I used to think that but now I think the way Smite is constructed it's better to nerf their strengths

Reason being is sometimes a strength of a god is just a glaring problem that's hard to not play around, if you hit their other aspects they still do their glaring op shit just when Hirez finally whacks them where it matters to lower their ban rate they end up as trash characters because now the utility that helped pull them up or the other stats they used means you've now utterly fucked the character via other nerfs

E.g. take Freya as an example during her rekit, they didn't gun for the railgun which was her frustration value and instead hit things like her base speed, the damage off Valkyrie's Discretion, then they actively had to gut her Aurora Blade because it was causing too much frustration, they reworked the 1 from 3 shots to 5, by the end of it she was just some walking mess

Now if we look at Apollo he'd been getting hit on his ult and his mez, both parts that aren't impacting his play efficiency because it's his raw damage that he uses to overpower. But he's not dropping in ban rate and he's still skyrocketing which means his raw damage is the problem which is something Hirez says they don't want to nerf. But that's the thing- they have to, hitting his utility is just repeating a Freya and once they do, Apollo will be a shell of himself.