Developer Update - Bastet

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Developer Update - Bastet

By: TitanAjax

SMITE Season 7 reveals continue on with another God Ability Update Preview: Bastet! The Egyptian goddess of cats has had overwhelming community support, and now it’s time to give her the love she deserves. In 7.1 Bastet will wield an entirely new ultimate that utilizes her cats in an all new way! This combines with overhauling her ability 3 to summon a single cat and provide more utility for Bastet on a lower cooldown.

This might feel really redundant if you’ve read the recent Odin and Freya posts, but It never hurts to restate our methodology and goals. Here is the plan for God Ability Updates that we have been following recently:

We will not rework a god’s abilities unless all four of the following are met:

Popularity is significantly low (bottom 10 gods or significantly dropped below previous data for the god).
Balance problems exist (very high win-rate, very low win-rate, extreme difference between skill levels, extreme difference between community perception and actual stats).
Community discussions and requests are asking for a change to occur with significant frequency or magnitude (big reddit posts, constant Twitter discussions in multiple circles).
Kit exhibits clear ways to improve clarity, theming, or frustration issues.

Once we identify a god meets these criteria, we will begin designing the reworked abilities. We keep the following constraints in mind:

We have no plans to rework a god’s complete kit in the foreseeable future. Only certain abilities will be addressed in a rework. Usually around two abilities are adjusted.
Try our absolute best to preserve a god’s core play style. This refers to the kit as a whole, and less to specific abilities.
Try not to remove core unique features from the kit that are only present in the game on this god. Always try to keep their unique features, usually by preserving specific abilities.
Be specific about our goals for gameplay and thematic improvements, and focus rework design toward those goals.

DOES BASTET MEET THE CRITERIA?

She does! Here’s some data looking at each criteria, one-by-one.

Popularity

Bastet has been pretty consistent in her mid-to-low popularity, as can be seen in her full history chart later in the blog.

55th most popular goddess in Arena, Clash, Joust, Siege
74th most popular goddess in Conquest
69th most popular goddess in Ranked Conquest

Bastet isn’t dead last, but she’s not exactly popular either. She also has been at nearly the same popularity since 2015!
This signals pretty clearly that the player base needs something more exciting to be changed before we see any significant shifts in her metrics. Even some high profile SPL performances haven’t caused much movement.

Balance Problems

Just like Odin, Bastet’s balance problem is a perception vs. reality issue.

Currently in the Heimdallr Update, her win-rates are:

17th most winning goddess in Arena, Clash, Joust, Siege
22nd most winning goddess in Conquest
31st most winning goddess in Ranked Conquest

These numbers are quite solid. She’s not amazing but she’s certainly not weak either. What is strange is that even though she is putting up pretty good numbers, SMITE players consistently rate her nearly dead last on tier lists and in discussions, and her pick/ban rate is low to match.

Community Discussion

This has been a strong motivator for the design team on both reworks in 7.1. We can never really hear from everyone out there in the SMITE community, but with The Olympians, an international team of community managers, and a dev team that is always participating in community discussions, we get a pretty good feel for it. Bastet has had constant negative discussions around her kit design.

Clear Paths to Improve

Bastet’s kit has a clear issue: it’s pretty much only damage. It is not surprising to hear that players are not excited or interested in playing a kit that doesn’t do much beyond leaping in, dumping your kit, then leaping out.

As we evaluate our goals in the next section, you’ll see how this path could conflict with her core playstyle. We want Bastet to still be able to dive in and kill gods, but there is room to give her more exciting gameplay and more utility, without taking away that identity.

BASTET'S HISTORY

This next chart shows Bastet’s entire history, across all game modes and skill levels. Data starts at the end of 2012! This is a good way to visualize how the goddess has changed over the years. These stats support the evaluations above.

BLUE line is her match count shown as a percentage of total matches

This makes it immune to changes in total player count
It’s expected for gods to gradually drop down as more new gods are introduced
Notice how this has been low, with slight fluctiations for almost FOUR YEARS

ORANGE is win-rate

This is shown without any adjustments for player skill or population shifts
Her win-rate is actually quite consistent, and hovers slightly over 50% for the last 4 years. Bastet’s actual balance performance is not the issue though; it’s players not valuing her even though she has potential to perform.
This clearly contrasts a case like Freya, where her win-rate graph moved up and down drastically

GREEN is ban-rate

This is also shown as a percentage of total bans
Bastet hasn’t had any significant number of bans since 2015, showing just how far she is from affecting the Conquest metagame.

SMITE – Bastet History Graph Link

WHAT ARE THE CONSTRAINTS/GOALS FOR BASTET’S REWORK?

Target the Points of Rework

Bastet’s rework targeted damage skills that had little redeeming quality. Her passive was simply bonus damage, something she does not need more of, so that will be targeted. Her 3 and 4 felt like the best places to add more to her kit without conflicting with other goals.

Preserve Core playstyle

Bastet is loved by her players for being a high damage, high aggression, early game jungler. However, we do feel that she does those things to an extreme level that limits her kit from having more features, and causes snowbally or frustrating gameplay.
We will not be changing her Pounce or Razor Whip, as they best fit that playstyle. This combo just felt so iconically Bastet that it could not be changed. It fits her theme and playstyle equally well, and it feels great to use on the battleground.
Bastet’s kit will have some damage shifted away for more utility, and some of her early game strength shifted to more mid-to-late game impact.
She will continue to summon pets, as we will discuss next.

