07-27-2006, 07:50 PM
Greetings and Salutations,
Librarian, looking at the numbers you are quite right that the damage numbers won't stack up in hell without an aura unless you have some uber runewords like grief. But this does not in any way diminish the utility of this skill in the very least. For one, auto-smite would be the perfect way to level up a young smiter, it only begins to lose its edge by mid-nightmare to hell, depending on the number of players. For those early levels smite+holy shield alone is more than enough to bring up those damage numbers even without an aura even with poor gear. For a single technique that can be used all the way up from normal to nightmare, or 2/3 of the game, it has paid for itself in full and then some.
In hell however, mindlessly auto-smiting will no longer work because damage is lacking without an aura, but with the judicious use of skill switching, one can use auto-smite to control the crowd, then switching to an aura on the RMB, while continuing to use single-smiting on the LMB. Switching techniques in this way allows you to have both great crowd control and an aura damage boost. You can have your cake and eat it too.
Even the lack of an aura can be augmented with the right equipment that adds damage to smite such as the redeemer, astreon's or grief so that smite damage is increased sufficient enough even for hell. Alternately, the might merc can be chosen as an external source of aura damage. Enough crushing blow can even obviate the need for massive raw smite damage.
Librarian, looking at the numbers you are quite right that the damage numbers won't stack up in hell without an aura unless you have some uber runewords like grief. But this does not in any way diminish the utility of this skill in the very least. For one, auto-smite would be the perfect way to level up a young smiter, it only begins to lose its edge by mid-nightmare to hell, depending on the number of players. For those early levels smite+holy shield alone is more than enough to bring up those damage numbers even without an aura even with poor gear. For a single technique that can be used all the way up from normal to nightmare, or 2/3 of the game, it has paid for itself in full and then some.
In hell however, mindlessly auto-smiting will no longer work because damage is lacking without an aura, but with the judicious use of skill switching, one can use auto-smite to control the crowd, then switching to an aura on the RMB, while continuing to use single-smiting on the LMB. Switching techniques in this way allows you to have both great crowd control and an aura damage boost. You can have your cake and eat it too.
Even the lack of an aura can be augmented with the right equipment that adds damage to smite such as the redeemer, astreon's or grief so that smite damage is increased sufficient enough even for hell. Alternately, the might merc can be chosen as an external source of aura damage. Enough crushing blow can even obviate the need for massive raw smite damage.
No matter how skilled someone is today, at some point they were really bad. Even Mozart was a poor musician at age 1. --Steve Pavlina
A word becomes the property of anyone who uses it. --Earl Prevette
A word becomes the property of anyone who uses it. --Earl Prevette