SMITE Version 1.0.2326

## New God: Sylvanus - Keeper of the Wild | October 1, 2014

###  Nature's Protection (Passive)

Enemies that successfully land a basic attack on Sylvanus have a 25% chance to be rooted for 1s. This may only happen once every 12s.
###  Verdant Growth

Sylvanus throws a seed to a target location. If it hits an enemy they will take 80/100/120/140/160 + 35% of your magical power as damage and become rooted for 2s. If the seed lands on the ground, after 10s it will grow into a flower providing 6/10/14/18/20 MP5 to nearby allies. The pod can be destroyed by basic attacks, exploding and releasing poisonous spores that reduce protections of nearby enemies by 5/10/15/20/25 for 5s.
* Cost: 60/65/70/75/80 mana.
* Cooldown: 12 seconds.

###  Wisps

Sylvanus releases wisps that seek out nearby allies and enemies. Allies are healed 25/35/45/55/65 +15% of your magical power every 1s for 5s and have their protections increased by 5/10/15/20/25 for 5s while enemies take 10,15,20,25,30 +10% of your magical power every 1s for 5s as damage over time.
* Cost: 60/65/70/75/80 mana.
* Cooldown: 18/17/16/15/14 seconds.

###  Nature's Grasp

Sylvanus's treant launches his rooty hand out in front of him. The hand stops at the first enemy god hit, stunning them for 1s and pulling them back towards Sylvanus.
* Cost: 70/75/80/85/90 mana.
* Cooldown: 30/27/24/21/18 seconds.

###  Wrath of Terra

Sylvanus's treant slams his large trunks into the ground causing large thorny roots to break out of the ground around him. Enemies hit are knocked up and take 60/70/80/90/100 +25% of your magical power every 1s for 5s as damage.
* Cost: 100 mana.
* Cooldown: 90 seconds.

## New Voice Packs

* Sylvanus
* Pajama Party Kumbhakarna
* Infinity Wave He Bo
* Heavy Metal Thor

## Updated Voice Packs

The following gods have had their voice packs updated to fix missing VGS lines and add new event dialogue: Agni, Ah Muzen Cab, Anhur, Anubis, Ares, Bacchus, Chronos, Cupid, Guan Yu, Hades, He Bo, Hel, Loki, Vamana, Vulcan, Xbalanque.

## New Player Icons

Flags added for: Algeria, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Estonia, Gay Pride, Greenland, Iceland, India, Jamaica, Latvia, Luxembourg, Qatar, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Vatican, Venezuela.

## New Emotes

* Aphrodite Clap
* Mercury Clap
* Hades Wave
* Hun Batz Furious
* Isis Dance
* Ne Zha Dance
* Hades Dance

## Coming Soon: New Matchmaking

During the next several weeks, we will be testing an entirely new Matchmaking system. THIS SYSTEM WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE ON PATCH DAY. The basic groundwork was added this patch and will be rolled out over the next several weeks. This is a big system wide change, and we will be working through any issues. Please bear with us a we run trials on it; things may seem "worse" before they get better.

Once fully implemented (still a few patches out), the major new features of the Matchmaking system will include:

* Non-Timed Queues

* Timed Queues created a number of issues with matchmaking, as each player was guaranteed a match even if there was not a good one for them. With non-timed queues, easy to match players will get matches very quickly and unusual players or difficult teams will wait a bit longer, until a better match can be made for them.
* Players in queue longer have priority. Difficult to match players will gradually widen their search parameters, so that no one waits too long. This is something that will have to be adjusted as we test the system.
* Please note that this changes the flow of entering a match. Players can no longer cancel or ignore the match invite once it is sent, as doing so is considered desertion. There is a new pop-up to indicate this. In the event this occurs, players who do not desert but are placed back into the queue get priority for a new match.

* Team Weighting

* Teams are now weighted based advantages they might have from coordination.
* The new Matchmaker looks back on millions of examples of matches to better weight various combinations of MMR for teams.

* Player Similarity

* The Matchmaker now takes into account player similarity in addition to MMR, trying to match players with similar Smite experience.
* Our original system did some hard blocks around player levels (especially lower levels), but this new system looks beyond that at how much a player has played in each game type.

* On-going Optimization

* The matchmaker collects a wide variety of metrics that it can then use to automatically adjust itself over time in order to make improved matches and to optimize waittime.

## League Qualifying

We've added Qualifying matches for new players joining Smite League play.

