Medusa, Angels, and a Little Loki

Today I ramble around in SMITE, get a scare while watching some baseball, and read the next book from Marvel’s Silver Age. It was a good day for gods in both SMITE and comics as I was able to try out Medusa in SMITE and got to learn about Loki in Journey Into Mystery #85, both of which were very enjoyable – I’m not sure, but I’ll have to see if there’s a Loki representation in SMITE, I’m sure they have something since I’ve seen that the Norse pantheon is represented.

Medusa

Yesterday I downloaded SMITE for my PC and I want to see if that’ll be easier for me to learn than on the PS4, but for the time being, I’m still on the console. As I logged in this morning, I saw a “bonus” for logging in for days in a row and trying things out, and there was a rental for Medusa.

This was pretty interesting since yesterday I was wandering around on YouTube and ran across a video by BaRRaCCuDDa in which he was playing Medusa and winning. She seemed to be a pretty straight forward hunter that did decent damage, cleared the lane pretty well, had a nice ultimate that could help for either offense of defense, and now I could rent her. So I jumped on it.

Her passive ability is called Sidewinder and it is pretty good from what I was able to see. It allows her to keep firing her auto attacks while moving without suffering movement penalties. This is great because you can keep pressure on the enemy as you retreat while they are slowed with each attack they make. It helps with escape and makes her feel really mobile even though she’s got a serpent body.

I didn’t even realize this applied a DOT on whatever I hit, I just saw that it gave me the ability to hit multiple targets in front of me – it seemed to expand the arrows I was shooting and made it easy to clear the lane and to hit enemies who were trying to hide behind the minions I just mowed down. So apparently this does damage over time but the 1.5 second duration is so quick I didn’t notice.

This has a weird target zone in that it hits the first target and then sprays in a cone behind that first target. This is another ability that’s useful for hitting enemy gods who are trying to hide behind minions. In use, it’s kinda like Lissandra’s Ice Shard from League but after the first hit, this spreads out in a cone instead of just passing through in a straight line.

I didn’t quite figure out this ability while playing, but I was able to use it for escapes – I didn’t even realize it rooted the enemy god I hit since I only used it to speed up my escape. Now that I read the description, I’ll have to incorporate it into my offense as well. This coupled with her passive allowed me to get outta trouble and I only died twice in my first game playing her – I felt good about that.

This is of course the defining ability of Medusa. It’s a stun, damage, and slow that can hit quite a few enemies in front of you. Enemies killed with it are turned to stone and it sure seems to do some good damage. One thing this ability made me realize though is that I need to find out if there’s a setting to make spell casting a single button press – rather than one press to show the area effected and a second press to cast the spell. I had a couple of really good shots messed up because I only pressed once rather than twice.

So far, I’m really enjoying Medusa’s gameplay and I am seriously considering purchasing her full time. Speaking of purchasing gods, I haven’t really figured out the whole availability issue yet. There’s obviously some sort of general availability for champs like Neith and Ra and I think 6–8 others, but I’m not sure if that is just because I’m only level 7 or so or if it’s a permanent thing. I expect there’s some sort of free rotation similar to League, but I haven’t looked into anything beyond Ra, Neith, Jing Wei, and now Medusa. That’s another reason for the PC download – I want to see if I like this on PC or PS4 better. I’d rather not spend any money on a platform I end up not playing much. Actually, I don’t even know if you can have a single account on all platforms or if they are walled off from each other like most pc/console games.

In any case, I’m enjoying SMITE a lot and am happy to have a toxic free MOBA to play around in.

Win number 2

Ahead 5–0 in the 5th inning, the man who is the real Angels Ace left the game with tightness in his right biceps. Not a good sign.

Garret Richards is coming off a season cut short by injury but one where he was able to avoid surgery. I certainly hope his season isn’t over after 4 2/3rds innings. The team could certainly use more than the 2 months he pitched last year and if they have any chance of doing well this season, he needs to be healthy.

In the game, J. C. Ramirez took over and pitched 2 2/3rds innings giving up zero runs to get the win and the team got their first shut out of the season. Hope this is a good indicator of things to come.

Enter Loki

In Journey Into Mystery #85 we see the introduction of Loki into Marvel’s Silver Age and we learn a little about his relationship with Thor. In the issue, Loki tricks his way out of a tree prison that has held him for ages and he heads across the rainbow bridge of Bifrost to Earth to seek revenge against Thor. Once there, Loki tricks Thor into revealing himself and lays down a challenge to fight in the skies above the city. Foolish Thor accepts and soon finds himself hypnotized by his mischievous brother who then produces a mirror image of Thor to help part the god from his mighty hammer. Little does Loki know that once separated from the hammer, Thor turns back into Dr. Blake which is fortunate because this transformation also breaks the hypnosis. Thus the battle continues with Thor chasing and Loki running to a theater, the subway, and then flying around on an animated Pegasus from a Mobile gas station. Thor finally catches up to Loki and knocks him into the bay where Loki’s powers are useless in water. With his evil brother subdued, Thor ties him to his hammer and throws him back to Asgard where Odin is pleased to see Thor has taken care of the god of mischief.

The story isn’t too complicated but it does a decent job showing off the new villain that challenges Thor. It’s also good to see the rest of the Asgardian mythology getting fleshed out so that Thor has a bigger world to play in. The art is similar to the other Journey Into Mystery issues and even though this is just 14 pages long, I find the introduction of Loki and the Norse pantheon enough to give this issue an A-. I find it interesting that while Thor is still only a part of the comic issue, Stan has done a good job of building up a really good villain for him. Perhaps because Loki is already extant in mythology I’m finding him to be one of the best villains so far in Marvel’s Silver Age, possibly even better than Doctor Doom at this point.