I hate my own submission. I couldn't find a good song to put me in the mode to make a montage.. So here is a sloppy made clip show with music in the background.

The definition of diminishing returns is a lot of words to say that putting more effort into something does not always mean you get more rewards. At some point, you get diminished returns. This concept exists inside Smite, normally abbreviated as DR, which is mistaken for damage reduction by players from other games. Crowd Control, Protections, and Cooldown rates all have diminishing returns.

Crowd Control diminishing returns can be experienced during gameplay. Where it acts as a stacking buff with a max of two.  When a player gets hit by certain types of  Crowd Control they get a stack of DR. Gaining another stack of DR refreshes the timer. Each stack reduces the time the player is affected by Crowd Control by 20% allowing for a 40% reduction at max stacks. 

Diminishing returns for Protections and Cooldown are a lot simpler to explain. So simple that they can be represented as math formulas. 

For Protections: (100*Unmitigated damage)/(100+protections). 

For cooldown: 1-(100/(100+ cooldown rate)). 

You can forget that diminishing returns exist for protections and cooldowns as the game’s items are balanced in a way to avoid getting hurt by Diminishing Returns. Unless you are trying to min-max a build. Crow Control’s diminishing returns, however, are experienced in every match. Ever missed a Crowd control target? Might be because Diminishing Returns made the stun last for 60% of the time it was supposed to.

Nu Wa and spamming her fog and minions from under tower is so annoying to play against. The fog goes almost from tower to towerand nearly does enough to finish kill the wave minions. Then the clay soldiers get summoned and distracts the wave minions from going under tower. In the mean time the fog has come off cooldown to finish off the wave. The clay soldiers last long enough watch the wave die and run you down and bite your ankles. With cooldown the fog can be ready to be used almost immediately adtter disapating and the clay soldiers can be summoned after timing outt. She can do all this without going into harms way by staying under tower. If she does get into any danger her ult just removes her from the game for a bit and lets her travel a bit. Then disappear into the fog once more and back to spamming the fog and soldiers to clear the wave without leaving tower range.

I wanted to use the spectator to do my own close-up of the abilities but the current state of the spectator is not that good yet.

Theres a wall in the conquest map that prevents the teams from interacting. The wall lasts for a some time period, I was thinking five or ten minutes. The jungle camp's respawn timers are super reduced spawning every thirty seconds. While the wall is up teams farm up best as possible for when the wall comes down and its time to fight. Then its back to a normal conquest game. This could be expanded on by having a map thats broken into quadrants and have 4 teams.

Items have been created to add things to a god that their kit might be missing. Circe's Hexstone gives a God a dash. Screeching Gargoyle provides a God with a silence. Are there plans to add more items that give Gods more utility? I would love to see an item that gives God's a leap.

I forget which World tournament it was but it must have been one of the few with a Chinese team participating because it involves a strategy one of them used. No its not the Anubis pick, its a mid-game role swap. Its a strategy that did not end up working well but I love the idea. They pick Athena solo which was not unheard of for the time but was very off-meta. What made it more off-meta is that the Athena had the jungle starter. This puzzled everyone because going a starter item that was not intended for your role was unheard of. The game plays out as normal and at some point the jungler is spending more time in the solo lane and the Athena is clearing more camps. It was a very smooth transition that a lot of people did not notice until the casters pointed it out. The plan the whole game was to power farm the true jungle in solo lane and swap them at some point. In the end, the team lost but I loved this unconventional strategy and would to see another attempt at it.

I know this guy called Mujtabaa who likes to do the race to diamond. When a new god gets released he tries to get them to mastery ten as fast as possible. Eventually, Titan Forge put in-game rewards for being among the top ten of a race to diamond, which got me interested. Mutjaa has already gotten top ten twice and was going for a third. So I thought it would be fun to race them to diamond on the release. After two nine-hour grind sessions back to back with a half-hour break, I had achieved mastery ten. I was very sleep deprived and tired of playing the god but it was done. I went to bed excited to see if I had done it in the morning. I woke up and the results of the race were not posted. I took this to assume that there had not been ten people to get the god to diamond yet. Then the next day goes by and the winners are not announced. Then another and another. Surely three days was enough time for ten people with the god to diamond. Because the winners were not announced they must not have had ten winners guaranteeing that I finished within the top ten.

A week later the winners were announced and I was filled with anticipation to see my name. It was my first race attempt so I was not expecting to be high up there but surely top ten. First place, a name I didn't recognize. Second place, another name I didn't recognize. Third through eighth place the same thing. Then I read Mujtabaa's name. They got ninth. I failed my mission I could not sneak away a top-ten finish from them. OK, I couldn't sabotage Mujtabaa but surely I got tenth place and can get some in-game rewards as a consolation prize. Nope, I was not in the top ten. I did so much mind melting smite games all for it to result in nothing. I did not stop Mujtabaa from getting top ten and I didn't even finish top ten myself.

After a few hours of being disappointed another tweet by Smitegame comes out about the race and had something to do with me. Because Mutjabaa had already placed top ten in a previous race the list is being expanded to include eleventh place. Who was in eleventh place? It was me Despite not being in the top ten I was getting the rewards. I did not know how to feel about this. One hand I got some rewards, but I didn't really earn them and I did do my main goal.

A few months later a new god is released and the race is on again. This time I can not spend hours playing the game. I will have to go to work and sleep. If I couldn't do it the first time by taking only a thirty-minute break, what are my odds with a break for work and sleep? I had to get top ten this time, to actually earn the rewards I was given. I still ended up reaching diamond on the second day of the race. So I might have a chance but a slim one. A week after the race started the winners were posted to Twitter. I checked it not expecting to see my name, but I saw it. I had redeemed myself and gotten the top ten. Not only mine but also Mutjabaa's. The crazy guy did it again which I think makes them the best diamond racer in Smite. Its was funny to see the two extra names they announced later in the day because Mutjabaa and I had already gotten the rewards for a race.

Would be cool to see the race to diamond winner list keep expanding but smite1 has not gotten a lot of new god releases for the race to exist. Maybe the top ten could have expanded to the top twenty because of repeat winners. Hopefully, it can continue on in smite2 when it goes full access.