* All new players are started in Qualifying, and must complete 10 matches to be placed into a Division and Tier.
* All existing League players with less than 10 matches, and in Bronze 5, will be placed into Qualifying.
* Placement out of qualifying happens on completing the 10th match, regardless of win or loss.
* Under our new matchmaking system qualifying players are favored to be matched together, however this will not always be the case. (This capability will improve over the next several patches, so thanks for your patience).
* The qualifying system does not try to pinpoint the exact placement of players, but rather to move them into an appropriate starting position for climbing divisions.

Our goal with this change is to create a better experience for players joining league, by setting a reliable promotion point, and removing the "Bronze 5" stigma of our current system. It's important to note that they way our League system works, very few players are actually playing at a Bronze skill level. The average skill point is between Silver and Gold Tiers.

## Misc

* Bundle Improvements:

* For your convenience you are now able to click to purchase skins or voice packs for gods you do not own, but doing so shows a purchase option to buy both at once.
* You are able to view bundles even if you don't own the god for an item in the bundle.
* You are now able to buy bundles that you already own parts of. If you buy a bundle that you own parts of the price is discounted by the price of each item in the bundle that you own, capped at a minimum bundle price.

* Fixed a bug that caused the character builder to crash for some players on specific gods.
* Ability to set a unique region has been added to Custom Matches.
* Improved Wards so they now show their deaths, even if timed out.
* Improved the visual presentation of wards in the wards screen.
* Fixed incorrect lighting being used in conquest spectator.
* Removed emote text from Treasure Chest description list, as emotes are no longer in the chest.
* Added Arrow Key Support for HUD editor, to allow for more accurate placement of elements. Sweet!
* Added shift support for HUD Editor.
* Fixed a crash condition related to selecting god filters.
* Fixed an issue that caused stacking items to make the stat bars on the scoreboard fill further than they should.
* Fixed an issue that could cause demo files to become corrupted.
* Fixed an issue with replays not populating data on first load.
* When using “Hi!” [VVGH] your god will automatically use the Wave emote, if you have it unlocked.
* When using “You Rock!” [VER] your god will automatically use the Clap emote, if you have it unlocked.
* Fixed an issue that could cause players to have no abilities when initially getting into a match. Ouch!
* Fixed an issue which caused the gold fury to become immune to damage after interacting with player made collision.
* Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish Voiceover work have been removed from the North American and European versions of the game in order to reduce the download size of the game.
* The Brazilian server will continue to have voiceovers for Portuguese and English. The Hispanic American servers will continue to have voiceovers for Latin American Spanish and English.
* Many Latin American Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese voicepacks have been updated in this patch.
* Your new god Rotation is Aphrodite, Geb, Anhur, Hercules, and Fenrir!
* We have made several additions to server logic, allowing us to put all games into a "safe mode" during network instability. Safe mode will have loss prevention features for matches and ranked play.
* Fixed an issue in the basic tutorial related to item acquisition.
* Numerous updates to the Smite landing page.
* Fixed an issue where team names over 64 chars would crash the game.
* Fixed the text overlapping on queue messages.
* Updated the WC 2015 loading card frame and icons for clarity.
* Made improvements to server instance stability.
* Fixed a visibility issue related to the Wild Juggernaut in siege.
* Fixed an error with stacking items on the scoreboard when in practice games.
* Spectator has had a number of improvements and upgrades.

* Updated top bar with more prominent kill numbers.
* Streamlined bottom panels with more concise information. There are now clickable tabs and toggle buttons for several UI elements.
* Selected Player panel now shows player name, god portrait with respawn feature, ability and item status, as well as stats, health, mana and gold.
* Game Stats panel has been improved with several statistical categories that can be view for easy comparison.
* Items with cooldowns now have appropriate timers in the new spectator player panel.
* Gold Fury and Fire Giant panels now show portrait with respawn timers, health bar with HOG indication, and counts for team kills.
* Improved Team Panels showing each teams player names, god, actives, buffs and ult indicators.
* New default layout to make our production team happy.
* HUD editor to let users customize the layout, scale and visibility of UI elements.
* Now justify the spectator team names to the outside.

## General Gameplay

* Fixed an issue with attack speed debuff items and abilities affecting objectives like the Fire Giant and Gold Fury.
* Basic attack speed can now never be reduced to less than 0.4 through Attack Speed Debuffs.
* Fixed an issue that caused players to continue dashing after they respawned if they had died mid dash.
* Pause Changes

* F10 is the new hotkey to pause the game in custom matches.
* The game must now be paused for 5 seconds before unpause, to prevent spam issues.
* Added checks for team “in combat” status. Any team member channeling an ability, dealing damage, or receiving damage is considered “in combat” and as such a pause cannot be performed.

