Magical Item Changes in Season 7

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Magical Item Changes in Season 7

By: TitanAjax

A new SMITE Season always brings major changes to items. These changes are intended to bring as many items into viability as possible. Variety in items can also lead to better variety in gods. Since items can affect any god, their changes are especially exciting and far-reaching.

We know people are excited to see 7.1 item changes like Gladiator Shield sustain nerfs, Support Aura item buffs, and Hunter Crit items buffs. In addition to item changes there are also more new items and item reworks. Players have eagerly awaited the Stone of Fal rework, a new Mage ADC lifesteal item, a new Physical Power healing bonus item, and more exciting things we have planned for Season 7!

Many items will be changing in Season 7 SMITE, but we are doing a specific pass on Magical Power and Magical Penetration items, and we want to take this opportunity to go into more detail on the reasoning behind these changes and the improvements they will bring to SMITE.

The two items the Magical changes revolve around are:

Mages that can easily utilize this item are almost always more viable than ones that cannot. This item provides flat penetration in the early-game causing large power spikes.

This item has become the new mandatory Mage item. Getting this item immediately is the only way for Mages to do effective damage to tanks, and there is little to no downside to getting it.

These items create problems for Mages as well as other classes. Players have felt the effects of these items in SMITE for years. Some players have gotten used to it but many have continued to feel an imbalance in the Magical damage they take. We feel strongly that it is time to shift things into a healthier direction.

Mages

Mages feel forced to buy Obsidian Shard to be effective
Early game flat penetration creates a wide variance in damage between Mages, from player to player or god to god

Non-Mages

Easy access to early game flat penetration allows Guardians to deal too high damage. SMITE prides itself on allowing tanks to flex into bruiser builds, but current build paths have moved too far in this direction.
Mages can buy a single item at the right time and then can ignore Guardians or Warriors builds and still output consistent damage to them.

To solve these issues we follow a similar methodology to our Conquest and God Ability Updates: Identify problems and set clear goals.

Here are the points we decided on when moving forward with this set of changes, and the actions we will be taking to meet those goals.

Percent Penetration Goal: Make receiving Magical damage feel less volatile, more predictable, and easier to understand.

Actions: Require Mages to purchase multiple items to reach the same amount of Percent Penetration.

Flat Penetration Goal: Decrease early game guardian damage.

Flat Penetration Goal: Make more Mages viable and more Mage build paths viable.

Actions: Decrease the amount of early Flat Penetration that is accessible to Mages and Guardians, compensate with more power on Mage items.

Magical Power Goal: Introduce more meaningful trade-offs in itemization.

Actions: Adjust item stats to focus on power or penetration, not both.

SPECIFIC ITEM CHANGES

Let’s look deeper into the actual balance changes and redesigns we will be doing to work toward these goals.

Percent Penetration Changes

The plan here is to take the Percent Penetration provided by Obsidian Shard and split it across a group of items, while introducing a hard stat cap for Percent Magical Penetration of 40%. This will require Mages to buy at least 2 items from this new set of Percent Penetration items in order to reach the cap and deal more damage to tanks. However, we hope that in this new system that Mages will not feel pressured to hit the 40% in every game. With more Percent Penetration and high power options they can build more to their god’s synergy or to counter enemy builds instead.

Obsidian Shard

Will now provide 20% Magical Penetration as a stat
New passive, replacing the old one, and now providing 10% additional Magical Penetration on a single damaging ability, with an internal cooldown. This bonus can exceed the Penetration cap.
Increased Cost but retains low amount of Magical Power
Obsidian Shard will still be a large source of Percent Penetration, but it won’t be nearly able to reach its previous max of 45% in a single item. Mages will be able to nearly reach the cap with this item but with some limitations. Here are the other items that will be gaining Percent Penetration.

Demonic Grip

Decreased Percent Magical Protection Reduction per stack slightly

Pythagorem's Piece

Removed 10% Cooldown Reduction
Added 10% Magical Penetration

Typhon's Fang

Decreased Magical Power
Added 10% Magical Penetration

Soul Reaver

Increased Cost
Decreased Magical Power
Added 10% Magical Penetration

Shaman's Ring

Being Reworked into a completely new item
Added 20% Magical Penetration

Warlock's Staff

Added 10% Magical Penetration
Reduced Base Health from 200 to 150
Passive stack number, health, power and mana bonuses adjusted

Staff of Myrrdin

Added 10% Magical Penetration
Decreased Magical Power

Flat Penetration Changes

This section focuses more on early game power curves. Certain Mages and certain builds can allow for huge power spikes early, often catching players off guard and making Mages feel unfair to play against. Mage abilities tend to have larger area of effect or longer persist time, which can be exceptionally frustrating to be hit so hard by.

