Smite has received a new update, this time around the update sees an existing God completely remade and transformed from a Chinese God to a Mayan God. Sun Wukong the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai and Korean God has been remade to become Hun Batz, the Mayan God of Music.

This change means that his entire model has been remade from scratch along with his abilities and stats. Any players who already owned Sun Wukong and his skins receive the new Hun Batz and the equivalent skins (one of which has been untouched and still looks just as it did as Sun Wukong). This change also means that the previous highly special Red Sun Wukong is now a common skin that can even be acquired with in-game favour, this is very odd as it used to be a special skin that could only be acquired during the Closed Beta through a limited time Facebook promotion.

Players who loved Sun Wukong, myself included, remain mystified as to why Hi-Rez has handled the change-over the way they have and personally I would have preferred to see Sun Wukong stay as is or simply have a skill make-over and simple visual upgrade like Freya, Zeus and Loki have received. While Hun Batz could have easily been a new separate God.

Hun Batz' abilities closely follow that of Sun Wukong but have had some changes made to them and are as followed:

- Infused Strikes (Passive): This replaces Sun Wukong's old passive that provided increased movement speed. The new passive gives Hun Batz's next basic attack within 5 seconds of using an ability, additional physical damage. This effect can only apply once every 2 seconds and gives 25 bonus damage +20% of his physical power.

- Somersault: Hun Batz flips through the air, dealing damage when he lands at his target location and slowing them (the same ability as Sun Wukong had but simply with changed stats)

- Overhand Smash: Again, the same ability as Wukong had but simply with reworked stats

- Sacred Monkey: Hun Batz tosses a monkey in a straight line ahead of him, if it hits an enemy it will bounce between 4 targets and deal damage. If the last target is a God, Hun Batz will teleport to that God's location.

- Fear No Evil (Ultimate): Hun Batz summons a totem from the ground, which causes all enemies within the radius to be feared directly away from the totem and take damage every .25 seconds.

Coinciding with the new Hun Batz and visual upgrades to Freya, Loki, and Zeus, Hi-Rez has almost fully remade the visual aspect of the Joust map, this is in line with the art style and quality that Hi-Rez wants to take the game. All other visual elements of the game will be reworked in future patches to be in line with this new direction. This patch also includes an entire new UI remake that provides more on-screen information and is highly inspired by the UI of DOTA 2.

All in all, this is not the best of patches we have seen from Hi-Rez and hopefully they can finally pick a direction and stick with it as the title has been in open beta for quite some time already and yet has seen many directional changes in that time. The remake of Sun Wukong (and thus too the deletion of that God in essence) is pretty shocking for long-time players who have grown fond of him and the elimination of the Red Demon Sun Wukong skin as a once limited edition skin is also very strange.