When did you play ranked last? I've been playing since probably April and he was a fairly low pick already and then completely gone after 2 nerfs to damage. He has one of the worst kits for survivability in the game for mages especially with water spout slow being nerfed. Now don't get me wrong, he can still be a force but outside of pubs he is seldomly picked from my experience or watching tournments. EU has a bit more liking of him but he usually doesn't have a good showing the few times he does show up. Baffles me because while I'm not great I can still carry fairly hard but I also run a pretty high death rate (but I also average 9 kills a game in ranked across the board with him so it works out enough)
The real strong mages in the meta atm for mid are Agni (escape + stun/mass damage from ults is very good), Janus (high damage poatential and his movement/escapes is the best of any mage), Sycliia (absurd late game damage, 2nd best mage escape ingame behind Janus). Vulcan has came on as of late and been a whore but they gave him a minor nerf to keep things fair. A good Vulcan is about as painful as a mage as you can play against. Also just the last 2 weeks, Nox went from trash to a super star, such low cool down you can just spam her 3. She is actually banned most games now. Nu Wu also is strong but can mid or solo, her global is good for clean up + location of enemies and her stun combo is great cc and fucking hurts.
The rest fill niche rolls or just don't get played. Solo is completely changed, limited mages now...typically Chang'e, Aphro, Nu Wu sometimes, and Zhong who is really hard to deal with.
Oh lastly, Ra is probably the most frequent picked mage period (yet usually not worth a ban). He plays strong solo or mid, great team fight, sustain, etc. I honestly thought they might nerf more then they did but he is still about as safe as pick as you can go.
As far as toxic...not sure if you played when they had curse voice integrated into the game but it makes things a lot better. Maybe 1 of 4 games do you run into major douche bags in voice, 70% of games I have at least 4 in chat (for ranked) which is so much nicer then chat. Still have to have a thick skin but its not horrible. Casuals....well I fucking hate, because you either have really toxic trolls or you have people that are all about YOLO and shit, they just don't care and some how are surprised when you politely point out flaws in their approach etc when you are trying to win. The ONLY time I do casual conquest is if I want to try and clean up my play with a god I don't use much or try a new build. I play mainly ranked and also Arena (love me some mass slaughter).
Any game I've tried to play since I started playing smite has no staying power for me, Dragon Age is pure awesome and I still struggle playing that much always thinking...oh just one game of smite!
