I want to talk about Fatalis

Hastened Fatalis has recently seen a lot of changes, and I want to talk a bit about them, and the impact it has had.

Fatalis (The T3, not the T2) started out by having 30% IAS and 10% MS. By the community seen as a niche item. Once in a while bought on gods like Rama and Izanami, and considered core on Kali, Freya and Bakasura. You sacrificed DPS for mobility. This is important.

Fatalis then got a buff. To 20% IAS, 10% MS, and 10 pen. Honestly, this was a fairly minor buff, but the community went fucking haywire. And honestly, this was one of the most degenerative metas ever. I think the item as it was before was fine. Occasionally bought. But because the Smite community often works like TGC communities and net-decking, you were now playing against a Fatalis literally every single game. And this is incredibly annoying for anyone who's not the hunter itself. And a problem you started seeing in games was that terrible ADC players were still allowed to succeed because the item is a massive crutch for people who can't position correctly. It's incredibly hard to punish while walking into a back-strafing Anhur with Fatalis. Or a back-strafing anything.

Fatalis was eventually made more expensive, and ended at 25% IAS, 10% MS and 10 pen. Remember what I said in the beginning, that "You sacrificed DPS for mobility"? This case has been heavily pulled back. The stats are upped, and even though the price is upped too, it's not like gold is hard to come by in Smite. The item is arguably about as balanced as it was to begin with, but when you consider that you can get more value per item slot, which is your big limitation later on, the item has still increased in value per gold. This, combined with the fact that people have now gotten used to have a 24/7 crutch, and bad players need it, means I still see Fatalis bought on 90% of hunters.

A lot of people will interpret this as me saying "Why do people buy it?". That's not what I'm saying. There are good arguments for buying the item - it makes your life super easy, it's good DPS value, and a lot of people have gotten used to having it. Seeing Fatalis once in a while is cool. Seeing it every single game is extremely frustrating. And it makes the difference between a good ADC player and a bad ADC player much, much smaller.

Giving the item pen to begin with was a mistake. We know this, HiRez knows this. But they refused to revert because it makes them look bad.