All of the below is in direct response to Aggro’s comments about the role of the warrior during the backliner’s podcast. In it, Aggro basically stated that he wants to see from this patch if warriors can find success without being able to solo the enemy adc.
Let me preface this all with saying I was a little bit concerned about how my role was being affected by the patch BEFORE hearing Aggro’s design philosophy, but now I’m outright concerned that I might need to drop comp as a whole, switch roles, or drop the game entirely due to the below.
My biggest concern with solo right now is the skills of splitting teamfights, zoning, etc directly falls apart with Aggro’s design philosophy here. If warriors physically cannot threaten the hunters or mages, which has happened this patch unless you straight up build transcendence, you cannot zone or create space whatsoever because the backliners have zero need to respect you. If the backliners don’t need to respect warrior damage whatsoever, then why wouldn’t you just click sobek solo every single game? If you take away the damage aspect from warriors, then why on earth wouldn’t you just play a guardian or assassin, both of which either do more damage or have more cc, and often both in the case of assassins.
Everybody wants warriors out of the jungle, but thoroughly gutting the class like this and then saying “well do warriors really need to do anything at all besides be a second support” is probably the single most concerning thing I’ve ever heard about smite.
I’m in several ama leagues and was previously considering actually signing up for the SOC with my teammates since we’ve scrimmed against several SOC teams and won against them in tournaments. I was even enjoying this patch, even with it’s obvious faults. But while I could overlook the faults when I thought it was unintentional that they gutted warriors to this extent, I definitely cannot now that I know that it was the intentional design of this patch.
Edit: Want to make it abundantly clear that I realize Aggro’s opinions do not reflect those of the design team holistically, but Aggro is on the design team so I feel expecting his opinions to have an impact within the design team is more than fair.
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