Weekly Roundup

• August 10th Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• Open Beta 41 Patch Notes
• August 14th Titan Talk - Twitch VOD
• Pantheons Collide Art Contest

August 10th Titan Talk - Open Beta 41 Patch Notes w/ killgoon

Titan Talk on Monday was the rundown for OB41 patch notes on the sole show that killgoon was on for the week.

Q&A Section

• Action Cam for New Players - From everything they’ve tested, making action cam as the default does have a positive impact on new player retention. There are a few other camera-related changes they’d like to try, but presenting an option between camera types for players starting the game isn’t something they’ll likely do as it can overload new players.
• Rod of Tahuti Changes - All the item passes they’ve recently done have been prioritized over what they’ve wanted to do for Rod of Tahuti since it isn’t seen as important as some of the other things they’ve tackled. If they were to do a pass on INT items and Rod of Tahuti’s passive, it would probably look similar to the % protection item changes that replaced % increases with flat bonuses.
• Candidates for God Buffs and Nerfs - They look at pretty much every metric that can be pulled relating to a given God’s performance and are generally aware of how they are doing in various game modes. Subjective player feedback is also taken into consideration, and sometimes they avoid making changes to a God when they expect other things in a patch to affect their performance or are awaiting sweeping changes in an upcoming patch that are likely to impact them.
• Saga Skin Themes - They will almost certainly do a more fun, whimsical skin theme for a future Saga (may not be the next one up). Dark and serious skins have historically sold well for them, so that’s generally why most of the Sagas have followed themes in that vein. Because Saga skins involve more animation and rig work, they could theoretically do a chibi skin for a Saga but doing enough within that theme to sell it as a Saga may pose a challenge.
• Map Weather w/ Gameplay Effects - Weather is something they’d like to possibly implement at some point, but striking a balance between map aesthetic and gameplay is important for them as they’d like to keep things rooted as a MOBA and avoid some of the more impactful map effects the way HOTS does it.
• Future Aspect Updates - Their goal with the enchanter item pass is to target specific item additions, but they’re aware some enchanter-style Aspects may need to be touched up as part of it so the pass may need to be in parts.
• Esports Nowadays as a Mid Tier Game - Esports attracted a lot of potential since investors saw it as a path to making a lot of money, but this hasn’t really materialized since media rights can’t be sold the same way and sponsorships from non-gaming industry companies hasn’t pushed much for advertising money. It’s difficult to have a high prize pool without being a big game like League or Fortnite, and even those scenes’ prize money has gone down over time. When crowdfunding for S1, it didn’t drive enough of a difference in sales compared to when things were marketed normally.
• More Pathfinding Items - They’re in favor of Pathfinding as a stat and will largely incorporate it into item effects in place of move speed where possible; Caps had intentionally made the buff from Damaru movement speed rather than Pathfinding.
• Success of Adaptive Starters - They largely favor the freedom in options afforded by the current starter system but have run into issues where some of the effects overlap too much with each other, and would like to ideally push more options that open up gameplay styles rather than being strictly role-based.

August 14th Titan Talk - Open Beta 41 Feedback + Art Q&A w/ Hinduman & Ben

Today’s Titan Talk was without killgoon, who is out on a family vacation, and featured the art director, Ben, for some art-related Q&A.

Thursday Hotfix

• Totem of Death proccing too often
• Staff of Cosmic Horror not proccing often enough
• Omen Drum stacks falling off too quickly
• Fixed an issue with AI Bots and vortexes
• Khepri
  • General
    • Basic attack sync fix
• Ix Chel
  • IxChel not being selectable under mid or support
  • Threads of Light
  • Aspect of the Mother's Light
    • Cooldown increased from 6 to 10s
  • Lunar Invocation
    • speed increased
  • Rainbow Crash
    • speed increased
  • Great End
    • Cancelling targeting ultimate still takes the mana
    • Rapid cancelling the ult to keep echo bonus or spam inhand is fixed

End of the Week Announcements

• Ix Chel Aspect is now live!
• Another hotfix is planned to ship soon but may slip into next week.
• Submissions for a new SMITE Prime art contest with the theme of pantheons colliding are open and includes Diamond prizing for the 2nd-5th place entries and $200 USD for the grand winner. Submissions will be open until September 20th, afterwards voting will take place for a week before the winners are then announced and showcased on Titan Talk.

Q&A Section

• Recent New Skins - Another member of the art team, Jason, was on the forefront of this Saga, previously working on S1’s skin themes during the transition to S2 and works on model updates for Gods like Awilix and Bastet. Ben took over for the splash art for this skin since the previous splash artist had a family emergency come up. The Dapper Demon Ah Puch had come from a concept done by Ena, who was previously on and very prominent on the art team.
• Ben’s Involvement w/ Map Art - Although Ben is the art director, he mostly only overlooks what gets done by the rest of the team and lets them do as they’d like on the artistic side, only really checking to make sure things are in line with SMITE’s art style and offering suggestions for improvements.
• Bastet’s Art Update - For very old models such as Xbalanque, Hun Batz, and now Bastet, that require drastic model overhauls sometimes ends up splitting player opinions when going from one re-design to another. The art team paid attention to a lot of the community discourse on wants for potential Bastet model changes and made sure it would reflect off of what most players want and casted a voice actor with a strong Egyptian accent for her new VP.
• Creatures Character Models - Non-humanoid Gods like Bake Kujira definitely limits the team with what all they can do, as they have to treat their basic attack and emotes such as claps differently compared to human characters, and this does make Gods in this vein more expensive to make and animate. They’re also more limited on skin themes, but delivering on major figures like Jormungandr is just as important for them as it is for the fanbase so they develop creature Gods as they’re able to within their budget. As an example of things blowing out of proportion due to having to work on a non-humanoid God, Tiamat affected the God development schedule so much that they had to skip a God release and come out with the Loki rework instead just to keep in track for Tiamat’s release.
• Memes for Global Emotes - Early on, Ben would hand animate global emotes such as for Danzaburou’s butler skin, which was time-consuming when they could be spending their time elsewhere. It’s also tough for them to get easy wins for emotes like they could for Janus’, which Ben referenced some Rick and Morty-based art done by the SMITE community. Eventually, global emotes ending up dropping in quality due to time constraints and members of the dev team leaving while other members like their UI artist, Erice, were being overloaded with everything on their plate. The art team saw a lot of the community discourse on the quality of global emotes and Ben took it upon himself to get these back on track and start solely referencing memes and other media. As a teaser for Ravana’s global emote, Ben considered referencing a meme with UFC commentators and Joe Rogan but with Ravana’s multiple heads taking their place and also considered looking towards something similar to a character from Baki iconically grinning. What they ultimately decided on was to reference Akuma from Street Fighter’s Raging Demon move and pose with a Ravana twist.
• Underdog Mythological Figures - Personally, Ben would like to work on under-represented characters from pantheons such as Japanese yokai, potential Lovecraftian figures, and more Yoruba or Maya Gods. He also mentioned wanting to have work done on Anansi, although that may slightly overlap with Arachne.
• More Attractive Male Skins - It’s tough to entirely gauge what the playerbase is interested in in terms of skin ideas but they tend to play towards fans’ tastes. For the Moolan skin, it was intended to be a badass female warrior in line with Red Sonja as an inspiration and was meant to parallel with the Horus farmer chicken skin as rival animal-themed clans. As mentioned before they pay a lot of attention to community feedback on these subjects and based on the outcry for more male-oriented skins, they are certainly willing to work on more skins in that vein. As a teaser, Jason is working on one such skin and based on what Ben had seen that was being used as reference, there are some cheeks involved.

