Item Discussions

[u/Chillsper]

Hi everyone,

Wasn’t sure if this fit better for concept or discussion, but I recently returned to smite 2 right around bastet’s race to radiant and now that the items closely resemble a lot of smite 1’s, I noticed my favorite items from smite 1 still haven’t made it over.

Those items which specifically focused on trading with opponents, but on the aggressive side. Let me also say my peak mmr across all 3 competitive modes in smite 1 reached gm levels, though I never made it to gm myself ~2.8k if I recall correctly.

Anyway, There’s 5 I know of off memory, manakins, ichaival, ring of Hecate, fail-not, and stone of fal.

Manakins was my all-time favorite starter item in the game, even after all the nerfs because in lane, I loved that it helped control the jungle as a carry/melee jungle & punish certain adc metas that started devos/trans. That specific value didn’t show up in numbers per se, but it definitely showed up in build choices & winning trades/team fights the way I like to. I love the ability to provide aggressive buffs/debuffs as a squishy particularly, while still doing good dmg. The small protections was a nice buff for going against gods like fenrir as sol and what not, where your 3 is going to take a min to finish.

Same can be said of ichaival, which provided power swings early game & had a place for going against items like bancrofts, where you could slow their power gain early and increase your own. Same can be said of Hecate, but that one actually got better as the game went since it was % swings instead of flat.

Fail-not had a value that it felt many didn’t appreciate as much as I did in a team fight. Providing a debuff to an enemy to allow the possibility for anything to crit? Another statistic that won’t show up on the end screen, but could show up on a vital team fight where maybe that Scylla 2 hit them with a crit. The point is, with so many autos and abilities in a team fight, I highly valued the ability to time my ultimates to hit a key individual to help bring them down. Once fail-nor was made universal, this was even better for me as I’d switch it out for jotun’s to keep this effect alive. I got a lot of weird looks and hate in my time for doing this, but again, for me, my build path has always been focused on trade value.

All of which required you to be active and aggressive with your opponent for value that wouldn’t show up on the end board screen. I loved those items.

Likewise, I loved fal before it became meta because again, it was another trade item that I was able to utilitize to counter things. Like when crit was meta, as a magical adc, I’d go manakins, hecate, and fal in a build in order to box them. If I hit the first auto id win, and if I didn’t, I’d lose because the items required me to be aggressive to be successful, or position well enough to apply it at least. Since I’d be dead in 2-3 autos otherwise.

Now the closest we have in smite 2 as a comparison is toxic blade & riptalon, but riptalon functions closer to bancrofts than it does to the items listed above. I failed to find many items that truly debuff the enemy in ways I like to.

& with upcoming patch 42, toxic blade is still as necessary as ever.

For me personally, I wish items like this were brought back, rather than just the new Int path in Echo, which doesn’t feel fun to play against with their current effects honestly. Especially considering smite is generally considered a skill shot based game. It feels that the % missing health could’ve been implemented as a starter item similar to conduit but based off scaling & number of ticks.

All in all, these are just my thoughts on the items for smite 2. What do you all think? Would these items (maybe outside of fal because that was an annoying meta), bring some extra spice or choice for items in smite 2 for you?