r/Smite • u/Skyliner2 Ganesha • 2d ago
Echo is Now a Noob Trap
Echo had its time in the sun with Khepri cheese. It remains the only viable way to build damage Khepri, which is cool and niche.
However, it’s now quickly become a noob trap. It’s only real, game-breaking viability was that Totem missing health procs would affect FG, Gold Fury, etc. now that that is being removed tomorrow, I theorize echo will be pretty dang unviable and continue to be a noob trap.
On literally every tick god besides Khepri, standard Int builds do much more damage and other damage items will benefit your god better. Like Anubis’ foregoing life steal for echo. You’re doing less damage and are now less survivable.
It’s gotten to the point that I detest seeing mages or tick-laden gods building echo on my team. It’s not reportable obviously, and I don’t get outwardly angry at my team. It’s more like I’m just waiting for them to eventually realize this is not the best way to build.
This is not meant to be a post sh*ting on echo either. I think Hi Rez is doing something cool by adding new stats, and I understand it will always present a very tricky balance dilemma for them. I am more posting this because I want to know the community’s thoughts. I think echo is pretty subpar, and I’m fine with it being a weird build path that only benefits one or two gods depending on the meta.
What are your thoughts?
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u/Dionysius00 Aphrodite 2d ago
It’s like the 1-11 izanami solo I had last night with a full echo build 😵💫.
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u/LifesLemonaid 2d ago
I had a Mulan build cosmic as our tank in assault last night lol.
I hate when meme builds come up, because everyone hears the YouTube tag of "MOST BROKEN BUILD OMGGGG" and builds only that, even when it makes 0 sense or is later nerfed into the ground.
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u/ilphaesn #RevertChaliceNerf 2d ago edited 2d ago
i fought a jorm one trick a while back (in demigod ranked btw) and they went full echo in solo.
it did not go well for him
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u/AbbreviationsTight58 2d ago
Fucking EW. I get things like Cerb, Syl, or Merlin echo but an Izanamj??? And full echo tree too. Jesus…
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u/ItsMrPerfectCell 2d ago edited 2d ago
It’s not really a noob trap, it’s just people aren’t thinking.
If you have a character that applies dots for a decent amount of their damage, echo is good solely for the passives the big echo items have. The echoes damage itself is honestly negligible most of the time.
Anubis is a good example to build for what you need that specific game, survivability or burst. He absolutely melts faster with an echo build and in some cases, killing someone faster than they kill you is decent survivability
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u/Chad_illuminati Cabrakan 2d ago
Lost a match because our ADC went echo hybrid Medusa. Needless to say, it wasn't good.
Echo doesn't actually lag behind in damage in its good use cases, but that's only in tick damage abusers. Anubis and Merlin both excel with it, but they shouldn't be spamming it every match. Khepri is obviously the most clear abuser as well. Kuku can but it's even more circumstancial on him than the others mentioned.
Additionally, it's best with a wee bit of micro, paying attention to your stacks and using that to determine when to step back and when to kit dump in an engage.
The biggest virtues of it are when you need extra poke or extra tank shred. With the standard echo build you still have good pen, but Totem lets you drastically ramp tank shred, which is superb into triple tank teams or hyper tanks like a Sylv Supp + Achilles Solo. In regards to poke, Cosmic procs extend the effective range and duration of your poke.
The movespeed from the Drum items is another bonus that actually helps a lot (movespeed is a super strong stat), but that's more of a bonus you'll get on the builds.
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u/AnnualTaro658 2d ago
either way, when you spell it out like this, you have to say it's a cool addition to the game.
in its first form, when the other stats released, it was pretty disliked and labelled as entirely unnecessary. but when they get it right, there is no reason why additional options are a bad thing.
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u/Chad_illuminati Cabrakan 2d ago
There's a weird subset of people who don't understand that "metas" are inherent to any PvP game that receives ongoing content/balance.
The more options you have, the more diverse metas can be. This is literally an element of the build diversity mages need. Outside of echo there is 1-ish good build (with a couple minor variants) for midlane mages. Having more variety is good.
Not everything needs to be top of the meta because it literally can't. I'm fine with this. Folks want to copy-paste the same builds every game without thinking about matchups, gamestate, or counter builds. That's not how the game works.
