[2022] Additional 9.3 Balance and Dev Commentary

Hello everyone, TitanAjax here, SMITE's Design Director.

The start of this Season has been... interesting. There have been a lot of concerns and discussions so I wanted to drop by to explain our reasoning on some decisions as well as communicate some action plans.

Some quick notes:

• Everything in Bold is an official patch note being added to 9.3, and will launch with the main patch
• Nothing in this writeup will be in Public PTS, and will be added to official patch notes on the website at a later date once we finish PTS testing.

Damage in SMITE

First off, let's talk about how the community is frequently commenting on how there is too much damage in SMITE. We agree with players on this and are working to address it, but we plan to execute things in a different way. We think 9.3 targets this effectively, but we are prepared to do more in the future to continue the process.

The common community suggestion is to "bring down god ability base damage across all gods" which is possible, but global sweeping changes tend to have more side effects than expected (see boots removal) as well as often hurting certain gods or styles who might not need the nerfs (see brawling mechanic).

Now both boots removal and the addition of brawling were exciting changes to SMITE that helped solve key problems, but both required a huge amount of follow up work to balance the resulting shifts. We still have big upcoming plans for brawling and healing (spoiler alert). And we think a global base damage nerf would be an even more intense and unpredictable situation.

Instead we are approaching this in a specific step by step process

• Identify the key sources of too much damage
• Nerf their itemization, which essentially applies to most gods (nearly global)
• Apply additional nerfs to only the highest performing gods within those categories

What we determined for step 1 was

• Mages - saw the biggest 9.1 increases in damage
• Warriors - saw a later 9.2 increase in damage, likely to the prevalence of Berserker's Shield
• Guardians - saw some damage increase, but only slightly
• Hunters - saw nearly no damage increase in Conquest, but are doing slightly more in other modes
• Assassins - saw generally small damage decreases in all modes and skill levels

Some of these weren't specifically surprising. Mages very much struggled last season, so we implemented some heavy flat pen buffs. Hunters had 25% damage removed from Critical Strikes. These buffs had a larger impact than expected and are being partially reverted in 9.3

We worked hard last year to get Warriors back into the Solo Lane, and to keep the lane aggressive. We feel like we succeeded there, but we also noticed that basic attack focused Warriors were generally the lowest performers, so we aimed to bring them up to the point of the rest of the class. This is what led to the Berserker’s Shield buff in 9.1

• Mages - The flat pen nerfs in 9.2 bonus (in between 9.2 and 9.3) should decrease damage output across virtually all mages (and some guardians in more casual situations)
• Warriors - The Berserker Shield rework should decrease damage output across most of the top meta warriors right now. And we plan to nerf more of their items as needed.
• Guardians - As their damage was only a small boost, possibly driven just by meta shifts, we had decided to not address this in 9.3.
• Hunters - Essentially our plan for Hunters (and Assassins) is to help them by nerfing everyone else and by making changes to conquest to decrease the snowball effect, while still nerfing the damage of top performers. Hunters also need to retain their damage to keep tanks in check.
• Assassins - Assassins are the burst damage class. If they cannot burst down enemies then they don't really have much going for them. Assassin burst is generally close range, and high risk. We are open to nerfing them, but it will likely be the last one we visit given their class goals and their current performance.

We are also committed to taking more action to further these goals, including a set of PTS changes for 9.3. The following are all being added to the main patch of 9.3

- Runeforged Hammer Nerf - Decreased Physical Power 45 to 35

Runeforged Hammer is the main power item that Warriors are getting if they don't want Berserker's Shield. Some even get both. Decreasing the power here along with the shield rework will nearly assure that every single Warrior loses some damage

- Hide of the Nemean Lion Nerf - Decreased Physical Protections from 90 to 70

Now this one might look like it doesn't fit the rest of the message here, but this item is clearly overperforming and it's part of the reasons that Warriors are doing so well. Warrior damage goes up when they can't be checked by Hunters. The SPL players have specifically helped us pinpoint that this item is a problem and we want to take action as soon as possible. Consider this one more of a buff to Hunters or Assassins rather than a tank nerf.

