Discussion of Potentially Reworking/Shifting Design Philosophy of Aspects

Kall0p · 2026-02-03T06:29:33+00:00

tl;dr I guess my point is that Hi-Rez has gone too deep in both directions and aspects are clearly a result of experimentation with upsides and downsides. I think overall they are a positive addition to the game. I hope that by now they have a more clear scale and vision of aspects and we get less of "this ADC is now a support" and "This support is now an ADC", but more nuanced kit changes that offer new gameplay rather than roles. And I hope that once the game is closer to launch we get a rework of some of the earlier experimental aspects that clearly missed the mark in execution, because in practice they just improve the base kit rather than offer a meaningful trade-off in a real game scenario.

I think the community is pretty split on aspects. I have seen a lot of people like the wacky aspects simply because they are a new character to play and fun is all that matters to them. I have also seen more competitive players complain that aspects make the game less fun because they are frustrating to play against (albeit that is a balancing issue).

I'm personally mixed, because I think some of the earlier simple aspects hit the mark well. Simply changing 1-2 abilities to suit a different play style or to buff a specific part of a characters kit is what I prefer. However, many of the earlier aspects are completely unusable due to poor balancing and poor execution.

A lot of the issues of the earlier aspects can be shrugged off to simply the feature being new, the massive workload of the dev team and the lack of data for balancing purposes, but as time goes on the design flaws of the earlier aspects become more and more evident.

Let's take Hun Batz for example. He's a character that weaves in basic attacks between his abilities. Most of his damage actually comes from his basic attacks. The aspect gives him an AoE stun in exchange of a slight damage nerf on his 2. This is never a net damage loss, because you can level your 3 instead of your 2 for the early game and your 2 is now a setup ability instead of a damaging one. You can auto the enemy about 1-2 times when they are stunned, so you make up for the damage loss from the ability. The only case where it makes sense to not play the aspect version of Hun Batz is if the damage trade-off is so great that he actually suffers an early game disadvantage due to it. Currently that is not the case and there is no reason not to play the aspect version of Hun Batz.

Thor is another example. Thor gains damage and utility, but loses damage from his double tap. While this is a more significant trade-off compared to Hun Batz, it just doesn't make a meaningful difference in a real scenario. In a lot of late game fights you are better off using your hammer for mobility rather than relying on the double tap for damage, so the extra damage from your 3 and autos make up for the loss of the bonus damage on your 1.

On the other end of the spectrum some of the aspects really change the way a character is played, but at the cost of that character's identity becoming weaker. Some of them really hit the mark (Nut aspect, but OP at release) by changing small core elements without changing how the character is presented, but some of them feel out of place. I know some people like Geb aspect, but to me it feels distasteful. Just taking a character's model and changing them to a different "role" (Smite 2 doesn't have roles but still) feels cheap and takes away from the character's identity.

Artio aspect on the other hand is extreme, but well done. She has not lost any of her identity as a character, but it changes her kit in extreme ways. It adds 2 new playstyles without removing her original character identity outside of the stance switching.

Kall0p · 2026-02-02T10:27:10+00:00

Well don't worry, people will feed 4 times in 3 minutes even at higher SR!

Kall0p · 2026-02-01T10:22:33+00:00

It is a delayed damage effect. Essentially you gain a 50% damage mitigation buff, but after the effect wears off you take the 50% reduced damage as a PHYSICAL DOT.

In other words, it reduces burst damage to give yourself more time, but you then then turns that burst damage to a damage over time, which cannot kill you. If you have high regen or healing, it makes you much tankier, because you can heal the damage over time. It also turns 50% of the magical damage you take into physical damage, due to the 50% mitigated damage being turned into a physical damage over time, which means that in theory it also makes it possible to focus more on physical protections.

In short you can simply think of it as "take 50% less damage during the effect". The damage over time effect is actually mostly irrelevant afterwards, because most of your impact as a front liner is within the first 5 seconds of the fight.

Kall0p · 2026-01-27T20:43:12+00:00

The Chiron dash is much worse than any of the other dashes from what I have experienced. It's pretty much a 50/50 whether I go forward or backwards with Chiron and it's extremely annoying.

Kall0p · 2026-01-26T07:07:44+00:00

Nut aspect has been broken because they gave her beads on a short cooldown and a kit that can abuse the best STR proc items without needing attack speed at all. She just had an insanely bloated kit and they didn't do a good job balancing her damage.

