On Tuesday, November 17th, Hirez will release their 71st god, and 12th Hunter into the game, Chiron, The Greek Great Teacher. We are going to break down all of Chiron's abilities, and see what he is good at, what he is bad at, and what they can fix to make him balanced in Smite.

Overview:

While looking at release Chiron, let's go back in time a bit and look at other gods on release, like Sol, Bellona, Ratatoskr, Medusa, and Bellona. All of those gods were extremely powerful and overpowered during their release. Will Chiron add to that list? Most likely not. However, let's look at the flipside, with gods like Ravana. Will Chiron be that weak on release? I don't think so either. His abilities all have moderate to high length cooldowns, and one if his most outstanding parts of his kit is his ability to chase down targets that might be trying to run away. He had a couple of bugs, but they were all resolved during the time of the PTS. Now I'll go to go ability by ability and break down how good they are, and how they can be changed, if at all.

Passive: Herbal Medicine

For those who don't know, every time Chiron uses an ability, him and an ally near him get healed over a duration of 5 seconds. The heal scales off of their level, and consumes a charge that is created every 12 seconds with a max of 3 charges. In my time playing this new god, I do not think that the heal itself is the problem. The problem in his passive lies in how often you can activate it. Even if you spam your abilities for no reason, there will be a charge to consume, leading to almost infinite healing. There should be some downtime, so when you activate an ability there can not be a charge to be consumed. To do this, the cooldown of charges should be increased from 12 to about 17, or even 20 seconds, to reduce the consistency of the healing.

Ability 1: Training Excercise

The gist of this ability is that it is an AoE circle, a little bit smaller than the size of Nox's Siphon Darkness, which explodes and deals damage. If used on yourself or an ally, it cleanses any CC, if it explodes on an enemy, it cripples them for 1 second. This is going to be his lane clear ability, even though it is not big enough to reach the full wave, which leaves him with a little bit of lackluster clear. This ability is half of Chirons chase-down potential that I talked about earlier. The cripple works well in lane and in teamfights on gods that use leaps or dashes for initiation, like Rama for example. However the cleanse, in my opinion, is a bit too strong. I think the cleanse should be removed, but other than that it is a solid ability, not designed to fully clear the wave, good damage, and obviously activates his passive for survivability and sustain.

Ability 2: Masterful Shot

This ability has two very good uses. Its first use, is a passive part of the ability. Every time you auto attack an enemy god, minion, or Gold Fury/Fire Giant, it leaves a mark on them. As long as this mark is active, enemies have 3% protection reduction. When you activate this ability, all marked targets near you get hit with an arrow, which does a small amount of damage and slows, also consuming the mark. The protection reduction is huge in teamfights, if you can land an auto on every person on the enemy team. This ability also has extremely good boxing potential in the laning phase, especially if paired with an Ichaival. If the enemy starts to run away, the slow helps start the chase, and when paired with the cripple, makes for a great combo. This ability has a pretty long cool down early, but goes down to 10 seconds when leveled up. The debuffs are not too potent, and I think the ability is at a good state of balance, which brings the balanced ability count up to 2 now.

Ability 3: Giddyup!

In my opinion, this is the most original and fun ability in his kit. It is a dash, but it is a slow dash. While Chiron is dashing, he can auto attack, and if he comes into contact with an enemy god, they are knocked behind him, and he continues to dash through them. When I talk about Chiron's chase-down potential, this is the ability that I am really talking about, this is the ideal chase down ability for retreating enemies if paired correctly with the cripple and the slow. However, it is definitely not as broken as it sounds. Because it is such a slow dash, it is very easy it cancel it or interrupt it. Things like Ymir freeze, or roots, or pulls can all cancel him out of this ability and putting it on cooldown sooner than the Chiron player would like. To me, the fact that it is so easy to interrupt and the relatively slow speed of the dash is reason enough to say that it is at a good state of balance.

