Baba Yaga: A Closer Look

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Baba Yaga: A Closer Look

By: TitanAjax

WHO IS BABA YAGA?

In Slavic folklore there is a witch who dwells deep in the woods. Travelers, heroes, or even royalty would seek her out for help, but that help would often come at a price, or not at all. Baba Yaga is cruel and unpredictable, as is her magic.

OUR VISION

Baba Yaga arrives in SMITE due to an overwhelming amount of community support. She is one of the most requested characters and we are happy to finally make this eerie goddess a reality.

We keep the god release schedule exciting through a combination of community requested gods and gods that the dev team strongly believes in. This results in many different gods being labeled as community requested, but we want to make sure that Baba Yaga gets the credit she deserves. This character had such overwhelming community support that we are now launching a character that we might have overlooked entirely if it weren’t for your voices!

Baba Yaga has a wide range of myths about her from a large window of historical eras. She has many unique powers and influences throughout these tales. In one such story she tasks a young woman with cruel chores in exchange for a skull lantern. Upon receiving the lantern it burns her entirely oppressive family away, granting her freedom. She is said to have control over the day, night, and the sun itself. She is also sometimes more of a protector or matron of nature of certain families.

BABA YAGA

Theme – Witchcraft. Her magic results from her mortar and pestle, where she mashes together strange ingredients into potions or spells with a wide array of effects.
Visuals – Visuals – An old and scary woman who rides around in a mortar and pestle, usually pictured along with her cabin that walks on chicken legs.
Personality – Chaotic Neutral. She can help, she can hurt, sometimes both, or neither. This personality leads to a combination of creepy and wacky in SMITE.
Perspective – Baba Yaga is wildly unpredictable and unreliable, and many gods aren’t even aware of her existence is real or not. Gods tend to keep their distance from her.

In the SMITE storyline, Baba Yaga will be sought out by Mulan for answers about the Jade Corruption. Along the way Mulan will meet Persephone. Mulan has little understanding of what Persephone has done, but the Queen of the Underworld seems genuinely willing to help so Mulan agrees to let her travel with her.

They seek out Baba Yaga for answers and get to experience her torment personally. Dark things are coming to SMITE and who better to foretell them than Baba Yaga?

BABA YAGA'S VISUALS

We had strong starting goals for Baba Yaga so even the early iterations don’t look drastically different from each other.

Start with a creepy old witch, design a mortar for her to ride, and design a pestle that doubles as a mage staff. Of course, she had to be paired with a walking cottage as well.

The concept artist did a great amount of research into getting her clothing options and coloring right to fit her culture. Her details are lovingly crafted to portray her witchcraft trinkets and her Slavic origins.

Her Mortar and Pestle were designed to give a SMITE level of power to items that are usually described in rather simple terms. The Mortar feels like a powerful ancient relic, with sources of power shown through blue emissives. Her pestle gradually works its way into a gnarled staff as a reference to her association with nature.

Baba Yaga also has a sidekick, her Witch’s Cabin. We wanted the cabin to have a personality of its own, which is mostly given through animation. The cabin will be able to walk around, settle comfortably into place, and even become startled by combat. It really has a life of its own.

Baba Yaga is a Mage, focusing on ranged magical damage. She is intended to be playable in the Mid Lane mostly, and excels at throwing out ranged poke damage. She is very light on crowd control, and instead focuses on zoning out enemies through the threats of damage. In usual Baba Yaga fashion, her damage comes at a chaotic price.

Kit Unique Features:

Her kit features “controlled randomness” in a way no other SMITE god has
Ability 1 changes shape and secondary effect on each fire of the ability.
- The Baba Yaga player will always know what shape and effect will be fired next, visible in her passive meter
Ability 2 causes Baba to brew a potion with a random combination of ingredients that will add bonus damage or secondary effects to this attack
- Baba can also store a potion in her consumable slot to be used later
A unique take on a leap ability
A passive that involves her Cabin acting as its own character, pathing around the map
The ability to stack items faster than other gods
An ability where she gets in her cabin and controls it

We are all super excited for Baba Yaga to hit the battleground. She brings a personality that is unlike any other character in the game. Enemy gods will be fleeing from her unsettling voice, and terrifying magic.

Source: https://www.smitegame.com/news/baba-yaga-a-closer-look/

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Mythical (400)
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Mythical (400)
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Can Bakasura eat the cabin? I'll be disappointed if not.

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Prominent (46)
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Probably not. He can't eat any other pets. Wanna see what she can do tomorrow.

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She should get a John Wick skin

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wrote:

She should get a John Wick skin

Whoever did the Russian in John Wick needed to be fired. It's pretty bad and kind of laughable. Whoever worked on the Russian somehow mixed up Babayka (which it should have been) with Baba Yaga and just rolled with it. Does Keanu Reeves look like an elderly Russian woman to anyone?