I wanted to create a new thread for this and hijack a thread in combat.

Since recent changes are in place, smite seems to really hit no harder than a normal slice.

With the changes to spell formulas, only fear and charm type spells utilize charisma (i.e not halt, stun foe, etc) and charisma is no longer an active statistic in any defensive contests. With this change Charisma (a core stat for our guild, supposedly) only factors into our soul pool (however this is largely irrelevant with the circle component), Lead (ditto. Size of group and circle are far larger factors from testing on this some time ago. Moderate charisma is nice but hardly needed) and Smite.

Smite is our only non standard verb, which is more important given stealth combat is basically unavailable to us. As someone that is charisma secondary I was dissapointed after the newest round of smite testing. I realize it was bugged and out of control before this, and I'm not saying im comparing it to early 3.0 damage levels, but compared to its usefulness in 2.0, I really dont see it anymore.

In testing against gryphons last night, I was able to kill a gryphon in about 5-6 slices on average with a very heavy 2HE or 7-8 with very heavy HE. When I used smite instead for each attack (keeping balances up with TR) it took the same amount of blows.

After about a two gryphons my pool was spent and I had to wait a pretty significant amount of time to recharge (full soul pool/state) so this is by no means a 'spam' ability and there are definitely limitations to it. It can only be used with certain weapons and only at melee.

I would really like to see the following (some ideas stolen from another poster)

Charisma should play a far greater role in smite damage. The main purpose of this maneuver is to crush an enemy with our holy fervor. I feel while an accuracy bonus is prudent on the ability, it should be mild at best (or perhaps non existent). As an alternative to an accuracy bonus, the elimination or reduction of the standard defense penalty from slice (or other medium strength attacks) might be better and keep in line with our defensive nature.

If left as is, I can see no reason to really desire the use of this ability or build for it, which is sad cause despite the nature of charisma being important to the idea of paladins its not very well supported within the system and you are better off training any other stat generally speaking (more so in 3.0 given the change in spell contests). As a guild full of many very old systems (glyphs, holy weapon) or half implemented ideas (mounted combat...) I feel especially sad.

Keep in mind im not asking for Smite to be a "i win button". No one wants that. Guild balance and combat balance is important, but there should be a reason to use smite, a cost for it, and a semi noticeable effect as a player for strategizing(= around it.

That be an interesting as well, giving it kind of a strategic bonus.

I had an idea where paladins would get a system with various types of smites, and some smites costing more of our pool than the standard ones, and some even causing our pool regeneration to be penalized for a time. One of those smites was a force of impact based smite, which could fall in line there.

Conceptually, I dont see a smite as being 'more accurate'. The flavor text of the ability is one about bringing the pain, and if nothing I could see the accuracy being penalized on it. If the concern is too much damage, then I can see the bonus damage being split between damage and force of impact.

Either way, i think its a SUPER awesome idea!

>That be an interesting as well, giving it kind of a strategic bonus.

>I had an idea where paladins would get a system with various types of smites, and some smites costing more of our pool than the standard ones, and some even causing our pool regeneration to be penalized for a time. One of those smites was a force of impact based smite, which could fall in line there.

>Conceptually, I dont see a smite as being 'more accurate'. The flavor text of the ability is one about bringing the pain, and if nothing I could see the accuracy being penalized on it. If the concern is too much damage, then I can see the bonus damage being split between damage and force of impact.

>Either way, i think its a SUPER awesome idea!

I hadn't suggested it because I'm not that big of a Paladin player I have two Elothean Paladins, which are fun not sure what I was thinking anymore with two very similar Paladins anyways more importantly to Smite.

I was under the belief that Smite could be a powerful, devasting blow, that maybe was fueled with Soul Pool, but was draining in fatigue, wasn't very accurate in of itself, but was forceful, driven, hurting, to whatever point GMs will allow it to be, with the costs being whatever they need to be.

As far as other Smite options might be cool to see other things too. Later on after initial release.
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I agree with Rewyn. They should remove the circle base for smite pool and soul pool and make only charisma count. Lets make charisma worth it!

:P

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Any updates here from Kodius?