Titan Talk today gave the latest roadmap of Gods and content tied to the upcoming Saga event that’ll be showcased in full on Wednesday’s show. This roadmap includes Ravana, who marks the 90th God to be added to SMITE 2!

Link to YouTube VOD

Update 41 | August 11

• New God: Ix Chel, The Light Weaver
  • +1s:
    • Slight heal scaling on A02
    • ULT can now Echo, conditionally
  • Aspect:
    • Enchanter.
• Design Focus: Echo Itemization
  • Echo payoff items: “When You Echo, Do X”
  • Most power of Echo shifted to these payoff procs
• Design Focus: Minor Aspect Reworks
  • Updates to Hercules, Cupid, Athena, Sobek, Apollo Aspects (and more!)
  • Example: Cupid Heart Bomb Can Now Attach to Ally Gods to Heal
• New Saga Event: Dark Tapestry
  • Collect to unlock Rewards, or Buy All for Event Contents
  • Includes all new Wandering Market Content through OB45 (Oct. 6)
  • Featuring a new Saga for Neith: Grim Pact
  • New Cosmetic Type: Level Up Skins
  • Also launching with a new Ah Puch skin
• Race to Exalted: Neith
  • Starts Tuesday, August 18th!
• And More!

Update 42 | August 25

• New God: Ravana, Demon King of Lanka
  • Will be available in an early preview on PTS, Aug. 5
  • +1s:
    • TBD, testing a few different approaches at the moment
  • Aspect:
    • EX Moves
• Design Focus: Enchanter Itemization
  • Items to support Healing/Shielding Support Mage Gameplay
• Dark Tapestry Continues
  • Classic Traveler for Xing Tian
  • New Travelers for Medusa and Ix Chel
• Race to Exalted: Medusa
  • Starts Tuesday, Sept. 1st!
• And More!

Update 43 | September 8

• New God: Hachiman, Lord of the Eight Banners
  • Design Explorations:
    • Considering if/how to incorporate additional Banners
    • Playing with several ideas around making his Dash more interesting in his kit flow
• Dark Tapestry Continues
  • Classic Travelers for Sol and Tsukuyomi
• Race to Exalted: Tsukuyomi
  • Starts Tuesday, Sept. 15th!
• And More!

Update 44 | September 22

• New God: Hel, Goddess of the Underworld
  • All New Model!
    • In the process of casting for a new voice pack
  • Too early for design teasers on +1s or Aspect
• Dark Tapestry Continues
  • Classic Travelers for Charon and Amaterasu
  • Reward Traveler for Thor
• Race to Exalted: Charon
  • Starts Tuesday, Sept. 29th!
• And More!

Further Look Ahead

• Holiday Studio "Break"
  • Over the holidays, just like last year, we will have a longer break than normal between patches
  • This is for two reasons:
    • Platforms are also on vacation, and we cannot safely update the game during the weeks of Christmas and New Year's
    • We are people and would like to spend time with our loved ones
  • We are currently targeting Dec. 15 for the last update of 2026, and Jan. 12 for the first update of 2027
• Rest of Year God "Class" Lineup
  • Two Guardians
  • One Warrior
  • Two Junglers (including Ravana)
  •  Three Mages (including Ix Chel and Hel)
  • Two Hunters (including Hachiman)
  • 10 total more Gods before end of 2026

Q&A Section

• Aspects for Gods That Don’t Have One - Is something they’d like to when they have time, any Aspects that need extra FX has to be slotted into the production schedule. Adjusting existing Aspects can be done more quickly without involving as much design bandwidth.
• Native North American Pantheon - Not something they’re 100% opposed to but would require a cultural consultant that’s an expert on the represented religions to treat them with respect.
• Races to Radiant Burnout - There has been an increase in discussion on this matter but these events have always been geared towards rewarding players that are interested in participating rather than being for everyone. They expanded the tiers since there were more interested players than they anticipated, though the Races to Exalted haven’t been nearly as popular.
• Only 1 Remaining Warrior - They aren’t intentionally avoiding classes and are rotating through them as they make sense, but the Warrior class has the least amount of remaining Gods and the most requested ones in Tyr and King Arthur necessitate work on the movement system overhaul to work well. The movement tech being worked on is mostly done to better address disagreements between client and server positions of each player as they move around.
• Work on Pet Tech - Is mostly focused on increasing the number of things pet AI can do and make them more complex than Nu Wa’s clay soldiers.
• Anti-Heal Item Pass - Has been something they’ve gone back and forth on but aren’t intending on going back to its state in S1 where healing is completely shut out when anti-healed but very potent out of combat. Increasing the base cap of 25% has been considered but not a direction they’ve confirmed to go with.
• Dracula as a God - Personally, killgoon thinks Dracula is a bit of a stretch but his inclusion is something that has come up a lot and may work well as an assassin.
• Xbox Race to Radiant - There’s a plan of action that’s been discussed as compensation for affected Xbox players in the Cu Chulainn race that they’ll have more details to share shortly.
• Wandering Market Coin Gain - Are aware of players having issues getting enough coins in this economy and are still looking into ways to best handle buffing this.
• Twitch Drop Recolor Availability - There were a few methods of attaining these in-game or as rotating Twitch drops that they’ve discussed but haven’t confirmed exactly what they’ve decided on. 
• Scope of Aspect Changes - Aren’t completely new or different Aspects and are leaning towards making them work more cohesively.

Weekly Roundup

• July 27th Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• Open Beta 40 Patch Notes
• July 29th Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• SmiteSource Open 2026
• July 31st Titan Talk - Twitch VOD

July 27th Titan Talk - Open Beta 40 Patch Notes w/ killgoon

Monday’s Titan Talk was the usual solo show running down the most recent patch notes and taking Q&A with killgoon.

Q&A Section

• Holiday Break - Come December, the team will be taking another 4-week break over the holidays and skipping a patch in the 2-week cycle. They aren’t able to undergo certification for console text chat during this time since the platform certifiers are also away for the holidays.
• State of Junglers - The designers had watched the video by Weak3n and were discussing it but killgoon hadn’t. Jungle has historically been one of the strongest roles in S2’s lifespan and are making the necessary Conquest changes to ensure that junglers aren’t super weak, and they believe some people feel jungle is weak right now due to their historic strength. Right now, they don’t feel that there’s a crazy imbalance between roles.
• Remaining God Ports for the Year - At least one true guardian God is planned by the end of the year. No new news to give on development on the ports for Cthulhu, Lancelot, or Kuzenbo.
• Hotfix Nerfs for DPS Items vs. Tank Items - For items that necessitate quick hotfixes as they did with the penetration items, they evaluate the scale at which the items are being used and its impact on the game state, and something as severe as causing players to die far too quickly was something they decided needed swifter action against.
• God Healing vs. TTK - The only real outlier at the moment is Guan Yu Aspect which they are addressing this most recent patch. None of the other healers’ numbers are particularly out of line from what they’ve observed and they’re constantly monitoring these metrics as healing is heavily favored in metas with longer TTK.
• End of Match Animations - It was a decision made very early on not to port these over since many players didn’t pay attention to them and would skip over them to view the EOML stats. Doing them now would be a massive arc of work given the number of animations having to be added. They do want to make improvements to the EOML screen and possibly re-do it, but this would not include the old victory and defeat screen animations.
• God Lineup Plans - The God ports up until the end of the year have all been planned out with some room to shift things around in case priorities have to be moved around. When their team was bigger in size, they were able to plan out ports a year ahead.
• Starter Item Pass - Is among the things on the radar and comes up often that they’d what to get around to in a future patch. They appreciate the ability to build any starter in any role but there are a few passives that overlap with one another that they’d like to resolve with a pass like this.
• S1 Tier 2 / Bridge Items - For items like Ichaival, it’s less appealing for a majority of players to have to sell an already built item when they just want to reach full build with a set of T3 items.
• Displaying Ping In-Game - Most games measure ping differently from the way it was done in S1, and choosing one or another was a decision they deliberated on for a while before deciding to prioritize working on something else.
• Unique AA Chains for Gods / Aspects - On Aspects that change their range type, they are limited by having to use existing animations so it’s rare for them to be able to re-purpose ones well enough to fit for Gods like Kali.
• Buffing Underutilized Tank Items - In the most recent protection item pass that targeted getting rid of % increases, they prioritized buffs for tank items that players already utilize. As of recent and in the future, they’d want to buff items that aren’t as used as much, such as Eye of Providence.

