Tons of great new stuff coming for Smite fans soon, including a brand new god that completely shuts down a few other gods.
Today on the Smitegame Twitch channel, HiRezKelly and Drybear revealed some new UI/UX features, an updated store, a few new skins, itemization changes, god tweaks, and of course the new god, Ah Puch (pronounced Ah-Pwash). here are the complete patch notes, but for now let’s delve into some of the bigger things that are happening.
Ah Puch
Zombies! This god looks awesome and I can’t wait to play him. He’s a combo based area denial mage who looks perfect for countering gods like Hercules, Ra, or Sylvanus (all strong picks).
His passive ability gives him some pretty great sustain. Most of his abilities cause decaying corpses to appear in some fashion. Walking over one of these corpses lowers your cooldowns and gives you mana and health based on percentages. This will let him stay in lane much longer than other mages.
The abilities that cause corpses to appear are his first and third abilities. The first sends a corpse running straight ahead that explodes when it makes contact with anything. After that a corpse appears where the explosion happened. His third is a damage over time that also denies heals. Every time an enemy god afflicted by the DoT is healed, it adds a stack. When the DoT expires, the enemy is stunned based on how many stacks they have. This counters Hercules and Ra perfectly, who rely on sustained healing, not burst, for their incredible lane presence.
His second ability cause things to go boom, and also detonates any decaying corpses lying around. This allows him to do massive damage with his combo. You throw down the DoT so they can’t heal, ram an exploding corpse into them head on, and then make two of the exploded corpses detonate while they’re stunned from your third ability. Then if they’re still alive you can use your ultimate to unleash a stampede of ghouls. That’s right, his ult creates a river of ghost spectre things that fly forward and wreck people while slowing them.
Overall he looks incredibly fun and I can’t wait to try him out. I hope the numbers turn out ok, because he looks like a very solid solo laner.
Itemization
Finally, Devourer’s Gauntlets are getting a nerf. Kind of. The starting physical power has been reduced a bit, and the stacks now give you less power and lifesteal per stack. The total amount from the passive at full stacks remains the same though, as now it requires 75 stacks instead of 50 to be fully stacked. This makes hunters a little weaker early on, which is great. Heartseeker is also getting a buff, which makes hunters have to choose between which stacking item they want, unless they pick up both. I’m glad for the item diversity, although I still think Dev Gauntlets are the way to go for the sustain.
A new item called Soulstone is being added next patch. Soulstone is a magical starting item that gives mages MP5, so think of it like a Bluestone Pendant for mages, which hopefully means mages will be more viable in the solo lane compared to brawlers.
The hammers are getting changed. Heavy hammer had the slow passive reduced and base health reduced, while Frostbound had it’s health increased. This might slow down warriors in the solo lane and shut down mages from getting invaded early, which I hope is the case.
God Balance
Apollo, Kumbhakarna, Neith, Osiris, and Sun Wukong are getting decent buffs this patch. Apollo’s base power is being increased which will hopefully make him more viable in the laning phase. Kumbha now slows attack speed with mighty yawn if his targets awaken early, and Neith’s clearing ability has increased damage and increased scaling. The goal of Neith’s buff appears to try and make her more viable late game, as her greatest pitfall as a hunter is she just doesn’t have the high in-hand damage that hunters like Rama or Ullr have with their auto-attacks.
Kumbha’s mesmerize now slows attack speed, and Osiris got his base attack speed raised slightly so hopefully those two gods will be more viable in the support and solo roles respectively. Sun Wukong also might be a bit more viable in the solo lane thanks to a buff to the minion killing potential of his cudgel.
Skins
That’s right weeaboos, Smite has you covered. The new skin for Bastet is super kawaii as you can see. The cats her ultimate spawns leave rainbow trails as well. I expect the voice pack to be equal parts amazing and obnoxious, but at least it will never approach Cupid levels of KAWAII.
Serqet is also getting a T2 lore skin which looks great.
Nemesis’ Executioner skin looks incredible.
And how about that Kukulkan skin? It’s so demonic.
These are the Xbalanque skins you get for purchasing the new season ticket.
The Kuangbang is Back
Ao Kuang was completely and stupidly overpowered in season one, and with season two he’s taken a dive. He needed a buff badly, but we’ll see if Hi-Rez has the right idea with the direction they’re heading. His steroid now doesn’t break stealth, so he can activate it while invisible. That’s pretty great for Ao Kuang, not so good for anyone he’s ganking.
The execute threshold on his ult is now at a flat 30% instead of starting lower and ending higher which makes him much stronger early on. In addition, if he executes someone he heals for a percentage of his health after executing and flying away to safety. Kuang has a very low win rate in conquest, so he needs to be buffed, but I don’t think this is the way to do it. Let’s hope it works out for the best.
Achievements
With this new patch comes achievements. There are achievements ranging from playing a match as a god from all seven pantheons to killing an enemy with a guardian’s basic attack, so expect a wide and fun variety from Hi-Rez. Each achievement has its own individual design, and the art time has clearly been working overtime to make these look great.
I’m hoping these achievements won’t cause people to play the game too differently, as that would ruin it, but instead serve as icing on the cake. I’m also hoping these are retroactive.
Season Ticket 
Remember the season ticket you could buy during the SWC that got you the sweet goodies like that Ares SWC 2015 skin? This is like that, except you get two Xbalanque skins, one for EU, one for US. You also get an exclusive loading frame that allows your to earn fantasy points by winning games. You can unlock tiered rewards every thousand fantasy points you get. At 1,000 points you unlock this gorgeous Nemesis skin, and at 3,000 you unlock a badass Kukulkan skin. This is a pretty neat mechanic, and I’m excited to see what Hi-Rez does with it in the future.
User Experience
The store is getting a much needed revamp, and Curse Voice will have better integration. Now if you have Curse installed it will basically be integrated into the game itself, so you can invite people to your curse call straight from your friends list without having to be queued up.
