PRELIMINARY PATCH NOTES - JAN 23 2013

this will not be colored since 1 I'm lazy and 2 this is not final XD

New Skins:

Guan Yu -- Master Guan Fu
Ra -- Solar Exclipse (Facebook Exclusive)

Draft Mode:

In Ranked and Challenge Conquest matches, players from each team now draft gods while in the match lobby.
When drafting, players on each team pick gods one at a time. Once a god is chosen, no other player on either team can draft that god. Once you have drafted a god, you can �trade� that god with another player on your side. This allows players that draft early to secure a god for another player that is drafting later.
In order to join Ranked matches, you must now own at least 12 gods. This ensures that you will be able to select a god even if you are the last person to draft a god, following bans and the other player draft picks.

Teams:

�Team� functionality has been added. Teams are groups of up to 9 people that organize themselves for competitive or social reasons (aka �clans�). As we grow out the team-based competitive functionality in the future, �Teams� will be the anchor point around which much of the functionality is organized.
Teams can be created, joined and managed from the Social menu.
The creator of a Team is automatically established as its Leader. Other team members can be assigned a rank of Initiate, Member or Officer. Leaders also have the capability to transfer leadership to another office if they desire.
Team leaders can create a unique Tag that may be seen in game alongside their members� in-game name. Tags can be between one and three alphanumeric characters in length and may be changed only once every seven days. Players have the option to enable or disable the display of team tags in-game, as well as choosing how to format the display. These options are on the UI tab of the SETTINGS menu.
A new Ranked Team Conquest queue has been added on the Play Menu under the new Competitive tab. In order to join this queue, you must be in a 5-person party composed solely of members of your Team that are Level 30 or above. In future patches, rankings of the top teams playing this queue will be published.

Refer-a-Friend Program:

A �Friend Referral� option has been added under the SOCIAL menu. Details on this program can be found at http://www2.hirezstudios.com/smitegame/referafriend
Players that provided Beta Keys to friends during the Closed Beta should automatically have those friends linked through the friend referral system, with rewards provided retroactively.

General:

The Conquest map has undergone a major artistic makeover. The layout of the map is the same as the previous design.
The game now allows you to set different Resolutions and Screen Types between the overall Lobby and a Match. As an example, you may run the game in a windowed mode while not in a match, and full-screen while in a match. The Video tab on the Settings screen controls this behavior. As part of this change, the login screen and lobby screen have undergone a variety of visual changes.
The Play Screen is now arranged into four tabs: Practice, Casual, Competitive, Custom.
The Normal Conquest queue under the Casual tab now allows teams of only up to 3 players, instead of teams of up to 5 players. Five-person teams can still compete in Arena and Domination, or through either Challenge matches or Ranked Team matches.
The Solo Practice mode has been updated. Players now compete against Ra instead of the Manticore. A variety of other improvements have been made. Watch for additional changes and improvements in future patches.
The End of Match screen has undergone a variety of changes and improvements. Additional improvements are planned for future releases.
The Item Store now has a tab to View Stats.
You can now view your recent match history and other stats for particular gods from the History tab on the God screen.
The Item tab now works on the God screen.
Fire Giant buff regeneration has changed from 30 HP5 and 30 MP5 to regenerating 3% of your health and mana every 5 seconds.
Challenge Matches will now launch in the Region of the match creator. So, for instance, if you set your Preferred Region on the Play screen to Europe and then create a Challenge Match, the match should launch on European servers.
Fixed an issue in which the back button on the in-game web browser was not functioning.
The Player Stats webpages available under the Stats screen as well as through the main Smitegame.com website have been updated and improved.
The jungle camps start slightly weaker and escalate their difficulty throughout the match.

Spectator Changes

NOTE: In order to initiate Spectator Mode on a match, you must still have a special flag on your account. However, once a match has been recorded, any player may watch the match. If a match has been recorded, the �Match Detail� page on the Stats Website will have a button to �Watch Replay�. If in game, this button will initiate a replay. If out of game, this button will provide information on the chat command to run in order to watch the replay.
Fixed an issue in which certain gods and skins were not visible during a demo stream.
Spectator bookmarks (Shift+Number) no longer get erased when rewinding to a time before the bookmark was created.
Performance improvements to spectator playback at high speeds.
Playback can go up to 16x speed.
Important player messages, e.g. kills, now transmit during a demo stream.
When viewing a player, their messages, e.g. accolades, will show to the spectator.
Rewinding while paused updates the timestamp on the playback controls.
Rewind points are generated every 30 seconds.
Improved skip back/skip forward control behavior.
Wards for both teams are now visible.
Three commands to spectate matches

/Spectate <PlayerName>
/SpectateQueue <PlayerName>
/Replay <MapInstanceId>

Fixed an issue where many of the auras and effects were persisting on characters after manipulating time.
Pinging the map to change views now interpolates the camera to the ping location for a less-jarring treatment.
View rotation sensitivity from mouse input has been increased by default.
Slightly rose the ceiling view height for the spectator camera.
Fixed issues where death effects could linger when rewinding while a god dies.
When following a player with the overhead camera, the camera view will begin behind the player.
Fixed an issue where the mouse cursor will sometimes become invisible after rewinding the game.

Items:

Aegis Amulet

Cooldown increased from 120s to 150s.

Purification Beads

Cooldown increased from 120s to 150s.

Mystical Mark

New FX.

Gods:

Anhur

Desert Fury

Anhur is now immune to all crowd control for the duration of his ultimate.

Hel

Decay/Restoration, Hinder/Cleanse and Repulse/Inspire

Mana costs for these abilities have increased from 60/65/70/75/80 to 70/75/80/85/90.

Hercules

Fixed an (awesome) bug in which players would spawn as Hercules� rock.
Earthbreaker

Fixed an issue where the damage was applying instantly instead of when the rocks hit enemies.

Excavate

The radius of the boulder has been increased by 50%.
The damage reduction from getting hit by the rolling boulder has been removed.

XBalanque

Base attacks per second has been reduced from .91 to .88.
Dead of Night

Anytime he kills an enemy he gains 5 physical power permanently, up to a max of 30 physical power.

Rising Jaguar

Physical power contribution has been reduced from 40% to 20%.

Zeus

All of Zeus� FX have been modified for performance and appearance.
Chain Lightning

The way that chain lightning passes between targets has been modified. The timing between each target is now consistent, independent of the distance.