SMITE Version 9.5.7092.11

# 9.5 - Slipknot Bonus | May 31, 2022

## New God Skins

* **Glaive Tech Cernunnos**
Standard - Heavenly Light
* **Afrofuture Olorun**
Standard - Heavenly Light
* **Flourescent Friend Ganesha**
Exclusive - Sea Being Chest
* **Happy Little Painter Zhong Kui**
Exclusive - Prime Gaming

## New Voice Packs

* Glaive Tech Cernunnos
* Afrofuture Olorun
* Flourescent Friend Ganesha
* Happy Little Painter Zhong Kui

# 9.5 Bonus Balance

* An issue occurred where Masters and Grandmasters players were not properly reset, so we will be applying another Ranked Reset to only players in those tiers
* This will occur on the day that the Bonus Balance goes live
* All Masters/GM players will be set to Diamond 1 with 0 TP and 2750 MMR
* Win/Loss count for the split will also be reset
* These resets will not affect god leaderboard position or quest progress

### Bug Fixes

* UI

* Fixed an issue where players were redirected to the wrong queues when clicking the “Play Again” button in the end of match lobby (Fixed in Live 5/20/22)
* Fixed an issue with the Ranked leaderboards missing data and background elements

* Gods

* Hera

* Fixed an issue where she could knockback Slash Juggernauts with Royal Assault

* Bakasura

* Fixed an issue where he could eat the weaker Buff Camp holders in Conquest without doing any damage to them at the beginning of matches

## Game Modes

*This is the first balance update after the 9.5 “Time to Kill” changes! A lot has changed in the game and things feel very different. There are of course a few specific balance outliers we plan to adjust immediately, but our general philosophy is to take it slow on balance and give people time to experiment, learn, and enjoy this new meta.*

* Some stats about 9.5:

* Conquest matches that end before 15 minutes have been decreased from around 14% of all games to around 10% of all games – a nearly 30% reduction. This shows that the worst case snowball matches have significantly decreased.
* Conquest matches average length has increased on average by about 3 minutes, from 26m to 29m, about a 15% increase. This shows that the matches are longer, but not painfully long.
* Kills per Conquest game have decreased, but not by very much. The average kills per match (both teams added together) was around 52 total kills, and that has decreased to about 49 kills – only a 6% drop. This shows that most matches still involve a lot of action.
* When factoring the match length increase and kills total – we see a decrease of about 2 kills per minute to 1.7 kills per minute  – a 15% decrease. This further supports that the action still very much exists in SMITE games.
* All of these numbers look great from our side, and we did see noticeable increases in player counts in 9.5 over 9.4 (but this surely was affected by SMITE Night and the Slipknot Event as well)
* Overall we are very happy with how 9.5 went and at the moment we do not plan to do any partial reverting of the core TTK base stats, we will be looking to solve and pacing or outlier issues through map balance, or individual god and item balance.
* The two key balance outliers we quickly identified were: Hunters gained too much strength, and Warriors lost too much strength. We plan to adjust both of those in this update, but then slow down on balance a little and watch the meta develop naturally.
* A new season usually takes people weeks or months to learn and solve. The 9.5 changes are bigger than a new season, and bigger than ever, so we expect people to take even longer to find optimal strategies.

### Conquest

*Conquest underwent some equally heavy changes as the gods in this update. Overall the pacing changes have done a good job of preventing games from feeling over before 10 minutes, but there are a few things we want to adjust. We found that red buff was just too punishing for most Mages to clear, and that a similar effect was happening from gold furies against whole teams. We are bringing down the damage on both of those to make them safer objectives to take.*

*We are also doing some adjustments to towers, the 30% penetration felt like a bit too much, especially in the late game when trying to siege bases. We are decreasing that penetration and base damage of Tier 2 and Phoenixes, while buffing the base damage of the Tier 1 towers only to make sure that early game tower diving is still risky.*

* Manticore Camp (red buff)

* Decreased Base Magical Power from 24 to 18
* Decreased Scaling Magical Power from 6 per 3 minutes to 4 per 3 minutes
* Increased Magical Power provided by Red Buff from 10 to 15

* Gold Fury

* Decreased Base Magical Power from 60 to 40
* Decreased Scaling Magical Power from 4 per minute to 2 per minute

* Oni Fury

* Decreased Base Magical Power from 70 to 40
* Decreased Scaling Magical Power from 4 per minute to 2 per minute