July 29th Titan Talk - Open Beta 40 Feedback + Q&A w/ Hinduman & killgoon

Titan Talk on Wednesday following the launch of OB40 went over what happened on patch day with the update being unavailable on certain platforms and taking in feedback over the latest changes.

Open Beta 40 Patch Day Release

• After their build was certified with Xbox, it ended up being stuck in the process of publishing with no way for them to unpublish it to revert to an earlier build or re-attempt at publishing. They had reached out and had it investigated around an hour after running into the issues but the initial responders weren’t able to resolve it. It was then escalated to Xbox’s engineering team and they were able to get the publish unstuck about 12 hours after the initial planned ship time.
• This was a different case from when they had to delay the patch last time and was mostly out of their control, possibly being related to the Xbox outage on Monday.
• For an error on their end, they erroneously forgot to publish the build for Sony Europe, though this was unrelated to the issues they were having with the Xbox build.
• Since they were unsure how long the game would be unavailable for the affected platforms, they hadn’t fully established the plan of action on what to do for the players participating in the Race to Radiant for Cu Chulainn, with them being told that the Xbox side may not be available for a couple of days.

Q&A Section

• Hunters Feeling Strong - From the very early numbers they ran, nothing indicated that carries are performing much stronger compared to last patch and are nowhere near the level mages were right after the INT pen item pass, but they will continue to monitor their performance as time goes on.
• Aspects & Assault Healer Tiers - The issue of classifying certain Gods for healer tiers when their Aspects provide much more healing than their base kit has become more prominent and is something they’re paying attention to but can’t entirely confirm what direction they want to go to resolve this. Locking players into an Aspect in addition to what God gets rolled sounds interesting but this may or may not be something every Assault player is interested in.
• Daily Reddit Skin Polls - killgoon doesn’t pay attention to each post that goes up since there are a lot, but these polls are taken from a very specific subset of the playerbase and the results may not line up with what they can realistically accomplish since their main focus is improving the game state while getting whatever cosmetics they can get done in.
• Ix Chel Patch Show - Is scheduled for next Wednesday and they’ll be joined by their newest designer who took point for Ix Chel. The proposed Echo pass that includes changes to its functionality, its existing item effects, and new Echo items is still planned for this update but there is a small chance it’ll slip to the patch after. Mage bruiser items such as Warlock’s Staff and Tablet of Destinies are still on their radar but aren't as immediate of a priority.
• Next Ported God Survey - Since it’s still the middle of the year, they aren’t expecting the results to be too different from the survey they last had but would like to possibly have another at the end of the year.
• Time CC’d as a Post-Game Stat - These types of stats are fun to see and have some merit but it’s tough to quantify since there are differing CC types and durations. They’ve also wanted to include shielding as a potential EOML stat.
• Worshipper Gain Adjustments - There is a decent difference in worshipper gained when winning compared to while losing that may be a bit much compared to when this bonus was initially established for most games, and has been something they’ve actively discussed. 
• S1 Collabs’ Revenue - For in-game crossovers, they would pay the rights holder a % of the proceeds for the crossover cosmetics along with a minimum guarantee regardless of sales numbers. For the Maxonomic chairs where they licensed the SMITE IP, they would gain a portion of the earnings from each chair sold and the studio also received free gaming chairs!
• Minions Being Too Squishy - Their intentions were to make them weaker in the mid-game but stay relatively the same in the early and late-game, and if wave clear feels off following this patch then they’re willing to adjust accordingly.
• Game Mode-Specific Balance - Barring a few things such as Hecate Aspect, they’d like to avoid making too many balance changes specific to certain modes if they can so that players don’t have to re-learn their Gods’ kits when playing various modes.

July 31st Titan Talk - Open Beta 40 Community Q&A w/ Hinduman & killgoon

Titan Talk today was mostly dedicated to Q&A and the hotfixes that have recently gone live to cap off OB40 release week.

End of the Week Announcements

• Cu Chulainn Aspect is now live!
• SmiteSource will be running an Open circuit league format starting this September with a $21,500 prize pool and Diamond prizing. Registration opens on August 19th.
• The next God Roadmap will be on Monday, August 3rd, and will include more Gods than the previous one. Hinduman teases that he was able to one shot with a not yet revealed God’s ULT in their playtests (it was obviously bugged).

Hotfix Roundup

• Thursday Hotfixes
  • Fixed a mana cost issue with Artio’s Shapeshift that would prevent use.
  • Fixed various issues with Cu Chulainn’s voice lines not working as intended.
  • Fixed an issue with Atlas where his Astrolabe would sometimes get stuck deployed.
  • Adjustments made to Loki’s Vanish audio attenuation and occlusion.
• Friday Hotfixes
  • Fixed an issue with Cu Chulainn’s Vent Anger getting into an odd state and not working if stunned while transforming.
  • Re-enabled Xing Tian Aspect after fixing a bug where loading into games didn’t give the Aspect version of his ULT.
  • Fixed an issue with Dwarven Plate’s tooltip displaying its stats twice.

Q&A Section

• Upcoming Aspect Changes - With the coming update, there will be a few improvements to underutilized Aspects that aren’t strictly balance changes and more tweaks towards their functionality.
• De-Cluttering Skin Selection w/ Prisms - The current implementation with each Saga form being separate is intended so it’s easier for players to get to a given prism for a form. For recolor and mastery skins, they’re against combining them the same way they do for prisms since how each of these skins are acquired is different and some skins in this vein have unique ability FX unlike most prisms.
• More Hybrid Scaling - Their current philosophy is to utilize hybrid scaling in order to enable different playstyles when going STR or INT as they’ve tried with Nut and Sun Wukong. The previous usage of hybrid scaling early on in the game where abilities would alternate between using STR or INT for certain abilities didn’t work well and lead to it feeling off for players since they’re used to building just one stat.
• In-Game Esports Tab - This would be a UI task that would need to be developed alongside all the other UI QoL improvements that get brought up, and they would rather prioritize the latter at this point in the game’s lifespan. The clan system is also commonly requested and they’d like to implement the clan tag and LFG aspects of it and might not prioritize the cosmetics that were tied to it, but they know some players may not be thrilled about this.
• Objective in the Middle of Assault - Has been something they’ve considered in the past but have been deterred since there are many outspoken Assault players whenever anything gets changed for this mode.
• Balance Point for God Releases - While they traditionally prefer to release new Gods slightly on the stronger side, most of the ports of this year have been a little weaker after their experience in playtests. Bastet has been an outlier since she was perceived as weak on PTS and they overbuffed her for her release on live.
• Having Map Bosses as Gods - Aren’t against having Apophis as a potential new God since they’ve already done the same for Surtr and Fire Giant.
• Multiple Aspects for Gods - Could be something they support later down the line where each God has access to 2 or 3 but definitely isn’t feasible in the current state.
• No New ADC-oriented Aspects Since Discordia - The direction they go with for Aspects is based on what they feel would make sense for a given God, and there haven’t been many recently ported Gods that they feel an attack damage-based Aspect would make sense for. They’ve gone for an enchanter-based Aspect for Ix Chel since her kit already seems to align with that type of playstyle.
• More +1’s for Existing Gods - Early on, +1’s were geared for Gods whose base kit from S1 didn’t seem to fit as well with the standards for S2 as to what all a God can do with their abilities, so they aren’t intending on giving more +1’s to God kits that already have a lot going on, like Xing Tian.
• Balancing Based on Win Rates - A lot more is taken into account over just God or item win rates, and they deliberately avoid nerfing items with high win rates if community perception is that the items are weak. There are many cases they run into where performance doesn’t align with perception and they often look at opinions from players at higher skill levels, but they try to take into account feedback from all players regardless.
• Voice Chat Improvements - While they won’t get around to it anytime soon, they’d like to make some drastic changes or rework voice chat to resolve a lot of the issues tied to it.
• Auditions for Voice Roles in SMITE - They work with an external studio based in New York called 3Beep that handles a lot of the casting calls where people record their 30 second auditions of a given voice pack before the devs pick the closest one that works best for a skin to record the rest of the lines. They had previously worked with Okratron 5000 for a lot of S1’s voice roles, who are responsible for series such as Dragon Ball.

