Smite's Next Update Brings a New Character and Some Excellent Skins

Hi-Rez Studios this week detailed the new 3.8 update for Smite and the character it brings with it.

Susano, the God of the Summer Storm, becomes the third character from the Japanese pantheon added to the game. His passive allows him to build up movement speed based on the number of abilities he has on cooldown (4 percent each). This could serve as both an offensive and defensive buff--using all of your abilities will enable you to get away more quickly or chase down an enemy you can then finish off with a basic attack.

As for what those abilities do, Wind Siphon deals damage in a cone in front of Susano and pulls anyone in the middle of it toward him. Jet Stream creates a whirlwind that does damage, and by activating it a second time, he can teleport to the whirlwind's location. Making this even more useful, if the initial damage hits an enemy, the whirlwind travels with them, letting you teleport to their location(and reducing the cooldown to six seconds, down from 13-17 seconds, depending upon its level).

Storm Kata is perhaps the most complicated of his basic abilities; it performs three moves quickly in a row, doing damage in a cone, then in a circle, and then finally dashing forward. His ultimate, Typoon, creates a hurricane at his location, pulling enemies in and growing in size. Activating it again moves the storm in whichever direction he's facing, dealing damage and knocking up enemies.

New skins are introduced in 3.8, including masteries for Raijin. Other characters get new, original skins, including the very excellent Riftshaker Janus and Jag.rar Xbalanque. You can see images of these in the gallery below.

Gallery

Balance changes are being made to items, characters, and the Conquest map. Nemesis is being buffed slightly to make her more effective early in the game; Raijin is being tweaked to make him easier to use and more powerful; and Xing Tian is receiving damage increases, adding the root back on his Hook Slam ability, and getting an adjustment to how his ultimate works.

Among the item changes are an increase in power and cost to Bloodforge, as well as a new passive meant to distinguish it from Devourer's Gloves. Golden Bow is getting both a power increase and a cost reduction, while Rod of Asclepius should be more beneficial to healers (and will be easier to build into, as a prerequisite gets a similar healing buff passive).

On the Conquest front, the speed camp is coming back, but in the current location of the mana camp. This is meant to help those who play as Junglers, letting them move around more quickly. They'll also have more to do, with Back Harpies respawning more quickly.

For the full patch notes, head over to Smite's website.