Ability 4: Centaurus

This is one of the coolest Hunter ultimates I've ever used besides Medusa's. Chiron becomes CC immune for a certain amount of time or until he fires 3 long distance arrows that deal lots of damage. If he dies while in his ultimate, he does not die until he runs out of time or arrows, whichever comes first. However, if he gets a kill while dead in his ultimate, he instead is brought back to life with health equal to the damage he did while in his ultimate. This is a very big risk versus reward ability in my opinion, because you can keep going to find the kill, but if you don't, you get no heal and will die for it. I believe that the heal on this ability is insane. The damage is high, but not too high, even for an ultimate like this, because it still is somewhat hard to hit because the arrows have the same travel time as normal autos. That being said, because the damage is so high, if you find a kill, you will likely see yourself return to full health.

Good Supports to Lane with:

All of these Supports have one thing in common: Early laning phase aggression. This allows Chiron, like other hunters with less than desirable lane clear, to still be able to push the wave faster than then the enemy and to get good poke damage off, which is something that Chiron does excel at. The easy to land cripple in his kit will allow all of these gods to successfully CC their opposition in the early laning phase for extremely easy poke or even an early kill.

Good Supports to Lane Against Chiron:

Any god with an easy way to cancel his dash will be extremely valuable against him. Gods like Xing Tian and Ymir that can take advantage of his easy to cancel dash will have a very easy time punishing Chiron in lane. Taking high lane pressure Supports up against Chiron such as the Ymir and the Xing are also extremely good because of his lackluster wave clear.

Good Hunter Matchups Favoring Chiron:

These are just two examples of good potential matchups in favor of Chiron. The cripple is best against Rama because it stops Rama from rolling, stopping him from crippling as well. The slow on Chiron's 2 and also the displacement on his dash both are very good at putting Ah Muzen Cab out of position and slowing him so he cannot escape, even with a beehive near by. Any god with a leap or dash that is an essential part of their kit will find themselves under pressure by Chiron.

Good Hunter Matchups Against Chiron:

This may come as a surprise to some, but Artemis will be a very good matchup against a Chiron. Because Chiron has very huge chasedown potential, he can also get reinitiated on very easily once he dumps his abilities. Because Artemis has a CC immune ult, she will cleanse all the the cripples and slows Chiron has used on her. Also her ult will be very good to use on reaction to the sound queue that "Giddyup!" has, since the boar will cancel out the dash, and, since she is CC immune, she won't get knocked out of position if Chiron dashes into her. As a generality though, Hunters with CC immune ults and good counter initiation can easily turn on Chiron once his abilities are down and shoot him down fast. Anhur and Medusa are prime examples of this.

Some Key items for Chiron to build:

As one of the two basic stacking items for Hunters, Transcendance will be the most efficient for Chiron. Having such a huge spike in mana will allow him to sustain in lane even more than Neith since his heals are tied into his whole kit and not just one ability. Ever since Soul Eater has been buffed, it has been an extremely common item for hunters to pick up. At the cost of of a minimal lifesteal and DPS loss, you gain invaluable survivability, which is very good on Chiron, since you will find yourself dashing towards the fight because of the ability to auto attack mid dash. Executioner has always been a staple in the Hunter build since Season 1. Chiron will be no different, but even more so because of the passive of Masterful Shot on top of the passive penetration on the item. This will make for an extremely deadly combination in 1v1 boxing and in teamfights.

All in all, I believe that Chiron is one of the most balanced gods to be released in quite a while. His laning phase is quite good, despite not having a clearing ability that hits the whole wave. His boxing potential is quite high with his healing on top of the protection debuff. With minor tweaks to his ultimate, we won't have another release like Bellona or Sol, but a very good hunter that will do well in a lot of aspects in the game. We have yet to see how he will be changed in the future, or how well he will fare competitively, but it is not too far-fetched to say that he will be valued by a lot of pro players. He brings more utility than a number of other hunters do, which will make up from his potentially lackluster late game due to his lack of an attack speed steroid. Chiron will probably see a couple small nerfs, but he definitely will be a top pick in season 3 or SWC.

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