Susano Storms Into Smite's Playable Pantheon
Let it rain
Smite's [official site] pantheon of playable gods continues to expand apace with the addition of Susano, God Of The Summer Storm. He's from Japanese mythology and is the brother of an earlier addition, Amaterasu.
In terms of sibling rivalry, they seem like quite the handful. One account I'm looking at describes the fallout from an argument about who wins a creation challenge. Apparently Susano destroys Amaterasu's rice paddies, smears poop on her palace walls and "throws a flayed pony through the roof of her weaving shed". I think the pony was sacred to Amaterasu so the gesture is even more provocative, although I'm just going to put it out there that if my brother chucked a flayed ANYTHING into my weaving shed I'd be pretty narked.
Anyway, Amaterasu hides in a cave thus obscuring the entire sun and plunging the universe into darkness. She is eventually lured out by the sound of laughter as another goddess performs a "lewd dance". Susano is then banished from heaven. BANISHED.
Afterwards there is a redemptive adventure involving the slaying of an eight-headed dragon with a penchant for sake. The killing and subsequent butchering of the dragon has Susano discovering a secret sword hidden in its tail which he then gives to Amaterasu as a kind of "sorry" gift. Hallmark should take note, here. None of this apology card nonsense. You need swords hacked out of the tails of drunken dragons. "I AM SORRY I RUINED YOUR DINNER PARTY HERE IS AN APOLOGY SWORD".
So, given Smite has neither rice fields to destroy nor weaving sheds to desecrate nor palaces to empoopen, what does Susano actually do in-game?
Passive: Swift as the Summer Storm
For each trained ability that is on cooldown, Susano gains bonus move speed. That means that if you spam your spells you go faster so I'm guessing this is to keep incentivising spell casting and promote the idea of Susano as this tempestuous, swift, destructive character.
1: Storm Kata
This is a three-part attack where you have to activate the next part within three seconds of the previous one to keep the chain going.
First you deal damage in a cone in front of you.
Second you deal damage in a circle around you.
Third, you dash forward.
At its most basic, you can use the combo to attack and then escape or attack and then chase. But you can also take advantage of the "within three seconds" thing to get some extra hits in – so you press one and activate the first part, then you right click to get some basic damage in, then you press 1 again to get the damage in a circle around you, then more right clicking, then maybe 1 again to zoom out if you need.
2: Wind Siphon
This one's also a cone of damage in front of you but if the enemies are in the middle of the cone they'll get sucked towards you. It's good for getting them in melee damage range, but obviously that's a thing you might regret if it turns out they're beefier than you expected.
3: Jet Stream
This one throws out a whirlwind which sticks to an enemy if they're caught in its path and does damage over time. Susano can also teleport to the whirlwind while it's on that player to get in some extra damage. I'm imagining this will be super useful for closing the gap on fleeing enemies and taking them out having whittled them down.
4: Typhoon
This one's a big circular ult which creates a hurricane that drags enemies towards its centre. Once it grows to full size or once Susano activates the ability again it'll shoot forward in whatever direction he's facing, dealing damage along its path.
The god reveal video has a whole bunch of information about potential combinations and I can feel my fingers getting confused just watching it. What I'm feeling is that excelling with him will largely be about managing your spells effectively and knowing when to dash in and when to leave the hell alone.
Elsewhere in the patch are changes to the conquest map (that's the three lane one they use for competitive play) which are intended to benefit junglers – the biggest that I can see is the reinstatement of the speed buff camp so junglers should be able to nip about and be a nuisance. Here are the conquest changes and god tweaks. For skins, cheevos and other bits and bobs, they're all detailed in the dedicated 3.8 patch notes. ALTERNATIVELY skip down to the comment section...
Conquest Map change
- This buff has been placed at the current Mana Camp Location.
Miscellaneous
- Soipdgj;lkdsf
- Players who spam incredibly fast will now bypass this filter on their local machine only and will continue to hear all emotes until they stop, which will then initiate the timeout period. Any players within range will only ever hear 10 emotes.
Item Changes
Bloodforge
“Bloodforge is receiving a new identity to separate it from Devourer’s Glove. The new Bloodforge will act as a mid to late game luxury items focused around Physical Assassins, offering a lot of base power in addition to a boost of speed and a shield upon getting a kill. Assassins who want to jump into a fight and pick off a single target are going to enjoy this item which allows for the potential for continued aggression or a safer exit strategy.”
Gem of Isolation
“Gem of Isolation is a fun utility item for mages that helps them bring additional control to a team, but was often too prohibitive cost wise to build.”
Golden Bow
Heartward Amulet
Hide of the Nemean Lion
Mail of Renewal
Rod of Asclepius
“Rod Of Asclepius is receiving two noticeable increases this patch. Rod Of Healing, the item it builds from, is receiving a weaker version of the aura and Rod of Asclepius is going to be slightly stronger at providing health and increased healing. This should make this item easier to build into and more effective once it has been purchased.”