* Primal Fury

* Decreased Base Magical Power from 70 to 40
* Decreased Scaling Magical Power from 4 per minute to 2 per minute

* Towers

* Tier 1

* Increase Gold Reward from 75 per person to 125 per person
* Decreased Penetration from 30% to 20%
* Increased base power from 215 to 230

* Tier 2

* Decreased Penetration from 30% to 20%
* Decreased base power from 290 to 270

* Phoenix

* Decreased Penetration from 30% to 20%
* Decreased Base Power from 320 to 290

*We are also making the same penetration nerf on all non-conquest game modes to bring the power of tower camping back down a bit. It is very clearly more dangerous than previous updates, but this felt like taking it just a little too far and could cause matches to feel like a stalemate in the late game.*

### Assault/Slash/Joust/Duel

* Decreased Penetration from 30% to 20% on all towers

## Item Balance

*Warrior mains comprised most of the negative feedback for the 9.5 update, and we saw their discomfort reflected in the data as well. Warriors clearly dropped in win%, and Hunters clearly rose. These 2 classes tend to offset each other, so every Warrior buff is a Hunter nerf and vis versa, so we tried to focus on only the most specific things to adjust for each class to bring them back closer to the average balance point, which Guardians, Assassins, and Mages are still sitting within.*

*For Warriors, we looked to buff their early to mid game damage, to both help them clear and to better pressure their opponents in pvp. The Gladiator’s shield buff will help that damage scale through the late game. We also are buffing their items that can counter Hunters (and basic attack Assassin’s who are quickly rising) to give them extra options to build more effectively against comps with multiple gods reliant on basic attacking.*

###   Gladiator's Shield

* Passive bonus damage now applies to gods at all HP percentages, not just under 60%
* Increase bonus damage scaled from Protections from 25% to 35%

###   Breastplate of Valor

* Increased Physical Protections from 55 to 65

###   Breastplate of Determination

* Increased Physical Protections from 55 to 65

###   Breastplate of Vigilance

* Increased Physical Protections from 55 to 65

###   Spectral Armor

* Increased Damage mitigation on Critical Strikes from 30% to 40%

###  Hide of the Nemean Lion

* Increased Damage mitigation on a Blocked attack from 50% to 65%

*For Hunters, we are nerfing the strongest items in 3 specific aspects: Gold, Lifesteal, and Crit. Gilded Arrow nerfs their gold gain. On a slow map they can use this item to gain a huge advantage, and it needs to come down to keep their power spikes closer to the other classes. Devourer’s Gauntlets provides a huge amount of survivability with the added HP and Protections, so we are bringing down the lifesteal amount to make Hunters more gankable. Finally, we have seen Crit builds become the number one option, partially fueled by the extra gold from their starter item. We wanted to make sure we nerfed this build in its damage and utility.*

###   Gilded Arrow

* Decreased gold gain from 7 to 3 per trigger

###   Devourer's Gauntlet

* Decreased Lifesteal from 15% to 10%
* Decreased Lifesteal per stack from 0.3% to 0.2% (decreased from 15% to 10% at max stacks) (deceased total item lifesteal from 30% to 20%)

###   Deathbringer

* Decreased Critical Damage Increase from 30% to 25%

###   Malicious Deathbringer

* Decreased Critical Damage Increase from 30% to 25%

###   Envenomed Deathbringer

* Decreased Critical Damage Increase from 30% to 25%
* Decreased the damage output debuff from 15% to 10%

## God Balance

*We only have one bonus nerf today, but there will very likely be more nerfs in the main update for 9.6. Cliodhna was the top performer in the early days of 9.5 and competitive SMITE, so we drew up some base damage nerfs for her in multiple places.*

###  Cliodhna

* **Banshee's Wail**

* Decreased Base Damage on first two hits from 35/50/65/80/95 to 30/45/60/75/90
* Decreased Base Damage on final hit from 70/110/150/190/230 to 60/100/140/180/220

* (Decreases Total Damage from 140/210/280/350/420 to 120/190/260/330/400)

* **Flickering Visions**

* Decreased Base Damage from 90/145/200/255/310 to 70/125/180/235/290

## New Skin Voice Actors

* Glaive Tech Cernunnos: Erik Braa
* Afrofuture Olorun: Don Hooper
* Fluorescent Friend Ganesha: David Shatraw
* Happy Little Painter Zhong Kui: Brook Chalmers

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