[BLOG] The Bark and the Bite Patch: God Balance Changes

Post Reply
Novindus
Posts: 5
Joined: 20 Mar 2014, 16:57
Location: Cheltenham, United Kingdom

[BLOG] The Bark and the Bite Patch: God Balance Changes

Post by Novindus »

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

Image

The Bark and the Bite patch brought a lot of rebalancing to the table for two gods. A core god to the eSports meta was hit with the shiniest of nerf bats and some more obscure or unused gods were given minor buffs and some just generally weird things were patched out of the game too (apparently Artemis’ traps were counted as wards by the system, who knew?). All in all there were not a huge amount of changes to gods in this patch, most if it was fixing animation bugs and little UI treats like a passive meter for Sobek (about time) but there was one very, very notable change that initial caused a collective sigh of relief: the bat had come for Mercury at last…

 
  • Image Mercury
  • Made You Look
  • Radius increase per rank reduced from 7.5/10/12.5/15/17.5 to 7.5/9/10.5/12/13.5.
  • Range reduced from 55 to 48.
 

Now for those of you who follow Smite’s meta this seemed like it would cause a shift in the way Mercury was being played, maybe even push him OUT of the meta. But you would in fact be far from correct, this nerf (if you want to call it that) has not changed how potent Mercury is in the ADC, Solo and Jungle roles. Frankly this change has done absolutely nothing to affect him in the long term as he is still a hugely potent hyper carry entering the mid to late game. Granted this change has made him harder to take into a laning role but unfortunately it has barely reduced his effectiveness, he can still out box almost anybody in the game and he still brings a phenomenal amount of damage to the table. Nothing short of a huge buff to a certain controversial celestial plate helm will really balance Mercury properly.

 

Another less meaningless change in the long run was to a god who was not being played at all, Cabrakan. For his short life span in the game Cabrakan was plagued by annoying bugs and issues that made his very aggressive, short range and frankly warrior-esque kit feel underwhelming. As a result,  he was not being used. Of course Hi-Rez spotted this and decided it was time to rub him up with the buffing cloth;

 
  • Image Cabrakan
  • Seismic Crush
  • Cabrakan now increases his attack speed by 70% for his next basic attack during this ability.
  • Refraction Shield
  • Increased stun duration from 1 to 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5s.
  • Reduced recovery time from 0.8s to 0.2s.
  • Tectonic Shift
  • Reduced recovery time from 0.5s to 0.2s.
 

In combination with each other these changes have done a LOT to make him playable. Divios of Cognitive Red has taken it upon himself to educate his peers in the strength of Cabrakan solo but it does not feel like people wish to play him in top tier tournament play which is a shame but it is a step in the right direction.

 

What do you think of these changes? What do you think could be done to Mercury to make him balanced if anything?
Post Reply