Smite – May & June updates (8.5 and 8.6)

One of the biggest changes to Smite in the coming update is the introduction of another god from the Arthurian Pantheon to the continuously growing list of over 100 playable gods in Smite. Morgan Le Fay, one of the more famous villains of the Arthurian legend, will soon be available for players. A magic-based god, Morgan Le Fay, will be present in Casual mode for the first month before being choosable for Ranked play. Upon release, she will include two palette swaps and has three mastery skins. She has five abilities:

• Empowered Blade – marks enemies, increases magical power, and once gaining 5 stacks doubles her magic power and reduces the cooldown for the Consuming Power ability.
• Sigil Mastery – summons a crashing magical sword causing various effects depending upon the sigil selected.
• Dragonflight – creates a dragon apparition dealing damage to enemies and knocking them back.
• Shroud of Wildfire – surrounds herself with fire damaging nearby enemies, then explodes in an area, causing a brief DoT debuff.
• Consuming Power – consumes Marks on the enemies in front of her, dealing damage and empowering her next strikes. Also fires projectiles that heal her when hitting targets.

There were some minor changes to some gods to improve balance, this included:

• Ah Puch – increased base health and physical defense.
• Anhur – ‘Desert Fury’ cooldown will be increased.
• Artemis – increased base damage of ‘Suppress the Insolent’ ability.
• Horus – increased ‘Fracture’ dash range.
• Hou Yi – increased ‘Ricochet’ base damage.
• Gilgamesh – duration of slow debuff for ‘Sun-Forged Scimitar’ is decreased, and damage scaling for ‘Drop Kick’ also decreases.
• Heimdallr – decreased bonus damage for critical strikes
• Izanami – decreased cooldown for ‘Fade Away’ ability.
• King Arthur – decreased damage mitigation for ‘Steadfast’ ability
• Kumbhakarna – increased base damage for ‘Throw Back’ and ‘Groggy Strike’.
• Mercury – ‘Made You Look’ base damage was increased.
• Merlin – cooldown for ‘Dragonfire’ begins from the initial cast of the ability rather than at the end of the ability’s effects.
• Persephone – decrease magic power scaling for the Harvest (Flower) ability
• Rama – increased damage scaling for ‘Rolling Assault’, and increased base damage for ‘Astral Barrage’ ability.
• Vulcan – increase base damage for ‘Magma Bomb’.
• Ymir – cooldown increased for ‘Ice Wall’

Not that many bugs will be addressed in these updates, but a couple particularly annoying ones have finally be resolved, including a bug that caused the ‘Rewards’ button to be present even though there were no rewards earned and another bug where both TP gain and loss were shown with both a + and – symbol causing confusion of whether TP was being gained or lost.

One great new feature for streamers is the ability to mute all copyrighted music. This will mute all copyrighted music in music packs and during god emotes and abilities for all players, including allies and enemies. This will make it easier to put a video of your gameplay online without the risk of being taken down for copyright violation.

Smite is a free-to-play third-person multiplayer online battle arena developed and published by Hi-Rez Studios and was released in 2014. Since its release Smite has seen a generally positive response from both players and critics. While there has been some criticism of the game’s controversial depiction of Hindu deities, the overwhelming majority of people appear to understand that these depictions are intended to be inclusive of one of the world’s most major religions and cultures, not exploitative or dismissive of it. Smite is currently available for Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch.