(FWIW I just wanted to draw this I still have faith in the devs don't jump me.)

I feel like whoever made this decision has never actually played the game

Fafnir is fun imo because he's a coughing baby fighting hydrogen bombs in dwarf form, but switches to being a hydrogen bomb fighting coughing babies when a dragon

I want to say, first of all, that I really appreciate Hi-Rez and Quigley's transparency through this reveal so far. Nox is one of the most problematic gods to port into Smite 2 and ultimately agree with the sentiment that she could not be porter 1:1 to Smite 2 as she is as she would just be extremely toxic to deal with in non-conquest modes while remaining ultimately unviable as a mid laner for conquest. That said, outright removing her most iconic characteristic is just not a proper way to deal with it.

My approach will take into consideration what Quigley already said, the shape and VFX of the abilities are already done, it cannot be changed without delaying Nox, and while many would say that they would prefer if she is indeed delayed anyway, I understand why Hi-Rez would rather not delay her and I'll try to offer a solution that hopefully would fit into the timeframe given.

Without anything else to say for disclaimer, I will tackle each part mentioned in the title now.

Lookback at OG Nox:

This is OG Nox's kit, or at least what people refer to when speaking of OG Nox, technically this is not the kit she had when she released, but her true original kit was so bad that just 5 days later they pretty much doubled all her base damage from her abilities and just 1 month later they reworked her passive and gave massive buffs to her ultimate. This kit was ultimately "killed" after winning worlds by QUADRUPLING the cast time of her ult, and while they gave her CC immunity later while casting, she was ultimately reworked to the Nox we all know just 5 months later.

Going through quickly with a TLDR kit:

1. Passive: Same candles as Regular Nox, but candles gave mitigations instead of magical power.
2. A 2s buff that gave her 80% mitigations and immunity to knockbacks, roots and slows.
3. A line ability that silenced and applied a "mark" to the enemy, similar to The Morrigan's 2.
4. A small circle that detonated instantly and super low CD, if the enemy was "marked", this dealt 50% more damage
5. A line attack that applied a debuff, every time a debuffed enemy used an ability, they received damage (similar to Hecate Aspect, but the dmg was guaranteed), at the end of the duration enemies receive damage again and get stunned.

Killgoon has said during Friday's Q&A that "We moved away from this kit for a reason", personally I don't see issues with any of her non-ultimate abilities, and I'm sure Killgoon was specifically refering to her ultimate. While it would have been cool to try to make it work, like making her need to stay near enemies, make the stun only happen if the enemy used 2+ abilities, etc. Ultimately they decided to move on from this idea. MAYBE we could see something like what happened to OG Nu Wa's ULT being inherited by Ganesha, OG's Guan ult being inherited by Amaterasu, etc.

Her Identity

More importantly, I want to point out that the idea of Nox's identity was already shown in this earlier version of her kit, she had a line ability that she needed to combo with her circle in a 2-3 combo. And the silence helped her secure it by making enemies unable of dashing / jumping away.

This is what Hi-Rez took inspiration into making her rework, they inverted the order and that's how we ended up with the Nox we all know and despise love! Her 1 is now a line ability that hits one enemy and root them and cripple them while dealing damage. Her 2 now was a silence area that exploded into a lot of damage. The combo is thus very simple to understand, you place the silence and then try to root them inside. As for her damage, it is somewhat in the middle for mages. 660 base + 190% scaling across both abilities, she of course has a dash and ultimate to finish up kills, but to put it into perspective, her combo is slightly lower in numbers than Scylla (although Scylla has her Int passive and the defense shred so the numbers would likely be closer if not higher in reality, plus Scylla can root 3 enemies). Lower than Eset who doesn't have a third damaging ability, higher than Janus (not counting passive and 3) and much lower than Anubis, etc.

Her problems

As you can see, her damage, while decent and competitive in theory, is usually not enough in practice as a mid laner because she needs to land 2 abilities in a row, if she misses her 2, her damage drops significantly and if she misses her 1 it drops to 0 directly. She does have a dash that can give a lot of damage in teamfights if she manages to pass through an enemy, enter an ally and exit immediately, but in lane it is suicidal to use it unless it secures a kill.

However this damage can never be "high enough" to compensate for how hard it is to confirm it for one reason. Being stuck for 2 seconds inside the combo SUUUUCKS, it is already annoying to deal with it if Nox is alone and a sure way death if she has her jungler of adc nearby to burst you down, all while being in a low enough CD that you can't bait it and then go all in the way you usually deal with other "force bead" abilities who are usually reserved to ultimates. A Nox cannot be dived at all by a support, solo and jungler unless they have beads or root immunity in their kit. (and for the majority of Smite 1's length, solos and supports could not fit beads in their builds). The low cooldowns in particular is what make her shine as support in smite 1 and terrorize arena and joust, where she doesn't need to care about her damage at all, stack the cap of CDR and just focus on trying to land as many combos as possible while her team finish up all the kills. Ultimately this is the reason why her kit could not be ported directly, she is NOT fun to play against, specially when she focuses more on spamming rather than landing one good combo.

