Smite discussion

[mishimayukio]

Been hearing people's ideas about smite recently and heard some good ones and thought I'd start a discussion about them. As most of you probably already know smiter builds have some serious problems at the moment, the primary problem being that the timer is too long and it resets when you die, and because of the focus on charisma and smite feats you make a poor tank even fully buffed.
Funky agrees that there is a problem, but isn't quite sure what the best fix would be. So post here with your ideas.

2 ideas I've heard:
Significantly reduce both the damage dealt AND the cool down timer, something like 1/4 or 1/6 of what it currently is, aiming for smites every 30 seconds at around 100-150 damage each for a pure/near-pure smiter with all the smite feats.

Change the great smite to an onhit that deals damage to a single target a certain % of the time, would resemble assassin's dev crit but with the end result being damage rather than instant death.

I'm currently in favor of the first one because for the onhit to trigger, you have to actually hit the target. Not exactly the easiest thing for a smiter.

[dodrudon]

Maybe take off the timer, balance the damage, but add a catch so it doesn't get spammed. For instance, it deals half or a quarter damage to yourself, or takes off 15% of your max HP.

[fusa]

dodrudon said:

Maybe take off the timer, balance the damage, but add a catch so it doesn't get spammed. For instance, it deals half or a quarter damage to yourself, or takes off 15% of your max HP.

Could easily be exploited by spamming smite/heal/smite/heal

[bhao]

maybe have no smite timer for the paladin but for the target. make it only work on monsters once every 30 or 60 secs. similar to how the bard curse song works, but without the lasting negative effects and with a lot more damage. that way the paladin can go about smiting other things in the meantime, and doesn't feel so useless while recharging.

[Ironfang]

How about a timer but the first smite does 100% damage then if you smite again without waiting for X number of minutes damage is 50% then 25% then either stay at the 25% every smite or make it go to 0 until you wait again.

*note the 100% does not have to be as much damage as it currently is.

[sabregirl]

I think I like the idea of the much shorter timer for lower damage. Mostly because in many areas death is just something you can't do much about and one death on a smiter with a 4 minute smite timer results in at least 2-3 minutes of cursing. I am a bit concerned if the damage is lowered too much, it could be difficult to get through some creature's damage resistance.

I do like the idea of other benefits being gained from the great smiting feats as in the CoT's Aura of Victory, which could be extended to the other smiter classes. This would make smiters more than just a one trick pony.

-S

[Yomi]

A variant on ironfangs idea -- one could have the smite damage recharge -- 1% of damage per 2.5s for example (and death would stop the recharge but perhaps not drain you either). So you can almost always smite and have the cool special ability. But if you sit around spamming smites you'll be doing a hefty 4 points each. Should you smite now? Or wait just one more round for a little more damage... Getting more complicated one could put a bit of a curve on the equation to encourage waiting even more.

[FunkySwerve]

Interesting ideas so far, please keep em coming. I should say up front that I'm planning to add an item and a simtools command that will allow toggling of smite damage between pos and divine for cot and pally, and neg and divine for bgs. Might want to factor that into your thinking. Other possibilities include making smite onit, either all the time or percentile, smaller aoe or single taget - sort of a lower ab, higher damage version of the AA. Timing is much easier to script now that we have a timestamp system for the server uptime, so you can suggest fairly complex things. Ideas that encourage thoughtful play and options are preferable (like Yomi's curve).
Funky

[lala]

Ah Funky that sounds rather cool, combined with Yomi's suggestion its got me thinking of the old arcade days where the ship would have 3 types of wpns and you choose 1 that then gets powered up.

So in the same concept, could be possible that each class gets maybe 3 unique damage or abilities, but you can only have 1 active that gets charged with Yomi's idea.
As an example for Paladin:
Option 1 Positive damage that starts low and increases over time that scales.
Option 2 Divine damage as above.
Option 3 No damage but does a KD lasting 1 round for every turn charged to a max of 5 rounds.

The 2 damage and the none damage ability could vary for each class.

[omino23]

I was thinking about smites and had this idea:

How about if you have a certain number of lvls of BG and COT/Pally you could do both smites with a seperate timer. This is sounding a little more like a quazi class idea and if there is interest I would be happy to write up my suggestions of how this might work as a new class.

[mishimayukio]

Had another idea. Instead of changing the scripted smite we could just leave it as it is, and make the normal smite unlimited like AA abilities to be used in-between greater smites. Unfortunately this would do nothing for blackguards as I don't know of any monsters that are good, unless you can modify the smite good feat to smite anything with a 2da edit.