The goal of these changes is to force Mages to rely more on raw Magical Power in the early game by restricting access to flat penetration in the early game. Guardians also get much larger damage boosts off flat penetration rather than power, so this change will heavily affect those options as well.

Spear of the Magus

New passive, replacing the old one, and now increasing damage from subsequent hits of the same ability
Increased Magical Power
Spear of the Magus has always been thought of as the “DoT” item. Its especially effective on gods whose abilities tick more than one time. As we pivot it away from giving a massive Magical damage boost to your whole team, we will focus it toward being a literal DoT item. Its new passive will cause enemies to take increasing damage if they are hit by multiple instances of damage from the same ability.

A few other key items will be affected by this balance pass, and in general they will be losing Flat Penetration and gaining power.

Shoes of the Magi

Removed 10 Magical Penetration
Increased Magical Power from 55 to 75

(and T2)

Void Stone

Increased Magical Power from 20 to 40
Reworked Passive to now provide a 10% Magical Protection Reduction

(and T2)

Stone of Binding

Decreased Physical and Magical Penetration on Passive trigger

Dynasty Plate Helm

Rework to be a more clear hybrid item and have no flat penetration

Magical Power Changes

As the final part of the puzzle, we are adding slightly more power to a series of Magical Items. Roughly 10-15 power per item listed here. This is intended to compensate Mages for essentially losing their top 2 items in the game. Mages were performing quite well so they could survive some nerfs but the amount of damage from Penetration was staggering. This power increase is necessary to keep Mages successful through these pivotal changes.

Power increases your strength by adding to your damage. Penetration increases your strength by multiplying your output, making it much more potent than power in most situations. For example: Scylla’s Crush while at 400 Magical Power and 15 penetration hitting another Mage, would deal as much damage as a Scylla with 525 Magical Power. In this scenario, 15 Penetration is equivalent to 125 Magical Power.

Items receiving increased Magical Power:

Non-Mage Items

An obvious question in players’ minds right now is: what about Physical Penetration? This is definitely something we considered, but in truth these two damage types have many differences. The two types do not need to have the same design strategies applied to them.

We feel that the current balance state of Physical items are in a much more positive state and less adjustments are required. We are applying a few key lessons from the Magical Penetration pass to Physical items. There won’t be any reworks due to this, but the following items will both have their Penetration amounts reduced.

These changes will be closely monitored for player feedback and data throughout all stages of the process. Olympians and Pro players have already reviewed a lot of this proposal, and we have been working and play-testing with their feedback in mind. We look forward to releasing the full patch notes soon so we can get even more feedback.

There are a few key balance points we will be open to adjusting throughout PTS and post launch. Obsidian Shard’s stats and even the Percent Penetration Cap itself will be open to adjustment if there is a clear improvement to be gained from it.

We feel confident that these changes will improve player’s experiences across the game, but we can’t really ensure that without hearing from all of you. Thank you for your continuing passion for SMITE and for always telling us how you feel. Make sure you tune into the Season 7 Update Show January 8 at 3pm ET for more in depth discussion on these and the rest of the item changes coming next update. We’ll see you on the Battleground!

Source: https://www.smitegame.com/news/Magical-Item-Changes-in-Season-7

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Mythical (400)
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I have been out of the loop for awhile on smite, just kind of lurking here and there, but is it fair to say that theoretically the changes they are making to magical items should probably result in a more diverse pool of workable builds across the board for mages and to a lesser extent other magical based characters from other classes?

Remarkable (5)
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Hey Silent,

So...yes, that's the targeted goal...more variety of builds for mages. At the same time, they're looking to limit guardians taking advantage of going bruiser/damage and not having to pay the same price as mages that want to do the same thing.

These are significant changes, and considering everything as a whole, it is a bit tough for me to wrap my head around how exactly all of these will change.

I'll chat briefly about my expectations of these proposed changes for each of the items:

Obsidian Shard

Will now provide 20% Magical Penetration as a stat
New passive, replacing the old one, and now providing 10% additional Magical Penetration on a single damaging ability, with an internal cooldown. This bonus can exceed the Penetration cap.
Increased Cost but retains low amount of Magical Power
Obsidian Shard will still be a large source of Percent Penetration, but it won’t be nearly able to reach its previous max of 45% in a single item. Mages will be able to nearly reach the cap with this item but with some limitations. Here are the other items that will be gaining Percent Penetration.

