SMITE Season 4 changes revealed

Yesterday Hi-Rez revealed and discussed the patch notes for SMITE's Season 4, and the normally hour long show that consists for 60% out of banter and skin discussion turned into a 3+ hour long marathon in which not even all the changes were discussed in depth. 

The general philosophy of the changes is giving players more choice, with filling some gaps in itemization as a secondary priority.

The starter items and all of the tier 1 items have been reworked and rebalanced to allow for a greater variety in starts, making them more character specific than role specific. 

Relics are also changed significantly, as they can now be upgraded once to increase the effects, lower the cooldown or in very few cases both. This is an addition to the existing relic system, so each player still gets them for free at level 1 and 12. 

New consumables in the form of Rituals and Chalices have been added as well. Rituals are beefed up but one time use Relics with a fairly hefty price tag attached to them. Chalices give you a number of uses of either healing pots, mana pots or wards that are refilled when you return to base. They also have the added caveat that when you sell them they give you nothing.

All of the items in the game have been touched in one way or another and a fair number have been shuffled around in various trees to clean up the specific purpose of each item tree. 

The conquest map also gets some changes with the inclusion of a new buff on the duo lane side jungle and cleaning up some walls to make pulling camps more similar in both sides of the jungle. The Clash map gets an entire visual overhaul, granting it an Egyptian theme, with the Order and Chaos sides being distinguishable from each other by a Nile and Desert Pyramid feel respectively. 

To properly test all these changes there will be a very long PTS cycle, 2 weeks to be exact. During these two weeks tweaks and changes will be made to get as much player feedback as possible before the patch goes live. 

The PTS is expected to go live today, and patch 4.1 hitting the live servers around the 31st of January. As always, consoles will be getting the update a week later.

All this is just the tiniest tip of the iceberg. The full patch notes can be found here.