https://www.smite2.com/news/open-beta-40-update-notes/

The latest God Roadmap was showcased for today’s Titan Talk, going over the next 2 updates. This roadmap is on the smaller side as it coincides with being in-between major Saga events, and the next roadmap is already lined up for 2 weeks from now on August 3rd.

Link to YouTube VOD

Update 40 | July 28

• New God: Cu Chulainn, The Hound of Ulster
  • One of Top-Requested Traditional “Solo Warriors” on Player Surveys
  • +1:
    • Use your 2 at Level 0!
  • Aspect:
    • Big.
• Design Focus: Carry Itemization
  • New Attack Pen Option: Dominance Returns!
  • New Attack Anti-Heal Option: A Toxic Blade-like item!
  • AND MORE!
• Lots of UI Features!
  • View Teammate & Enemy Stats (Prots, HP, STR, & etc.) in-match!
    • And your own stats while in the Item Shop!
  • View enemy health bars on Portraits when your team has vision
  • Friends List: View Queue type and Time In-Match, AND MORE!
• Summer Fun! Standalone Cosmetic Event
  • New Skins for Da Ji, Atlas, and Odin, and Supporter Store Items
• Race to Exalted: Odin
  • Starts Tuesday, August 4th!

Update 41 | August 11

• New God: Ix Chel, The Light Weaver
  • Will be available in early preview on PTS, July 22nd
  • +1s:
    • Slight heal scaling on A02
    • ULT can now Echo, conditionally
  • Aspect:
    • Enchanter.
• Design Focus: Echo Itemization
  • Echo “Payoff Items”
• New Saga Event: Grim Pact
  • Collect to unlock Rewards, or Buy All for Event Contents
  • Featuring a new Saga for Neith: Grim Pact
  • Also launching with a new Ah Puch skin
• Race to Exalted: Neith
  • Starts Tuesday, August 18th!
• And More!

Q&A Section

• Enchanter Item Pass - No firm target update for when they’ll get around to this, but is certainly on their to-do list for design focuses.
• Shifter’s Shield Hotfix - There aren’t any plans to ship a hotfix, as despite the item’s prominence, it isn’t as problematic as the pen items that necessitated a swift balance hotfix.
• Mage Bruiser Items - The main item they’d like to have following Ethereal Staff is Warlock’s Staff. Tablet of Destinies seems more oriented towards other roles due to the way it is statted, and may not be as prioritized.
• No Hot Male Summer Skins - The summer skins lined up for this year were locked in for the schedule prior to a lot of community discourse surrounding what players want to see. They aren’t avoiding adding skins in this nature and can certainly have them in the future.
• Next Twitch Drop Skin - Should be scheduled for next patch with Cu Chulainn’s launch.
• Movement System Update - Something they’re currently working on fixing is how dashes interact when players collide with one another and while they won’t be able to resolve every issue tied to them, it should improve things.
• Flavor Text in Item Descriptions - killgoon pitched this to the team a year prior and it wasn’t favored much due to it adding too much from already long item descriptions and detracting from what’s more necessary to read.
• Pon Pon’s Rod of Tahuti Pass - Is not an immediate priority since design direction has changed but it would look a lot like the recent protection item pass if they were to implement it.
• Pass on Auto-Builds - Will have one eventually, it was never their intention to frequently update them since they aren’t used much and would prefer for players to learn to build on their own or adopt community builds.
• High-Cost / Luxury Items - Has been something they favor and would like to push but it’s difficult to do so when players are mostly accustomed to being able to reach full build every game.
• Ix Chel God Lead - Their newest designer is taking point for Ix Chel and will be on for her show to showcase it.
• Martichoras’ Popularity - Was one of the lower Gods when they last did their community surveys and isn’t favorably viewed by most of the community.
• Outlook for S2 - Overall, new player retention has gone up over time and while player counts are more seasonal due to other game releases or holidays, they have bigger increases than they’d expect for some months.

https://www.smite2.com/news/open-beta-39-update-notes/

https://www.smite2.com/news/open-beta-38-update-notes/

Since there wasn’t a Titan Talk yesterday and they’ll be out on Friday, I’ll probably skip the 2LDR for this week and’ll just run down the usual patch week announcements here: (maybe it’ll help prevent my posts from getting automodded 💀)

• The Race to Radiant event for Chronos will be live once the patch drops and will run until July 7th.
• The previously announced Race to Exalted event for Scylla will be delayed to next patch with Xing Tian’s release.
• Chronos’ Aspect will be releasing a day early on July 2nd.
• There will be a 2x Worshipper weekend event starting on July 3rd and running until July 6th.
• Twitch Drop campaign for Crimson King Gilgamesh will be available starting July 4th until the campaign ends on July 18th.

Weekly Roundup

• June 22nd Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• Open Beta 38 Patch Preview
• June 24th Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• Open Beta 38 Balance Overview
• June 26th Titan Talk - Twitch VOD

June 22nd Titan Talk - Solo Q&A w/ killgoon

Titan Talk on Monday was a solo Q&A session prior to coverage for OB38. There was a server-side hotfix on Saturday morning to fix rare cases of Bastet Aspect ULT pulling enemies into walls.

Q&A Section

• Development on Xing Tian - His port is coming along, but his postfires are feeling a little longer than necessary when coming from S1 1:1, so they are considering smoothing these out and making him feel more fluid. Any previous bugs, such as him being able to leap more than 2 times, should be resolved since they pretty much have to build his kit from the ground up.
• More Enchanter Mage Items - Has been something they’ve discussed, though their next focus is more mage bruiser options. Their goal with any item additions are to enable or support playstyles that are lacking with what is currently available.
• Movement System Overhaul - There are bits of it that their lead programmer and the rest of the team are steadily working on but haven’t been shipped yet that they still need to fine tune, specifically to avoid movement over-correction for abilities heavier on movement or ones that interact or push into other players. A lot of the groundwork on this is already done and they’re somewhere around 70% done with the overhaul.
• Pet AI for Gods - There’s better tooling and groundwork for pet tech that has helped for already ported Gods with pets. Rather than solely focusing on a pet God as the next port priority, they’re working on the tech in the background to help for these ports in the future. 
• Aspect Atlas Performance - Is at a ~40% win rate in casual Conquest and is even lower in Ranked, which aligns with their expectations post-changes and would be something they can buff accordingly instead.
• Doodle Ra Skin - Is potentially on the table due to its popularity and was initially forewent since it involves a bit more tech work for its FX.
• Reworking Bake Kujira - His kit has been very polarizing and it’s hard to tell what direction to go since the majority of his identity is his AA’s. They’re likely to preserve that aspect as well as his push, but his ULT may be changed to something more fitting, such as him making a giant splash as a whale.
• Players That Say S2 is Worse than S1 - Most people that hold this opinion say so since the game is missing their favorite Gods or modes and other features that the team isn’t able to get around to. When evaluating this objectively, they try to parse feedback that is actionable to find ways that they can improve the game with what they can realistically accomplish.
• Adjusting Role Passives - For the most part, they don’t want to risk adding overly transformative effects to a given role passive since they want to avoid encouraging people swapping roles in lobbies just for the most optimal benefit.

