i never played the first one. i played a crap ton of heroes of the storm for the first couple years it was out, never got into dota or league though.
I played the first Smite for a while, i’m assuming smite 2 is the same-ish. best way i can describe from a heroes of the storm POV is that there’s less map gimmicks, every auto attack has to be aimed in third person, and the hero mechanic designs are much less unique. art style is okay, skins sometimes ruin that art style hard. some of the character designs are pretty cool like khepri and jormungandr, and if you like mythology there’s tons of the greatest hits like wukong and zeus and shit
honestly i’d look into getting a Deadlock invite, I haven’t tried it out but it looks neat and seems like it scratches around the same itch as smite. I also dunno how to get an invite since I don’t have one myself, but I think the subreddit should have invite sharing threads or something like that