Balancing Carries and Snowballing Discussion

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Disclaimer: Captain! Enormous wall of text headed our way!

I think a big problem in Smite is the ability for certain gods, like Agni, Neith, or Chang'e to completely dominate a game once they're fed.

How/Why? Well, think of what a carry is. A carry is sustained by his team, and then the team is sustained by the carry, or at least in theory.

Let's compare that to League of Legends. Yes, it's relevant. There's a champion named Kog'Maw, who (I think) used to be the only hyper carry. There used to be/still are legitimate strategies of "protect the Kog'Maw," because a farmed and ready Kog'Maw is a nigh-unstoppable, utter nightmare. Bio-Arcane Barrage FTW.

Please take note of the nigh. Kog'Maw is still a carry, or a hunter. He's still squishy, he still has all the traditional hunter weaknesses and his damage, for the most part, is still the old-fashioned pew pew pew sustained damage. Only it's more like BOOM BOOM BOOM, in his case.

In SMITE, however, what a fed (almost) anyone can do is just ridiculous. This partly due to how the game mechanics work, partly due to the all-encompassing nature of
'carries', and partly due to the power gap between the fed and the non-fed.

There are three horns to this monster:

1. The burst damage meta.

2. The power gap between the fed and the non-fed.

This is a lot of ground to cover, and this post will ramble for quite a while.

1. This is perhaps the most difficult to explain. In this game, it is far too easy and far too effective to 100-0 someone compared to League. So much so that it is considered the meta to have a burst-type mage in mid lane.

Why burst mage over, say, carry? Because all the sustained damage in the world doesn't matter when you can be killed in two seconds.

I'm not complaining that such damage exists - I'm complaining about how freaking easy it is to do. Dueling doesn't really exist now. The only times you'll see dueling is either lane harassment, or two physical carries fighting. There is no point in dueling when He Bo can juggle and kill you in one combo. Or Agni can stun you and spam . Or when Poseidon can just one-shot you with his kraken. In those cases, unless you happen to be the burst-y type yourself, you usually just run.

Please note that my chosen examples were all mages with AoE attacks. I understand if or or such can instagib a god. My problem is when the same principle is applied to area attacks.

These AoE burst mages don't sacrifice the scope of their attacks for damage. They get CC to set up their attacks, their wide area effects cannot be dodged, and the fact that they can share this damage among multiple opponents makes sustained damage dealers simply outclassed.

In League, there are very few champions who can 100-0 to someone near their level (****ing Veigar), and all of them are single-target (I think. There are a lot of champions, and I might have missed one). When you pick a burst damage mage over a sustained damage mage, you're making a clear trade-off. Not so in SMITE.

This leaves less room for alternative team compositions since burst is Debeste, and I think that's pretty sad.

The second part of my argument concerns what a fed god can do, what the non-fed can do.

The biggest problem, in my eyes, is that fed gods get access to too much power.

Almost all ability scalings in this game turn you into a monster late-game. Or when you're fed. Pretty much nothing falls off or becomes less effective.

This creates a snowballing effect. If fed enemies just get stronger with no limit or clear counter, you'll lose. I feel that the power difference in a few levels is far more pronounced in Smite than in League.

Also, due to the way items in this game work, fed enemies can just keep on snowballing.

This isn't League, where one kill gets you a level and a small stat increase from a Longsword. In Smite, finishing an item has enormous effects, and unlike LoL, there are items that give such an enormous advantage that fighting back is extremely unlikely. The linear item path doesn't help.

Which just makes the power gap wider, and wider, creating the snowball effect.

What can the non-fed do? This isn't League, with the forced equilibrium of pushing acting as a restraining bolt against completely losing the lane (at least early). That's why first blood is so insanely important.

Together, these two points make certain gods a bit too powerful from a kill or two. The combination of 100-0-ing someone while maintaining a farm advantage is too strong.

I think there could be a few solutions.

1. Tone back certain abilities way, way down. Poseidon's ultimate already has a 2 second stun and doesn't need insane damage to go with it. Reduce the contributions on it a bit. Same for other abilities, like . If burst is too effective, I think nerfing burst damage would be better then buffing everything else.

2. Tone down certain items. would be less insane if it was changed to 75%, maybe buff it to once every 2 seconds as compensation. I'd prefer it if not every god could 100-0 people.

3. Reduce the effectiveness of certain items, like . They should be less universally useful. Maybe change it to a flat amount of penetration per hit, so stacking defense would actually be effective. We need less "universal" items.

4. Reduce the effectiveness of burst damage. Maybe give gods more health across the board. Maybe something. I'm not sure about this part.

What say you?

Renowned (112)
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The probleme with a less burst meta would mean that a lot of gods would get quiet useless. Hebo survive's with his burst and so does kali, nezha, thanatos, anubis, zhong kui (if the enemy isn't dead/disengaged before ult ends you dead) just to name a few.

Also the substained damage meta works in lol because of it's map which is larger and the champs take longer to get to save tower range.

Against a fed enemy it becomes a challenge to either work to gether, farm up and take him out or just out play him.

I will just get the elephant out of the room. What meta would be better? Which one do you prefer? I ask this because neither is neccesarly bad. I don't think one is better then the other. I like smite's systeam better because i feel more powerfull with 2 kills but you are now where near unstopable. Early the point of kills are more about shutting down your enemy instead of getting kills.

never forget dawngate and never forgive EA. Freia will hunt them for eternity.

Distinguished (54)
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One meta allows more diversity. The other is forced around burst. I know what I prefer.

Renowned (112)
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This isn't LoL.

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