June 26th Titan Talk - Open Beta 38 Balance Preview w/ Hinduman, killgoon & Caps

Last show for this week went over all the details for next patch’s balance. Specific numbers for the base HP changes are a bit much to show here but you can find them all on the SMITE Prime page.

God Balance

• Bastet
  • Cat Call (4)
    • Cat Dash damage reduced from 60/95/130/165/200 + 50% Strength to 40/65/90/115/140 + 50% Strength
    • Cat Dash slow reduced from 20/25/30/35/40% to 12/14/16/18/20%
• Base Stat Changes
  • All Gods level 1 basic attack damage has been reduced by 20%, across the board. This brings base basic attack damage more in-line with SMITE 1. It still scales as it did before.
  • Base Health has been adjusted to have a bigger gap between Gods associated with different traditional roles. Additionally some Gods had some Protections adjusted.
• Health Increased
  • Artemis (Base & Per Level HP)
  • Danzaburou (Base HP)
  • Hua Mulan (Base & Per Level HP)
  • Nemesis (Base HP)
• Protections Increased
  • Chaac (Per Level Prots)
  • Guan Yu (Base & Per Level Prots)
• Health Reduced
  • Agni (Base & Per Level HP)
  • Ah Puch (Base & Per Level HP)
  • Anhur (Base HP)
  • Anubis (Per Level HP)
  • Aphrodite (Per Level HP)
  • Apollo (Per Level HP)
  • Artio (Base HP)
  • Cernunnos (Base HP)
  • Discordia (Base & Per Level HP)
  • Eset (Base HP)
  • Fenrir (Base & Per Level HP)
  • Ishtar (Base HP)
  • Janus (Base HP)
  • Jing Wei (Per Level HP)
  • Kali (Base HP)
  • Loki (Base & Per Level HP)
  • Merlin (Base HP)
  • Mordred (Base HP)
  • Morgan Le Fay (Base & Per Level HP)
  • Ne Zha (Base HP)
  • Pele (Base HP)
  • Poseidon (Base HP)
  • Ratatoskr (Base HP)
  • Scylla (Base HP)
  • Sol (Base HP)
  • Thor (Base HP)
  • Tsukuyomi (Base HP)
  • Ullr (Base HP)
• Protections Reduced
  • Aladdin (Base & Per Level Prots)
  • Thor (Base Prots)
  • Ullr (Base Prots)

Item Balance

• Avatar’s Parashu
  • Strength reduced from 100 to 90
  • 10% Penetration added
• Book of Thoth
  • Evolved Intelligence reduced from 20 to 0
  • 10 Evolved Penetration added
• The Cosmic Horror
  • Intelligence reduced from 75 to 65
  • 15 Penetration added
• Doom Orb
  • Intelligence reduced from 90 to 80
  • 10 Penetration added
• Dreamer’s Idol
  • Intelligence decreased from 140 to 130
  • 10% Penetration added
• Gilded Arrow
  • Attack Damage reduced from 25 to 20
• Gluttonous Grimoire
  • 10% Penetration added
• Heartseeker
  • Strength reduced from 55 to 45
  • 10% Penetration added
• Jotunn’s Revenge
  • Strength reduced from 40 to 35
  • 5 Penetration added
• New Item: Spear of the Magus
  • 95 Intelligence
  • 10% Penetration
  • Ability Hit on God: That God is marked for 8s. Marked Gods take 5% increased damage from all sources.
  • Builds from Evil Eye and Void Shard
  • 2700 gold
• Obsidian Shard
  • Intelligence increased from 60 to 90
  • Penetration decreased from 35% to 20%
• Oath-Sworn Spear
  • Updated Passive effect
  • Ability Hit: Reduces target’s Physical Protection by 5 for 4s. Each God kill or assist increases this by 1, stacking up to 10 times.
• Pendulum Blade
  • Strength reduced from 35 to 30
  • 10% Penetration added
• Riptalon
  • Attack Damage reduced from 25 to 20
  • 10% Penetration added
• Rod of Tahuti
  • Intelligence decreased from 85 to 80
  • 10% Penetration added
• Soul Gem
  • 10 Penetration added
• Spear of Desolation
  • Intelligence reduced from 100 to 85
  • 15 Penetration added
• Tekko-Kagi
  • Strength reduced from 45 to 35
  • 10 Penetration added
• The Crusher
  • Strength reduced from 50 to 45
  • 10 Penetration added
• The Reaper
  • Strength reduced from 55 to 45
  • 10 Penetration added
• Titan’s Bane
  • Strength increased from 40 to 60
  • Penetration reduced from 35% to 20%
• Totem of Death
  • Will be disabled starting this update
• Transcendence
  • Evolved Strength reduced from 15 to 0
  • 10 Evolved Penetration added
• World Stone
  • Intelligence reduced from 80 to 70
  • 10 Penetration added

Q&A Section

• Tanks Post-Changes - Power curve should feel smoother now with there no longer being a spike just from one pen item, so tanks will be able to fight into mages better during the mid-game but will feel rougher going into late-game scenarios.
• Aspect Base Stats - Aspect versions use the same base stats of the God as a basis and any modifiers work off of the changes shown today. 
• STR Damage Anti-Heal Option - Is still on the radar for a build path they could fulfill later down the line.
• Rod of Tahuti Changes - Their intentions were to add % pen to it first as a preliminary step in this pass and make some changes to it in following patches as they see how the item plays out.
• Pen on Gluttonous Grimoire - They didn’t want to add pen to Bancroft’s for traditional lifesteal builds so placing it on Grimoire felt more logical with that item’s intended build direction.
• Changing Supporter Starter Upgrade Level - Are still in favor of keeping it the same level as the other roles and has been something they’ve heavily discussed, but aren’t privy to adjusting role passives by much. 
• Healing & Anti-Heal on Abilities - They previously added anti-heal to God abilities but done as much for new ports outside of obvious cases like Ah Puch since it isn’t as necessary with where healing is right now. It’s highly unlikely they outright buff the amount of healing reduced by anti-heal without buffing healing game-wide proportionally, which is a balance space they don’t want to return to.
• Future Item Design Directions - Following the upcoming mage bruiser item pass, they’re interested in possibly tackling starter items again in a patch later down the line. Caps is also potentially considering more enchanter support-style items for the future.
• Support Green Buff - As shared previously, they’re hesitant to implement a full-on green buff since historically their effects were just abused and taken by other roles and this would probably happen more with jungle buffs stacking.

Weekly Roundup

• June 15th Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• Open Beta 37 Patch Notes
• June 17th Titan Talk - Twitch VOD
• June 19th Titan Talk - Twitch VOD

June 15th Titan Talk - Open Beta 37 Patch Notes w/ killgoon

On the first show of the week, killgoon had the usual solo rundown of the latest patch notes before moving on to general Q&A.

