skin (black & blue recolor)
General Changes:
- “Teams” are now called “Clans”
- All gods have been relabeled either Assassin, Bruiser, Tank, Mage, Support, or Carry. God tooltips have also been adjusted to provide information more succinctly. (Go to the Gods page in the Lobby, scroll over each god to find Pro/Cons listed for each god)
- The “GUIDES” menu has undergone significant enhancement. These changes include significant updates to the Character Builder, and new sections for Video Tutorials, God Guides, Community Websites, and more.
- Consumables currently equipped by players now show on the in-game scoreboard.
- The Joust Practice mode can now be played in Co-Op mode in parties up to 3. You will face off against one to three enemy gods, based on your party size.
- Additional bot gods have been added to the Co-Op Practice Arena. Kali, Sobek, and Anubis join the fight.
- A new “Jungle Practice” map has been added under the Practice tab on the PLAY menu. In this map, you can practice fighting each type of Jungle creep in a controlled environment.
- When creating a Custom Match, you can now choose to utilize the 4-Ban Draft Pick mode, which allows each team to ban two gods.
- The visibility range of wards now shows more accurately on the mini-map, based on line-of-sight rules.
- The health bars on the Gold Fury, Towers, Phoenixes, Minotaur, and Fire Giant have been modified.
- Modifications have been made to how sound is attenuated in the Jungle.
- Various cleanups have been made to the Match Lobby user interface.
- Various bug fixes and cleanups have been made to the Tutorial.
- Fixed an issue where enemy players caught inside of vortexes (Poseidon’s Whirlpoo l/ Hades’ Piller of Agony) were not being slowed when using basic attacks.
- Fixed an issue where a minion would not play a death animation correctly.
- Fixed an issue where Ao Kuang’s Spirit’s Tempest ability would be invisible for players if they did not see Ao Kuang when he fired it.
- Fixed an issue in which players could get stuck behind the Fire Giant.
- Performance optimizations have been made with death animations and other physics-related effects.
- Several other UI elements have undergone a polish pass.
- Several crash conditions have been fixed.
- Setting the world settings to “low” or “lowest” will disable ragdoll deaths as a performance boost.
- A variety of changes and improvements have been made to the sound/music in the game.
- Fixed an issue where Vulcan’s turrets would remain visible for a few seconds after it died.
Spectator Changes:
- Added the first version of an isometric viewpoint
- To trigger isometric view, press the new camera icon along the playback bar.
- By default, W/A/S/D/Q/E moves the camera
- The rotation of the camera is locked (I assume in isometric view)
- Selecting a god from the upper roster with LMB will cause the camera to follow that actor
- You can now see the consumables currently equipped by spectated players.
- Performance optimizations.
- Mana restore and statuses are now controlled by visibility settings.
- The team scoreboard can be slid down out of view by pressing the “L” button by default.
- The top-center timer now reflects the timer as seen during gameplay while the timer on the playback controls reflects the overall match time.
- Overhanging pieces of the Conquest map, such as the top of the Fire Giant cave and the ceilings on the team bases, have been removed for better visibility. These map changes are only visible while spectating.
- Fixed an issue where the camera could jolt to a different view after rewinding.
Gods (Balance changes):
Agni:
- FX have been updated for looks and performance.
Flame Wave
- A bug has been fixed that allowed this ability to do double damage under some conditions.
Ares:
Shackle
- Fixed a bug when up very close, you would not have been able to apply another Shackle.
Poseidon:
Changing Tides (Passive)
- The rate at which the Tide is reduced automatically over time has been decreased.
- Bonus scaling changed from quadratic math to linear (multiplication vs. addition) – This now uniformly scales based on Tide level (e.g. 50% Tide level now grants 50% of max Tide bonuses)
Tidal Surge
- Cooldown reduced from 12 to 10 seconds (all ranks)
- Damage increased by 20 for each rank
Trident
- The percentage of Tide consumed has been reduced from 35% to 15%.
Whirlpool
- The percentage of Tide consumed has been reduced from 35% to 25%
- Pull-in has been increased slightly
Release the Kraken!
- Increased outer radius base damage from 120/150/180/210/240 to 170/195/220/245/270
Ra:
Celestial Beam
- This ability will now always hit its target only once, and never multiple times. We will evaluate the effect of this change on Ra closely.
Vulcan:
Volcanic Overdrive
- The cooldown on rank 4 and 5 is now properly set to 90 seconds.
- Mana costs on rank 4 and 5 is now properly set to 100.