SMITE gets a new god and Hi Rez launches a new office in the UK

Season 3 is well underway in SMITE and the next patch will be a small one but will bring a new god and some tier 2 skins to the game.

First up is the Raijin, the Japanese god of thunder. Amaterasu filled the Warrior role for the new Japanese Pantheon and now Raijin will fill the mage role.

One thing that I love when new characters are introduced into the game is seeing if they will include something brand new in their ability kits. Everyone's ultimate abilities in the game are pretty much, you activate it and that's it. Raijin's ultimate actually has three different abilities that you can choose from. When you activate the ultimate, your 1, 2, and 3 buttons change into new abilities.

If you press one, you will unleash your ultimate and deal 100% damage.

If you press 2, you will deal 50% damage but will also hit enemies with a taunt that lasts for .5.

If you press 3, you do 50% damage but you hit enemies with fear for .5 seconds. 

What are taunts and fears? TL;DR version. Taunt causes your opponent you be pulled towards you. Fear causes them to move away. So his ultimate has an extra element to it because you now have to decide what is the best version of the ultimate to use. If you team is in trouble, you can apply the fear to them to cause enemies to back off, or if you want your team to clean up, you can pull them towards you. 

Next, Bastet and Ratatoskr will be getting their tier 2 skins and Aphrodite will get her new mastery skins. 

The other big news is that Hi-Rez Studios is expanding. SMITE has been on the rise in the last few years and this is the perfect time for them to expand and set up shop in the UK in Brighton. The Studio will “Fueled by the continued rapid growth of SMITE, our European community has expanded tremendously over the past year,” said Todd Harris, COO of Hi-Rez Studios. “Hi-Rez prides itself in being a highly community-oriented company, and this move will allow us to much better serve our European players, across SMITE as well as our other games.”

The studio will be lead by Veronique Lallier who is the former Vice President of Digital Publishing at Warner Brothers and was also named one of the top 100 Women in Games by MCV. Of course they will need people to work in the studio so if you are interested you can apply at the following link http://www.hirezstudios.com/careers/.

For the full list of patch notes, including the full rundown of Raijin's abilities, check out the patch notes over on SMITE's official Reddit page. 

I have to say that it has been amazing seeing SMITE gain popularity and grow even bigger over the years. I started playing in 2013 when it was in Beta and only had a fraction of the characters the game has now. It's so weird to go back and watch some videos of SMITE from that time and see how almost everything has changed since then. I am really excited to see where SMITE goes in 2016 and in the future.