The Top Performing Gods at the Epsilon Invitational

The Epsilon invitational was held August 13^th and 14^th to celebrate the winners of the Season 2 Smite World Championship, Epsilon Esports. Four of the best Smite teams in the worlds were invited to compete. This article is about the performances of the cast of Smite gods during the tournament. Eighteen games were played over the course of the tournament and 55 gods were represented in the picks and bans. There were some stand out performances and some not so great showings from the gods.

Fafnir

Fafnir remains the king of the gods. Fafnir accumulated the most bans this tournament, 15 out of a possible 18. In the three games that the dwarf was not banned, he was picked and just won the game for his team. At the invitational, Fafnir was the only character to have both a 100% pick/ban rate and a 100% win rate.

One of the reasons for Fafnir’s incredible performance is his utility. Coerce, his second ability, is one of the best spells in the entire game. It gives an ally up to 50% additional attack speed in addition to each source of damage from that ally proccing additional damage out of Fafnir. The power of Coerce is magnified while in dragon form, as it can affect multiple teammates. 

Fafnir’s ultimate, Draconic Corruption, gives added utility to each of his other abilities while creating a zone and turning Fafnir into a damage threat in his own right. All these factors make Fafnir a late game and team fight monster, cementing his position as the top god in Smite.

 

Junglers

Nemesis was the other character to achieve 100% pick/ban rate at the Epsilon Invitational. She was banned in half of the games, and picked up in the other half. In her 9 games, she won 3, winning a respectable two thirds of the time. Nemesis started the season a bad choice, but after meta changes and a couple buffs to her ultimate, she became a top-tier jungler.

Similar to Fafnir, Nemesis is not the best character to be by herself in the early game, but she can easily gank a lane. Nemesis’ ult lowers the kill threshold on enemies and she can easily set up kills with any of her laners. If Nemesis only forces out a relic, the low cooldown on Divine Judgement means that she will be right back to a lane and try again. Nemesis is also great in the lane game because she can kill a squishy target or select a target for her team to instantly blow up.

Ao Kuang is another jungler who boasted impressive numbers at the tournament. He was the second most banned god with 11, but was only picked up in 3 of the remaining games. He won two of those games and had the highest kill participation of a character picked more than once, at 92%. The dragon king showed that he was still a powerful pick.

From Susano’s release until the Epsilon Invitational, he was one of the best gods in the game, dominated matches and being an almost required ban. However, at this LAN, Susanso fell off hard. He was only banned 3 times and even though he was picked up almost as often as Nemesis, he only won half as many games. Susano still showed a dominant early game but he lacked meaningful presence in the late game unless he was already snowballing hard and thus did not win as much as people were expecting him to. 

Hunters

Hou Yi was the most picked god at the LAN, being played in 13 games and only banned out twice. It seems that Hou Yu was overrated because he won a paltry 4 games. Freya was the next most picked god in the hunter role with 8 games, but she too won about a third of her games. While these gods put on a couple of great performances, overall they were unable to carry games.

However, the other magical hunters shined in the tournament. Chronos and Sol were exclusively played in the hunter role and picked up 4 and 2 times, respectively. Sol drew a lot of bans, with 10 coming her way while Chronos was barred in 5 games. These gods are less focused on the late game and are safer, so they were able to weather the early and middle portions of games and come out strong victorious.

 

Mid

The mid role was relatively tame at the Epsilon Invitational. The only standout performer was Janus. Janus was banned in half of the games and only picked up twice, winning both games. Most of these bans were targeted at Enemy mid laner Khaos after he showed proficiency in the god and Janus was banned in all five games of the finals.

Raijin started out as a poor god but after a couple buffs became the best mid lane god in the game. At this tournament, he was banned out in 4 games and picked 8 times. Raijin won only 2 of his matches. After power pot starts got removed, Raijin no longer had the lane dominance he once relied on to snowball and his late game power wasn’t enough to run over teams without such a head start.

 

Solo

Erlang She and Ravana were the most contested solo laners at the tournament. Erlang Shen was the most recent god to be included in competition. He pulled 8 bans and was picked in 7 games. Of these games, Erlang only won 3 times but still showed his potential. Ravana performed marginally better. He was banned 5 times, played 9 times, and won 5. Ravana’s ability to bully out other gods and win lane is very strong. Neither of the top solo lane gods were exceptional, but they were not overvalued either.

 

Conclusions

The Epsilon Invitational was held August 13^th-14^th and featured some of the Smite teams at the top of the meta. At the tournament, Fafnir reigned supreme. He was the only god to have both a 100% pick/ban rate and a 100% win rate. Nemesis was the next strongest character, also achieving a 100% pick/ban rate but winning 67% of her games. On the contrary, characters like Susano, Freya, and Hou Yi had dismal performances. The LAN meta seems to have adapted to a style that favors strong laning gods such as Sol and Ravana paired with late game supports and junglers such as Fafnir and Nemesis. Will this remain the meta during the Fall Split? We will find out soon.

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