Rod of Healing
Runic Shield
“This change, along with the Witchblade change below, is the continued effort to encourage players to build towards the situation and reward them for that decision with efficient buys.”
Spectral Armor
Stone of Gaia
Wind Demon
“Wind Demon is seeing a change of design in this patch. Anti-healing on crit was simply not enticing for players who wanted to prioritize crit, as those characters would either buy Brawler’s Beatstick or rush for more damaging options. Highlighting that second aspect, Wind Demon will now provide increased attack speed and movement speed upon critting an enemy, allowing characters to deal more damage upon critting and provide tools to give those players better positioning.”
Witchblade
God Changes
Artemis
“Artemis traps now show a warning indicator rather than a visible trap for enemies viewing it. Once triggered, the visible trap will appear as normal. We’ve taken this approach to solve visibility issues across her various skins that have different thematic traps.”
- Updated the hidden trap FX to look more consistent across all Artemis Skins.
Chaac
“Chaac is receiving some additional love to help him compete more directly with other Warriors. An increase to his slow, as well as making his Ultimate more punchy, especially in the early game, should allow him to more regularly box and secure kills on his enemies.”
- Increased Slow from 15/20/25/30/35% → 20/25/30/35/40%.
- Increase base damage from 150/200/250/300/350 → 200/250/300/350/400.
Freya
“Freya is receiving a very focused change that is both a buff and a quality of life improvement. By increasing the pulse duration by 1 second we ensure that Freya will never have leftover Irradiate time.”
- Increased duration of pulse from 5s → 6s.
Kukulkan
- Fixed an issue where Kukulkan’s Passive would not get modified by Rod Of Tahuti’s Passive.
Nemesis
“Nemesis excels as a late game executor, focused on shredding assassins and tanks alike. We feel she currently does well in this role, but her early game is too punishing to allow her to reach this point of the game. Increasing her Passive as well as allowing Divine Judgement to steal 50% protections at all rank should give Nemesis more potency in the early stages of the game while still keeping her the late-game focused assassin that she currently is.”
- Increased Power Gain and Power Loss from 4% → 6%.
- Increased Protection stealing from 30/35/40/45/50% → 50% at all ranks.
Raijin
“Raijin is seeing a mixture of quality of life improvements and small positive adjustments. We’ve fixed an issue with Percussive Storm being improperly silenced and interrupted, while also making it more usable and reliable for Raijin. Raijin will no longer be interrupted out of his Thunder Crash if hit with a hard CC after he has become invisible. Finally Taiko Drums will now allow for more time to make smart decisions, and should feel less restrictive. Raijin has been performing under the curve, and we feel these changes will put him in a better place without directly increasing his burst potential.”
- Increased projectile speed from 100 → 115.
- Fixed an issue where this ability would not stop upon being silenced.
- Removed Raijin’s collision during his pre-fire. (while invisible)
- Raijin will no longer be able to be stunned/silenced/etc. once he has become invisible.
- Time in air increased from 3s → 4.5s
- Reduce movement penalty from 75% → 40%.
Ravana
- Increased radius from 12 → 15.
- Updated tooltip to correctly indicate it as a Leap instead of a Dash.
Skadi
“Skadi and Kaldr have been performing well, with a large portion of damage and power coming from Kaldr. While we like the dynamic, we wanted to tone down Kaldr’s damage some to make him more manageable to play against.”
- Decreased Kaldr’s Basic Attack Damage from 60/60/80/80/100/100% →50/50/70/70/90/90%.
Vamana
“A bit of a give in take on Vamana; we’re decreasing the scaling on Armored Umbrella and increasing the scaling on Ubrellarang. Vamana has many strengths from his ability to dish out damage, control a fight, and sustain in his ultimate. This shift is to better balance his damage across all his abilities.”
- Reduced Physical Power Scaling from 100% → 70%.
- Increased Physical Power Scaling from 40% Per hit → 50% Per Hit.
Xing Tian
“Xing Tian is seeing the balance of his kit shifted around, but we overall wanted to bring him up in strength. By making his ultimate more well defined for enemy players to play around, we felt comfortable bringing back some of the strength of his main abilities. Furious Roar’s damage now happens over a longer period but will end up stronger in the end, and Hook Slam’s Root has been brought back allowing Xing Tian more control over enemy players in a fight.”
- Fixed an issue where Xing Tian’s Ultimate could get stuck on the Joust Map.
Furious Roar
- Increased duration from 1/2/2/3/3 → 1/2/3/4/4.
- Decreased dot damage from 4% per second → 3% per second.
- Increased base damage from 70/100/130/160/190 → 80/115/150/185/210.
- This ability now roots instead of slows on the slam hit.
- Increased casting time from .72s → 1.25s.
- There is a new animation for casting of the ultimate.
- This ability now deals 25/45/65/85/105 + 35% per hook, rotation, and throw.
- Cooldown reduced from 100s → 90s.