* “Training” AI: Co-Op and Practice

* New AI is being introduced to create a better experience for new players in Co-Op Arena, Joust, and Conquest matches.
* This AI is designed for players who are fresh out of the tutorials and as such is extremely simple.
* This AI is considered our “Training” difficulty level.
* New difficulty levels for AI will be added in future releases.

## Items

###  New Item: Short Bow

* +15% Attack Speed. Cost: 600
* This item starts a new Tier 1 Tree.

###  New Item: Charged Bow

* +25% Attack Speed. Passive: Every basic attack has a 25% chance to trigger chain lighting, damaging the target and up to 4 nearby enemies for 20 physical damage. This cannot trigger more than once every 1s. Cost: 1350

####  Odysseus' Bow

* This item has been moved to the Short Bow tree, building off of Charged Bow, which has a lesser version of the Odysseus passive.

####  New Item: Hunter's Bow

* +25% Attack Speed. Cost: 1000.
* This is a new Tier 2 item in the Short Bow tree.

####  New Item: Ichaival

* +30% Attack Speed. Passive: Every successful basic attack increases your Physical Power by 10, and reduces your target's Physical Power by 10 for 3s. Max 3 Stacks. Cost: 1650.
* This is a new Tier 3 item in the Short Bow tree, building off of Hunter's Bow.

#### Updated Item Icons

* Iron mail, Steel mail, Midgardian Mail, Hide of the Nemean Lion, Mystical Mail, Sovereignty.

## Gods - Balance/Updates/Fixes

###  Arachne

* General

* Adjusted web FX for Night Crawler ability on Black Widow skin.
* Fixed her basic attack stats to show her full damage instead of ½.

###  Cabrakan

* Seismic Crush

* Cabrakan now increases his attack speed by 70% for his next basic attack during this ability.

* Refraction Shield

* Increased stun duration from 1 to 1.1/1.2/1.3/1.4/1.5s.
* Reduced recovery time from 0.8s to 0.2s.

* Tectonic Shift

* Reduced recovery time from 0.5s to 0.2s.

###  Fenrir

* General

* New ability icons confirmed!

###  Freya

* General

* Fixed weapon trails overlapping if her attack speed was too high.
* Fixed an issue with her body persisting after death.

###  Guan Yu

* General

* Added to the list of healers for purposes of Assault selection.

###  Isis

* General

* Fixed Scarlet Coven skin t-posing in the lobby.

###  Kali

* General

* Fixed her basic attack animations cutting off when at high attack speed.

* Marked for Death

* Kali's Mark now has an indicator next to their health bar that only Kali can see. This is for Kali to more quickly identify her target.
* Kali's Mark is now revealed to her teammates when the mark is under 25% health. This appears as a unique special FX.

###  Kukulkan

* General

* Corrected several typos in his lore.

* Whirlwind

* Reduced the duration of damage, once you leave the Whirlwind, from 3s to 2s.

###  Mercury

* Made You Look

* Radius increase per rank reduced from 7.5/10/12.5/15/17.5 to 7.5/9/10.5/12/13.5.
* Range reduced from 55 to 48.

###  Odin

* Lunge

* Fixed an issue that would cause the shield to not explode if he landed in a cripple.
* Fixed an issue that would cause the shield not to explode if he was stunned right after landing.

* Raven Shout

* Fixed an issue that would cause him to not hit units below him if his shield exploded while he was knocked up/thrown.

###  Poseidon

* General

* Legendary skin basic attacks no longer play the hit effect if they miss their target.

###  Ra

* Speed of Light

* A new passive meter has been added.

* Solar Blessing

* Improved the visual FX to be more distinct from friendly to enemy.
* Alienware skin has Alienware logo on the ground, and the enemy Alienware will appear like the default skin color to help differentiate from friendly.

###  Serqet

* Deathbane

* Fixed a bug that cause the third dash to sometimes not hit.

* Ambush

* Cooldown increased from 15s to 17s.

###  Sobek

* Blessing of the Nile

* A new Passive meter has been added.
* This ability now builds stacks on successful hits from basic attacks and abilities. Abilities will only grant one stack even if multiple targets are hit.

###  Sun Wukong

* General

* Fixed Dark Lord skin to no longer T-Pose while doing taunts and laughs.

###  Vulcan

* Backfire

* Fixed an issue where if this ability is used while walking forward, Vulcan became stuck bent over until the player stopped moving.

###  Xbalanque

* General

* Fixed an issue with his animation locking up in the lobby.

* Dead of Night

* Passive meter added.

###  Zeus

* General

* Fixed some T-posing issues with his Almighty skin.

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