https://www.smitegame.com/news/hero-of-the-trojan-war-5-3-pc-update-notes

Skins

Item Balance

• Soul Gem
  • New Passive-On successful hit of an Ability you gain 1 stack. At 4 Stacks your next Ability that damages an enemy God will deal bonus damage equal to 40% of your Magical power, and will heal yourself and allies within 20 units for 40% of your Magical Power and will consume the 4 stacks.
• Doom Orb
  • Updated Self Buff FX for when Doom Orb's Passive buff is active
• Typhon's Fang
  • Decreased Magical Lifesteal from 15% to 10%
  • Decreased Passive Healing bonus from lifesteal from 50% to 40%
• Warlock's Staff
  • Decrease Power from 75 to 65
  • Decrease Power per stack from .6 to .5
  • Warlock's Staff now provides 115 Magical Power when fully evolved, down from 135.
• Book of the Dead
  • Decreased Mana used to form shield from 25% to 15%
• Malice
  • Decreased Physical Power from 50 to 40.
  • Increased Critical Strike Chance from 20% to 25%.
  • NEW PASSIVE – Every Critical Strike against an enemy God gives one stack. At 3 stacks, your next ability that damages an enemy God will consume the stacks and deal bonus damage over time to the first God hit for 120% of your physical power. Damage is dealt in 3 ticks over 2s.
• Rage
  • Increased cost from 2400 to 2500.
  • Decreased Physical Power from 30 to 20.
  • Increased Critical Strike Chance per stack from 1% to 2%.
  • Rage now provide 40% total Critical Strike chance when fully evolved, up from 35%.
• Soul Eater
  • Decreased Stacks needed from 100 to 75
  • Increased Bonus Physical Power on Evolved from 10 to 20.
  • Soul Eater now provides 60 Physical power when fully evolved, up from 50.
• Warrior's Blessing
  • Increased Evolved Bonus Protections from 10/10 to 15/15
  • Decreased the stacks gained from gods from 5 to 3
• Hunter's Blessing
  • Adjusted how the item provides Basic Attack Damage.
  • This fixes a few issues where this item interacted with various abilities and systems in the game. This item now better interacts with hit chain progression, abilities that scale with Basic Attack damage, and a few edge case scenarios. In some case this is a buff for characters (anyone with a slower hit chain) and in others this is a nerf for characters (The Morrigan's Passive).

God Balance

• Arachne
  • WEB-Reduced Cooldown from 18s to 16s, Can now have 3 webs at once, up from 2.
• Cerberus
  • GHASTLY BREATH-Increase Damage per Tick from 15/25/35/45/55 to 20/30/40/50/60
  • SOUL EXPULSION-Increases range from 40 to 50
  • STYGIAN TORMENT-Decrease Post-Fire from 1.4 to 0.1, Cerberus is now Crippled for 1.2s after firing this ability. He also is Knockback and Knockup Immune for 1.2s. This ability now Auto-Activates all three heads.
• Freya
  • BRISINGAMEN'S BLESSING-Changed Magical Lifesteal from 15% to 5% + .5% per level (ending at 15%.)
  • IRRADIATE- Decreased Damage from 40/55/70/85/100 to 35/50/65/80/95, Decreased Magical Power Scaling from 25% to 20% per shot
• Khepri
  • ABDUCT-Decreased Cooldown from 15s to 14s
  • SOLAR FLARE-Decreased Cooldown from 18s to 16s
• Scylla
  • QUICK LEARNER-Increased Power per Stack from 20 to 25
  • SIC EM-Increased Magical Power Scaling from 75% to 80%
• Serqet
  • DEATHBANE-Increased Cooldown from 10s from 13s, Decreased Physical Protection Reduction from 15% to 10%
• Ullr
  • BLADED ARROW-Decreased Physical Power Scaling from 80% to 70%
  • HAIL OF ARROWS-Decreased Physical Power Scaling from 120% to 110%
• Vamana
  • COLOSSAL FURY-Increased Protections Gained from 5/10/15/20/25 to 15/20/25/30/35, Added a targeter to indicate the hit area for Vamana's Basic Attacks while Colossal Fury is active.

Kinda like what was done for Chu culainn's berserk form, artio's bear stance and Nike's sentinel form

You might downvote me, but listen to me for a second here.

When Scylla uses her 1, she says "Zoey, Achilles!" that's the first sign right there.

Now, for the deal breaker, when you ult as Scylla, and kill a god, you're given an additional chance to hit another god, I do love to think that is the work of the dog Achilles under Scylla's skirt. I think you know the similarity now, Achilles can do the same thing with his ult

Scylla's Achilles is Achilles.