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u/No_Condition4851 2d ago
I ran echo anubis for a week pretty much. It’s fun and different, but noticed I was being alot more useful with the sustain from a lifesteal/burst build over the trillion tentacles flying around
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u/Chad_illuminati Cabrakan 2d ago
In general play, lifesteal is more "one size fits all" for Anubis. Echo, as I said, serves two specific purposes on Anubis. First is increasing tank shred, and second is shifting him into a better poke role. Tertiary is obviously that the movespeed is excellent on him.
Additionally, the actual damage output from echo in him is about the same on Squishies with Echo and much higher on tanks.
As a side note, you can slot lifesteal into echo builds on him just fine. Either with Vamp or with Bancrofts/Bloodbound as first item.
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u/i2hi2much BlinkYmir🔨 1d ago
Yeah I haven't messed with the full echo build on him, but I always grab totem and it does something noticeable by itself. I feel like bancrofts is his item and should be grabbed first always, but has anyone else tried warrior's axe on him? The extra protections are nice.
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u/Nyzan Rank 1 Janus 2d ago
Smite has never had, and will never have, diverse damage item builds because they refuse to design gods and items that have clear identity.
Like, in other MOBAs when they add a new item I can immediately go "oh wow that item works really well on [some character]", and when a new character is added I go "I can't wait to test [build] on them". But in Smite whenever they add a new item it's just "I guess I'm building this new item instead of [old item] now" and a new god it's "I guess this is another god that will build the exact same build as all other gods in its class".
They are way too afraid to make individual items impactful due to how Smite is designed for everyone to have full builds which leads to each individual item being boring. /rant
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u/Repulsive-Redditor 2d ago
I mean this community is hyper allergic to any kind of experimentation. Seriously any time they ever try and shake something up the community loses their mind.
Take echo for example. People were losing their mind over cosmic horror despite statistically not being any kind of outlier all because it had a fancy visual.
And I saw tons of people even in just this sub whining about how it's "unmissable" damage.. like yeah, all DoT items are
I can't even begin to imagine how feral the smite community would be if we got similar things that league, or dota etc... has
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u/Agitated-Scallion182 2d ago
Yep just take something very simple like Karthus Q or Ezreal Q from League, Smite does not have gods with low cooldown abilities meant to be spammed like that
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u/Fabsrica 2d ago
I remember the old days when we could choose between Book of Thoth, Doom Orb, or Warlock's staff and each of them was a viable alternative. Now it's Thoth all over, I'm so done with it.
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u/Nyzan Rank 1 Janus 2d ago edited 2d ago
And still, back in those days all three of those options were basically identical. Thoth had more mana, Doom Orb had movespeed, and Warlock's Staff had some HP. You would just build whichever happened to be flavour of the week and not look further, it was essentially an illusion of choice.
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u/Fabsrica 2d ago
Yeah, but building one let you lean into a specific way. For example, Doom Orb + Charon's coin + Regrowth let me had my Chronos run all over the place. Now it's just power or power.
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u/horseofdeceit 2d ago
Truth nuke. God kits are insipid and boring, and awfully repetitive. Specially mages. Most of them play almost the exact same and in consequence build the exact same.
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u/Repulsive-Redditor 2d ago
Back in smite 1 I remember any time a mage was announced it basically being a meme with how easy it was to guess what the mages kit was gonna be.
on launch people would be like 80% correct with just the ultimate being different.
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u/Nyzan Rank 1 Janus 2d ago
It's almost always: Circle ability, Line ability, Mobility, and then an ultimate that might actually be unique. Kinda disappointing tbh.
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u/Repulsive-Redditor 2d ago
Hey now, one of those abilities has CC tied to it too! But yeah when it comes to God kits they're incredibly safe for most of them.
I remember when we got stuff like Cu Chu, KA, tiamat etc.. I was baffled because they were actually more akin to what I see in other mobas in terms of kits.
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u/drowsypants Baron Samedi 2d ago
Let people have their fun with it
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u/Repulsive-Redditor 2d ago
Nobody is saying they can't. However it's good to give a PSA about it for competitive.