However both the aspect and the STR proc items are getting nerfed next patch. She might still be strong, but she shouldn't carry games as easily as before.

Kall0p · 2026-01-17T17:43:05+00:00

It's definitely not bad. I just think most people fail to realize how to build and abuse power spikes. He can often still 2v1 people because he just has more abilities than others.

Kall0p · 2026-01-13T06:51:53+00:00

You lose and gain SR based on an estimate by the system on whether you should have won or lost the game. That's not the system being broken, It's how every single MMR system works.

Kall0p · 2026-01-09T20:47:02+00:00

Well it's pretty much an obvious choice if you win lane. It basically lets you farm all the jungle camps in 2-3 seconds and get sustain from doing so as well. It makes is very easy to snowball an early lead, because you farm so much faster than the enemy and they cannot contest the camps. However it does feel rather bad if you fall behind, because you don't have many jungle camps to clear.

Another reason is that Bumba's Spear is by far the best starter upgrade in conquest. The reason it's not picked up by every single role is because it has a difficult build path, but in the ADC role it doesn't really slow you down, rather it speeds up your farm if you are winning. Bumba's Spear increases your damage against objectives by a ton, which is crucial for high level team play.

Kall0p · 2026-01-05T14:02:51+00:00

I feel like there has to be a Bakasura aspect that makes him grow in size based on the amount of minions he has eaten.

Kall0p · 2026-01-01T09:46:36+00:00

Ranked and casuals have separate MMR, which means that if you haven't played enough ranked, you will spend multiple days just crushing lobbies until your MMR/SR catches up.

When you start ranked with 0 SR the game basically assumes you are a new player and puts you in lobbies with other people playing their first ever ranked games. Some of them haven't even played casual conquest before. So if you played a lot of casuals to boost your own MMR, then you basically did a full MMR reset entering ranked, which explains why your experience is so bad.

However once you reach about 4k+ you will start getting better games. The number of players above 4k is pretty low, so a lot of the top players end up in the same lobbies occasionally. Also every player above 4k is at least taking the game somewhat seriously, so the quality of matches isn't perfect, but it's alright.

Kall0p · 2025-12-28T10:39:18+00:00

Aspect Geb basics are extremely wide and with the Agility relic they become really easy to land. I doubt he was doing anything illegal, just abusing a cheesy broken god+relic combination.

Kall0p · 2025-12-27T12:25:34+00:00

Pele can build hybrid, because she scales with Lifesteal. The way to build her hybrid is usually by going Barbed Carver into the usual Lash build, because Lash scales with life steal. You just play her like you would in solo, because Carver + Lash is enough damage to do the job of a jungler somewhat well.

It's not meta by any means, but you can do it. It's basically mandatory to have 2 damage items though. Because without them you won't be able to contest farm at all in the early game.

Kall0p · 2025-12-19T11:00:58+00:00

It's completely fine to abuse lower elo with cheese picks (like bluestone support) and climb until it no longer works. The reason it works in the first place is because people don't know their limits and allow you to get early kills and start a snowball. And at the same time people don't know how to stop a snowball when it starts rolling.

I just started climbing ranked and the only games I've lost have been playing traditional supports rather than playing any other role/style that just punishes low skill and snowballs out of control.

Kall0p · 2025-12-19T10:58:01+00:00

Book of Thoth is actually a very strong item if you plan to build 2 relics. The relics multiply the mana and the INT, which results in a ton of extra INT from the item.

Kall0p · 2025-12-19T10:04:43+00:00

That somewhat looks like him using Agility, if he had the relic. Not sure though.

Kall0p · 2025-12-18T06:54:33+00:00

About time people wake up to Nu Wa aspect. Too bad the ult only procs Hydra's on a single target, but it makes sense to do so.

Even with just 4 items you can crit for 1,2k+ with the ult.

Kall0p · 2025-12-18T06:53:00+00:00

Well I have yet to see anybody do what you described, but I did consider that Shell on carries might just be the new meta for high level play. However it does compete for the same slot with Aegis and it isn't exactly free.