Q&A Section

• Chronos in Playtests - Has been on the stronger side during dev playtests, but their games tend to run longer than regular or competitive matches due to them going out of their way to test things.
• EOML Stat Screen - Is on the list of UI elements that they want to improve for the future, particularly in regards to highlighting player performance.
• Bans in Joust - Ranked Joust with bans was historically much less popular than any other mode that’s currently in S2 outside of Duel, so having bans in Joust would likely alienate a lot of its player base and be a largely unpopular change.
• Community Reception on Plating & Dampening - The devs think the community underestimated these stats when they were initially implemented and believe their changes should help push them towards their intended use as an additional avenue for mitigations.
• Better Visual Feedback on Item Procs - More visual FX or items appearing whenever their passive effects procs to better illustrate what is happening is among one of the things they’ve discussed to help the NPE, but could also end up being too visually cluttered than what they’d like.
• Vamana ULT Rework - Is certainly in the conversation for things that’ll likely be adjusted due to its age.
• Cost Efficiency for Item Cost and Stats - This was something initialized early into the game’s balance and is still among their considerations for current balance decisions, but is sometimes less applicable due to there being passives tied to items where designer and community sentiment may not align.
• Adding Winged Blade Back - They aren't intending on giving up on Hussar’s Wing just yet and would still like it as a luxury option to give its effect.
• Warhammer 40k Crossover - Because the rights holders for this IP are very specific with how their characters’ dimension and portrayal are done in-game, the devs are more hesitant on collabing with them due to the amount of time it would take to fine tune everything to work with the in-game Gods.
• Licensing for Crossover IP’s - Kratos is often brought up as a third-party God that the community wants to see added, but is more difficult of a consideration because of licensing rights and how that makes the playable character’s availability among different platforms and skin sales much more difficult. There was one rights holder that they were in talks with for a potential crossover that wanted their content to only be available for 7 days, but this never went through due to it being way too FOMO for their liking.
• Odysseus as a God - Relatively speaking, nothing really stands out for this character outside of his name and none of the kits pitched for him as a God have really pushed them towards him as an addition. For characters outside the realm of what usually constitutes as a “God,” they’re more considerate of what that character could potentially do in-game on top of having an easily identifiable figure that can reasonably illustrate what they can do, such as the case for Danzaburou. killgoon wasn’t on the team for when the Arthurian pantheon initially shipped but was around for Cthulhu’s development, and there was a lot of internal discussion both times on how these figures would fit for the game and be received by the community.
• Next 2x Worshipper Weekend - More than likely to be on the 4th of July weekend.
• Making Agility Relic a Mainstay - Because of the overwhelmingly negative sentiment for Agility and the devs wanting to develop a game that the majority of their players should enjoy, they are largely staying away from making Agility a permanent additional keybind for every game.

June 17th Titan Talk - Open Beta 37 Feedback + Q&A w/ Hinduman & Caps

With killgoon feeling under the weather, Hindu and Caps went over feedback for the latest patch as well as answering some designer-related Q&A.

Wednesday Hotfixes

• Fixed some minor crash issues
• Bastet - Fixed an issue with Aspect description not displaying correctly
• Bastet - Fixed Autoskill not working correctly

Q&A Section

• Race to Radiant Feedback - They have seen some of the feedback on how this event has potentially promoted toxic behavior and have some changes that they couldn’t get in for this first iteration lined up for future ones, such as reducing worshipper gain on new Gods in vs. AI matches. This event is catered towards players interested in gaining prestige within a short timeframe and isn’t meant to reward anything substantial outside of special cosmetics.
• Bastet ULT Cats - Caps’ intent for these cats is to have people be able to escape from them unless Bastet makes them dash to a target.
• Changing Ability Size - Has been something available even prior to Atlas Aspect but they’d prefer to use it sparingly due to it being more difficult and being one of the reasons why re-enabling his Aspect took a while.
• Protection Scaling Affecting Ability CC Duration - Feels a little odd for prots to affect how long CC lasts and people already have visceral reactions when tools are available to reduce CC duration, but otherwise they aren’t against adding more prot scaling on future Gods or Aspects as they have in the past.
• Weak Recent Active Items - Because these items may have less intriguing passives or base stats in order to keep their active effects in line, it is natural for people to perceive these items as weak with a higher skill floor for their active use. They are still monitoring performance for actives such as Radiant Bulwark and will adjust them as needed.
• Bringing Back Archdruid’s Fury - Largely already shares the same design space now as Kinetic Cuirass.
• Magical Spectral Armor - Caps does agree with killgoon’s stance that there shouldn’t be a perfect solution to counter everything and building should have tradeoffs, but also holds that an anti-magical CRIT item is a space that they could probably fill.
• Base Guan Yu Buffs - Is essentially in the same spot as Janus where his win rate is in the middle of the road but community perception may not necessarily agree.
• More Starters & Upgrades - The designers have talked at lengths internally on just starters, and adding new starters is something they would like to do when there are windows available.
• Base Stat Pass - In general, Caps is evaluating where each God’s base stats are in comparison to S2 and S1 and finding a decent middle ground, with most squishier Gods receiving base HP nerfs. For example, Agni had much lower base HP in S1 and is more in the middle in S2. Basic ATK damage will also be going down across the board with adjustments to minion clearability to accommodate this change. There will be a little bit of flat pen added as they intend on spreading pen to more item options.
• Reworking Gods - Due to players being attached to certain kits, they’d like to avoid having reworks whenever possible and try to preserve each character’s core identity for ports unless it’s something they feel very strongly necessitates major ability changes.

June 19th Titan Talk - Open Beta 37 Community Q&A w/ Hinduman & killgoon

Friday’s show reviewed recent hotfix details and some upcoming changes to the Race to Radiant event following community feedback.

Friday Hotfixes

• Lucerne Hammer
  • Strength now correctly reduced from 35 Strength to 20 strength
• Skeggox
  • Strength now correctly reduced from 25 Strength to 15 Strength
• Ratatoskr
  • Aspect of the Thickbark
  • Acorn of Yggdrasil
    • Ashwhorl Acorn changed to abilities heal for 3% but Flurry heals 1.5% 4 times
• Bastet
  • Pounce
    • No longer triggers active effects on refire
  • Cat Call
    • Damage reduced 100/140/180/220/260 + 60% STR to 60/95/130/165/200 + 50% STR

End of the Week Announcements

• Bastet Aspect is now live!
• They reached the first 200 to finish the Race to Radiant event yesterday. Since there were more players interested than they expected, they are making the following changes:
  • Starting with the Bastet race, an additional participation reward will be given to any players that reach Rank X within the first week.
    • First 7 Days - New Bastet Badge
  • Starting with the Chronos race, the number of players for each reward will be expanded.
    • Top 100 - Rank X Mastery Emblem (up from Top 50)
    • Top 200 - Radiant Bastet Badge (up from Top 100)
    • Top 500 - Leaderboard # Tracker (up from Top 200)

