It's finally time for the first inter-regional LAN of Season 5, we'll be treated to tons of matches spanning from Wednesday to Sunday! We've spent the whole of Season 5 wondering who was the best of the best in Europe and North America, and while it was obvious that Space Station would qualify, the other 3 spots of the top regions were unclear. Europe was a race between three (NRG, RivaL, and Dignitas) but NRG dropped a set to Obey while Rival and Dignitas swept the Alliance. EUnited started out losing it's first 3 matches, but then finished 6-1 to qualify for the LAN.

How to Watch:

As always, you'll be able to watch the event on Mixer, but you'll also be able to watch on Twitch and on YouTube

Teams:

There will be a match between Nocturns Gaming and WhySoCereal to determine who will be the LatAm representatives. The match will be the first game played on Wednesday.

Schedule

Note that each tournament day begins at 11:00 EDT

Wednesday, May 9

Thursday, May 10

Friday, May 11

Saturday, May 12

Best of 5

Sunday, May 13

Best of 7 With Winner of Match 12 having a 1 game advantage

Smite Minor League Finals

On Sunday May 13, we'll also wee a Best of 3 between Anxiety Onset, the top SML team from North America, and Insignem, the top SML team from Europe.

I am of the opinion that the reason most people avoid conquest is because the entry level is so high due to all you need to know before even getting started. Blessings quests were a good idea, but how about we update the recommended build system not only to be up to date with meta but also to have several options per god to fit different roles? This would take considerable time but it could be outsourced to players via some voting system or pros or something.

We also need better and deeper tutorials but those would take a lot of time. There's a lot of good instruction videos out there by pros and other community members. How about we have the game client point people straight to those? Let's have the learning tab back with only those instructional videos added and let's have the home page advertise any new additions.

When I roll a chest a few times and I just get wards, voice packs I won't use and other filler I just stop spending anymore money on the game for a while.

If chests were filled with a lot less filler than I probably would just buy the entire chest which means I would actually end up spending more money. If I could just buy what I want I would probably end spending more money because I would actually feel like I'm getting my money's worth.

The way things work now just discourages me from spending money and makes me regret it when I do unless it's the rare occasion when I actually get something that I want.

I absolutely would love to play gods like Hel and Uller, but i can not stand listening to the same line over and over when playing these gods. Tyr dont speak while switching stances, why must Hel repeat the same line every time?

Edit* I'm watching new commenters getting downvoted, someone's got an eye on the thread trying to prevent visibility. My comment within this post received hella down votes compared to the amount of voting elsewhere on this thread. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Many users including myself faithfully purchased last splits season ticket only to have it not function properly with no official fix or explanation from Hirez.

It's been acknowledged by multiple members of staff however the support staff maintains that no compensation will be given despite this known issue and to keep an eye on patches for a potential fix. It doesn't matter if you send proof, pictures from multiple weeks with zero voting capability, their stance has remained unchanged.

I don't think I have to get to wordy to explain all the ways that's absolutely fucking unacceptable to take my or any players money, not provide the service I've purchased then tell me I won't be compensated.

Every extra ciricular service or event I've encountered from Hirez has needed intense contact w support for me to properly receive the content I paid for. From the paladins Area skin, the Hand of gods Venus Aphro, Twitch Skins, theres always an issue.

Now we have this, a core service offered and advertised within your main HUD and its malfunctioning, and I'm hearing that there will be no compensation. How do you justify this?

If you or a friend has or had this issue drop a comment below, I have one thread in the past similar but it's still not resolved and I'm curious to see how many pop out of the wood work right here on the sub w the same issue. Thx Guys.

So Geb's 2 (Shockwave) has decreasing damage as it goes out to it's max range, reduced by 50% at max range. It would be nice to have like a 10% scaling meter on the ability to show certain points on it where the damage drops. Doesn't need to show every % drop as that would get way to crowded on the targeter, but I think 10 % or even just a 25% marker would be nice.

