Super excited to test the crap out of this, but looks like my character is not available in Test. Can I trouble someone for a test copy?

>>What does this messaging mean?
>>The strength of your conviction has fully returned.

Your conviction strikes have fully regenerated.

>>Would you be willing to share the formula that determines how many free smites you get based on conviction ranks?

Right now it's almost the same as the crafting technique schedule, one "category" nicer. So at 0-24 you have 1 strike, 25-49 you have 2, and so on until you max out at 900. This is still subject to change.

>>So far, it looks like the free smites I got are adequate to train conviction without tanking my soul pool. Since the smites regenerate every 60 seconds, if you are just smiting on the 60-second experience timer, you should be able to train conviction indefinitely.

Yup, that's the idea. I'm concerned the solution isn't very elegant, but as a simple mechanism for making sure Conviction remains trainable it works.

>>I know you can check your smite pool with SMITE CHECK, but would it be possible to add a message to the attack that indicates when you are drawing from your soul pool (having exhausted all of your free smites)? Maybe something like this:

Good idea, I'll poke at it.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

Armifer - thanks for the tweaks (the messaging for burning soul.)

Found a bug - it consumes a strike even if we cannot land the attack due to range (bug log below). Additionally, I was gaining Conviction EXP fighting a Reaper, which counts as pvp for all other skill gains. While I can see an arguement either way, I don't think smiting pets should teach. 'Pep' wise, it feels pretty solid when upswinging, against someone below you it wasn't as cool, but I'd rather upswing power as a rule anywho. All in all, it looks/feels pretty solid. EXP might need another pass once there are more methods for training, though current form could be better for new paladins.

> smite check
You contemplate the strength of your conviction.
Your conviction is enough to deliver three blows against your enemies before you must either rest or draw upon your spiritual strength to continue.
> smite chop
You draw back with a divinely inspired strike!
You aren't close enough to attack.
You begin to advance on a shining red spectral reaper.
> smite check
You contemplate the strength of your conviction.
Your conviction is enough to deliver two blows against your enemies before you must either rest or draw upon your spiritual strength to continue.

Samsaren

>>Will probably be a day or two to fix that. You just found an old problem in the engagement range check for Smite that I will need to investigate how to properly fix.

No worries, if that's the biggest splash I can make, I won't lose sleep tonight.

Samsaren

>>I'm amazed at how fast you're chugging through this. Keep it up!

Mixture of things. A big part of it is that I'm personally motivated and willing to put in more hours than I will put in on a normal project, combined with having a fairly clear RL schedule at the moment.

But I'd be lying if I said it was just that. The other side of it is that this is a situation where the DR3 system and background changes paid dividends. Altering your circle req was the work of 20 minutes. Much of the work for then-Endurance skill had already been established. Grandfather schemes had already been well worn and modular. Most of the hours in this release went into the SMITE command, and even that benefited from Combat 3's relatively modular approach to how combat styles are set up.

I wouldn't expect this pace to continue for every aspect of the Paladin work this year, unfortunately, because both of those situations can change.

>>I'd love to jump in and test, but my character isn't on test. :( Can we get an update?

I'll ask Lyneya about that, though I suspect I won't be able to do anything about that 'til Monday or Tuesdaqy at the earliest.

>>I know the answer is probably no, but what if the attack still hit at range when you smite?

No go. In addition to not really being where I'd like to go with smite, it'd be kind of nightmarish.

Without too many details, what happens is SMITE has a custom engagement check, then deducts its cost, then calls to the combat system to do its thing. The bug is that SMITE's custom check is allowing an attack through that combat core is ruling invalid due to range. I see the situation where this'd happen, but I don't know exactly how to fix it without a little investigating.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

>>That makes sense. I suppose having it execute a charge wouldn't work either?

To be honest, that's what I thought would happen originally and I didn't think to do a practical test. I'm still pretty new to how combat core parses attacks and some of the edge cases eluded me.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

I understand this may be PAFO, but can we know how the charisma bonus works? Is it linear or logarithmic? I vaguely recall the charisma benefit for the current smite plateaued somewhere around 70 charisma according to Kodius. I haven't neglected char, but I'm curious whether I have more reason to focus on it now.

>>I understand this may be PAFO, but can we know how the charisma bonus works? Is it linear or logarithmic?

Linear.

Charisma in the original SMITE had varying caps based on what part of the ability it was acting on. IIRC it takes 35 Charisma to get to the original cap and 100 Charisma to get to cap out the original Smite Pool.