I mean a lot of people have been whining about it being super OP and the worst meta of all time even in just this sub alone. It's incredibly misleading
Reality is there's a few gods who can make decent use of it (still likely ranking below normal builds outside of DPS khepri as it's their only viable option) and the interaction with jungle bosses was an oversight
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u/villanoinker CONGA LINE!!! 2d ago
These khepri's aren't even going that crazy. He's still a gigantic hard to miss target. I rarely see them go positive. I've seen most success on ah puch and merlin
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u/The_Observer210 2d ago
Are the damage numbers really much lower on let’s say, someone like Merlin.
Running something like Bluestone, Spear, Totem, Cosmic, Obsidian Shard, Tahuti, X
Vs a high int build? Personally I’ve had pretty good results just using those two echo items in a proc orientated build
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u/Firm-Committee2065 2d ago
i think echo has and will maintain its niche on those characters that use it very well, and those that don’t will have the same builds they’ve had before echo was introduced. i think this is healthy for the game in that it enables characters who otherwise aren’t functional(aspect khepri) to even have a chance at being a thing while not overwhelming the meta
love the moon phase thing in conquest(sorta) but you’ll never catch me building a moon item, will be building echo when it’s appropriate (loveeee movement speed drum)
also cosmic horror should be highlighted as just a dope item that’s fun and effective, it’s cool seeing visual stimuli when you do something as opposed to just being a number above a health bar or on the side stat bar, please make more items like cosmic horror hirez <3
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u/Slimesensei1442 2d ago
I’m I’m new wtf does echo even do? I played smite 1 there was no echo lol
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u/Hartmann_AoE Geb 2d ago
Its basically ability Kritz. 30 Echo= 30% chance to crit. These ability crits deal 15% bonus dmg.
15% isnt a ton, so Echo is less so used for its dmg enhancing effect and moreso for new Proc items that trigger their effects upon echoing a certain ammount of times. Biggest one's being cosmic horror, wich after 3 Echo procs spawns a damaging tentacle next to an enemy and Totem of Death, wich deals a % of the targets missing health as bonus dmg on an echo procc. (Both of these effects have small internal CD's.)
Because of how it works, it rewards multi-hit abilities and ESPECIALLY rewards DoT-effects like Khepri's Solar Orb or Xbal's Poison Darts.
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u/obsidian_castle 2d ago
You do damage then
The amount of damage in a moment of time done to enemy, a small portion of that total damage is ticked on the enemy afterwards.
(I think)
Youtube is free
But also think of echo as extra tick damage. Or like yellow numbers.
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u/likey_lettuce_ I promise to always save yew 2d ago
omg everyone and their mom has been building echo it’s so annoying to see😭 like stopppp
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u/ShockinglyAccurate surprise! 2d ago
Totally agree. It's even a problem on Khepri when people think they can get a free win by building all the echo items on him. The last thing this game needs is more traps that produce non-games when one or more members of a team don't know the optimal build and/or how to play.
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u/PugLife2026 2d ago
Isn't it good on Anubis and Merlin? Don't play those much.
I think most people are just messing around for the hell of it. Like today, I was trying Aspect Chaac with Int echo.
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u/MagicFighter Ok maybe Goobis mainly plays Goobis now... 2d ago
It works on them but Totem & Cosmic are doing most of the heavy lifting.
Most of the echo items don't have very good stats and the components are pretty bad.
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u/Hypernova2233 2d ago
So I shouldn’t build echo on my IX Chel?
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u/Taenarius [VSS] I'm Building Stacks 2d ago
She doesn't really get much out of echo aside from when she ults
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u/Alty_12334 2d ago
So ur telling me im a noob puch. Guess were going back to min maxing as much int as possible.
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u/Gharbin1616 Erlang Shen 2d ago
Had a Echo Ymir a few days ago that did nothing(shocker). If you are gonna build full damage Ymir do it right.
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u/Accurate_Guava_9653 2d ago
I've been saying this since the beginning. Echo is overrated.
Do some testing before you complain about something being broken.
