Mercury's Emergence In Smite Competitive Play

The weekend of October 19th was the first time Mercury was available for competitive play in the SMITE weekly tournaments. Expectations were high for the performance of Mercury, the skiddish preemptive bans showing both the fear and understanding of his Special Delivery and Sonic Boom's potential,  but due to the instant bans he did not have much of a presence in the North American tournament.

The first match where Mercury made it past bans was in the hands of Anditas on Team Exertus playing against Team Dignitas. It was exciting to see him picked for play, but in execution, Mercury did not live up to the assumptions of his jungle dominance. He was capable of laying on the damage in early ganks but was bursted down easily with little presence in the team fights after initiating. Anditas was able to secure a triple kill after cleaning up a heated exchange near gold fury against Team Dignitas, but in the final push for the minotaur, Mercury was the "fastest god" to make the trip to the respawn timer.

Mercury appeared again in the second round of the finals, now in the hands of Team Dignitas' Drew 'Lassiz'  Boyd in the jungle role versus CoG gaming. Lassiz was consistent and present with his ganks and initating when necessary, but in the early game his damage was not enough to secure any kills and CoG's sustain was just too much of an obstacle to overcome for him. While his ultimate did cover massive amounts of ground and create opportunities to focus down single targets, if the cue was missed, Mercury was just not a threat with targets simply walking away from his damage. The team composition of Sobek, Hercules and Mercury, as HiRezBart put it, "seemed too gimmicky," with the amount of throwing CC. In the match, plays that actually took advantage of that style of crowd control were very few and far between.

On Sunday the 20th, Mercury came back in to play in the first match of the EU tournament: Epsilon Esports versus YoungBae Fanboys. Zindurn on Epsilon gave Mercury some redemption, hitting his ultimate as a save in the jungle and securing a double kill against Freya and Ares at the 11 minute mark. These kinds of valiant efforts were just not enough throughout the match though as Mercury could not provide the same kind of burst damage that other junglers have to secure kills, his damage being more of a sustained type which was not what Epsilon needed. This could be contributed to the Fatalis Mercury build which sacrifices damage for an over the cap attack speed and the lack of purification beads versus an Ares on YoungBae. The team fight from Epsilon faltered versus the pure damage being thrown at them and it was enough for YoungBae to take the game.

Perhaps the best showing this weekend was from Apoteket's Zimpstar who dominated early game against SK gaming's Xaliea who was playing Aphrodite in the solo lane. The early rush of golden bow as the first item paid off so much for him, keeping the entire wave cleared and Aphrodite hugging the tower. Zimpstar did not miss a beat and used this completely to his favor with kill after kill in the solo lane and picking up a second purchase heartseeker that lasted all the way to 23 minutes when he died for the first time at 9/1/4 k/d/a. This death was caused by a lack of beads, mirroring Zindurn's fatal flaw from the first game of the EU tournament.

Once Mercury went down again after a heroic ultimate trying to stall SK's comeback when attacking the fire giant, his heartseeker stacks were cut again and the team fights started to be reversed in SK gaming's favor. In the end, each death of Zimpstar was pretty justified, initating and picking prime targets to get a push, especially taking out Smek's Guan Yu near the end of the match, but there was too much sustain and experience from SK Gaming to keep Mercury from doing what he does best: late game massacering. The plays Mercury needed to make were there though, split pushing and solo taking a pheonix, focusing healers and using special delivery to isolate players and keeping the pressure high.

Reviewing the competitive plays from this weekend, it appeared as if it was Mercury in the solo lane, and not the jungle, that seemed to be the best location for this god. The solo lane played to all of Mercury's strengths which would be the ability to harass, zone out opposing players and let his team squash the overextended competition. The solo lane also gave Mercury the opportunity to capitalize on kills from his team's ganks, instead of risking himself in that roll, allowing him to snowball to the point where he really shines. Special Delivery when used in 2-3 man rotations almost ensured kills, but using it alone as a jungler did the opposite, rooting Mercury and putting him at the mercy of his aggressors.

There were many great displays of player skill and Mercury's own additions to the competitive scene, including play favorites like throwing the opponent in to friendly towers for extra damage. While this weekend may have been a mostly rocky introduction for this god, it will be exciting to see what happens with him in the upcoming weeks.