While the fate of Paragon is hanging in suspension, the MOBA’s main competitor on console — SMITE — seems to be simply building up steam. Following the SMITE World Championships and HRX 2018, developer Hi-Rez Studios is already detailing all the major changes for Season 5 of SMITE.
While Hi-Rez already released a video earlier last week detailing in general terms how the conquest map would be changing for the season. However, the patch notes for the new season show off the more expansive meta changes in the specific lanes, jungle, items, and god rebalancing.
The main underscoring point of the SMITE rebalance is to slow down the early-game — feedback Hi-Rez claims they’ve received throughout the game’s history. By lowering gold/experience earned from minions, widening the map, and rebalancing the rewards from minion camps, Hi-Rez hopes that the games will take longer and will feel less pre-determined by early game performance.
Another massive change is a shift away from the early-game starter items, where all of them have been removed entirely. Replacing those are a new category of items: Blessings. Unlike other items, Blessings will evolve and stack by performance instead of purchase. For instance, someone who grabs the “Assassin’s Blessing” will get bonus damage on Jungle Monsters. However, after killing a certain amount of Jungle Monsters it will upgrade to a second-tier.
Adding more emphasis to late-game content, there is now a Tier 2 Fire Giant that appears after the 25 minute point. Unlike the normal Fire Giant, the newest iteration grants more Magical and Physical Power, Health and Mana Regeneration, and extra damage towards both Towers and Phoenixes.
However, the Fire Giant is not the only Jungle boss to receive a giant change. According to the patch notes, the Portal Demon (a constant objective from the Smite World Championships) has been replaced by a Pyromancer. Where the Portal Demon added mobility to the map, letting the objective taker have easy access to the mid-point, killing the Pyromancer will give a buff to the team’s fountain. In essence, everyone from the objective-taker’s team exiting the fountain will gain added movement speed, Health, Physical Protection, Magical Protection, Team XP, and Team Gold.
Now, there are way too many patches to go into the nitty gritty of everything, so if you are interested in the game (and can understand the technical language) check out the full notes in the source below. Meanwhile, make sure to check out the new skins being added to the season — notably the Pale Raven Morrigan:
