Smite goes through frequent periods of change and shifts in the meta game, almost every patch Hi-Rez have something new to offer us as players and sometimes it is completely game breaking, or sometimes it does nothing. This patch is so far proving to be the former.

In this patch for Smite we see a rework for two of the most underpowered gods in the game to attempt to bring them back into the meta: Arachne the Weaver and Odin the Allfather. Another change was that Ao Kuang was removed from the game and his abilities were given to Kukulkan whose skins and model look gorgeous. It is a shame his voice pack is a twelve year old boy with a lisp.

The new reworks are great, they take elements from the old kits of both gods. First off, lets take a look at  Odin. For a very long time Odin felt more like a support/tank than a bruiser or damage dealer. His kit was based around a huge team fight ultimate where Odin summoned a ring of spears to envelope enemies and allies alike- nobody could escape unless they jumped out. Odin WAS the king in the ring and thankfully they have not take this away from him. Now however his ring is somewhat more powerful, anybody can shoot into it and Odin’s allies can leave at will while Odin and his enemies cannot. This is a huge and possibly game breaking change as they also took Odin’s crowd control immunity and steroids from him when he is inside the ring, now he is simply immune to being rooted to the floor or slowed which means his ultimate is now even more risky for him to cast. From there the changes continue. He retained 2 elements of his kit- his leap which deals a huge amount of damage still and his circular slow where he swings his spear around himself damaging and slowing enemies hit. From here we come to his second ability which used to be a huge attack speed stim for his entire team, giving them a whooping 55% extra attack speed at max level which made Odin a huge threat in a team fight… now he instead has a shield that once it’s timer expires explodes for an amount of damage depending on how much health the shield has. An added bit of complexity is found in using your first ability immediately after the shield, causing the shield to detonate immediately and deal an unbelievably high amount of damage. Finally there is his passive which used to grant him double the vision radius of other gods, meaning he could forego placing wards around his lane and use the vision to protect himself and anybody else in his lane…. now Odin gains a good physical power buff from killing somebody inside the ring. It feels like they wanted to remove everything apart from his ultimate that made him a team player and instead have turned him into a massive burst warrior which is not actually a bad thing, it just leaves our resident Novindus a bit salty because he loved playing Odin in the support role.

Digmbot’s Thoughs On Odin:

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been killed because and allied Odin trapped me in his spear wall and I couldn’t jump out, leaving me to be focused down by the enemy trapped with us because I was critically injured. The new changes to Odin are welcome, and in my opinion make him much more viable outside of team fights. The Raven Shield/Lunge combo feels a bit overpowered to start with, but can quickly be mitigated by items and alert players. Its still a threat, but it moves from devastatingly effective to simply powerful as the game progresses. Of more concern to me is the new look and feel of his ult. While I appreciate and welcome the ability for allies to simply walk out of the ring, Odin becomes much more vulnerable in his ring than he ever was before. Fortunately, the power buff he receives from his passive in the ring occurs if an enemy dies in the ring. This means that Odin himself doesn’t have to secure the kill. He simply needs to set up the situation where an enemy – or multiple enemies – are caught in the ring for the team to collectively burn down. That being said, during my play with him, I have had serious issues with dropping the ring before the timer on it runs down. This comes under the heading of “A BAD THING”, since Odin is stuck in the ring – unlike his allies. Once you find yourself trapped in that ring with a VERY pissed off Bastet who has a critical hit build, you’ll understand why this is a problem.

Next, we come to Arachne… what is there to say about her before the patch, frankly she was useless. Her ultimate had a short cool down but in reality all it did was pull people into you- which was great early game. In the late game however,  it killed her horribly. Her third ability only had a slow and her two was just a silence leaving gods unable to cast abilities, but as you were on their back this dragged you out of position and killed you more often than not. Finally her first ability, the only ability in her kit that even has a memory in the new rework, was her ability to place eggs on the ground and if someone stumbled into range of them they spawned two spiderlings which went to town on whoever triggered them, this has become a web wall where if someone walks through one of the two web walls you place they are slowed and arachne is given vision of them where ever she is on the map while the fight off the spiderlings. Again this ability feels fairly useless late game except for getting the spiderlings to attack objectives and soak up the initial damage but otherwise all it does is give a slow and vision (which is better than it’s old uses). Her first ability is now an unbelievable attack speed steroid that applies a poison which heals Arachne for a huge amount and can be comboed with her two which is another stim;  however  after a 3 successful basic attacks the victim is wrapped in webs unable to escape for a period of time while Arachne goes to work on them. With these stims Arachne has become a hugely potent threat in the early and mid game. Her passive makes this even more menacing with her dealing extra damage for every 5% of the targets health that is missing, making her very opportunistic in play style and very deadly. Finally we come to her ultimate which is something that has never been seen in Smite before where Arachne climbs up onto a great web above her head gaining immunity to anything but tick damage and she moves insanely fast for a whooping seven seconds! Just like Odin, Arachne needed a rework and to be completely honest she is not a top tier god, but is now perhaps too powerful.

Digmbot’s Thoughts On Arachne:

I’ll be upfront here. I don’t like Arachne, old or new. I do enjoy playing assassins and playing in the jungle, but Arachne is my absolute last pick in that role. That being said, this was a god that was sorely in need of a rework. Her old kit had left her with no place in the meta, and in many of the matches I played she was taken as a joke or to troll people. Her new rework is a vast improvement, but I’m worried Hi-Rez might have swung from one extreme to the other here. The chain effect on her stims makes her unbelievably powerful early game. She also has incredible chase potential, since her ultimate will not trigger towers to attack her while shes crawling on the roof of the screen. Of course, Freya can do the same with her ultimate as she flies. But Freya’s movement speed isn’t buffed nearly to the extent as Arachne’s. Couple this with the fact that you can also buy and use the Sprint active ability before you use her ult and Arachne is basically a roof dwelling, creepy spider version of The Flash. Still, this was a much needed rework. Her spiderlings were simply a nuisance once you got past level 8, and her pull could easily be nullified by an alert player with the right items. All in all, I’ll be interested to see where she slots into the meta with her new kit. But I won’t be playing her.

Last night’s news about a possible Microsoft buyout of the indie developer responsible for Minecraft, Mojang sparked quite a reaction last night. A lot of people do not seem to relish the thought.

Now Bloomsberg have reported that far from Microsoft approaching Mojang as was assumed, founder Notch approached Microsoft first. The report states that Notch “reached out to Microsoft a few months ago, based on a positive working relationship on Minecraft for Xbox,” and that details have been being hammered out ever since that time. If the deal did go through it would also see Notch leaving Mojang entirely after assisting with the transition.

The news comes as a bit of a shock given that Notch has a reputation for being big on indies but not as much on bigger companies, having once famously pulled out of a Minecraft/Oculus deal after the VR company was acquired by Facebook. Personally I am still a tiny bit sceptical, but then $2 billion is a lot of money and you can never really tell.

All we can do now is wait and see whether there’s any truth to the news flying about.

The teaser site put up a few days ago has finally revealed its secrets to the Internet. Piranha Games are working on a space MMO in a similar vein to that of EVE or Elite Dangerous, but with one large difference – it will depend largely on procedural and emergent mechanics. In simple terms, they plan to go light on the NPCs and see what happens when a game is mainly populated by only players.

It’s a third-person game, in which you are free to pilot your ship and trade, purchase, sell or pirate as much as you’d like. It’s hoped that the players will instinctively seek out roles for themselves in-game, and that the interactions between the groups that form will be the basis on which the game functions. Sounds very similar to EVE. Piranha hope to provide players with all the tools needed to construct their own space stations and ships and start their own faction wars, which sounds very exciting. The ship customisation looks interesting too. This was shown off in an announcement trailer which has since been made private.

To make the game and fund its development, Piranha are running a crowd funding drive which starts at $1 million. That’s enough to get the basic game made, while the functionality to have local space scraps only comes when $2 million is reached as a target. But then an MMO doesn’t come cheaply, the only concern is what is protecting the backers’ money as the funding is not being run through Indiegogo or Kickstarter but through Piranha’s own site.

Only time will tell whether Transverse will rise or sink out of sight forever.

If you’d like to help fund the game, you can do so here: [x]

Welcome, everyone to something new and exciting.

Starting TODAY, Sanitarium.FM is going to be committed to bringing you news, opinion and coverage of the best eSports has to offer. eSports is a massively growing section in gaming, and it offers us the chance to sit down and watch top tier players compete in some amazing competition. League of Legends, DOTA 2, SMITE, Starcraft II…these are the biggest games on the scene, and we’ll be working to cover them and do our part to grow awareness of eSports as well as share our love of competition and just plain awesome gameplay.

What You Can Expect:

• Tournament Coverage
• Patch Notes Breakdowns
• POSITIVE Coverage (We don’t like negativity. Unless it’s EA. Then we really don’t have anything else to report….)
• Embeds of streams so you can watch from the comfort of Sanitarium.FM
• A shiny new forum for you to talk it up about eSports. Its your community, make the most of it
• A few surprise guests

Whos Going To Be Involved:

Our two biggest eSports junkies are Digmbot and Novindus. Expect plenty of analysis and news from them. PredictedCyborg may pitch in from time to time, as well as Lonesamurai. Even Crimsonshade might get in on the act when he’s not busy beating the servers about the head to make them cooperate.  And…maybe some surprise guests.

You Keep Saying That About Guests:

Yes. Yes I do. Better keep a close watch on this section.

Thats the basic intro folks! Keep it locked here for more in the coming days!

In the midst of the Bukkit episode, it didn’t seem possible for another shockwave to hit the Minecraft community. But it has, and from a completely unexpected direction in some ways.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that according to “a person with knowledge of the matter” Microsoft have been in some serious discussion with the makers of the sandbox game, Mojang with the intent to acquire them for themselves.

The deal, said to be worth around $2 billion could be signed as early as this week. It comes as a bit of a surprise given what else has been happening recently though.

Minecraft is undoubtedly a very popular game and it’s easy to see why Microsoft would be interested. However, Mojang founder Notch has always been fairly wary of venture capital and big business and even once criticised Microsoft’s Windows 8 as being very bad for indie gaming.

All I can say is that the idea of a Microsoft-owned Minecraft makes me feel very… uneasy.