This doesn't change much. Ob Shard was always a fairly late-game purchase, and although this has gotten basically nerfed, it should remain as a specific counter to enemy tanks. If anything, I do expect it to be purchased a bit less, similar to . That's probably a good thing, taking it away as a necessary / core item in most builds.

Demonic Grip

Decreased Percent Magical Protection Reduction per stack slightly

This is fine, and it shouldn't see a shift in purchase, either in standard mage ADC builds, or in time purchased.

Pythagorem's Piece

Removed 10% Cooldown Reduction
Added 10% Magical Penetration

This is a slight doozy to me, but it makes sense, and I like the direction in the end. People were sometimes picking it up mid-game, and its stats have been regularly undervalued...it's always been a pretty strong item. Now with taking away the CDR, and adding the % pen, this should become a truly late-game type of item. This makes sense too, because the passive is best for when teammates are more assured of grouping up regularly.

Typhon's Fang

Decreased Magical Power
Added 10% Magical Penetration

This is picked up mostly by , but sometimes situationally for mage ADCs. This change is interesting, as it seems like it's giving it an overall buff...but I want to see how much the power is being decreased. I don't want this item being too strong for ...it increases his damage mostly against tanks, but as long as the power is dropped sufficiently, it probably decreases his damage to squishies.

Soul Reaver

Increased Cost
Decreased Magical Power
Added 10% Magical Penetration

Going back up in cost again. This now becomes an even more focused anti-tank item, and the increased cost should keep it late-game only.

Shaman's Ring

Being Reworked into a completely new item
Added 20% Magical Penetration

So we don't know what this complete rework is, and how it will change its stats, but given that it now provides 20% pen, this can either go hand-in-hand with late game, or turn it into an alternative. Will be interested to see the full changes.

Warlock's Staff

Added 10% Magical Penetration
Reduced Base Health from 200 to 150
Passive stack number, health, power and mana bonuses adjusted

I'm honestly not sure what's going on here. Historically this is a stacking item that you'd pick up early game as an alternative to . With the decrease in health, this hurts its early potential, though perhaps the stacking total will be decreased to 50 or 75, helping the curve a bit. But the % pen is weird to be on a stacking item...perhaps this opens it up to being a mid-game stacking item (I say mid because you usually don't go for stacking items late-game). But with reduced stacks, maybe it makes it an option at all stages of a game?

Staff of Myrrdin

Added 10% Magical Penetration
Decreased Magical Power

I've just honestly never been that interested in this item. The adjustment makes sense though.

Spear of the Magus

New passive, replacing the old one, and now increasing damage from subsequent hits of the same ability
Increased Magical Power
Spear of the Magus has always been thought of as the “DoT” item. Its especially effective on gods whose abilities tick more than one time. As we pivot it away from giving a massive Magical damage boost to your whole team, we will focus it toward being a literal DoT item. Its new passive will cause enemies to take increasing damage if they are hit by multiple instances of damage from the same ability.

I'll admit, old SotM is one of my favorite items, and for good reason...on the right gods, it's super powerful. This is a welcome change, though. Probably one of the most important ones. Also makes it significantly more powerful on gods that have ticking DoT damage than on gods that have ticking potential (but where you can walk out of the area), and considering that, I'm not sure how they're going to make up what is basically a nerf to those types of gods.

Shoes of the Magi

Removed 10 Magical Penetration
Increased Magical Power from 55 to 75

(and T2)

Void Stone

Increased Magical Power from 20 to 40
Reworked Passive to now provide a 10% Magical Protection Reduction

This is no longer going to be an early pickup for Guardians looking to be aggressive. This change definitely fits their concept of limiting early-game guardian bullies.

(and T2)

Stone of Binding

Decreased Physical and Magical Penetration on Passive trigger

I'm going to guess this gets decreased from 15 pen to 10 pen. Will be the definitive early-game item for aggressive guardians.

Dynasty Plate Helm

Rework to be a more clear hybrid item and have no flat penetration

How exactly? No more pen...guessing the prots go up a bit? Or perhaps it gets a bit of both prots? Or maybe some added health?

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Mythical (400)
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Magical Item Changes in Season 7

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