The extra gods being released quickly is really doing wonders for replayability - Poseidon and Thor in particular this patch are great additions, even if they only had very minor adjustments from their Smite 1 versions (not sorry Cupid, you're still boring). Balance doesn't feel massively different if i'm being honest, the same gods feel strong and weak as a few weeks ago.

My main issue this patch has been performance, i've been getting far more hitches and frame drops since patch day, so i'm now playing both on lower settings and with DLSS (which is a good addition in itself at least!)

An interesting idea that I don't believe i've seen yet is to suggest possible "+1s" for gods we haven't seen ported yet. For example Sobek's execute, Poseidon's 3 way tidal wave, Baron's throwable brew. Would be fun to see people's ideas for what ways we could spice up other gods that haven't released yet.

I'm also still a big fan of in game challenges as a genre, similar to the highest kills one that was ran. Could go similar vein with highest damage or similar, or narrow it down per god - "Share your best play with x new released god".

I haven't played enough with the three new gods to CA7 to accurately rank them but i'd probably have Poseidon in A and the other two in B off of first impressions.

This list is mostly based off of my playtime in casuals, ~ obsidian level ranked, and some competitive (open qualifications, swiss bracket, and last chance qualifications for the vegas lan)

The S tier characters are the one i've seen prioritised the most in picks and bans overall, generally either being banned or picked in the first 2 picks per side. Either the best god in their role, or just super prioritised due to current balance state or meta.

A tier gods are what generally will fill out the rest of most drafts, the gods with the best pickrate generally since they don't get banned too often. Gods like Anubis, Baron, Jing, Neith, and Odin have been top pick/ban recently but have seen a few nerfs since that, so i'd feel confident leaving them in A tier.

B tier gods are definitely pickable, and can be picked into good matchups (Nu Wa into immobile mid laners, Morrigan for combos with her ult, Ymir against teams with no jumps etc.), but are less prioritised than the gods above.

C tier gods i just have never seen prioritised nor have i ever really seen them perform well. Bellona could be argued into B tier probably, but i wouldnt be surprised to hear Thanatos has a 0% pick rate, and Ares i strongly believe to be utter garbage.

Strength vs Intelligence is close to physical vs magical power, but with some key differences and things to note:

• All auto attacks scale with 100% of your strength and 20% of your intelligence together.

• Strength build does not mean physical damage, Intelligence build does not mean magical damage. Damage type is determined by your god, not your build.

• Some abilities scale with Strength (Anhur), some with Intelligence (Hecate), and some with a mix of the two (Neith). Read your god's abilities to know which you should be building.

• Intelligence also sometimes is used for scaling on utility parts of a gods kit. For example the healing on Cernunnos 1 scales from intelligence, as does the mitigations on Amaterasu 2. It's not just about the damage!

Nu Wa is one of the two newest ported gods from Smite 1 in the most recent alpha patch. Her kit is very faithful to her previous kit, with the only change being to her passive. She's still best played in mid lane with a full Intelligence build, although you could probably attempt her as a crit ADC thanks to her new passive additions, which i'll run through now.

Nu Wa's new passive has two parts:

1. A root on auto attacks (a bit like Smite 1), but it's now on a 15 second cooldown (reduced by 1s for every auto attack hit), and not on a 5 auto attack build-up.

2. A buff for a few seconds after casting each ability:

   1. On casting her 1, she (and any allies that walk into the fog) gain additional movement speed.

   2. On casting her 2, she gains (a very significant amount of) flat penetration. (it's like 25 flat pen, its nutty)

   3. On casting her 3, she gains explosive AOE auto attacks, similar to Jing Wei 2 but a slightly larger area. The root part of her passive will root all enemies hit in the AOE if it is active.

   4. On casting her ult, her auto attacks gain extra range and projectile speed, very similarly to Hachiman 1.

All of these buffs can be active at the same time, meaning you can have auto attacks that travel further, faster, explode on hit, and root all enemies hit - hence the possibility of crit ADC Nu Wa.

Her ability combo remains the same as Smite 1:

• 2 (Clay Soldiers) - aim the targeter on the enemy god.

• Auto Attack - AA cancelling is still important, as it is on any other god. This also lets your minions have a chance to dash at the enemy, as well as maybe allowing you to root them.

• 3 (Shining Metal) - aim to hit both the enemy god and the soldiers you spawned, doing way too much damage and stunning them.

• Auto attack - more damage.

• If needed, 1 (Mysterious Fog) - pretty much just extra damage to confirm the kill, as well as giving you some movement speed to get out faster.

Your ult is not really part of a combo, just use it to finish off low hp enemies as usual - although you could also try using it to engage a fight for some initial damage and the AA buff.

For some typical Nu Wa builds:

Mid (Full intelligence): Conduit Gem (Archdruid's Gem) > Book of Thoth > Gem of Focus > The Cosmic Horror > Soul Reaver > Rod of Tahuti > Obsidian Shard. Alternate Items: Divine Ruin, Polynomicon, The World Stone.