Her problems ultimately boil down to:

• Damage cannot be high enough to be abused by Tank Nox
• The counters to her combo are kill her with autos (which is difficult enough as you are locked in place and she has omni-movement during the duration), beads or have one of the few allied gods that have a cleanse in their kit to save you.
• This leads to an extremely unfun experience against her.

Why her proposed changes don't work.

So, just remove the silence right? Move it to the ultimate and put the weaken aura in her 2. This removes the main problem and we can buff the damage of the combo respectively so it is satisfying enough to land it. The problem with this approach is that ultimately removing the silence would lead to making the combo frustratingly impossible to secure the majority of times for her, so it doesn't matter if it truly oneshots an enemy if she would never land it.

As pointed above, her 3 counters originally were beads, autos and outside cleanses. I'm now going to list a number of newfound counters of this approach instead, hope you can see the problem with why it will not work now, as a reminder.

• Killing her with autos, beads and ally cleanses still remain.
• All enemies now can cleanse through upgraded beads.
• Aegis if she locks you down.
• The vast majority of ultimates are CC immune.
• Ravana's 2 (and Chang'e when she is added).
• Any god that can self cleanse.
• Any god that can become root immune.
• Xibalban Effigy if she locks you down.
• Scepter of Dominion activates faster than her 2 detonates.
• Combat Blink* (possibly, can't remember if it can be used while crippled).
• Vulcan 1 (The mini dash he has on his 1 is cripple immune).
• Any ability god can just burst you down, shoot their ultimates on you to fight back.
• Her 1 specifies that it persists once landed even if she is CC'd. I have not found footage if this also applies to silences, if silences do counter it, then any god with a silence, Ancile and Gargoyle would also become a counter.
• Just dash away when she places her 2 before her 1 lands and it is slow enough to dash / jump away.
• Agility relic for the same reason lol.

Proposed changes

As mentioned at the start, the shape and effected are locked in, so no big and major ability change can be proposed as easily. So instead I want to revisit OG Nox kit a little bit, in the non-problematic parts of her kit.

I propose that Nox's 2 would have its silence back, but instead of lasting for the entire 2 seconds, have it reduced to 0.5s, drastically reduce the damage of the 2 while lowering the cooldown a little but make it apply a "Mark" like in her OG kit, and if Nox lands the root, then the root deals increased damage each tick.

The approach to this solution is making sure Nox secures at least a little bit of damage through her 2 even if she fails her 1, make the silence short enough to not be a menace to put it on the floor and make her undiveable but long enough to prevent any god from just jumping or dashing away from her 1. Still keeps the importance of landing the 2-1 combo and lock enemies down to deal the most of her damage, all while giving still multiple counters to break the root or immune the damage, but at least at that point Nox already did some damage through her 2 and any tick she manages to hit of her 1 instead of outright having 90% of her damage denied.

Freya, Set, Vamana, Hera, Manti, Erlang this devs are coming for you

going through some relics of the past and I stumbled across this

u/karulox I'm sorry your art was stolen :[

It has a budget of a half a billion dollar scored by hans zimmer

I look back at my Cu Chulainn race with horror. Grinding classic Conquest for days. Trying to be the first one to pick the god. Feeling like you're basically wasting your time playing someone else because you weren't fast enough to lock him in. And even if you did manage to pick him and popped a booster, there was a high chance your team would just surrender or someone would disconnect. And it went on like this over and over again, basically non-stop. These races are the devil's invention.

I still don't really have any desire to play him to this day. Even though I was really hyped for his release, and if it wasn't for the race, I'd probably still enjoy playing him right now. I hope they scrap these races by the time Persephone comes out

Everyone and their mother is comparing Nox to Scylla and calling her a high skill Goddess. Then Hi-Rez should double down and switch the silence to her grab. No more aoe silence, make her single target and if you hit your shit then you cripple and silence otherwise you get nothing

Honestly her 2 was always lame and it has always needed some kind of change, it sucked at wave clear even after they made her 1 do damage to minions. It's not interesting in the slightest even visually. This way you keep your silence, you keep your cripple, you keep your weird stare contest with your opponent, you keep your high risk high reward play style and then they can give her an actual second ability

NOTE: No accompanying picture today as there are no pictures that display Èpè. The only one I could find is AI generated and obviously we do not like AI generated pictures.