There was some talk about flipping the larger accuracy bonus with the more mild damage bonus.

I've held off on any additional testing until you can confirm something about it has changed, last few times in test taking small samples (50 or so smites, since im limited by my pool) vs similar slices yielded nearly identical hit to miss ratios and similar damage (hard to gauge damage with the new system, so i alternate when i smite and slice on the target to looked for average messaging and the amount of 'spikes' i saw in messaging).

Smite (the verb) is a modified version of the medium attack verb (Slice, Thrust, etc) thus it already works off the standard combat contest.

It should not be confused with the Smite Foe Spell.

Honestly this is a place that the spell should be renamed, or the ability. When having a discussion when you bring up Smite its sometimes confusing for non Paladins to understand what your talking about.

That would be fantastic!

Curious, is the smite damage bonus based off the raw damage of the attack (i.e is it worth more on higher damaging weapons?).

Sorry to post to this again. I spent an hour yesterday and a few days earlier testing smite again for any tests. After an hour, I really could not discern any difference between smiting and just slicing. This was fighting an at level creature that locks my weapon pretty quickly. I have just short of 50 charisma and in my test I could kill second tier gryphons in 4 slice commands (i would build balance with TR and attacking a secondary gryphon with periodic feints/jabs). Smiting down a creature killed it in the same amount of verbs. At about 90th circle and my charisma I could go through about five gryphons before tanking my smite pool entirely and having to wait (a while) to regenerate it.

I think the switch from 90% accuracy/10% damage to something 50/50 like you had mentioned would be really swell. Wondering if this something you can roll out so we can test it before Saturday? I imagine once saturday hits, you will be flooded with new bug reports and this will be back burnered for a very long time.

I popped Kodius an email (not sure if he reads those though). Just hoping it can be addressed given how quickly some other guild specific balance items have been brought up and squashed very recently.

My reference was more pointed at things that cropped up and were slammed within a very short time span, which seemed to have mostly soft data from users and research on the part of the GM. If your doing hard data research, that is awesome. I'm really impressed with how quickly the conversation around eagle went from problem report, to general contribution of the user base (barbarian user base dwarfs the paladin one many times over, so it has that going for it) to a implemented resolution. Thats appreciation, not castigation. I think with the flurry of reported issues in late December which were system wide items made this a low priority item, very understandable. Wide scale balance is the priority and getting 3.0 is key, but with the last few days I really just hope this can be looked at because (and not to sound like a forum snert) the change to the 3.0 combat model has made this function and the underlying Smite Pool system more or less cosmetic.

I adore the work put forth so far and this is not the voice of someone that does not appreciate the effort.

On the RW area, I guess I'm confused. RW only boosts weapon skills and not 'damage'. Your OF value would grow as far as I understand, and it should be directly comparable to Dragon. RW (unless there is some hidden bonus for its spell slot cost) does nothing to 'increase damage'. The only power we have that does that is RuE (which does hardly anything if a weapon is forged, and is otherwise comparable to one of your forms I believe) and HES (which is a normal strength buff and strength not being in our SoI wont give a very good buff). My guess then is the barbarian powers were bugged, in which case those are great fixes.

I would love to help test. I will be on tonight at about 7 PM PST if you want a test subject. I'll toss you my contact info.

Thank you for letting me test this with you tonight.

I like the results..feels like its hitting harder. I have a question, is charisma playing into the damage/accuracy bonuses, or strictly the size of your smite pool? SMITE HELP seems a bit outdated given it refers to brawling mode.

>>The bonus is entirely based on charisma. It scales pretty well up to and somewhat past 70 charisma, if I recall correctly.

Possibly stupid question, but why not past 70? Stats can go past 99 in 3.0, so this seems an odd capping point.

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"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors."
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>>Its just a diminishing returns thing. DR lacks floating point and in this case there isn't much bonus left that can be applied by the time you hit 70.

Ah, that's much clearer than how it was originally worded, thanks for the clarification.

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TG, TG, GL, et al.

"Disagreement with the fundamental plan at this point is akin to supporting Richard III vs the Tudors."
-Raesh