SMITE Gains Another Hunter – Rama, the 7th Avatar of Vishnu

It seems Hi-Rez feels there’s not enough Hindu love in SMITE, as they are releasing a second Hindu god back-to-back with this first Hindu Hunter (Greek, Egyptian, and Mayan have two each!).

He seems, upon first watch of his reveal video, that he is heavily reliant on auto-attacks, more so than Artemis or any other hunter. This will make for some interesting early lane phases.

Things of note this patch:

• An in-game UI customization tool has been added
• Scylla and Kumbhakarna received conservative nerfs
• Bacchus, Zeus, and Fenrir were given seemingly appropriate buffs
• Ra-merica, a(n) ridiculous amazing skin, is released just in time for July 4th.
• Polynomicon was given another nerf. I still maintain that it isn’t enough…
• Golden Bow is 150 gold cheaper to buy

After the cut, watch the God Reveal video for Rama. Then check out the rest of the details in this patch.

Rama, the 7th Avatar of Vishnu (Hindu Hunter)

Astral Quiver (Passive): Rama’s Astral Quiver generates an Astral Arrow every 15 seconds. Every basic attack that Rama lands will reduce the amount of time to generate an arrow by 2 seconds. Astral Arrows are used with Rama’s other abilities.

Astral Strike  (#1): Rama switches to a more powerful arrow that pierces and slows enemies by 20/25/30/35/40% for 1s and deals 10/20/30/40/50 bonus damage. This ability consumes 1 of Rama’s Astral Arrows with every shot. Rama cannot toggle this ability if he has no Astral Arrows.

• Cost: 1 Astral Arrow.

Pick Me Up (#2): 

Passive: Any time an enemy is hit by an Astral Arrow there is a 10/20/30/40/50% chance that an Astral Arrow pickup will appear on the ground (Only procs on the first enemy hit by Astral Strike). The pickup adds one Arrow to Rama’s Astral Arrow count.

Active: Rama gains increased attack speed 30/35/40/45/50% for 5 seconds.

• Cooldown: 15/14/13/12/11 seconds
• Cost: 80/85/90/95/100 Mana

Rolling Assault (#3): Rama performs a roll in the direction he is currently traveling. After performing the roll, for 5 seconds Rama’s next in-hand attack will consume an astral arrow that cripples the target for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds and deals 20/40/60/80/100 bonus damage. Rama incurs no movement penalty during this shot.

• Cooldown: 12/11/10/9/8 seconds
• Cost 70/75/80/85/90 Mana

Astral Barrage (#4 Ultimate): Rama launches into the air and shoots 3 powerful arrows at the ground, each successive shot increasing in damage: 50%, 75%, 100% of 250/350/450/550/650 +80% of physical power and decreasing in AoE size: 30, 20, 15.

• Cooldown: 90 seconds
• Cost 100/110/120/130/140 Mana

New Skins

• Ra-merica Ra

For each sale of this skin, $2 will be donated to the American Red Cross. This is a seasonal skin available until July 14th.

• Iron Gamer Thor

Purchases of this skin will support Amateur LAN Tournaments ran by Iron Gaming (http://www.irongames.org/).

• Metal Carnage Fenrir
• Valiant One Rama
• Gold Osiris

Updated Cards

• Bloodfire Hades
• Sacred Dragon Ao Kuang
• Jungle King Anhur

New Ward Skins and Player Icons

• East Island Head Ward
• Sword in the Stone ward
• Added “country flag” player icons

HUD (GUI) Customization

A new user customization controls for the in-match GUI has been added.

• All previous HUD settings have been moved into the HUD Editor, accessible via the User Interface tab in the Settings menu.
• In the HUD Editor you will find a control panel which allows you to select individual elements and control different aspects.
• All elements have toggle visibility, are independently scalable, and several are moveable.
• The Spectator HUD scale has been moved to the Spectator tab of the Settings menu.

General Changes:

• Your new free god rotation is: He Bo, Geb, Sun Wukong, Anhur, and Bastet!
• Fixed a rare bug where selecting a skin could cause issues returning to a game you were disconnected from.
• When selecting a god, it will now play the voice of the last remembered skin.
• Chat Input is now restricted to 140 characters, so you cannot accidently type over what the server allows and have your message rejected.
• Fixed an issue where Items which grant power based on a % of another stat weren’t properly updating the scoreboard or end of match lobby.
• Watching the Twitch stream will no longer mute match notification sounds while in fullscreen.
• The post game lobby Time statistic now matches the game clock, rather than including the pre-match lobby and pre-game prep time.
• Co-Op bots now stagger their loading to reduce the strain on lower end machines.

Account Security

• To improve account security, we’ve added support for choosing a secret question and creating an answer.
• All players that are level 10 or greater will be prompted to provide a secret question and answer.

Item Builder

• The Item Builder now defaults opening to the Custom selection.
• Fixed an issue with the Item Builder not showing the price for an item, if it had been purchased in the previous match. Wierd.
• Fixed an issue with custom item builds not loading properly for different gods.
• Fixed an issue with being able to clear the ‘Standard’ loadout in Item Builder.
• You can no longer add duplicate items to the same category. NOTE: You can have the same item in multiple categories, just not multiple times in 1 category.
• Hitting ESC on the Item Builder now properly closes it instead of the entire gods page.

