Here are the Smite 2 Alpha patch notes: All May playtest changes

The new era of Smite is finally playable, with the Smite 2 alpha playtest going live on May 2 alongside a Mount Olympus-sized list of changes hitting everything from gameplay and modes to items, stats, and gods.

Because this is the first real Smite 2 balance patch since HiRez started working on its sequel release, there are (unsurprisingly) lots of things to go over⁠; the alpha blog the devs shared on May 2 tallied up to 14,158 words and covered everything from gods and items changes to Conquest upgrades, new gameplay rulings, and what basically amounts to a complete overhaul of classes.

For veteran Smite players and eager newcomers alike, it’s a lot to take in, so we’ve broken things down a little more⁠—and spun out the gods and item changes⁠—so you can take it all in as quickly as possible. After all, we all want to be playing the alpha test as soon as it goes live, not just reading about everything.

So, settle in with your reading glasses and a pipping hot cup of tea, because these Smite 2 patch notes are a mighty tome.

Smite 2 Alpha Playtest patch notes

Gameplay

Strength (STR) and Intelligence (INT)

• All gods can now build all items. 
• All gods can now build these two different stats that will have different effects on scaling their abilities and basic attacks.
• STR is generally used for Basic Attack Damage and Ability Damage.
• INT is generally used for Ability Damage and Ability Utility Effects.
• Each effect in each ability will be clearly labeled to indicate what type of stats they scale from. 

Magical and Physical Damage (and Protections)

• Any god can now deal Magical and/or Physical Damage. 
• Many Smite 2 gods deal both types within the same kit, regardless of item build. 
• Each instance of damage in each ability will be clearly labeled to display if it deals magical or physical damage. 
• Abilities that scale mostly or only from STR generally deal physical damage.
• Abilities that scale mostly or only form INT generally deal magical damage
• Many abilities scale from a combination of STR and INT at the same time, and are specifically chosen to deal only magical or physical damage for thematic reasons or balance reasons. 
• Basic Attacks can deal Magical or Physical damage depending on the god, but all basic attacks currently scale at 100 percent STR plus 20 percent INT.

Magical and Physical Protection

• Magical and Physical protections will work just how they did in Smite.
• Magical Protection decreases Magical Damage and Physical Protection decreases Physical Damage. 
• The formula for mitigating damage through protections is unchanged. 100/(100+x)
• Keep in mind that most enemies will be able to deal both types of damage, and itemize accordingly.
• Even a god building all STR can still deal Magical Damage, when you take or deal damage a symbol will appear next to the damage numbers that conveys the type. 

Cooldowns

• Cooldown Reduction  percent has been changed to Cooldown Rate 
• Cooldown Rate does not map directly 1:1 to percent reduction, it has diminishing returns the more you get. Example:
  • At 10 CDRate, my effective CDReduction is nine percent
  • At 50 CDRate, my effective CDReduction is 33 percent
  • At 120 CDRate, my effective CDReduction is 54.5 percent
• This also uses the 100/(100+x) formula.

Lifesteal

• Lifesteal is now just Lifesteal, this stat automatically applies to ALL damage dealt, whether it be magical, physical, basic attack, or ability.
• There is no reduction for area of effect abilities. 
• It applies at a 100 percent effectiveness of the amount to enemy gods.
• But it applies at 33 percent effectiveness to all minions, jungle monsters, and jungle bosses.
  • So 30 percent lifesteal
    • 30 percent of the damage dealt to gods is healed.
    • And 10 percent of the damage dealt to everything else is healed.

Penetration

• Flat Pen is not currently available as a stat on any item, and there are no plans to reintroduce it.
• A similar effect can be achieved through Protection Reduction Debuffs though, which are available in a few select places. 
• Percent Pen is still available on items. So are effects like Qin’s which doesn’t have actual Pen, but is still anti-tank in its own way.
• Physical Penetration benefits abilities that deal physical damage.
• Magical Penetration benefits abilities that deal magical damage. 

Critical Strike

• Critical Strikes include all of the modern smoothing formulas that Smite had.
• Critical Strikes in Smite 2 hit for 1.75x damage, With the Deathbringer item boosting that to 2x damage.  
• All gods can now buy Critical Strike Chance and can Critically Strike on their basic attacks.

Movement

• The Backpedal is minus 40 percent. Strafe is minus 20 percent. Melee penalty is minus 35 percent. Ranged Penalty is minus 50 percent
• Gods no longer gain movement speed over the first seven levels.
• All gods are full speed from level one.
• There are no boots-style items in the game, movement speed only comes from full-priced tier 3s, usually under specific conditions only. 

Diminishing Returns (of crowd control duration)

• This is mostly unchanged from Smite.
• Hard crowd-control provides one stack of DR.
• Displacement crowd-control provides two stacks of DR.
• Each stack of DR provides 20 percent crowd control reduction of the duration.
• Cap of 80 percent Reduction, but this cannot reduce effects to lower than 0.5s.
• Stacks up to four times, lasts 15s.
• One change from Smite 2 is abilities can now apply only one or two stacks of DR. In Smite some abilities could apply three stacks based on multiple CC effects in a row.

Displacement Crowd Control

• All knockbacks, knock-ups, pushes, pulls, grabs will now be described as “Displacement” CC effect instead of “Knockbacks.”
• The term Knockback often confused players because it sounds more specific than it actually was.
  • This is a hard CC effect.
• Abilities that displace will describe the direction and style of displacement in their long description.