Q&A Section

• Bastet Releasing Strong - As shared in previous shows, they have had a habit of overnerfing the recent string of God releases from their experience in playtests, which is ironic since when players complain that Gods release too strong, they ask if the devs are even playtesting their game. For things like God launches and Atlas Aspect, players having fun with the game is a major factor for them and making their experience miserable is something they’d obviously want to avoid.
• Moolan Traveler Price - For new skins released as Travelers, they aren’t meant to be discounted and are intended to have the same price as directly purchasing a new S2 skin at 2,400 Diamonds. The Moolan Traveler has been selling well since its release.
• Prioritizing Gods over Aspects - This isn’t a realistic request for the dev team as a whole since development of God ports involves multiple departments to work on them, with Aspects coming to fruition due to it being something that they can accomplish within each patch cycle without hindering dev time for ports.
• More Map Mechanics - Work on new Conquest mechanics are being worked on in the background, but coupling these with some planned balance adjustment passes may be overbearing so they’d prefer to keep content releases steady rather than frontloading them.
• Player Numbers Outside of Steam Charts - The game is still making money and is continuing to grow with the usual seasonal rises and dips, so people shouldn’t be concerned for the game’s longevity as of recent.
• Quick Play vs. Other Players - Most of Quick Play’s appeal is to get players in-game as quickly as possible, so retaining this aspect is their priority for these queues. There is a conversation to be had about how much time players spend on the home screen since it is intended to motivate people for the game’s monetization, and they overall feel that the amount shown on this screen is necessary and they won’t be lowering the amount of stuff there for now.
• Quick Play Conquest - Is still on their to-do list, with the main bottleneck being bot AI where the bandwidth needed to improve having to be re-focused elsewhere.
• Minion Damage Nerfs - killgoon isn’t wholly responsible for these changes, and his stance is that the amount of damage minions dealt vs. Gods in S1 wasn’t healthy for the game and felt it was necessary to lower it, despite some people perceiving this as catering too heavily to new players. As a result, there has been more prevalence in tanky solo Gods since these changes.
• High Level Play & Balance - Historically, there have always been pain points for players at the highest level and while they do take into consideration feedback for balance from the top level of players, they tend to look at feedback from a border spectrum compared to other games.
• Use of AI in Global Emotes - There hasn’t been any change in the process of how these are done and they prefer to avoid questions that are in this vein since any responses they give never seem to be satisfactory enough.
• Development of Aspects - Generally, they review each kit and evaluate some of the things that a God could do and they’re able to accomplish in order to make gameplay changes that are interesting, with the scope and design capabilities evolving over time. Working within the necessary 2-week patch cycle feels more beneficial for the designers since it helps rein in the design scope and prevents it from becoming too bloated with features.
• Single Prot Items Being Weaker Than Dual Prots - They are aware that most items that give both prots are stronger than ones that only give one, and have tried to push for high single prot items but are still evaluating things following the plating/dampening pass.

https://www.smite2.com/news/open-beta-37-update-notes/

The next 3 ported Gods following the release of Bastet next Tuesday were revealed on today’s Titan Talk with the latest God Roadmap!

Link to YouTube VOD

Update 37 | June 16

• New God: Bastet, Goddess of Cats
  • All-New Model inspired by Community Feedback
    • More cat-like, less humanoid
  • One of the Top Priority Junglers on Player Surveys.
  • +1s:
    • Core Kit references older (Cat Summoning) SMITE 1 kit
    • Passive gives Strength as well
  • Aspect:
    • Big Cat.
• The Darkstar Saga Continues
  • Two New Travelers: Mulan and Ne Zha
• Race to Radiant
  • A new recurring event that recognizes the first players to reach Radiant for each God release
• Updated Atlas Aspect
  • Less annoying to play against, retains core essence of Aspect
• Balance Updates and More!
  • Reworks to Plating/Dampening Items, Blinking Abyss, and more

Update 38 | June 30

• New God: Chronos, Keeper of Time
  • Most Requested "Magical Carry" on Player Surveys
  • Updated Model
  • +1s:
    • Master Time: New Ways to Endlessly Stack and Become Powerful Over Time
  • Aspect:
    • Enjoy Your Time With Your Friends
• The Darkstar Saga Continues
  • New Travelers for Discordia and Bastet
• Base Stat and Penetration Pass
  • Addressing Base Stats and Penetration to improve itemization and game flow
• And More!

Update 39 | July 14

• New God: Xing Tian, The Relentless
  • #2 Most Requested Traditional "Support Guardian" on Player Surveys
  • +1s:
    • Too Early to Talk About
  • Aspect:
    • Spin to Win!
• The Darkstar Saga Ends
  • New Travelers for Geb and The Morrigan
  • Reward Traveler for Khepri
• Mage Bruiser, Echo Itemization Gap Pass
  • Creating alternate viable build paths for Mage Bruisers, Echo-centric builds
• And More!

Update 40 | July 28

• New God: Cu Chulainn, The Hound of Ulster
  • One of Top-Requested Traditional "Solo Warriors" on Player Surveys
  • +1s and Aspect:
    • Too Early to Talk About
• And More!

Q&A Section

• Chang’e’s Port - Has been talked about in the past, with her pet tech being her main holdup but they are making a lot of progress on this front in the backend. Doing so will make more characters that involve pet AI more feasible.
• Tyr & King Arthur - Is one that they would like to do, with him and Cu Chulainn being neck-to-neck as the top remaining Warriors outside of King Arthur. His port is more doable than King Arthur’s, being less involved with the movement system update in the background but still involves some work to get his juggles done right.
• Surtr & Minions - One of the more technically challenging ports left, majority of which is related to picking up and throwing minions and much less due to his ULT.
• Stance Switchers & Hel - Hel has been doable for a while with them having tech in for stance switchers since Artio and Ullr. Due to the amount of work involved with her FX and model, she is more of a choice they have to consider when they have the time available for her port.
• Map Art Updates - Are working on environment art in the background and have something they want to share for the near future. The current pace is realistically what they’re able to accomplish while maintaining the cycle of content and updates on a biweekly basis.
• Addressing Ranged Gods in Solo - In S1, there was a specific build path consisting of items such as Warlock’s Staff, Ethereal Staff, and Tablet of Destinies for bruiser Mages that is missing in S2. Beyond filling this niche, they have slowly sought to resolve ranged Gods by buffing traditional Warriors, and it’s more beneficial for teams to run tank solos in general at higher levels of play.
• STR Scaling on AA’s - The designers don’t think just lowering the STR scaling on AA’s will solve the issues players have. Base AA damage is significantly higher compared to S1 as a cognizant design decision made when they started working on the game, and it would be something they look at and evaluate if it needs changing when going through their base stat pass.
• Magical Assassins for Ports - Ao Kuang, He Bo, and Maman Brigitte all have around the same popularity but all have their own challenges while porting. Ao Kuang involves a second model for his ULT, Maman Brigitte has more technical challenges relating to her abilities, such as the zig-zag targeter that Serqet also has, and He Bo is probably the easiest of these 3 options but they’re taking into consideration the community feedback that players vastly prefer the animation set on his He Bro skin over his base model.
• Arachne w/ Aladdin’s Wall Run - The current designers prefer Arachne’s current kit and don’t really foresee fulfilling the community suggestion of her making use of Aladdin’s wall run.
• More Anti-Heal - There aren’t any plans to bring anti-heal back to the level it was prior to the healing update. Pele Aspect is more of a specific outlier that they are working to address rather than reverting changes and having healing in general back to its previous state.
• Lead Designers for Each Port - Caps is the lead for Bastet and Xing Tian, Austin is the lead for Chronos and Cu Chulainn, and their new designer is taking point for the next God following Cu Chulainn.
• Double Stacking Build - Hybrid scalers building both Transcendence and Book of Thoth is an issue the team is aware of and is looking into.
• Scope of Atlas Aspect Changes - Is still largely the same but with the most frustrating factors to play against reined in.
• Skadi & Pet Tech - Once more of their pet tech is built, Skadi would be one of the ports they’d prioritize due to her popularity and her kit being more easy to re-create.
• Considerations for Kuzenbo - Since Xing Tian was the next one up on their Support priority list, Kuzenbo wasn’t their next immediate priority but is still among one of the Guardians they’re considering for ports.
• Freya’s Kit - Due to the number of kits and reworks she’s had, the design team has historically been torn on the best way to go about her abilities and what to retain. Her banish is probably the one ability they’d want to keep 1:1 when porting her.
• Porting Limited Skins - Aren’t against bringing back Limited skins as they have done so in the past with Void Wyrm Kukulkan. T5 Skins are a little more time-consuming as they wouldn’t want to bring back the entire skin and all its forms but rather have to choose one form to bring back.
• Backfilling for AFK Players - Not realistically something that works well from what they’ve tested because of the need to fulfill the slot of another player whose God or build you may not know to make work. Filling this slot with a bot is almost always worse than just playing with a man down.

