Hey guys, my name is StewBeef, and today we’re going to be explaining how Strength and Intelligence works in SMITE 2. But before we can technically do that we need to be able to understand some core features in the game that uses them.

Physical vs Magical Damage

Now what makes a physical or a magical character? 

If you previously have SMITE experience then this question is simple. It’s a character that does either physical or magical damage. 

So why do we have to talk about this?

Well to put it in simple terms, not shockingly, these elements still exist within SMITE 2. Every god that you play outputs one of these forms of damage either through their abilities or basic attacks. To make this even clearer: a god’s whole kit only deals a certain damage type in SMITE 2. Meaning from their basic attacks to even their abilities will only deal a single damage type. 

Okay, if that’s the case wouldn’t it be simple to determine if Strength or Intelligence should be built on that god?

While at first glance it does seem pretty straight forward with: Strength meaning Physical, or Intelligence meaning Magical; this isn’t technically the case. 

Scaling

What is scaling?

The exact definition for this question is: how a champion, item, or ability gets stronger or more effective as the match progresses. Now while it is true that most physical based characters scale off of strength or vise versa; sometimes there is more to be said about the situation.

Basic Attacks

So the best way to start getting a general idea of how scaling works with Strength and Intelligence is looking at how basic attacks work for every god (currently) in the game. Every god’s basic attacks scales like so: 100% Strength + 20% Intelligence. Meaning that if you build Strength items your basic attacks will include 100% of that value and 20% of your Intelligence. 

Now while this looks like it would be beneficial for you to only build Strength if you want to empower your basic attacks, please remember that not every character’s design will allow you to utilize your basic attacks to the fullest. 

Examples:

• Anhur

Anhur is a ranged physical damage god. He is primarily played in the ADC role, but can branch out in other areas such as MID and Jungle. His kit is strictly Strength based and scales off of such. His best utilization is building to empower his basic attacks (either with crit or penetration w/ attack speed) to allow him to build up his passive which shreds physical protections. 

• Sol

Sol is a ranged magical damage god. She is primarily played in the ADC or MID role giving her options as being a burst mage like character or building to empower her autos and utilize her passive. Her kit primarily scales off of Intelligence while her second ability does include additional scaling from Strength. She does very well with either a full Strength build that has crit or a complete Intelligence build that allows her to utilize her kit more effectively. It should be noted that her passive does give strength, intelligence, and attack speed. And at Max Heat she gains bonus basic attack damage. 

Answering The Age Ole’ Question

Now that we know some of the basics let’s get down to understanding: how Strength and Intelligence works in SMITE 2. As we already know, even from the examples, that a character can be either physical or magical and scale off of these two elements. We know that each character's basic attacks scale off of both in different ways. 

Is this all that there really is to it?

Well, no. Every character in the game has at least a passive, a form of basic attacks, and 4 different abilities. (There are possibilities that more characters will have more than 4 abilities.) And we for a fact know that this is called a kit. And like stated before a god’s kit can only apply damage as physical or magical depending on who you’re playing. 

If an ability states that it will scale off of Strength, then that ability will scale off of Strength. If an ability states that it will scale off of Intelligence, then that ability will scale off of Intelligence. 

Primarily this is how you will see an ability be displayed within the game as either or.

Notice how the two different abilities scale off as either or. And also it should be noticed that not every ability is alike in scaling. Every god has a different flat base number within the ability and additional scaling of some form. But a single scaling is also not always the case:

Like the example above, you can have abilities scale off of both Strength and Intelligence meaning that you can build both item types and it’ll work toward that ability. We call these type of characters and abilities: Hybrids. 

NOTE: Read the abilities of the characters you are playing; there are additional forms of scaling that we will not be going over at this time. (Protection Scaling)

And generally that is how Strength and Intelligence work; they are stats of an item that or ability or buff that scale toward the god’s kit you are playing. If you have any other questions then by all means reach out to me and I’ll be happy to help any newer players having a tougher time grasping certain mechanics in the game as best as I can! :D 

Additional Notes:

If you’re having issues finding the right items to build in your game then look in the shop and select either the “Strength” or “Intelligence” category! Also remember that you have to un-select one category and then select the other category to see them with the current iteration of the shop :)

Can I build both on a single item? Sure you can! There are also hybrid items in the game, though not very many! 

Biome: Corrupted (Ruined Portals Overhaul)

The idea is going to play off of a already in-game feature that is present in the game since it's addition in 1.16 while also back-boning off of a mod that exists within the community.

I would love to see a corrupted version of biomes added into the game that are caused by the ruined nether portals scattered across the world. Depending on which biome the ruined portal spawns it provides us with a more "horror-esque" tone for that biome. It would be esentially a small biome inside of a biome but have a much larger radius of curroption than the current ruined portal design.

Similar to how the ruined portals already are designed with the nether leaking into the overworld we could have it introduce new blocks into that ecosystem that are suited for said biome. Example for this is that the desert portals would naturally turn the surrounding sand into soul sand and etc.

I think a cool feature would be to make it so that if any biomes would naturally have trees the blocks instead would be turned into ash piles scattered around. And breaking these could give us ash items similar in design to gun powder and use them to recreate the ash block which can be smelted for other designs. Could also introduce the mechanic with the cauldron that if you take 9 ash and throw it into the water it'll turn into a single piece of gun powder as a node that gunpowder uses that within it's recipe. You could make it so that if you put wood in a normal furnace you get charcoal and if you put wood in a blast furnace you get ash due to the extreme heat.

Just an idea, not really sure how far it would go, but I think it would be interesting to give the ruin portals more of a reason of being around than what they already provide for us.