The meta just broke. Honestly, if you’ve been queuing up on your PlayStation 4 lately, you probably felt the shift before you even read the logs. The latest smite ps4 patch notes—specifically the massive Open Beta 26 (OB26) update that just dropped this January 2026—aren't just about small number tweaks. We are looking at a fundamental rework of how ADCs function and the arrival of Discordia, the Goddess of Strife, who is already making the mid-lane a living nightmare for anyone without a reliable escape.
It's a weird time for the game. While Smite 2 is the shiny new toy on PS5, the PS4 community is still grinding hard on the original client, which is now more intertwined with the sequel than ever thanks to the Divine Legacy system. This update is a "cross-gen" beast.
Discordia Crashes the Party
Discordia isn't just a port; she’s a chaos engine. Her new passive, Contest of Gods, is basically a mini-game inside the match. It tracks which teammate is dealing the most damage and hands them a massive buff—either 10% Intelligence, 20% Lifesteal, or a steady HP heal. It sounds great on paper, but in practice? It’s causing actual strife in the comms when the Jungler realizes the Mid is "stealing" their buff.
Her "Unruly Magic" (the 1) got a serious quality-of-life bump too. Hi-Rez added a guaranteed damage hitbox at the end of the projectile. You don't have to pray the mini-orbs bounce correctly anymore. If you land the center, they feel it. Hard.
The Great ADC Item Massacre
If you main a Hunter, I'm sorry. The smite ps4 patch notes for OB26 absolutely gutted the "do-it-all" builds. For months, ADCs have been able to stack Strength and Intelligence to the point where they had zero weaknesses. Not anymore.
Hi-Rez decided to force a choice: you either go for an auto-attack build or an ability-based "caster" build. You can't have both.
- Manchu Bow: They stripped the Strength (10 down to 0) and replaced it with flat Attack Damage.
- Sanguine Lash: This one hurts. Strength dropped from 35 to 25, the cooldown jumped from 40s to a full minute, and—the kicker—it only damages gods now. No more using it to power-farm jungle camps.
- Dagger of Frenzy: Now builds out of Manchu Bow and Hunter's Bow. It gives way more Attack Speed now (25%), but the active stim was nerfed from 30% to 20%.
Basically, the era of the "hybrid" Hunter is dead. If you try to build like you did in December, you’re going to hit like a wet noodle in the mid-game.
Support and Solo Buffs: The Return of the Raid Boss
While the damage dealers are crying, Hercules and Hades are laughing. Hercules received a significant bump to his "Mitigate Wounds" (the 3). The base heal and the protections are both up. You’ll see him sitting in the middle of four people, soaking up ults, and walking away with half his health still intact.
Hades got a much-needed mechanical tweak to his Blight. Instead of reducing enemy Strength/Intelligence by a flat percentage, he now applies a 5% universal Damage Reduction. If he consumes the Blight with his 2, that reduction jumps to 10%. It makes him way more relevant in the late game where he used to just get blown up the second he pressed his Ultimate.
🔗 Read more: Why Magic The Gathering Born of the Gods Still Bothers People Ten Years Later
Performance on the Aging PS4 Hardware
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. It’s 2026. The PS4 is a legacy console. This patch actually included some behind-the-scenes "cleaning" of physics meshes on the Conquest map. According to the devs, this saved about 500 MB of RAM.
Does it run perfectly? Kinda. You’ll still see the occasional frame drop during a 5v5 teamfight with a Discordia ult and a Zeus storm going off simultaneously. But the fact that they are still optimizing the memory footprint for a console from 2013 is honestly impressive. They also fixed that annoying bug where the item store would lose focus on the gamepad when you were trying to use split-view. Small wins.
What You Need to Do Right Now
Don't just jump into Ranked without checking your builds. The "Spear of Desolation" nerf is real—the cooldown reduction on assists was sliced in half. You can't just hang out near a kill and get your Ult back instantly.
- Re-evaluate your Hunter builds. Decide before the match starts: am I a basic attacker or a caster? Mixing the two is now a trap.
- Abuse the Discordia passive. If you’re the Jungler, keep an eye on that damage chart. If you're top damage, you are significantly more dangerous than usual.
- Link your accounts. If you haven't done the Divine Legacy linking yet, you're leaving free skins on the table. Every hour you spend on the PS4 version right now counts toward your Smite 2 rewards.
The meta is currently in a "wait and see" phase. People are experimenting with the new Medusa buffs (her Viper Shot damage-over-time is significantly higher now), and some Solo laners are trying to bring back the full-tank Bellona. One thing is certain: the smite ps4 patch notes have officially ended the "one-size-fits-all" build era. Adapt or get farmed.