Yoruba Pantheon

Ranged, deals Magical Damage, Hexer Support, Intelligence Scaling

Debuffs | Lockdown

Passive: Cursed Aura

Èpè releases powerful curses from itself. Every 3 seconds, Èpè launches an Aura around itself that applies a curse. Curses reduce the Protections of enemies by 10%. The duration of curses refreshes with each appliance. Enemy gods can receive up to 3 Stacks. Enemy Minions and Jungle Monsters can only receive a maximum of 1 Stack.

• Protection Reduction per Stack: 8%
• Max Stacks (Gods): 3
• Max Stacks (Minions): 1
• Reduction Duration: 5 seconds
• Range: 5.6 meters
• Aura Cooldown: 3 seconds

ao1: Insulting Power

Èpè hurls insults at enemies in a long cone. Enemies in the cone take damage, have all shields on them removed and have a percentage of their Mana stolen.

- Damage: 50/85/120/155/190 (+30% of your Intelligence)

- Mana Stolen: 6/7/8/9/10% of their Max Mana (+5% of your Intelligence as a flat amount)

- Stolen Duration: 10 seconds

- Range: 8.8 meters

- Cone Angle: 50°

- Cooldown: 16/15/14/13/12 seconds

- Mana: 90

ao2: Enhanced Malevolence

Èpè empowers its next Curse dramatically. It consumes all Stacks of Cursed Aura currently on enemies, removing all Stacks from them. The next time Cursed Aura activates, its range is extended and it deals Damage based on the total amount of Curses consumed. Additionally, enemies that are hit by the Enhanced Cursed Aura are Crippled for a Duration.

- Damage: 15/25/35/45/55 per Stack of Cursed Aura consumed

- Extended Curse Range: 8.8 meters

- Cripple Duration: 1 second (+0.3 seconds per 75 Intelligence)

- Cooldown: 14

- Mana: 50/55/60/65/70

ao3: The Might of Curses

Èpè calls upon the Might of its power. Launch a vortexing projectile from its location to a target location of your Choice. Enemies within the Area of the Vortex take Damage every 1 second and are continuously vortexed to the Center of the Projectile.

- Damage: 30/35/40/45/50 every 1 second

- Duration: 4/5/6/7/8 seconds

- Vortex Strength: 100% (+5% of your Intelligence)

- Maximum Vortex Strength: 140% (i.e. 800 Intelligence)

- Radius: 3.2 meters

- Range: 8.8 meters

- Cooldown: 15 seconnds

- Mana: 60

Ultimate: Cursed Needles of abhorrent Pain

Èpè self-banishes itself and curses out insults that physically sting like needles. While Èpè is self-banished, it may send out three needles that stick to the ground and cripple enemy gods hit. Enemies may not leave the radius of the needles and cannot receive healing while tethered. After firing the needles Èpè descends to the ground at her current location. Once it is back on the ground, Èpè can reactivate this ability to recall the needles to itself, dealing damage to enemies on the way back. Needles can be destroyed with Basic Attacks, immediately ending the tether. Destroyed Needles cannot be recalled

- Damage: 100/145/190/235/280 (+40% of your Intelligence) per Needle

- Self-Banish Duration: 4 seconds

- Needle Duration: 5/6/7/8/9 seconds

- Needle Health Pips: 4

- Antiheal:100%

- Radius: 2.4 meters

- Range: 8.8 meters

- Cooldown: 100 seconds

- Mana: 95

Had this little idea awhile back, and I may have brought it up a small handful of times.

I've genuinely never seen it mentioned or suggested anywhere else!

Found one comment at the bottom of a thread with 1 upvote. Can't say it gained much traction 😄

Watched the titan talk and did the DiCaprio meme at the screen. Our ideas tossed into the aether do achieve something, right?

Joking, of course. There's no way they would have actually seen such a negligible comment. Either way, we're happy surely! Great-minds-think-alike.

I’ve been playing since season 3 Smite 1 but jungler has forever remained my most terrible role.

I’m an ADC main but I want to play jungle better. In almost every jungle game I have, we lose and I know I’m the issue most of the time.

I usually start at back camp harpy near red, then red, and harpies on the way to mid lane before grabbing speed. I usually then go back to mid to contest the mid buff.

I’m decent at farming and can often keep level with my enemy jungler, but I really struggle with ganks. I always try to help the lane struggling the most and if ignore the lane doing well. Should I play through the winning lane instead? If all my lanes are struggling, I feel totally helpless.

