Persephone: A Closer Look

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WHO IS PERSEPHONE

Persephone is the Queen of the Underworld. She is wise beyond her years. Even as a young ruler, she does not flaunt her power nor act hastily. Persephone is clever above all else, and she will dismantle the Olympian gods slowly and steadily. Perhaps her only feature that matches the intensity of her wit is her love for her husband, Hades.

OUR VISION

SMITE's newest goddess hails from the Greek Pantheon, although she takes a side we have seen little of lately. She generally opposes the gods of Olympus, yet this does not necessarily make her evil. Hera, Zeus, and the others tend to be self-serving, even when they appear benevolent. They crave power and worshippers, and will do anything to attain them.

Persephone, however, sees greater value in human life. She receives lost souls every day in droves, each one's story more heartbreaking than the last. She knows how humans strive and suffer for the slightest victory, something that few gods understand. Through their deaths she has learned that they deserve better lives, and Persephone aims to accomplish this by removing the rigid, selfish gods from the equation.

Persephone's primary themes involve concepts of life and death. She is, at her core, a nature goddess. She controls the changing of the seasons and the planting and harvesting of crops. She also wields the power of a death god.

Theme – Life and Death
Visuals – Morbid Nature. Flowers, Vines, Thorns combined with Skulls, Souls, Death
Personality – Clever, Plotting, Anti-Establishment, Empathetic
Perspective – Threatening, Unpredictable

The Queen of the Underworld will be the primary antagonist of Olorun, the new King of Olympus. He will gladly rise to her challenges, as he seeks to gain followers and sway more gods to join him. Persephone will keep him quite busy, and although she might seem like her primary goal is to embarrass and defeat him, she actually has a much more sinister plan in mind.

Persephone brought about a unique set of challenges as we iterated on her visual design. She needs to display themes of both life and death. She needs to appear royal and influential, but not stiff or snobby. She is young and caring, yet dangerous and powerful.

We experimented a lot with her clothing. It is important for us to keep searching for unique silhouettes on our goddesses. The short skirt combined with the long sashes stood out from the crowd and also helped meet her royal yet youthful feel.

The balance between floral and nature elements vs death and bone elements was also a big focus. At first glance she might look more like a nature goddess, but when you look closely at her metallic decorations you see the symbols of death clearly.

Persephone's gameplay revolves around her theme of life and death. With powers of nature and growth, she cultivates a morbid and unsettling group of abilities. As a mage she primarily focuses on dealing magical damage at long range, but Persephone's kit has a deployable heavy twist.

Her kit is interwoven with a deployable ability that allows her to place plants around the map. These plants start in the form of a human skull on the ground, which fits the visual goals of Hades' Queen. Skulls can be harvested at any time, but only by Persephone, for various effects that change as these plants grow up and take on new forms. She is the first SMITE god that can truly farm!

This makes spatial awareness a key skill required to succeed with her, and encourages mages to consider even more combat factors than usual. Knowing enemies' pathing routes and predicting the locations of future fights will be what takes a good Persephone player to a great one.

These plants interact with her kit in a variety of other ways. They fuel her passive, which allows her to earn more gold upon returning to base... if she farms efficiently. Their placement can be accelerated, as well as their growth speed, through secondary effects on her other abilities. She is also able to keep fighting after death, a long awaited death god ability, and her Ultimate rounds out the kit with the ability to deal large damage to a single target and heavily CC others.

She should excel in the mid lane, and appeal to players who look for something different in a mage playstyle. She is part necromancer and part farming game, bringing a very new experience to the mage class.

Persephone's unique gameplay features are:

A passive that provides additional gold for meeting harvesting goals
The ability to continue fighting after death if certain goals are met
Long duration deployables, Harvest Skulls, that grow and evolve, providing different effects depending on which stage in their life cycle they are harvested
A unique twist on her basic attack to aid in her Harvesting efforts
A heavily interactive kit that affects her Harvest Skulls in a variety of ways
An entourage of additional models that compliment her kit's visuals
A two-directional leap
An Ultimate ability with not one, but two new types of Crowd Control

Hades has been yearning for Persephone to join the roster for years, and it seems the SMITE players have similar feelings. She has been highly requested for quite some time now and we want to thank the SMITE community for being clear and consistent about their desire for this Goddess. She has given the entire team a great challenge in both visuals and gameplay. We can only hope that players will be thrilled to finally control her ghoulish flora on the Battleground of the Gods.