- Berserker's Shield - Will remain only purchasable on melee gods

We wanted to remove any specific one-off exception rules in SMITE, but its clear from community concern that the risk is not worth it here. No one wants tanky hunters, especially not the design team, so this item will remain melee only. A quick side note on class locked items: we generally don't want to design these types of items because they would punish flex roles a lot (more on that later) and they would most likely become must-buys, which would hurt item diversity. That is the general philosophy on why we don't restrict more items, but it's clear that no one benefits from Berserker's Shield on Hunters.

- Void Stone - Decreased Passive Magical Protection Reduction from 15% to 10%

Guardians were originally exempt from the update, but with more discussion of "tank damage" we have decided to add this nerf. Void Stone was recently adjusted in 9.1 that was potentially an overbuff with both base stats and passive being increased together. We know its not an especially popular Guardian item at the time, but it's a safe way to temper the damage for the whole class. We will be strongly considering base damage nerfs to multiple Guardians in future updates.

Hunter's and Assassins will dodge class-wide nerfs for now, although top performers will be nerfed with a specific focus on damage output whenever possible.

We will closely monitor 9.3 on this topic and potentially apply more damage nerfs across many gods, items, and classes in 9.4.

God Balance

God balance can certainly contribute to the above concerns as well. Items are a good way to nerf or buff an entire class, role or archetype but we certainly plan to supplement that with god balance, specifically nerfs to top performers. In the recent years we have put more and more focus on nerfing top performers swiftly and intensely, usually in the bonus balance updates that ship even sooner after the update show.

We have more data coming in every day, which has caused us to introduce more nerfs to Shiva:

Shiva Nerf

- Emblazoned Sweep

Decreased Knockup+Pull height from 3.75 to 2.5 units

Decreased Fire damage scaling from 10% to 5% per tick

- Damaru’s Tempo

Decreased Knockup height from 300 to 225

Shiva continues to climb in performance so we are decreasing his damage, but more importantly we are decreasing the total duration of his crowd controls. Shortening the pull duration brings you to Shiva more quickly, which shortens the time that you are unable to act. The lower Knockup on his second ability has the same effect. We are open to applying similar concepts to more gods across SMITE in future updates

Now let's talk about Serqet and Fenrir.

We saw the negativity regarding these changes, and we would like to clarify a few things.

• We are totally happy with flex roles
• We have sufficient data to show that Serqet and Fenrir were not simply flex supports, they were the most successful and most meta supports in the entire game, outperforming every single Guardian at the highest level
• We know this is not the same case at casual levels, where these gods tend to be less popular and lower performing, especially Serqet
• We specifically applied the rebalance to Serqet to attempt to address the casual and pro scenarios at the same time
• If we simply continue nerfing Serqet's ability to play SPL level support, we would expect her to just keep getting weaker across all roles for everyone else until she is nearly unplayable.
• So instead, we applied a powerful shift that was intended to make her a weaker support, while also including some significant scaling buffs to get some people excited about playing her in jungle
• We also saw Serqet compared to many other gods, like Erlang Shen. We have seen multiple shifts in the past due to items or gods where we have had to push someone back to their intended designed role. We don't do this because of design goals, it's usually necessitated out of community or SPL feedback. People disliked tanky Mage and Jungler metas. Erlang is a very similar case as Serqet where he is relatively unpopular and low performing in most modes and skill levels, but in SPL he tends to outperform most Assassins when played in the jungle. We want to announce now that we do have plans to adjust him next update to push him back toward being a better support or solo, and a weaker jungler. Not because we dislike his flex role, but because he has been outperforming Assassins in the jungle for too long at higher skill levels.

Now it's clear that this change has been quite polarizing, with most pros being happy with the changes but most players considering this an overnerf for Serqet. We think people are missing a few things in their calculations though:

• Serqet being built full Assassin will either have Critical Strike, or have a significant amount of Penetration or bonus damage items like Crusher or Heartseeker. None of the calculations or discussions we have seen have taken this into account. This will bring her "break even damage" down to a much lower number
• The passive is by far the biggest buff specifically against killing squishy targets. One of the calculation posts did cover this and the numbers were much closer to breaking even at lower power thresholds.
• We would also just like to restate that Serqet still has a huge amount of utility as a support. She has 2 strong CC effects, she has %HP damage and a %prot reduction debuff, as well as powerful mobility. Even with these nerfs we do still expect some SPL level support play, just hopefully less than being the actual #1 support in the league.

