07-20-2003, 09:33 AM
So at Brista's suggestion (i guess i'm easy to coerce as long as you stroke my ego ^.~) i started up a 1.10 Smite Paladin. I considered naming him "Lefty" for all of about five seconds and went with something a little more dignified- Seraph. I never did like joke names.
This is going to be the journal of his exploits. Eventually (assuming things go ok) it will get condensed, sifted, and re-arranged and turned into the first worthwhile PvM Smite guide. Keep in mind i'm more than open to suggestions on what i miss from people- so don't feel too shy ^.~
Anyway, since this is just a basic journal i'm not going to go over most of the basics right now- that'll be for later. For now, just to get any budding Smite fans on their feet i'll run over the real basic parts:
Smite is a level 1 skill where you take your shield and smack an enemy right in the face with it. It deals damage based on your shield's damage (visible only to Paladins, and sadly- not visible on shields in vendors) plus enhanced damage on everywhere other than your weapon and no flat +damage bonuses from anywhere (quite sadly... i'm not sure why... too broken to give +1 max damage to shields apparently) and no elemental damage bonuses. It always hits, it knockbacks against a good 95+% of all monsters in the game (it doens't knockback act bosses or anything immune to knockback, but it does vs. everything else), and furthermore it stuns for about .6 seconds +.2 per level- a surprisingly long 4.4 seconds at level 20 if i'm not mistaken. Finally, it has an unusual property of taking your base weapon speed as its own (for example, a Scimitar gives your Smite attacks -20 base attack speed) and applying it to its own swing animation- which can become quite fast, all the way down to 6 fps or perhaps even lower with the 1.10 patch (though i doubt it). This means you have to take an interesting approach to choosing your shield and weapon- getting the best mods that transfer over to Smite and the fastest weapon and the highest damage shield.
I won't get into knockback vs. not-knockback now. Smite has knockback and i'm using Smite. I can get the best out of it, or i can not- but if i don't use it, it'll use me.
So out i go with a pack of #lurkerlounge pals and we clear out players 8 blood moor and similar places. While doing this, i realize that i am severely out of practice with Smite. The reason i say that is because, for a while, i was wondering what to put my skill points into. Duh, Smite! If i'm going to build around a clvl 1 skill i may as well sink my first 10 points (minus Might) into it. So with a significantly heftier stun time of 2.4 seconds and +150% damage i start really laying the law down. No usable runes yet (and by usable, i mean "runes that begin with 't' and end with 'ir' or sound like the letter 'L'.") but i still make sure to pick up a 2 socket Scimitar when i see it. I'll thank myself later. Slowly, ever so slowly, i'm getting back into the groove of Smite. Old skills (of mine, not Seraph's) are awakening.
Eventually, though, we do Blood Raven and get Cain and decide to call it a night. Well, the other party members do. I run off and make a single player game. The first thing i notice is that Smite seems not to work like i remember it. There must be some sort of re-work of the code underlying the game because the always-hits ability of Smite doesn't seem to be working. I'll swing at guys but i won't hit three or four times in a row. In fact, i'd say that i'm hitting at most around 75-85% of the time in single play with Smite. Quite unusual. Maybe i don't have the "Smite rhythm" down right, but there you have it.
The second thing i notice is a pack of Carvers. In fact, i notice the largest pack of Carvers i've ever seen. Right at the end of the Dark Wood must have ran into around 150 carvers. At least 3 champion packs, right together. The whole mess spanned about three screens and included one of those camps full of guys. I cleaned up most of it after about ten minutes of fighting (knew i should have gone with something more sane than players 8, but too late to do anything about that) and the survivors are fleeing into the Black Marsh where i run into their bigger, uglier cousins- another "pack" that fills about a quarter of the entire Marsh. About five-seven shamans and their friends, three boss packs (one archer pack that harasses me across the entire field, one bird pack, one carver pack), another champ pack, and who knows what else all flew down on me and my poor rogue merc. After about thirty minutes of fighting, running to town, coming back, running back, reviving the merc, running back out, and killing a few guys at a time (i can't really seem to get any sort of containment because the more i try to spread the pack out the more random guys keep waking up) i finally clear them out. Then it's off to the Countess's tower. Right away, i'm greeted with another pair of boss packs (this time goats+archers) and some Devil Kin. Wow. Stairs traps are BACK. Hardcore Hell frightens me and i don't even play Hardcore. After dismantling that nasty piece of work i wisely set players to 1 and ran through the rest of the Countess's tower, crushed the Countess and hit alt. Hmm, an El rune. Half way there already!
Then i do it again. The second time i land an Eld (boo) and a Tir (yay!) rune. So now i'm all the way there. That was much less painful than i had expected. I run back to town and stick the Tir and El runes into that 2 socket Scimitar and bam, my very own Steel Scimitar. Time to call it a night.
At the end of day one:
Strength: 40
Dexterity: 45
Vitality: 50
Energy: 15
Gear worth note:
Arctic Furs
Steel-ed Scimitar
2 socket Targe (one socket with a chipped diamond in it, +13 resist all in total)
Skills:
1 Might
1 Thorns (to deal with the massive packs and their blocklock, generally not something i'd put a point in- but i figure if i'm going to test Sanctuary out (i've never put Sanctuary on a Smiter up until now) i may as well)
1 Sacrifice
1 Zeal
10 Smite
A question:
Does prevent monster heal transfer over to Smite? This shouldn't be that hard to test with the new uber-regenerating monsters.
