Smite’s Next Patch Adds a Guardian Who Can Heal Teammates Across the Map

Hi-Rez Studios has revealed the patch notes for Smite update 3.14, the biggest component of which is the new character, Terra.

Terra is a Guardian who is among the game’s more complex and nuanced gods. The first of her abilities is fairly straightforward, but it’s key to unlocking what her other two abilities can do. Force of Nature is a dash that deals damage to anyone she moves through. It can be used to shatter her stones (more on those in a second), which then lets her dash again within three seconds.

Monolith raises a stone that heals allies near it. By dashing into it, it explodes, causing all nearby enemies to be rooted for 1.5 seconds and dealing damage for five seconds to enemies who walk near it.

Crushing Earth works somewhat similarly: Activating it creates two stones on each side of your targeted location. Enemies between the two are slowed by 20 percent. After a few seconds (or whenever you activate them), the two stones slam together, dealing damage and stunning enemies–if they’re right in the middle, they’ll take damage from both stones. Alternatively, you can dash into either of the stones to cause it to explode, dealing damage in a cone in front of it.

Further complicating all of this is her passive. As long as one of her stones from Crushing Earth or Monolith is up, she is immune to knockup (making her a real hassle for characters like Bacchus or Sobek) and slows enemies with her basic attacks. If she destroys one of the stones with her dash, these buffs last for three more seconds.

Her Ultimate is also something that will require an extremely skilled player to fully leverage. Terra’s Blessing buffs all of her teammates for 10 seconds no matter where they are on the map. This buff provides extra movement speed, reduces cooldowns (though this won’t exceed the 40 percent max), and drops the mana cost for abilities. Additionally, if any ally takes four hits from an enemy god during the duration of Blessing, the ally will be healed. This happens no matter where Terra is, giving her a heal unlike any other character’s. Equipped with an item like Lotus Crown that provides extra protections when delivering a heal, she has a lot of potential.

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This patch does more than just introduce Terra. It also adds some achievements, lets you preview music themes before purchasing them, extends the lobby time for Assault matches by 15 seconds, and adds some new skins, including Pool Party Jing Wei. You can see these new skins in the gallery above.

3.14 also makes some balance changes. On the god side, the changes to Ra are probably the most significant: His Divine Light and Celestial Beam now scale more quickly, with the latter also costing less mana. Jing Wei’s Bolts now cost less mana, Agility casts immediately (it used to be 0.2 second delay), and Air Strike’s channel time has been lowered. Artemis gets a small bump to the amount of basic attack power and attack speed she earns per level, making her more effective in the late game.

Bacchus’ Ultimate takes a hit, with that obnoxious drunk effect now lasting only six seconds, rather than eight. Erlang Shen’s Ultimate should now be easier to read for other players and will heal him less. Hercules’ Earthbreaker does extra damage at early levels, while Mercury’s Made You Look does more across the board. Ratatoskr gets nerfed, making him deal less damage and heal less from Acorn of Yggdrasil.

On the item side, the major change is the turn of the Magical Might and Physical Might potions. These cost the same 450 gold as before, but can only be purchased once you’ve reached level 7. Each one has some new effects as well that you can see in the full patch notes.

Keep in mind all of this is pending any changes that come after a round on the public test servers. An exact release date for the patch has not been announced, but it should be out on PC fairly soon, followed by consoles, which have been getting updates more quickly as of late.

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