Impede Crowd Control

• Player-made walls and other blocking areas will use the term “Impedes” to describe what types of other gods or characters it blocks.
• Phantom effect grants Impediment Immunity.

Health Shields

• Health shields now stack in Smite 2.
• Damage will be taken from the shield with the shortest duration first.
• Shields will be able to be gained, lost, independently over time, and treated as if they were each unique shields, even though the UI currently only displays them as one total shield bar.

Gods

• Read all the god changes and reworks in Smite 2 alpha here.

Items

• Read all the item changes in Smite 2 alpha here.

Conquest

• Read all Conquest changes here.

General

Front End UI

• This UI is in a mostly temporary state, and is intended to serve the core functional purposes of playing:
  • Learning about Gods.
  • Getting into a party.
  • Playing a game through queues or custom games.

Practice Mode

• Navigate to the Gods section of the front end, select a god, then use the Enter Practice button to load into our test map with the god.

New Player Experience

• We expect most alpha testers will have already played a good amount of Smite, and we are prioritizing core gameplay systems, so there will not be any tutorial systems in the game at this time.
• This document will serve as the primary source of gameplay information.
• Please follow Smite socials for external guides, tips, and explanations.
• New player experience will become a huge priority for the team in future stages of development.

Queueing 

• Pre-match lobby will not immediately close if someone disconnects after selecting a god, they will have time to reconnect to the lobby or the match.

Conquest Roles

• Role queue and assigned roles are not ready yet.
• Pre-match lobby will have a function for players to select and trade roles.
• We highly encourage using this, even if you already hovered or locked your god.

Pre Match Lobby Information

• Players will be able to read their gods high-level summary, as well as individual ability descriptions in the match lobby.

Auto Buy

• All players will be prompted with an Auto Buy option at the start of each match.
• Each god will have two to three different Auto Builds players can choose from, this can be changed each game.
• Once a build is selected, that build will automatically progress whenever the player returns to base.
• The current auto build will be disabled for the rest of the match if ANY single item is bought or sold manually. This is due to the early development state of the system.

Auto Skill

• Auto Skill is available but must be manually enabled in the gameplay settings.

Surrender

• Surrender functionality does exist in this test.

Conquest Help Tips

• As you start the match and move through the map, help tips will pop up to explain new mechanics and rewards.
• These can be disabled via the settings menu.

Player Behavior

• This is an alpha test, things might go wrong, players might be confused. We encourage everyone to just “play on” as much as they can. Try to finish matches or use the surrender function. Try to focus on exploring the new gameplay even if your teammates or opponents are struggling.
• MMR will be reset multiple times in the future.
• Deserter penalty will be in effect for this public weekend.
• VGS, pings, and emotes will also have built-in spam protection.

Known Issues

General

• Players might move more slowly than intended after reconnecting to a match. This issue usually resolves itself after a short amount of time. 
• God Ability Descriptions or Item Descriptions might include typos or numerical errors 
• Voice packs are missing lines or have lines mixed up.
• VGS Buttons still register their gameplay effects, and will cause you to move while using VGS. Be careful of VGS while recalling.

UI

• The “True Alpha” intro video is unskippable. This is intended for now. Enjoy those precious moments with Travis and Ponpon. 

Conquest

• Conquest Towers are missing visual stages of destruction and outro destruction visuals. 
• Wards are using temporary models. 
• Ward vision area is not visible on the minimap.

HUD

• Damage numbers are not visible if you turn your camera so that they are offscreen. 

Items

• ALL item effects (buffs, debuffs, hit areas, aoe areas, etc) are using temporary visual FX and audio FX, and will be updated in the future. 
• A few items are not sorted correctly in alphabetical order. 
• Many items have not had their icon art updated yet. 
• Blinking Amulet is currently allowing the teleport to be triggered in combat or even while firing/channeling an ability. This is not our final intent and the item will be removed from future Alpha tests to be reassessed.

Gods

• Basic attacks can temporarily become unresponsive after rapidly tapping a single ability on normal cast mode. Using another ability usually resolves the situation. 

Anubis

• Has no passive meter currently, a new one is coming soon.
• Plague of Locusts visual FX can linger longer than intended

Athena

• Has not had updated ability icons yet.
• Can get stuck in walls if teleporting to a target right as they leap over walls. If you get stuck in this way, you can use the menu to leave the game and then reconnect, which should send you back to your base. 

Bellona

• Has no passive meter currently, a new one is coming soon.
• Bellona can visually appear to be wielding the incorrect weapon for her stance on occasion. 

Cernunnos

• Has no passive meter currently, a new one is coming soon.
• Has not had updated ability icons yet.

Chaac

• Has no passive meter currently, a new one is coming soon.

Fenrir

• Has no passive meter currently, a new one is coming soon.
• Has not had updated ability icons yet.
• Is unintentionally CC immune throughout the entire duration of Brutalize.
• Brutalize does not consistently proc items or critically strike.
• Fenrir’s position and distance relative to his Brutalize target is not the correct position or distance. 

Kukulkan

• Has no passive meter currently, a new one is coming soon.
• Kukulkan’s new dash can get interrupted early or stay equipped when it isn’t supposed to.

Loki

• Loki’s passive backstab damage numbers do not have a unique art treatment yet.
• Loki’s Ultimate is missing a few features. It does not cripple gods on the first hit yet, and it does not attach to the target god in the same way as Smite yet. 

Odin

• Has not had updated ability icons yet.
• Raven Shout can currently detonate while Odin is mid-leap. 

Zeus

• Has not had updated ability icons yet.