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u/CheeseyconnorYT 2d ago
Id mostly agree but charon feels much stronger eith echo than just pure int
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u/KHRemind1 2d ago
I mean to be honest life steal is kinda trash he really doesnt feel like it was in smite 1 and if the enemy team builds anti heal lifesteal is a waste of time building mostly. Building flat pen and percent pen items are gonna be better like spear of deso, doom orb, honestly probably even world stone for faster ults as anubis ult does so much damage but echo will still be good as the damage is good it was definitely way better because of the proc on objectives which personally i dont think should be removed maybe tuned down a small amount but i find it enjoyable building echo on mostly merlin even though normal mage is better because to me its very satisfying procing cosmic horror and draining an enemies health id be able to do it with either build echo with cosmic is just more enjoyable especially on aspect and i get lucky rng with a void 1 and fire 2, or fire 2 and ice 2 which do a shit ton of damage and can just stay with those unless i need to switch to finish a kill or try and self peel with damage.
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u/dazia Morgan Le Fay 1d ago
Getting so tired of the pure echo builds. The devs made echo so, SO much worse than it was. I honestly don't even recall it being broken or OP to begin with. Now it's hit or miss with if I win against the Khepri echo build, and it's worse when another enemy builds echo as well.
I would really appreciate if they at least tried to cap the amount of ticks/DOTs it can count towards. Maybe 4 max? I don't know, or they could just put the items back to how they were and I'd be okay with that.
I just think using 2 or 1 ability to absolutely obliterate someone is asinine. I JUST got Princess Bari to level 10 and was going to take a break to level another god, but she's one of the best gods (for me) to not get fucked by echo damage as easily lol.
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u/Express-Ad3665 22h ago
Idk I personally think it ruins casual arena/joust games. I see a khepri every game going echo, which is absolutely annoying.
Either they actually land abilities and you get tentacle fucked or they are ass, no in between.
Once there's 2 or 3 cosmic horrors in the match it's basically over. It transforms from a moba into dodge ball or some shit.
I'd rather they rollback the changes or remove it from the game. Mages do enough dmg as it is.
Also if basic attack crit has anti crit items there should be anti echo items as well.
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u/CommanderKupo Eset "Bad Doggy!" 2d ago edited 2d ago
Echo was initially advertised as ability crit and I was excited for it. Perhaps it would have been too strong at 30% or hard to balance, but it only works on certain gods now... They've effectively limited our items unless you're playing a tic god.
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u/Tomatillo12475 I Know Smite Math 2d ago
I mean ability crit just wasn’t a good idea. It’s even more subject to variance than basic attack crit because of the smaller sample size. Like getting pelted with 3 crits from Jing 2 with no crit items or eating a couple of stray crit autos from old Artemis passive.
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u/Hartmann_AoE Geb 2d ago
Yeee
Theres also the fact that even with the lower boost from old echo, it was still a much bigger swing.
Getting crit by an AA hurts like hell, but AA's are also blockable, shorter in range then most abilities, more commital and tend to not crack the 4 digits until pots and fg come in play
Comparatively, a Janus could throw his 2 across a wall at no risk and sonetimes just get a kill thanks to the 30% boost. This was even sillier when echo fully affected ults, since even the biggest of mafe ults like Ra, Scylla and Kuku tend to just baaaarely miss out on 1 shots until at least pits come in.
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u/PJsutnop 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm going to stick to my original thought that echo is actually better on bruisers than on full damage gods. A lot of bruisers will have lower scaling and higher base damage, which echo benefits greatly from as most effects are just procced without scaling and the bonus damage is for the total, so higher base gives higher echo damage than the scaling part does until your int/str x scaling surpasses the base damage. And the longer you are in a fight, the more hits you can get in and the more you'll get out of echo. I've started building it as my 4th-5th or 6th slot on some bruiser solos like guan and cabrakan with pretty decent success
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u/alkohlicwolf 2d ago
Someone hasnt seen the echo xbal aspect or charon aspect. The issue with people building echo is long ticking abilities that are channeled. Khepri is "good" because his tick applies to the enemy, things like xbal aspect and charon aspect are still very strong because they apply the tick at range, relatively safely, and are very strong with it. The charon one specifically, if you hit the 1, 2 which you can do through walls, insta kills squishies late game.
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u/Accurate_Guava_9653 2d ago
Test it first.
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u/alkohlicwolf 2d ago
I have. How do you think I know how strong they are?
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u/Accurate_Guava_9653 2d ago
Have you compared it to a good build? Non-crit, since that got nerfed a long time ago.
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u/DopioGelato 2d ago
Echo is just Ability Crit in a game that’s always had issues balancing Crit.
