Give Roles Identity: OB38 Discourse
I watched the recent videos by Deathwalker and Weak3n on the state of Smite after the recent patch.
My opinion: items are a way to give identity to roles and HiRez should lean into this.
Mages should do high burst damage to squishies and splash damage: keep strong flat pen and burst options and limit percent pen options. Same for junglers.
Solo laners should have access to strong protections and some damage but not pen: make single prot items good so they can be tanky early. Tanks shouldnt have to rely on percent protection items to be tanky: remove those.
Support should have access to active items to help the team and also sustain and prots: hexstone, upgraded shell, heroism are all great items. Let supports upgrade starter at level 15 again.
Hunters should be able to kill tanks over time and do less to squishies: lean into percent pen options for them but limit flat pen.
Finally, positioning and mobility was in a good place in Smite 1 and some of the overreaction to the new flat pen items is actually a problem with mobility. The midlaner should oneshot the enemy backliner if they can reach them, but it should be harder for that to happen. Remove combat blink so that damage dealing roles have less mobility and positioning and zoning actually matter.
In summary: Keep strong flat pen options, let tanks be tanky, let hunters kill tanks, make positioning and teamplay matter again.
Thoughts?