I can see the argument thematically, that we're supposed to be melee combatants. RW, HoW, Smite, they're all rather clearly aimed to a certain goal. None of these preclude the option to see a Bless cast/scroll/rag to utilize on your thrown weapon of choice. Nor does it preclude the option of making a melee/thrown weapon your Holy Weapon to go down the road of HT/LT vs incorps.

While I'm personally of the mind that our inherent weakness in Ranged combat, combined with a (by design) less broad debilitation suite is a pain in the backside at times, I feel that rather then trying to shoehorn existing tools into that spot we'd be better off looking towards other avenues for such. I'd even entertain the idea of a cyclic spell geared to such an aim (Range boost/blessing ranged attacks), as it would be a directed tool for those interested in such.

Samsaren

>>2dumbarse: The bottom line is if defense and melee are our strengths and no guild suffers by not thematically having them as a strengths, then we have no strength.

So much this.

---

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

>>I've been itching to get my hands on the new smite.

I took it for a spin, some light pvp and some pve testing - it's worth being excited about.

Samsaren

>>I really wish it worked with thrown. Outside of Paladins getting some pull-to-melee ability that's far more broken than the current selections, it's PvP application will be limited if it's restricted to melee.

While I agree we're suffering to ranged, I don't think Smite is the tool to fix that problem. I'd rather a solid, focused tool then a weak spread out one.

Samsaren

>Armifer stated in another thread that engagement is one of the things he/they are looking at improving for paladins somehow. That'll help with melee.

I'm not confident the solution will help the engagement problem if it's anything like Wolverine form or Khri Shadowstep, or even a tier above them. The options for retreat tend to out-value the options for staying engaged - on top of the current combat model already being biased towards missile range. A ranged booster would definitely be welcome, but it's just going to even the playing field since evasion boosters are so commonplace.

I don't want to rant about niche PvP problems though, Smite is awesome, outside of thrown being boosted I couldn't ask for more. It's amazing.

>I'm not confident the solution will help the engagement problem if it's anything like Wolverine form or Khri Shadowstep, or even a tier above them.

I'm totally with you. I do think it'll help make melee more viable, which makes me excited for it. I don't think it's a complete fix for many reasons I intentionally left out here. I didn't want to harp since I've already been very vocal on the issue and didn't want to come across as ungrateful when I really am very grateful for the changes so far. (I'm probably approaching "that annoying guy" territory on the ranged issue.)

I do think an engagement thing + a ranged buff for fall-back is a fine fix for a melee-oriented guild in modern DR. I'd rather solve that problem that way and then move on to other issues the theme doesn't address like more debilitation or some debilitation alternatives (e.g. thorns, reactive stuff like HOW) if we're supposed to be a debil-light guild.

>Not to stir the pot but can you memorize a tailwind scroll for your ranged boost?

That's not a bad idea, but I think this underlines one of the key problems with combat in DR. Ranged completely negates melee, especially when you mix in stealth and magic, so a melee oriented class without a gap closer will always be at a disadvantage.

I think a native weapon buff would be nice, but it feels like a band-aid. Something like this from diablo 3: https://giphy.com/gifs/diablo-3-steed-crusader-OzBBlakXKMz60/fullscreen where you charge to melee at the thing you're facing by riding a magical steed. Maybe adding a short-term free attack if something tries to retreat since that's insanely easy to do in this game. That reduces the value of ranged weapons to paladins, but that's not the worst thing in the world.

> Without getting into TMI territory, I've been dealing with a significant issue IRL with an elderly parent. I don't mind pushing to live once I can fix the bugs that were uncovered, it's just my DR time in the past week or two has been zero.

Best of luck to you and your parent. I won't speak for everyone else, but I can wait.

To echo others, best of luck with your parent and no rush at all of course.

- Felicini

All,

Is there a command on test to grandfather conviction to my level? I logged into Test today, and apparently for the first time: it copied my character from Prime as it was.

I logged out, back in, repeated, talked to Verika, asked about conviction (with no response), but could not trigger it.

I realize I probably could do some testing without the free strikes from Conviction, but I'd rather test as is.