That said, we understand player concern about her total damage and how much power it takes to break even. We are adding 2 small buffs to the rebalance to smooth out the overall effect.

Serqet Buff (included with the overall shift)

- Cobra’s Kiss

Increased Physical Power Scaling from 70% per shot to 75% (140% total to 150% total)

- Deathbane

Decreased Base Damage from 50/70/90/110/130 to 50/68/86/104/122 per hit

(shown as 9.2 live vs updated 9.3 proposal - a nerf but a smaller nerf than originally shown)

*We are buffing one ability's scaling even further to bolster the Assassin effect and bring down the amount of power needed to break even and we are buffing back one ability's base damage to shrink the amount of effectiveness she is losing on Support. We still believe this overall shift is required for the long term health of the role and the goddess, but this should diminish the effect."

Fenrir is receiving a similar change in 9.3 PTS to make sure his nerf is not too intense that it stifles flex roles.

Fenrir Buff

- Brutalize

Increased the Protections Fenrir gains while channeling on a target from 5 + 1 per level to 5 + 1.5 per level (Increases total from 6 to 25 to 6 to 35 depending on level)

Fenrir's main complaint when played in the jungle is that he is unable to use the Brutalize ability without significant risk to himself. We added the protections while channeling a while back and it was met with much positivity. We are increasing the effect he gets from that, which will help his survivability slightly regardless of what role he is played in.

Another god to discuss is He Bo. We have seen the power this god can bring in previous seasons, but since his most recent nerfs and due to other meta shifts he has been clearly at the bottom of the pick rates and win% charts for nearly the entirety of Season 8 and so far not much changed for him in Season 9.

We chose to go with this more interesting buff for him for a few reasons - because of this data described above - because we have seen a lot of excitement come from giving gods new features, or removing restrictions on them - We believe gods can feel better to play without introducing power creep, but the important thing is to nerf them accordingly. - Zeus and Bastet were considered bottom tier gods, with constant outcry for buffs or reworks. Their new effects gave them a ton of life and brought new gods into the meta that haven't been there for years. But they were also too powerful and could have been nerfed sooner. Both are being nerfed in this update to make up for those new features, but we don't want to make the same mistake with He Bo

He Bo Nerf

- Water Spout

Decreased Magical Power Scaling from 75% to 65%

With this change we Nerf He Bo's top end damage on the same ability at the same time that he gets a significant improvement to how he casts it. This should still be clearly a buff to the god overall, but we don't want to risk overnerfing him before even people get to try the new effect. We will certainly follow up with more nerfs depending on the statistical impact and feedback once the change goes live.

Conquest Balance

There has also been a lot of discussion about the snowball effect in Conquest. 9.2 has helped that significantly. With XP and Gold pacing going down, average match length going up, and surrender rate coming back down from their 9.1 levels. Things are looking closer to S8 in most of those metrics.

We are introducing one more change to 9.3 to help mitigate the snowball effect even more, especially in Duo Lane.

Alpha Harpy

- Decreased base XP Reward from 38 to 32

- Decreased base Gold Reward from 24 to 22

Naga

- Decreased base XP Reward from 75 to 49

- Decreased base Gold Reward from 50 to 33

Conclusion

Thank you to everyone out there who shared their feedback. We understand that our community is passionate, driven, and vocal - we wouldn't have it any other way.

We are committed to making any and all changes necessary to continuously improve SMITE. If that means damage nerfs, we will find a way to execute that along our historical design goals and philosophies. We will also be looking to use CC Durations as a way to nerf future gods more often, especially non-Guardians.

How do these changes make you feel?

Who else would you like to see rebalanced like Serqet?

Let us know in the comments. Thanks!

(edit: fixed wording on the shiva change, fixed a typo - will likely edit another typo or two im sure)

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