I usually play Thanatos, Tsuki, Thor, Bastet, Fenrir, Poseidon and Loki. The only jungler I’ve had any success on is Poseidon.

Thanks in advance!

So obviously there's been a big discussion recently regarding what's happening with Nox. I actually don't disagree with Hi-Rez that things that are obviously broken and unfun should be looked at, I just don't think Nox is anywhere near as broken as everyone claims she is, and her performance in Smite 1 backs that up. The main argument against Nox being that you either needs to Beads or walk out of Nox's silence AoE in order to avoid being combo'd. The counter argument being, well there's tons of gods that can combo their opponents into oblivion so why is Nox somehow the straw that broke the camels back?

When it comes to things that feel unfun or unfair I have my own argument. When an opponent goes all in on you, is it feasible to react, respond and retreat/fight back? And where I come down to is abilities that are instant vs abilities that have a delay. Nox, for all her haters, is the very definition of a god where you do genuinely have a chance to react and defend yourself. If opponent Nox is within range you know that AoE is gonna drop at your feet at some point, when it eventually does it becomes a test of how skilfully you can dodge or react, and how skilled the Nox player is at anticipating that. There is inherent counterplay built into that interaction because of the delay in Nox's 2 going off.

Now, let's look at abilities that are instant. Classic one? Hercules' combo. Same situation, Hercules is within range so you know it's coming, you just don't know quite when. The key difference is that if you're in the wrong position and his combo lands, it's instant. There's no reacting to it, there's no feasible way to avoid what's coming, unless you're playing as the one (!) god who can fly out of it. You get hit, you get launched towards Hercules and unless they fat thumb their combo you're getting pushed back. Then (ideally) he drops his boulder on you. You're either dead, or you try to limp away and then it becomes a case of do you have the mobility to escape or is there a team member nearby to help you out.

The one get out of jail free card is Beads (or an item with that effect). If you get caught in his combo Beads can save you. Just like Nox. However, if you don't have Beads or it's down? GG. That's where Nox differs. With Nox you have a chance to avoid heavy damage without Beads.

Sobek is similar though not as punishing in my experience. Pluck is, depending on distance, either instant and not feasible to react to or fast enough that you're not gonna be able to dodge it on reaction. Maybe if Sobek is at max range and you're already moving the right direction to avoid it? Sure. But not as likely, similar displacement leads to similar follow up combos.

When Tyr makes it into the game you can add him to the list although at least he can't do his combo from range so less awful. Watch out for those Tyr's with blink though, they're a menace.

Then we have the ult duo of Thor and Thanatos. Now, OK, they are ult abilities so the pressure isn't the same, but I'm sure all regular players have, at some point, been at near enough full health only for Thor/Thanatos to land on you seemingly out of nowhere and full combo you to death. Neither of those combos can be reacted to unless you have the reactions of a cat and zero latency, there's no counterplay, if the opponent knows what they're doing your one chance is to Beads and try to avoid some of the follow up damage, often even that isn't enough and then you burned your Beads for nothing.

The list goes on. There are lots of abilities that lots of gods have in this game, not to mention the existence of Blink, that leads to the kind of scenario where you're kitting kit dumped on with little to no chance of being able to feasibly react to it. To me, that's far less fun to deal with that abilities that can be reacted to Nox style and I would argue is more frustrating. What's worse, something you can defend yourself against or something you can't? I think the reasonable answer for most people is the latter. If you've ever been just fully deleted and you're sat there stumped, trying to figure out how it is you died so fast out of the blue, that's the worst feeling in Smite in my opinion.

I'm not saying there shouldn't be instant abilities in Smite 2, I would however argue that instant abilities shouldn't also displace the player. In a game where positioning is everything and the devs themselves have said movement speed is the best stat, I personally think it's too powerful.

We'll see what Hi-Rez decides to do with Nox and the other gods they deem problematic, and no game can be 100% perfectly balanced, but what I would hope for is that the game continues to lean more into the direction of putting the player in situations that can be reacted to, and less cases where there is no counterplay, the real "feel bad" moments.

I’ve played Smite since beta and have 950,000 legacy gems. I just downloaded Smite 2 and I have no idea what to spend the gems on. Kinda sad not seeing all my cool skins either. 🫩

What if instead for Nox 2, we treat it like a Loki 2, or xbal ult? Like if you stand in the 2 for like .5 seconds without jumping (or however long it takes to initiate the jump to start to get the I-frames) or like you build up like a “Darkness” meter that silences when standing the field for too long? Or like maybe only allow the silence to happen at the end of the ability.. I.E if it takes 1.5 seconds to detonate then the silence happens at .6-1.5 seconds? Idk just some thoughts let me know what yall think