Our second balance study will be focusing on the goddess Arachne, who was the community’s choice in the twitter poll.



Arachne has quite a history in SMITE. Like Hel, she has been around for since the beginning and was redesigned once. These articles are meant to focus on more recent stats, but first a quick recap.

Arachne is a closed beta launch goddess. She was part of the initial set of gods in the game. She was redesigned about halfway through season 1. She remained relatively untouched until patch 3.12 where her webs ability was changed to be a projectile rather than a ground target ability.

In Patch 3.10 Arachne had the following stats (before the Web change)

# 9 out of 77 gods in win % in casual conquest



# 10 out of 76 gods in win % in ranked conquest



# 61 out of 77 gods in play count in casual conquest



# 68 out of 76 gods in play count in ranked conquest



As a top 10 goddess in both casual and ranked, she was already quite powerful before the change to her Web ability. However, she was not very popular. Usually when we see stats like this it is because of some sort of feels or quality of life issue. We wanted to draw more attention to her and improve the experience of playing as and against her, all while leaving her balance at relatively the same spot. This is why we made the changes to Web.

Previously, Web had no feedback to opponents, as it just dropped on top of them when fired perfectly. It also had awkward controls for the Arachne player, as it was a very small and thin deployable. We felt great about the new projectile from both perspectives. There was more visual information and more positive skill shot feelings.

Her play count spiked initially, but let’s go forward even further to see how this affected her long term stats.

*Note that Arachne received no further balance changes after the 3.12 Web change. She still hasn’t received balance changes to this day, when we are working on patch 4.21. This article will show why that is the case.

In Patch 3.21 Arachne had the following stats

# 1 out of 82 gods in win % in casual conquest



# 7 out of 81 gods in win % in ranked conquest



# 29 out of 82 gods in play count in casual conquest



# 52 out of 81 gods in play count in ranked conquest



The actual best goddess in the game in casual conquest. Her play count stayed at a reasonable level even months after a balance adjustment that was not even a strict buff. We would have liked her play count to be a little higher in ranked for a goddess with this much success, but the she was clearly powerful. Keep in mind that when I say “ranked conquest” in these articles that I am only accounting for matches at the high Platinum rank and above.

As we continue into Season 4 there was a lot of meta shifting and item changes. Lets see how those affected Arachne.

In Patch 4.1 Arachne had the following stats

# 12 out of 84 gods in win % in casual conquest



# 49 out of 83 gods in win % in ranked conquest



# 56 out of 84 gods in play count in casual conquest



# 72 out of 83 gods in play count in ranked conquest



In Patch 4.6 Arachne had the following stats

# 10 out of 86 gods in win % in casual conquest



# 40 out of 85 gods in win % in ranked conquest



# 66 out of 86 gods in play count in casual conquest



# 80 out of 85 gods in play count in ranked conquest



In Patch 4.11 Arachne had the following stats

# 16 out of 89 gods in win % in casual conquest



# 6 out of 88 gods in win % in ranked conquest



# 69 out of 89 gods in play count in casual conquest



# 84 out of 88 gods in play count in ranked conquest



Throughout the first half of Season 4 Arachne remained at the top of the casual charts. Her play count remained very low in both casual and ranked, with especially low numbers in ranked. As I mentioned in the Hel report: extremely low ranked play count leads to unreliable stats. If the gods ranked play count is very low we tend to see a lot of variance in win % even when there are no direct changes to the god.

Many players assume that Arachne is only good when she is playing against enemies who are uncoordinated or unfamiliar with fighting against Arachne. Her casual stats are clearly strong, which might support this, but we also see her putting up large numbers in ranked from time to time, so there must be more value to her as a god.

The next big shift in items and meta happened in the mid Season 4 patch. The removal of Hastened Fatalis could definitely cause some shifts for this goddess.

In Patch 4.13 Arachne had the following stats

# 9 out of 90 gods in win % in casual conquest



# 25 out of 89 gods in win % in ranked conquest



# 72 out of 90 gods in play count in casual conquest



# 86 out of 89 gods in play count in ranked conquest



After this shift Arachne continues to have very low popularity and a high win %. The pattern continues. You can find players posting even more recent stats from our API that show how she is performing past 4.13. Arachne proves time and time again that she is strong, but not very popular. As we try to decide what to do with her at this point we face a series of difficult decisions.

Buff her even though she is already strong. This could be done successfully through small buffs, and could make her more popular without pushing her over the top. Although it does create a risk of the god taking over the meta and then needing nerfs.

Leave her alone. Some gods are just unique and likely won’t ever be widespread popular. The god can clearly perform well at most skill levels already so this is a reasonable option.

Redesign her. Or use a heavy “shift” where we buff some parts of the kit and nerf others. These generally work very well for stats but they always cause lots of community frustration, especially if it’s a redesign. They also have the largest development cost.

For the time being, we have decided to leave her alone.

Gods that can perform well in casual modes create a positive experience for most of the player-base. Although we balance around conquest, Arachne still performs very well in other game modes. This means that a large majority of players that just decide to pick her up and play her will be successful. She also has a small yet devoted following of veteran players. This means she generally has a lot more positives than negatives in her current state. Trying to make significant changes to that would be risky.

Like I did last time, Here are a few takeaway points.

No gods are ignored. If changes aren’t happening there is usually a reason. Arachne’s consistently high performance stats have resulted in her not getting buffs. Artemis falls into a similar category, although she is much more popular.



Not every god needs to be pro viable. Forcing that would have very dangerous results on 99% of the community. We do not prioritize buffing gods just for SPL, especially if they already perform well in casual conquest, ranked conquest, and other modes. Instead, god balance is focused around skilled ranked players (plat and up) and we constantly cross reference that with casuals to look for any outliers.



Although we don’t focus on buffing gods to SPL level, we do often prioritize nerfing gods that are dominating the SPL. Our main concern for pro play is diversity. We want many gods to be viable. Nerfing the top pick generally allows more gods to rise up, where buffing only affects the single god. It also tends to have better results for the general community, although there are always exceptions. This concept could probably be its own post.



Community reaction and feedback is important to the process. So is development time. Redesigns are very costly and have large risks.



Context is important. Showing these stats without any information can cause more harm than good.



Thanks for reading! Stay posted for more God Progress Reports!