Can someone make some concept art for that? I think it's a really good idea that came out of nowhere to my mind.

I was reading an amazing thread in a different post where Ajax and PonPon were responding to community ideas of balance, cc, kit originality, etc. Someone referenced rat's rework and I immediately thought to write this.

I was a rat main after it was cool the first time and before it was cool again. The dark era for him where unjust names like "shit rat" were floating about. It started as a joke to spite a friend, but I quickly fell in love with the playstyle. Old rat was a little bitch and I loved it. "I may not do much but I'm here to piss you off" was the mentality I went for. I loved that he could change his type of annoying based on the team he was facing with his passive acorn. Heals for longer presence, stun for cc he lacked elsewhere (probably due to his mobility, idk I'm not in charge of balance), lightning for those orgasmic crit/frostbound procs that would hit the whole enemy team, and the bomb acorns for….memes I guess?

Rat helped me find my Smite identity where I try to be a constant presence of annoyance. Then everything changed when the rework nation attacked. His ult got the knockup which was great, but the dash reset was gone, the build pathways were gone, and the tiny annoying acorns were gone. While still fun, and much more viable, he lost some team fight mobility and annoying-ness for burst damage and CC. Everyone and their mother started playing Rat because he was meta and as such he got nerfed. Then for the better part of season 4, I stopped playing and having fun with him since he was unviable and lacking the luster that caused me to fall in love with him in the first place.

The changes to season 5 helped a lot. I found a hybrid jungle build for Rat that allows me to stay in the fight longer and be more of a sustained presence. Full cooldown for more dashes obviously, and the mobility in the bigger map allows for more chase-down potential and surprise ganks.

However, the old Rat kit is what helped me find what play style I personally love in this game. The mindset translates to my other go-to-god selections in the current meta: artio, geb, and cu chu for me play as constant disruptors in the fight, demanding that the enemy pay attention to me or get CC'd or killed. New raijan and xbal are my carry mains that showcase this too. Raijan is always vomiting abilities faster than he can cast them and xbal's blind is self-explanatory. Also xbal's "spin and bitch" combo (as me and my friends like to call it) where he poisons and dashes for the extra damage is just the right amount of disrespect for me.

What I'm trying to build up to here is that for me personally, having a god main goes beyond just being good with them, or playing them a lot because their broken or whatever. You develop a playstyle and skillset all your own. If you pick Rama, you like to basic. If you pick kali or baka, you probably like to cling to a 1 v 1. If you pick janus, maybe survivability is your thing. If you play a ton of khepri, it's probably that amazing feeling whenever you get a successfully save someone. Or maybe it's something else about those gods, who am I to say? I'm sure there are other old-rat mains that have developed different playstyles from their experience with him besides my "annoyance" one.

While a lot of people cry "rework" when a kit just isn't working well COUGH COUGH KUZENBO COUGH COUGH, keep in mind that someone out there has identified with that god due to the one of the specific identities that the god brings into the game. In regards to the King Kappa, I'm rank 10 with him and I love his peel ability and damage reflect. I personally play him to sit in the enemy team and piss them off with my body-blocking and disruption. Others may play him differently, but either way you run the risk of changing his core identity for the sake of viability. At the end of the day, Smite is a videogame. It's meant for fun. While balance is extremely important, don't cry nerfs, buffs, and reworks without taking into account the reason other play the god in the first place.

Hirez has said this is a factor in their god balancing. The example I remember most clearly is jing wei's mobility where they stated they didn't want to change her mobility since that was core to her design. I couldn't agree more and hope they continue it in future balancing/new god design. Who cares if a god has new CC or a new mechanic? As long as their kit allows a new playstyle or a unique hybrid of styles that allows players to grow their own Smite identity alongside it.

I hope I got my point across and thanks for reading! Let me know the gods you main and why in the comments, I'm really interested in how other people see a kit compared to how I do.