And that's all for tonight! It's 4:30 in the morning and i have a D&D game to DM in ~7.5 hours. I'm off to bed!
This is going to be the journal of his exploits. Eventually (assuming things go ok) it will get condensed, sifted, and re-arranged and turned into the first worthwhile PvM Smite guide. Keep in mind i'm more than open to suggestions on what i miss from people- so don't feel too shy ^.~
Anyway, since this is just a basic journal i'm not going to go over most of the basics right now- that'll be for later. For now, just to get any budding Smite fans on their feet i'll run over the real basic parts:
Smite is a level 1 skill where you take your shield and smack an enemy right in the face with it. It deals damage based on your shield's damage (visible only to Paladins, and sadly- not visible on shields in vendors) plus enhanced damage on everywhere other than your weapon and no flat +damage bonuses from anywhere (quite sadly... i'm not sure why... too broken to give +1 max damage to shields apparently) and no elemental damage bonuses. It always hits, it knockbacks against a good 95+% of all monsters in the game (it doens't knockback act bosses or anything immune to knockback, but it does vs. everything else), and furthermore it stuns for about .6 seconds +.2 per level- a surprisingly long 4.4 seconds at level 20 if i'm not mistaken. Finally, it has an unusual property of taking your base weapon speed as its own (for example, a Scimitar gives your Smite attacks -20 base attack speed) and applying it to its own swing animation- which can become quite fast, all the way down to 6 fps or perhaps even lower with the 1.10 patch (though i doubt it). This means you have to take an interesting approach to choosing your shield and weapon- getting the best mods that transfer over to Smite and the fastest weapon and the highest damage shield.
I won't get into knockback vs. not-knockback now. Smite has knockback and i'm using Smite. I can get the best out of it, or i can not- but if i don't use it, it'll use me.
So out i go with a pack of #lurkerlounge pals and we clear out players 8 blood moor and similar places. While doing this, i realize that i am severely out of practice with Smite. The reason i say that is because, for a while, i was wondering what to put my skill points into. Duh, Smite! If i'm going to build around a clvl 1 skill i may as well sink my first 10 points (minus Might) into it. So with a significantly heftier stun time of 2.4 seconds and +150% damage i start really laying the law down. No usable runes yet (and by usable, i mean "runes that begin with 't' and end with 'ir' or sound like the letter 'L'.") but i still make sure to pick up a 2 socket Scimitar when i see it. I'll thank myself later. Slowly, ever so slowly, i'm getting back into the groove of Smite. Old skills (of mine, not Seraph's) are awakening.
Eventually, though, we do Blood Raven and get Cain and decide to call it a night. Well, the other party members do. I run off and make a single player game. The first thing i notice is that Smite seems not to work like i remember it. There must be some sort of re-work of the code underlying the game because the always-hits ability of Smite doesn't seem to be working. I'll swing at guys but i won't hit three or four times in a row. In fact, i'd say that i'm hitting at most around 75-85% of the time in single play with Smite. Quite unusual. Maybe i don't have the "Smite rhythm" down right, but there you have it.
The second thing i notice is a pack of Carvers. In fact, i notice the largest pack of Carvers i've ever seen. Right at the end of the Dark Wood must have ran into around 150 carvers. At least 3 champion packs, right together. The whole mess spanned about three screens and included one of those camps full of guys. I cleaned up most of it after about ten minutes of fighting (knew i should have gone with something more sane than players 8, but too late to do anything about that) and the survivors are fleeing into the Black Marsh where i run into their bigger, uglier cousins- another "pack" that fills about a quarter of the entire Marsh. About five-seven shamans and their friends, three boss packs (one archer pack that harasses me across the entire field, one bird pack, one carver pack), another champ pack, and who knows what else all flew down on me and my poor rogue merc. After about thirty minutes of fighting, running to town, coming back, running back, reviving the merc, running back out, and killing a few guys at a time (i can't really seem to get any sort of containment because the more i try to spread the pack out the more random guys keep waking up) i finally clear them out. Then it's off to the Countess's tower. Right away, i'm greeted with another pair of boss packs (this time goats+archers) and some Devil Kin. Wow. Stairs traps are BACK. Hardcore Hell frightens me and i don't even play Hardcore. After dismantling that nasty piece of work i wisely set players to 1 and ran through the rest of the Countess's tower, crushed the Countess and hit alt. Hmm, an El rune. Half way there already!
Then i do it again. The second time i land an Eld (boo) and a Tir (yay!) rune. So now i'm all the way there. That was much less painful than i had expected. I run back to town and stick the Tir and El runes into that 2 socket Scimitar and bam, my very own Steel Scimitar. Time to call it a night.
At the end of day one:
Strength: 40
Dexterity: 45
Vitality: 50
Energy: 15
Gear worth note:
Arctic Furs
Steel-ed Scimitar
2 socket Targe (one socket with a chipped diamond in it, +13 resist all in total)
Skills:
1 Might
1 Thorns (to deal with the massive packs and their blocklock, generally not something i'd put a point in- but i figure if i'm going to test Sanctuary out (i've never put Sanctuary on a Smiter up until now) i may as well)
1 Sacrifice
1 Zeal
10 Smite
A question:
Does prevent monster heal transfer over to Smite? This shouldn't be that hard to test with the new uber-regenerating monsters.
And that's all for tonight! It's 4:30 in the morning and i have a D&D game to DM in ~7.5 hours. I'm off to bed!