Preserve Core Features

Cats. They are loving pets, terrible movies, or fierce wild beasts depending on the context. Bastet is the goddess of them and they’re here to stay.

Although Cats are her unique features, they also were a common complaint among players. In order to remedy this we set the goal of keeping the cats, but finding more interesting ways to use them instead of relying on their current behaviors.

Have Clear Goals

Preserve the highly aggressive in and out assassin, who can also summon pets
Improve his perception vs reality issues, and get her balance point to more closely match player evaluation.
Add ways for Bastet to make a meaningful impact on late game team fights, outside of simply picking off an enemy.
Feature the cats more often and in multiple types of gameplay.
Fix some issues on Bastet that just feel clunky and unintended.

THE REWORK

With all of our evaluation, stats, constraints, and goals clearly defined we can now describe the changes to Bastet’s kit. Here are Bastet’s full kit patch notes summarized:

PASSIVE – Tracking Scent

Complete rework
Bastet will mark enemy gods she damages, causing them to leave a scent trail behind them. This trail will show Bastet where they are moving, while also giving her a movement speed buff while she is inside the path.

Ability 1 - Pounce

Unchanged design
May or may not have minor balance tweaks as we fine tune the new kit

Ability 2 - Razor Whip

Unchanged design
May or may not have minor balance tweaks as we fine tune the new kit
This ability has had its hit area and FX adjusted to be more accurate. Players will see more clear FX indicating the hit area, the hit will more closely match the animation timing, and the hit will only affect enemies in that area at that time.

Ability 3 - Ensnaring Claw

Complete rework
Line Targeter
Bastet calls a single Cat pet that charges forward. When this pet his an enemy god, they are rooted and take damage.
After the pet hits a god, or when it finishes charges its complete distance, it continues to persist on the battleground and behave as a usual Bastet Cat. It will attack and slow the nearest enemy and can be killed by enemies.
Cats now are only killed by a specific number of basic attack now instead of having traditional HP.

Ability 4 - Guardians of Bast

Complete Rework
Self Stim
Bastet summons two cat guardians, one on each side of her. These mystical beasts empower all of Bastet’s abilities for an extended duration. They attack with her as she uses her abilities, increasing their area of effect and dealing additional damage.
The Cats summoned to her sides cannot be attacked and do not block players, minions, or projectiles.
Ability 1 gains a much larger 3 circle pounce area
Ability 2 gains a wider overlapping 3 cone area
Ability 3 becomes 3 line shots, firing out 3 cats on each use of the ability
The Bonus Damage dealt by the additional areas increases as you rank this ability (these additional cats can still be attacked as described for ability 3).

EXPECTED EFFECTS

Bastet is seeing some big changes with three abilities being completely reworked. The preservation of her cat pets will make that feel less intense than it sounds, though, as Bastet players will be used to using that type of effect. Also, Bastet will still be able to Pounce in and out on players, hitting them with Razor Whip.

Having better CC and a pet on normal ability cooldown will give Bastet a lot more options when jungling, ganking, setting up, or cleaning up fights. Ensnaring Claw can be dropped into her combo, or fired before pouncing to confirm hits or bait out enemy movement abilities.

She will be doing less damage all of the time without her old passive triggers, but her Ultimate will be what makes up for that. Summoning the Guardians of Bast will be Bastet’s key damage amplification. The added area from the ability, as well as gaining a root in her kit, are the key changes that will let her better contribute to late game team fights. That root could even root 3 different targets when combined with her Ultimate!

This set of changes should make Bastet clearly feel more impactful and more consistent, and rely less on hyper carrying the early game. Bastet is performing pretty well, so we hope to keep her balance point at consistent level but with more people excited to try her out. Cats are amazing creatures and there is no reason why they shouldn’t be popular in SMITE!

Source: https://www.smitegame.com/news/developer-update-bastet/

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Mythical (400)
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Here's an example of her new skill #3:

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Mythical (400)
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I'm gonna say I think I like these changes too. I particularly like the adjustment to the 3. I'm uncertain of the 4, but seems like it should be functional.

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Mythical (400)
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Bran, the icon of her ult is from Odin's .

And I have to say that from these notes I'm pretty sad about the rework. I like how her ult works atm, being able to bodyblock someone with her 3 cats + yourself. Also, her new passive will reduce her dmg output (if compared to her current passive).

Her new 3 looks cool, tho.

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Memorable (13)
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Hey Vini, the format of this was the same as the one for Odin, so I copied/pasted and then overwrote...missed that one. Thanks for catching it.

I do understand about trapping enemies with the cats, and I loved that too, but I honestly think this is a better option for her. People could easily get out of the cats with a leap, and with a couple of focused abilities, could kill them. This changes things significantly for her. Where she had very little teamfight function before (which was fine, she's an assassin and was always looking to isolate an enemy), she now has broader potential. With much larger AOEs for her abilities when she uses her ult, she can hit multiple enemies in a teamfight.

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Mythical (400)
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Late to this but after cooling down from this reveal, I must say that, depending on how the ult actually words (cuz the wording is somewhat "open" and not really specific) will either be top tier again (Wouldn't be the first time since after her first rework she skyrocketed to S tier) or she'll still be played but a niche player base. I'm tending more to the 2nd option, as I feel that Most people will actually consider the ult "useless" depending on its duration.

Also my eyes are burning because the new icons completely don't follow the same color palet as the other 3 abilities (and the passive barely follows that color palet)

Signature by Stuke99, check out his Website Portfolio and his SmiteFire Profile!

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Distinguished (56)
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