Bringbackolddart2k18

For the longest I've always wanted a whole bunch of skins from chests but never wanted to bother with RNG just like a lot of others. I'm pretty sure I'm biased since Zeus now has two skins in 55+ chests but still.

With the changes to Divine Uprising it has been having me think pretty hard about this being implemented more abroad to the rest of the game. I'm not sure if it'd even be too much to ask but why not make skins in every chest direct purchase for increased price? An argument can be that then exclusive skins would lose their value, a workaround could be that they're only direct purchase when the chest they're in is purchasable. This way the skins more or less keep that rare value feel while also not being full of RNG to get which is what was the big complaint with Smite.

Though then there comes discussion with what a skin is really worth as people don't seem to like the 750 gem price we currently have for the Divine Uprising content. Not only does it seem too much but it's also a price above typical skin pricing. The best way to probably look at it as these kind of skins that we could directly buy from chests have a different pricing format.

Feedback would be appreciated as I'm unsure how good of an idea it would be to push this into the entire game since if it was done then people might debate that we might as well just get rid of chests in exchange for higher pricing. Then at least the way to keep their rare value would be to set up a shop for them similar to the season ticket that rotates like the chests do.

After i read the Twitter message from Stew, i almost lost my fun at the game. Removing gamemodes won't make people play other modes. i know why i play siege - it's because i don't really like the other modes (except joust). I really hope, they will consolidate it in S6 instead of just removing it. Paid a lot of passion, time and money to this game, but without my fav modes i think i would stop playing.

In light of the talks to remove/consolidate the more casual modes, I thought I would be interesting to get some of other people's reasons for avoiding conquest and/or ranked and give Hi-rez some feedback on the state of the game. I feel as though all the focus of this game has been on conquest and ranked while the causal players are quiet.

DISCLAIMER: I do think the game should be still based around conquest and more incentive should be made to get people to play it. However I think removing other game modes is a terrible move.

For me, I do not play ranked for a few reasons. I do not like the feeling of playing for something. Games to me are supposed to be a fun escape from the stress of real life and ranked contradicts that. I am curious as to where I'd be placed but at the same time, I don't care.

As for conquest itself, I do like playing it. I only play maybe one match every day or two. The reason is that it is a much larger time commitment and stressful than other game modes. Even though I only play casual matches, I still like to win. I don't BM or get mad when I lose or when someone else is bad but the desire to win is still there. That said, in other game modes like clash, arena or siege, I can make up for a bad player. If my hunter, for example, is not doing well in clash, I can make up for that. In conquest, if my duo lane is getting stomped, then we just lost that lane and now have a fed hunter to deal with and that essentially turns the game into a 4v5. In other modes, getting behind is not as punishing since the game keeps everyone at relatively even ground.

Another reason is the learning curve. I have around 1200 hours in the game and I know conquest pretty well. I know how to play every role competently and know rotations and proper farming and such. I know this stuff because I have put time into learning it but I can't expect other players to do the same. The other game modes are easy to jump into with no complex mechanics to learn. Arena, kill minions and each other. Clash, destroy towers and phoenixes and kill titan. Easy to grasp the concept and do well.

I don't think removing other game modes will help the game. It would cause a lot of people to quit playing the game rather than move to conquest. I would only play maybe once a week if they were remove the other modes and i definitely would put more money into a game that I don't play often.

What are you guys reasons and what are your favorite game modes?

Welcome to week 46 of the Challenge Rifts. Please feel free to use this thread to discuss this week's Challenge Rift. Feel free to post guides, tips, and tricks.

Make sure you specify your region, as different regions have different Challenge Rifts.

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I've been thinking of buying diablo 2 for a while now, I just don't know if it is worth it. Could someone help me decide? P.S: I played and loved diablo 3, and most of all I love the lore of the diablo universe

I'm looking to purchase the game, but I wanna know what bundle I should buy. I am checking g2a and I see reaper of souls and rise of the necromancer. Are those both the only expansions?