ADC? (Crit): Death's Toll (Death's Embrace) > Devourer's Gauntlet > Musashi's Dual Swords > Wind Demon > Deathbringer > Hydra's Lament > Titan's Bane. Alternate Items: Hastened Fatalis, Death Metal, Bloodforge.

Hades is, as he was in Smite 1, a close ranged magical damage bruiser, designed primarily for solo lane but with some flex into the mid lane possible too. His kit is largely unchanged from Smite 1 - his passive, 1, and 2 are almost identical, with a very small tweak to the 3 and a pretty large buff to the ult.

His 3 heals teammates in a larger radius now, with healing projectiles seeking them out, similar to Baron Samedi's 2. This means your team no longer has to huddle tightly around you and the wave for the healing.

Hades ult got a huge buff comparatively though, and it now allows you to cast one other ability during the channel, regardless of the cooldown on that ability. This means that you can 1 -> 4 -> instantly 1 again, or any other combo. This unlocks a lot of cool new combos for Hades, like double healing, or dashing to keep enemies in the ult (the aoe moves with you when you dash).

Build wise, your average Hades build will look very similar to Smite 1. He scales solely off of Intelligence, so there's no reason to build any strength items at all. This means you'll be doing either a typical mage build (possibly with some lifesteal), or a typical intelligence bruiser build. The autobuilds are actually decent for these, but if you want another suggestion:

• Full Damage: Conduit Gem (Archmage's Gem) > Book of Thoth > Blood-Bound Book > The Cosmic Horror > Polynomicon > Rod of Tahuti, Typhon's Fang. Alternative items: Staff of Myrddin, Soul Reaver, Soul Gem, Obsidian Shard, Gem of Focus.

• Intelligence Bruiser: Conduit Gem (Archmage's Gem) > Book of Thoth > Breastplate of Valor > Helm of Darkness > The Cosmic Horror > Genji's Guard > Stone of Binding. Alternative items: Helm of Radiance, Triton's Conch, Polynomicon, Leviathan's Hide.

With either build, your relic options are pretty flexible, but I would suggest either Sundering Arc or Blink Rune. Sunder allows you more pressure in lane by allowing easier buff invades, and objective secure lategame, whereas Blink allows you more engage possibility in fights, and a bit more safety.

Typical ability combo:

• 1 (Death from Below) - Dash (technically a leap, sue me) onto your target god, closing the gap and putting you in melee range.

• Auto attack - AA cancelling is super important on 99% of the gods in Smite, and Hades is no different, especially with Polynomicon. If you are unfamiliar with the term please go look it up on youtube and practice it in your next games.

• 2 (Shroud of Darkness) - Either your dash or the auto attack will have applied Blight on the enemy, meaning this ability will now fear the enemy away from you, making them unable to damage you or use abilities (or Blink) to escape.

• Auto attack again

• 3 (Devour Souls) - This is the main damage of the combo, and will heal you (and anyone around you).

• Auto attack again

• If still needed: 4 (Pillar of Agony) - this sucks them in, keeping them from running away from you, and does a lot of damage. You are also much tankier during this ability so they are unlikely to be able to turn around and kill you.

• If somehow still needed: either 1 or 3 again. Channeling your ult allows you to immediately use one of these again even though you just used them. If the enemy has used Blink or their movement to get out of your ult, 1 on them again. Otherwise use the 3 for some extra damage and healing.

• They are dead.

Some random extra tips:

• Hades 3 also does damage around any targets hit (that have Blight applied to them), so taking a fight inside an enemy minion wave is a big advantage from you, as you can apply lots of damage to any enemies standing inside the wave.

• You can use the ult solely to refresh the cooldown on your jump, allowing you to either chase or run away more effectively.

• Already mentioned this, but really focus on auto attack cancelling! It's important for most gods in the game, so better to get a handle on it now than later.

It's definitely a step in the right direction, a lot of the balance changes were ones I fully expected (Susano Bacchus Jing Sunder nerfs). Map looks noticeably better visually, and map objectives feel more like objectives and less like tissue paper now.

Both the new gods are fairly fun, although Intelligence Amaterasu is easily the most broken god of the alpha so far and should definitely have been nerfed before release (turns out like 4 seconds of 80% mitigation isn't a great idea for a character building full damage!)

The patch also addressed some of the most annoying bugs in the previous alpha patch, like the settings resetting and post lobby XP/worshipper bars disappearing to opposite sides of the planet. It does seem to have introduced a fair set of new bugs (AOE neith ults??), which hopefully we won't have to wait another 3 weeks to see a fix for!

Elite ranked queue sounds like a good idea, but also seems to not be working as intended, so i'll reserve my judgement there.

Absolutely 0 bias on this pick (we got crushed in 20 minutes after this)