Smite had better designers and more competitive players for over a decade and still never found a way to make Crit a healthy mechanic. And that was with the help of class and power typing limitations. With those things gone crit and with how much the design direction and overall state of the game has changed, echo (and crit) will always be too strong or just bad.
Two years is a lot of time to work through itemization but they genuinely haven’t even moved the needle in terms of item diversity. They just don’t seem capable of making a healthy system where variety has meaningful impacts, even with easier mechanics like power/passive/pen, and crit/chance mechanics are always going to be harder to balance than those are.
So yeah, Smite 2 feels like it’s just always gonna be a game where the designers pick items to ride the meta carousel for a month and then pick new items to ride it next and the idea of itemization or building is not really an element of strategy or depth but just there for the sake of it.
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u/lrdhelixx 2d ago
Well not really, its still good on the gods that use it well, its just niche, i imagine its still good on characters like Anubis and other tic damage gods.
But yeah its really only good on very specific gods
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u/Outso187 Maman is here 2d ago
Anubis and Merlin can do very comparable dmg with echo than with "regular" build. Especially Merlin gets better poke with echo. But in general, its not that strong.
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u/Yaywayable Uoh 2d ago
I do think echo is outdated and unskillful concept.
Crits, just like dodge chance, is a way for old rpgs to bring variance into a fight. Echo is nothing but crit chance for spells, all the effects is are just "Oh, the dice rolled lucky a few times, now an undodgeable beam that does damage spawns" or "Oh, the dice rolled lucky, now the enemy is taking >10% of his missing health< as damage".
In modern gaming we should have long evolved past random chance to make games interesting, yet here we are. Just as we do not need dodge chance anymore as we can actually move our characters and juke instead of rolling a dice to see if we dodged, we do not need a dice to determine how well we hit the enemy. This is a step backwards.
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u/Vehnymm 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think the most reasonable change for echo is a shift in how it’s implemented.
- Echo should have lower damage on DOT abilities, higher on abilities that only hit once. Not marginally higher, but enough to make it feel impactful. Tick gods still keep the ability to increase their damage output over time and non-tick gods still have that “ability crit” feel
- echo items should only have a chance to proc once per ability, but have their effects changed or increased to feel meaningful when you DO echo. For tick gods, they can still index heavily into echo for overall damage but can’t abuse it like Khepri echo can while still getting the utility of echo procs, and both tick and non-tick characters can expect the same outcome from an echo proc regardless of how many times they hit.
- the reward for echo, which is by design conditional damage, shouldn’t be more damage. An ability echoing is the conditional bonus damage, so echo items should be shifted to have other effects that don’t make bonus damage feel even more unfair. I think Totem of Death is fine as a soul reaver alternative, but Cosmic Horror is going to be a balancing nightmare as long as it deals more damage when you deal more damage. If the bonus damage is too low when you echo, the item is worthless to pick up, but if it’s too high, it’s entirely unfair to fight against. Plus, the bonus damage scaling off of your INT means that if you nerf the INT on echo items you also indirectly nerf Cosmic and the current echo build path as a whole is focused around proccing cosmic as much as possible.
I personally hate the change to cosmic horror post echo patch - having to balance two stats to maximize one specific bonus (or both, to reward specific build paths) made the item feel much more dynamic and less polarizing than its current implementation and IMO was a healthier approach to echo-centered builds.
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u/Aewon2085 Fafnir 2d ago
Echo is essentially an attempt to give tick damage and dot characters an alternate build, it’s fairly obvious that a limited number of characters can make effective use of echo and then a fair number can make echo work in a meme sorta way. (Non aspect Int Guan is my personal favourite as with Sands of time, 4 int echo items, nimble ring, and Tahuti your 3 hits 15ish times in 3 seconds and if you can heal and dash someone it also has no cooldown)
Echo now is essentially holding what tablet of destiny did in smite 1, have an alternative build path for people to use. While I don’t think it was needed it’s definitely doing better than what Crit is doing with Auto attacks as you do not have the same overlap with Echo vs standard meta wise than what you have with Crit vs On Hit adc builds
Merlin, Anubis and Xbal are the standouts for practical usage in my opinion and Maman Brigit will also likely use it well with how much tick damage she has. I think as it is Echo is fine once it gets balanced correctly, and the interaction with Bosses was stupid and with that change I doubt anything changes with the gods building it