Also everyone can see the targeter I believe I wasn't xbalanque but I saw the targeted

Edit: fixed the sentence

I mean, not to sound whiny and all but the skin:

• Has same effects

• His balls are the wrong color sheme

• Has no fangs

• Always smiling instead of being grumpy

I just want to say that if the skin is worth that much grinding, it should be different.

I've seen quite a few posts recently stating that Achilles is the most broken god since release Bellona, wtf were they thinking, he 1 can literally 1-hit, why does he have a stun, who gave him an execute, he will literally penta-execute every game etc etc

I am not denying that he is strong. However, you have to remember he is designed to be BOTH a warrior and an assassin, so if you look purely from either angle he seems crazy. The thing to keep in mind is he is missing some key aspects from both roles, and he can be played around once people get used to him

My worry is that they will nerf this unique god in a way where he cannot fulfill both roles he is designed for, and will be given up and made just one or the other.

He is remarkably similar to 2 existing gods that are considered average at best, whom I would like to analyze for comparison:

As a Warrior:

Achilles is missing 2 important things for a solo laner: Lockdown potential and teamfight presence. He only has 1 CC in his whole kit, not even a slow. And he doesn't have a team fight ult or ability like Chaac or Nike.

Achilles vs Hercules

Both of these gods have 2 damaging abilities, a stun, a heal, and a high damage ultimate.

Hercules also has a bit better base stats, but those can be compensated for by Achilles better passive.

Achilles shield slam is actually worse than hercs push. It doesn't stun the full range, cant push people under tower, has 1sec longer CD, and has less base damage. The cone is bigger than the line, but it lowers its damage half way through it. People are used to playing 40 feet away from herc and juking Earthshaker, that will come with time on achilles.

His heal is also much worse, trading most of the tankiness for a bit of power (which wont be much if you build full tank because its % based)

Even his ultimate is only comparable, since it does less damage and cant hit multiple people. It is an execute, but if someone is under 30%, herc ult will kill them anyway (especially with a bounce).

His only strictly better ability is his dodge, and even then only if it hits a god to get the reset. Otherwise you are just a Hercules that traded godly tankiness for damage, and has worse CC (Stun vs Push+Pull+Stun)

As an Assassin:

Achilles is missing one very important thing as a jungler: gank potential. His only mobility tool has to be used in the fight to get the double-proc for damage, and this leaves him having to gank by just walking out of the lane.

Achilles vs Ratatosker

The comparison isnt as apt here, but both gods have close range stuns, 2 abilities with scalings over 90%, and self heals.

As you can see, most of achilles abilities do more damage, but Ratatoskr has another CC option (in his slow), and has an entire extra damage ability over Achilles.

Ways to tone him down while leaving his niche intact:

1) If you cancel out of the ultimate, it goes on cooldown and you lose the Reset.

2) He gets the 'heel' debuff whether he hits/executes or not.

Just changing these two makes is much less likely to get multiple executes, and stops people from using the reset as an escape, lending to that 'high-risk' the ability was designed for. Personally, I don't think he would need any changes past this. However, just in case:

3) Lower the Power per level on his passive to +1, as many people are using it over the armored version even in solo lane. 30pwr+8%MS vs 235HP + 25prots is a pretty fair trade IMO

4) Increase the CD on his blessing so he cant heal as often

5) If they really feel the need to tone down his damage, reduce BASE damages, not scalings. If you reduce scalings, it means he doesn't get as much out of building full damage items to play as an assassin.

I honestly hope they just change the first two points here, as that will cut down on the highly frustrating Execute -> full kit -> execute secenrio and hopefully quell most of the complaints. People are used to avoid Herc's CC, they just need to get used to Avoiding Achilles.

Thoughts?

All of the skins this patch are in chests again. Is Hirez really abandoning the average player willing to buy skins outright to support the game in favor of whales who just spam chests filled with crap they dont want for that skin.

The answer is likely due to the fact that they needed another chest to put the Chang'e skin into (And to get more Gems but #FreeGameNoComplaining), but I was kinda looking forward to getting another shot at the Abyssal Knight skin alongside Abyssal Warrior.

It just bugs me that a skin that practically belongs in the same set doesn't get to be put with it and instead shafted into yet another chest, hell even the art for the Horrific Chest seems below the common standard compared to the other available chests.

Ah well, looks like it's back to praying to RNGesus.

And thank you.

On the update page it said that they would be increasing the webs that she could have active from 2 to 3. It used to be that you could put 2 webs down and then throw another 3 one for 6 spiders total. I thought that these changes would make it so that you can now potentially have 8 spiders total. Nope. All they did was change it so that the 3rd one that was "projectile only" can now be used as a trap. Did anyone else have this same misconception? Do you think they should make it the way I thought it was and have a fourth web be "projectile only" while being able to keep 3 as traps?