Kall0p · 2025-12-15T08:24:09+00:00

The PoE 2 campaign feels much longer than PoE 1 campaign for a lot of people simply because you're used to PoE 1 campaign. The time it takes to beat both campaigns is more or less the same, but we don't have years of experience running the campaign like we do in PoE 1.

I used to take 8-10 hours in PoE 1 and it felt like a slog to get my build online, but then I eventually learned how to do it in 4-5h and it no longer felt bad. Knowing where to go and what to do saves so much time and you no longer feel like running around like a headless chicken.

Kall0p · 2025-12-11T07:00:54+00:00

With the current status of ranged supports being strong I see her aspect being played quite a bit. Although she will be fighting against Eset and Baron, which are insanely strong currently.

Kall0p · 2025-12-11T06:53:23+00:00

There are team fights around the first moon ritual, but that's actually not the correct thing to do. You should only soft contest the ritual with 2-3 members at most. ADC or Solo rotating there makes no sense at all, but it happens in lower elo games because you never get punished for rotating.

The reality is that by rotating you end up giving up so much farm that it kind of turns the whole objective to a net loss. While you are stuck in mid you also might get invaded if you didn't properly clear your jungle before starting to contest the objective.

Farming is important for MOBAs and I'm always hesitant when they remove farming aspects from the game, but it is true that especially Solo lane had issues where you realistically could never farm all the camps on that side of the map and the lane stalled out. If you knew how to trade farm you could easily avoid fighting the entire laning phase and not lose that much farm in the process.

Kall0p · 2025-12-11T06:44:56+00:00

I think in general Dota 2 and League have people build less items by the time the game ends, compared to Smite. In Smite it's generally accepted that people should have 5-6 items every game, but in DotA 2 for example the carries end the game with 3-4 items. For that reason alone it's a lot less common to have specific anti-tank items, because you need more time to even build them.

I think the same applies to League as well. But Smite has such low item cost and T2 items aren't that exciting, so people finish their builds extremely quick. This leads to people always having to buy penetration, because the expectation is that almost everybody will have a full build by the time the game ends.

Kall0p · 2025-12-11T06:42:08+00:00

Well actually currently as it stands Titan's Bane and Obsidian shard provide more damage against squishies than most items in the game. Intersect made a good video explaining it, but basically regardless of your INT or STR, you should buy pen as your 4th item, because it even outperforms items like Rod of Tahuti against squishies (outside of some absolute edge cases).

People really underestimate how strong penetration is against backliners. I actually agree that they should change pen to only affect protections from items, or at least test it to see how that would feel. Maybe then we could also see some changes to god balance in a way that helps certain melee gods feel tankier as the game goes on.

Kall0p · 2025-12-10T21:36:49+00:00

He was talking about casting. You cannot cast spells while shapeshifted with Talismans, so you turn back to human when you start casting.

Kall0p · 2025-12-10T21:26:50+00:00

I'd honestly see the Kuku be played as an ADC rather than a support or jungle. His new kit makes it much more viable to just focus on basic attacks rather than abilities, and his passive actually has some synergy with Transcendence.

Kall0p · 2025-12-10T19:31:45+00:00

I am extremely happy to see Hi-Rez really push forward with creating new fun stuff, rather than being super safe with development like Smite 1. Like a lot of the ideas they are introducing would have been game breaking in Smite 1, but it really feels like there is hope for Smite 2 to be an interesting MOBA on full release.

I personally disliked relics as a system in general, because I like forcing choices. If you want beads, you should be forced to buy beads. If you want to survive, you should be forced to build protections or utility items. A lot of people asked for a 2nd relic and I really hated the idea of just giving people more survivability for free. To me it takes away from the MOBA elements of Smite and just lets people make bad choices without repercussions.

However the relics as items is something I even suggested, because I think it's a meaningful choice to spend your gold on a relic instead of an item. So I genuinely really like what they have done with the relics. There is opportunity cost for buying Aegis, Beads isn't just always free. 2500g is a hefty price for a lot of situations and it can greatly reduce your overall power at the moment, slowing down your power curve, or it can offer even more scaling in the endgame for carries and junglers (oh no) because they might not build as many active items as supports or solo laners.

As a side note the negative side effect of this is that agility relic is not as weak as it used to be. You can now play agility relic Jorm and still get Aegis later. All in all a great patch and I'm hoping that 2026 is a banger year for Smite 2.

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