Since the dawning of Aeon of Strife, MOBA's have always been puzzling over the issue of balance. At any given time, there are always top tier and bottom tier characters (or in the case of a good MOBA, Gods ;)). Inevitably, this leads to arguments on every forum, every facebook page and patch notes reveal, every live commentary, as to which god's are over- and under-powered. All players have their own opinion on what makes a given God strong, and because most players (I'm assuming) are humans, we carry biases.
For starters, most MOBA players will have a warped view of Gods they are personally very good at, or have invested a large amount of time in. For myself, Ymir has always been the individual I know I can't evaluate objectively. He has been a solid go to God for me since the beginning, and when someone implies that maybe Ymir's stun shouldn't have been buffed to do damage, or his base health coupled with his passive give him too high of a damage output early game, the first arguments that spring to mind are subjective, and therefore poor. However, while my reaction is not a valid argument, there IS an issue with both of these claims against Ymir, and this leads to my second point: Listing a Kit proves nothing about a God.
Often, you'll see a rage thread or a comment in the lobby after a game that a God is overpowered. When someone asks why, the aggressor will immediately list off everything WE ALREADY KNOW about the God. This is not a valid argument. Kits are designed to act as catalysts towards a specific type of game-play with a given god: Loki is designed to move in undetected, smoke an enemy carry before anyone can react, and get out, etc. The kits provided just assist these Gods in doing what they are supposed to do, and listing all of their abilities is like telling me a sniper rifle is more destructive than a Light Machine Gun because it has longer range. Of course it has longer range, we know that already. But there is no point of comparison drawn, because an LMG isn't designed to compete with a sniper rifle in range. They have two different functions. Likewise, saying Anubis is overpowered because he does more damage than Bacchus is ridiculous (I know there are Anubis lovers out there, but at the end of day on the competitive scene Anubis is much less viable than Bacchus).
If you believe a God is overpowered, look at the way they interact with the game. This refers to a concept called intentional imbalance that many multi-player games have to incorporate to keep the game entertaining. I'll give a brief summary here, but there is a short video on Penny Arcade by Extra Credit called 'Perfect Imbalance' that describes it about as well as I've ever seen, I'll leave a link at the bottom. Basically, if a game were actually balanced, where every God was equally viable in every given situation, you would no longer have a MOBA, you'd have chess. Neither player has an advantage of inherent ability in their God, and so action and reaction become irrelevant compared to strategy. While this is fine for games like chess, it does mean that there is actually a finite (or limited) number of possible moves in the entire game, and one could memorize all of them and use the optimal few to win. Obviously, MOBA's and MMO's don't function this way.
This concept is why Kit-listing is an useless argumentative tool. In a game like a MOBA, with intentional imbalance, certain gods or strategies are purposely implemented to counter other gods and strategies. If anyone remembers, Ymir/Anubis used to be an awesome lane because of the double stun. However, players quickly learned that if they went aggressive on Anubis before Ymir could set up a kill, they effectively destroyed the lane. Anubis/Ymir had a huge advantage, but what they gave up was a damage dealer that had any survivability. This is how it usually works. Any time a God or strategy is considered overpowered, give it some time. Experiment. See what other people do. Most of the time, with the infinite number of possible scenarios in Smite, someone will figure out how to counter it. That's how MOBA's work.
At a base level, if a God is too strong, there's probably a reason for it, but their abilities themselves are almost never the issue, and if they are, to make your point you have to show us why.
Penny Arcade- Extra Credit 'Perfect Imbalance': http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/perfect-imbalance
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