Weekly Roundup

• June 1st Titan Talk - YouTube VOD
• Open Beta 36 Patch Notes
• June 3rd Titan Talk - YouTube VOD

June 1st Titan Talk - Open Beta 36 Patch Notes w/ killgoon

First show of the week was the usual solo patch rundown with killgoon prior to it going live on Tuesday.

Q&A Section

• Old Prisms as Travelers - Plan is to bundle old direct purchasable Prisms into either Travelers or store bundles alongside an extra cosmetic in order to offer them at a more reasonable price package and update their card art to be in line with most other prisms.
• Ratatoskr’s Win Rate - The most recent change to his acorn was intended as a bug fix despite community sentiment that he needs buffs. Last killgoon checked, he was hovering closer to a 50% win rate than a 45% win rate, and this sometimes differs from how external websites slice the data.
• Importance of Mythology for SMITE’s Identity - A lot of the game’s design in regards to God kits and the idea of pantheons clashing is based around the power fantasy of mythological beings, so retaining this aspect is still very important for the game at its core.
• Junglers Starting w/ Tier 2’s - killgoon hadn’t seen much of this but generally speaking, the design intent is to always have people start with starter items.
• More Supporter Store Bundles - They have plans to test a name color bundle as a separate Steam DLC to see if more people are interested in them.
• Match Replays - They do have some tech in to be able to do match replays but not many players utilize these features so it’s not seen as an immediate priority.
• Shovel Knight Crossover - killgoon mentions that around a decade ago, they had very early conversations with the Shovel Knight developers of a potential crossover that obviously didn’t result in anything. (I am probably the only person in the world that would be stoked for this lol)
• Better FX on Item Procs -  For passive effects like Spirit Robe that seem somewhat invisible whenever they proc, killgoon agrees that some sort of visual FX would help communicate their effects to new players.
• First Person POV on a God - Not likely they’ll ever do something like this due to the amount of unique tech necessary to achieve this and probably wouldn’t feel good to play in a third person MOBA.
• Operation Health for S2 - While this worked well for Rainbow Six Siege, killgoon isn’t sure taking a 2-3 month break to solely address bugs and issues is the right path forward for the game when they can maintain the 2 week content cycle and have bug fixes with each patch. They have tried things similar to this such as Project Olympus in S1 and it doesn’t lead to as much community goodwill as you’d expect because of the time necessary to fix bugs and players getting disappointed if the one bug they’re most pressed about isn’t fixed.
• In-Game Messaging - Is something they’d like to do but don’t have the tech to do it right now due to how the game is built.
• Automatically Filling Assault Bench - Are mostly against this as they value the aspect of randomness for the God you receive or when rerolling. Something they still want to try is locking the God you rerolled away from for a few seconds as an option to go back to so another teammate doesn’t take it away.
• Re-Enabling Atlas Aspect - They have been playtesting with a revised version of the Aspect and are planning to have more news on it with the next update show.

June 3rd Titan Talk - Open Beta 36 Feedback + Q&A w/ killgoon

Following the update’s launch, killgoon flew solo again to go over feedback and other patch day concerns.

Hotfix Roundup

• Known Issues
  • Players that bought Horus’ Ascension Pass that should have gotten it as an Ultimate Founder have been refunded.
  • Horus 1 is consuming Hydra’s Lament proc but is not giving bonus damage from the item.
  • Healing numbers are appearing in the wrong place.
  • Rare instances where camera pitch can be locked while ulting as Horus or Rama.
• Wednesday Hotfixes
  • Fixed an issue with Horus gaining more movement speed than intended.
  • Fixed Audio issues with Charon.
  • Fixed Knockup Daily quest tracking.
  • Fixed an issue with Chef Vulcan on low settings.
• Thursday Hotfixes
  • Fixed an issue with auto skill not working correctly in quick play.
  • Fixed an issue with gold and experience floating text not appearing correctly.

Q&A Section

• Amount of Content in Patches - For a string of updates, they packed them with a lot of changes that led to the game being unstable, such as the new stats and items and the base stat pass. Since then, their updates have been smaller on the balance side but are really focused on tuning the biggest overperformers and underperformers in order to get the game in a better balance state before having bigger content patches again.
• Solo Lane Balance - As mentioned before, the solo lane is something they’re aware players have issues with and are looking to improve. Since the transition from S1, traditional warriors have lost a lot of sustain from itemization and it being built-in, and this is something they hope to potentially address within the next few patches.
• Paladins 2 - At the time Paladins released, there weren’t as many hero shooters on the market whereas nowadays it would be competing to be in the same space as Marvel Rivals and Overwatch. killgoon doesn’t expect a Paladins 2 to perform well enough in the hero shooter market to justify the work and money needed to put it into fruition.
• Multiple Language Dubs for S2 - Due to the number of character voices and skin voicelines in the game, just having an additional dub would be a massive money sink that likely wouldn’t guarantee a massive growth in player numbers from a given region. The Portuguese dub in S1 was invested in by the publishers for the game in LATAM and Brazil in order to grow the game more in that region, but stopped when that arrangement ended.
• Prominence of Bluestone - killgoon thinks that Bluestone isn’t that much better than some of the other starter options and that it’s prominent in the current meta because people think it’s too good, so to stop people from building it they may overnerf it so players can experiment with other options.
• Rotating Conquest Maps - Not something they favor much, with it being a big arc of work for the environmental art team and most of the intrigue of a MOBA being based around mastery of a map and all its intricacies.
• Roaming Jungle Boss - They experimented a bit with the previous Queen Naga that roamed around as a mini-boss, but it didn’t promote teams fighting around it as much as they wanted.
• Chang’e’s Port - The main blocker for her tech is working on her pet AI and having the jade rabbit going to the shop and back to her. They’re still having artistic discussions on her model and rig, and how much they want to update it.
• Bringing Back Side Camps - They feel that the side camps weren’t all too healthy for the game because of it being too much farm that distracted players from wanting to fight each other more. The side teleporters are something that could potentially return and foster more engagements around them.
• Lategame Objectives & Tanks - Objectives should help end games, but it is also necessary for people to die in the late game for one side to be able to end. They’re aware of the feedback that there are moments in games where tanks don’t feel as tanky as they should and are working to improve the flow of this as games progress. People needing to die in order to end games does not inherently mean that tanks have to be bad in order to resolve this, and ideally they’d like to be able to solve both of these as separate issues.

End of the Week Announcements

• Titan Talk for today, June 5th, has been cancelled. They’ll be back on Monday with the next God Roadmap and the showcase for Bastet on Wednesday.
• Horus Aspect is now live!
• Twitch Drop campaign for the Crimson Ferryman Charon recolor skin will start tomorrow and will run for 2 weeks.
• The SMITE Prime June Circuit kicks off this Saturday, June 6th! Details for the tournament are available on the website.

https://www.smite2.com/news/open-beta-36-update-notes/