Also... are the perceive window changes currently live in Prime not on Test? I didn't troubleshoot it, but my buffs weren't displaying properly.

Mithgrek, player of.

Welcome back. I hope everything worked out for the best.

^

What they said, and happy to have you back.

On one hand I want to assure you I'm now back in the saddle and working on this project again. On the other hand I don't really feel like emphasizing the point overmuch until I have something to deliver to the live game.

At any rate, though, thank you everyone for your patience as I got my family business in order. Things have more-or-less achieved normality again.

-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

>>This is a call for any other observations, opinions, or bug reports about Conviction and Smite prior to a live release. The currently planned-to-be-live code is in Test now.

I'll go poke at it some this evening after supper/family time.

Samsaren

A few additional updates:

1) "one blows" typo is fixed.
2) SMITE HELP is slightly expanded.
3) Conviction strikes formula changed a bit, to give more strikes in the extremely low end and fewer in the high.

New schedule, still subject to tweaking:
000 Ranks: 2 strikes
025 Ranks: 3 ""
075 Ranks: 4 ""
150 Ranks: 5 ""
250 Ranks: 6 ""
400 Ranks: 7 ""
700 Ranks: 8 ""

-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 was able to get into test to try out smite. I really like the new soul pool messaging. I jotted down some notes on smite, but they may not be a useful because I tested with 0 conviction. I tested in cabs with 2HE (1019 ranks) and SR (defense), RW (weapon) and AA (barrier) buffs. My notes are:

• I'm having a hard time telling the difference between slices and smites, but I think that may be because I have 0 conviction. As I understand it, conviction plays some role in potency. I can say I seemed to miss less, but the strikes to kill were relatively even between slice and smite. If I have 8 smites, I would most likely exhaust nearly all strikes on one creature kill.
• Soul pool regen is taking a really long time from the lowest level (~20 minutes and still near min level). I know part of that is 0 conviction, but it seems long even for a new paladin.

I've updated Test with the correct settings to trigger Conviction grandfathering for the current batch of characters on Test.

If you log a Paladin onto Test for the first time after reading this, you should get grandfathered in Conviction equal to your min circle req for the skill.
If you log into a not-Paladin, nothing special should happen.
If you log in multiple times with a Paladin, you should only notice this happening the first time.

If any of these statements is not true, please let me know.

-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 experienced no issues with grandfathering. I had 1008 conviction when I logged in. Did a quick test of smite and this happened...

> smite check
You contemplate the strength of your conviction.
Your conviction is enough to deliver one blow against your enemies before you must either rest or draw upon your spiritual strength to continue.
> smite
Drawing strength from your conviction, you execute a divinely inspired strike!
< Driving in like an adept combatant, you thrust a steel greatsword at an arthelun cabalist. An arthelun cabalist badly fails to parry with a longsword crafted from pure flame.
The greatsword lands a good (4/23) strike to the cabalist's left leg.
[You're winded, nimbly balanced and have slight advantage.]
[Roundtime 4 sec.]

What's weird is every other smite defaulted to slice, so not sure what I did to cause the thrust.

I did very brief testing, but smite feels a little better with the conviction ranks. Cabs are probably at the edge of my offense, so I tend to miss a fair bit, but I seem to hit critical areas more often (not sure if that's relevant). More notes:

• This may not even be worth mentioning, but a smite is consumed when attempting to smite with a 2HE and full hands. (Really not a big deal, but in case it matters...)
• I noticed a bigger difference with 1k vs 0 conviction ranks, but it's not a large difference. I tried bumping charisma from 90 to 99 and didn't really notice a significant difference there either. Bear in mind, I didn't test a bunch and outcomes may be more positive over significant sample sizes, but my experience in cabs is: It takes about 7/8 slices to kill a cabalist with slice fairly predictably. It takes about 6/7/8 default smite slices to kill a cab. It's just hard to feel (without bigger samples?). I also seem to miss less on cabs with smite, although sometimes I'll miss on consecutive smites, so it's tough to say there, too, except I seem to miss consecutively slightly more often with regular slices.

My experience may be skewed by creature. I don't know if cabs suck for this test.

I logged into test to play around with smite, but no ranks grandfathered into conviction on ederick.