The current Charisma bonus is a weaker per point than that, but caps higher and benefits mildly from Conviction as well. An easy way to think about it: Charisma rules the equation, but big enough chunks of Conviction ranks count as virtual Charisma points.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

I don't know if intended or not, but I took my 20th circle Paladin out and found that Smite taught Conviction even on full misses. Only on the first swing then the 60 second timer started up.

>>I don't know if intended or not, but I took my 20th circle Paladin out and found that Smite taught Conviction even on full misses. Only on the first swing then the 60 second timer started up.

The idea I'm running with is even if the attack fails at that point, you've succeeeded in supernatural part of the act, spent the conviction or soul to do so, and so should get the exp award.

That may change with some observation and additional thought, but for now it's intended.

>>Sure it's not in scope, but if by accident while you are in the engagement code you can figure out a way to prevent charging when I don't enter the command `charge` I would be ever grateful! Since we already have a command to charge I don't see why every jab/slice/gouge has to turn into a charge!

Wildly out of scope, unfortunately.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

I have rewritten the Smite wiki article with this information.

https://elanthipedia.play.net/Smite_command

---

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall rank!

Paladin new player guide: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Paladin_new_player_guide

armor and shields: https://elanthipedia.play.net/mediawiki/index.php/Armor_and_shield_player_guide

>>Is there any possibility Smite could be added to brawling?

Not at the moment. I'm not totally against the idea, but it'd be a fairly significant technical complication and I don't think it makes the cost:benefit ratio cut at this time.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

In regard to brawling, I totally understand what you are saying, it would be alot of work to implement.

Just want to mention that many Paladins have brawling in our top weapons. For example brawling is my third highest weapon. So while I understand it might be difficult to implement, it would be helpful to those of us with high brawling.

Thank you.

- Felicini

>Maybe this is just me not understanding the direction this is going. From what I can tell, Paladins now have another skill to learn each level. How does this benefit us? I am sorry if this was covered already. Thank you.

As someone who has gone through this somewhat recently with Expertise on my Barb, Conviction is absolutely going to be a benefit to Paladins and not a drawback, especially with more development in a few months time. You will now have a mechanical, rank-based skill to power some of your guild abilities, and those benefits will not be based on your mana pool or buffing up for ten minutes before combat.

The only "downside" is a slight adjustment to your combat routine or combat script. SMITE every 60 seconds and Conviction will learn at a primary rate, and the cirle requirements are very meager. Shield and armor ranks will be holding you back, not Conviction.

>>@Armifer - will conviction be a soft skill and contribute to our nth armors? Not that it really matters much in terms of leveling, but it's good to know.

I didn't bother to look, since as you say, it doesn't actually matter given how your Armor reqs are structured. I'll try to remember to look for curiosity sake in the next few days.

-Armifer
"Perinthia's astronomers are faced with a difficult choice. Either they must admit that all their calculations were wrong ... or else they must reveal that the order of the gods is reflected exactly in the city of monsters." - Italo Calvino

I did kind of feel like the ranks were kind of low as well. It was at least 80 ranks below my lowest body armor and about 150-200 ranks below my at level armor skills.

>>Conviction will be an armor skill?

All guild skills are prime skills.

Samsaren

>>It stinks, but it's the semi-fair way to do it.

It's the min req. I look at it as a gift so that I don't have a back-train to circle again. When it starts to feel like the short end of the stick, remind yourself we could easily have been told "good luck" and started as a whole at zero. From my testing the EXP given via SMITE is..very generous, it's a prime skill, and the req isn't super hard. Honestly as guild skills go, we're looking to be top of the heap.

Samsaren

>>Just FYI, grandfathering always rewards 'low' ranks. The idea is to give you something to start with, not to reward you with ranks as though you'd been >>training it the same way you train all your other skills.

I am aware, I was around when grandfathering ranks was not a thing.

I am still curious about being able to use thrown weapons with smite though, I know lots of paladins who use thrown and it would be kindof cool to see.

> I already asked this and was told no. Smite does not work with hurl / throw / lob, and this is as intended.

> I asked for an option of thrown against noncorporeal undead, as HoW doesn't do this.

I've asked before, but I'll ask again. Can we get smiting to add charges of bless to the weapon we smite with? It doesn't have to be anything extreme, but 10-15 or so would do quite a bit to help this situation.