“Top Stats” Screen

• Keybinding for this screen has been changed to T by default.
• This screen displays XP/Gold differentials for the two teams, and who has top Gold, XP, and Player Damage for each team.

End Of Match Lobby

• Fixed an issue in Practice and Co-Op where damage and healing dealt to AI controlled gods was not being treated as “Player” damage.
• AI Controlled bots now show up in the End of Match Lobby scoreboards.

League

• Fixed an issue with Leaderboard sorting.
• New art has been added for Season 2 Badges and Player Icons.
• The rules around rapid-promotion have been adjusted, to not jump as aggressively on players with fewer games.
• Fixed issue where some players promotion would not be saved properly

Items

New Item: Ancile

• +20 Physical Power
• +60 Magical Protection
• PASSIVE – You permanently gain +.5 Physical Power and +.25% Cooldown Reduction per stack, and receive 5 stacks per god kill and 1 stack per minion kill. (max. 60 stacks).
• Cost 2,400 gold.
• Ancile is a new Tier 3 item in the “Enchanted Buckler” item tree.

New Item: Enchanted Buckler

• +10 Physical Power
• +10 Magical Protection
• Cost 820 gold.
• This is a new Tier 1 root item.

Polynomicon

• Reduced magical power contribution to your next basic attack from 85% to 50%.

Round Shield

• Increased Physical Protection from 15 to 20.

Runic Shield

• Physical Power increased from 20 to 25.
• Moved to new “Enchanted Buckler” item tree.

Shield of Regrowth

• Physical Power increased from 20 to 25.
• Cost reduced from 2,400 gold to 2,250 gold.
• Moved to new “Enchanted Buckler” item tree.

Warded Shield

• No longer provides HP5.
• Cost reduced from 1,610 gold to 1,450 gold.

Throwing Dagger

• Cost reduced from 1,450 gold to 1,300 gold.

Golden Bow

• Cost reduced from 2,480 gold to 2,330 gold.

General Gameplay

• Fixed a bug with Taunts that would cause camera pitch to stutter. Players can now freely pitch the camera while taunted, but cannot turn it.
• Fixed an issue where players in stealth could be permanently revealed. We think we got it this time… seriously.

All Game Modes

• Modified match lobby to have the highest MMR player on a team always in the top position. This allows for 1st pick and banning in Leagues.  All other members in match lobby are sorted in a random fashion.

Joust

• Fixed an issue where 1v1 Challenge Queues were using the 3v3 Joust ruleset. Note that this only affects Challenge Queues, not 1v1 League.
• Fixed an issue where 3v3 Co-Op Joust was mistakenly using the 1v1 ruleset, rather than the 3v3 ruleset. Note that this only affected Co-Op, and not Normal 3v3 queues.

For reference on the difference between the rule sets is that 1v1 Joust has:

• Reduced respawn time.
• No Deicides.
• If a player disconnects, the match will be automatically forfeited after 2 minutes.

Siege

• The Siege map has gone through an artistic overhaul.

Co-Op

• Conquest is now available in a preliminary form. Significant work is still being done on AI.

Lobby Trading

• When trading gods, the enter key will no longer accept trades. Hitting Enter will let you still chat while a trade is active on your screen.
•  You can no longer trade with a person that has declined your trade request.  (NOTE: Is not enforced in Custom Match.

God Balance Changes:

Apollo    

Across The Sky

• Fixed a bug that would cause Apollo to get stuck on the ground when activating his ult next to a Janus portal.

Artemis

General

• Fixed the arrow not appearing in her bow if you hold down left click to continuously basic attack.

Transgressors Fate

• Fixed the trap animation persisting if the root ends early.

Bacchus

Chug

• Mana cost reduced from 50/80/110/140/170 to 40/65/90/115/140.

Chaac

Thunder Strike

• Fixed a bug that caused the visual effect to continue if interrupted while casting.

Cupid

General

• Updated targeters on the Lil’ Devil skin

Fenrir

Seething Howl

• Physical Power Bonus increased from 10/20/30/40/50 to 10/25/40/55/70 per rank.

Ragnarok

• Damage increased from 150/225/300/375/450 to 200/275/350/420/500 per rank.

Isis

Circle of Protection

• The Fire Giant’s lava will now appropriately charge the Circle’s meter.

Scylla

Sic ‘Em

• Duration reduced from 1.25/1.5/1.75/2.0/2.25 to 1.15/1.3/1.45/1.6/1.75 seconds.

Crush

• This ability now has a minimum travel time of 0.5s when used close to Scylla. Previously, this was nearly instantaneous. The travel time at long range remains the same.

Hades

Devour Souls

• Blight detonated enemies now deal 50% of the damage to enemy gods, but still do full damage to other targets.

Hercules

Strength from Pain

• Updated ability icon.

Kumbhakarna

Mighty Yawn

• Mesmerize duration reduced from 1.5/2/2.5/3/3.5 to 1/1.5/2/2.5/3.

Mercury

Sonic Boom

• Fixed a bug that caused him to run endlessly if cast from the spawn platform in assault.

Vulcan

Magma Bomb

• Fixed missing impact sound fx and hit particles.

Xbalanque

Branching Bola

• Being CC’d while Branching Bola is active will now deactivate it, and force it to be recast.

Zeus

Detonate Charge

• Slow increased from 30% to 40%.