Awesome! Thanks!

Do ranks in the new Conviction skill have any effect on the potency or accuracy of smite 2.0, or is the rank effect limited to the number of free strikes you get?

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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

Thank you very much for all the work you've put into this project, Armifer.

Out of morbid curiosity, do Charisma enhancing effects and abilities factor into the efficacy of your smite? If so I presume the stock in Auspice scrolls may raise a bit, heh.

- Anuind Silverspruce

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Any drunken idiot can fall off a bar stool, a real man rides it to the ground.

Been looking forward to this. Thanks!

Thanks Armifer!

Yay thanks Armifer! So excited to have a guild skill. So i'm noticing with 1200 ranks that Conviction is capped at 8 smites. Any benefits to having ranks above 800? Also, sorry for not recalling. But after these 8 strikes with conviction our normal smite pool goes into effect?

> Is there a cooldown period for learning? Like i can't smite twice in a row and expect to gain mental state? That seems to be happening for me. If so, what is the cooldown period between strikes for learning conviction?

One minute. It says in the post you linked.

>>So i'm noticing with 1200 ranks that Conviction is capped at 8 smites. Any benefits to having ranks above 800? Also, sorry for not recalling. But after these 8 strikes with conviction our normal smite pool goes into effect?

Smite doesn't scale well into the four digits, but ultra-high Conviction can cover for lower Charisma scores as far as potency of the effect is concerned.

The smite pool as you knew it is gone. After your Conviction strikes, you drain from the soul pool (the same thing that powers your glyphs).

-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 am updating the circle requirements on the wiki and for Genie's circle calculator. Would I be correct in assuming that conviction is a hard requirement (doesn't count toward Nth armor requirements)?

I am actually unsure off hand. I'll try to remember to check next time I'm available to log in.

-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

>>>>So i'm noticing with 1200 ranks that Conviction is capped at 8 smites. Any benefits to having ranks above 800? Also, sorry for not recalling. But after these 8 strikes with conviction our normal smite pool goes into effect?

Been looking into this myself and I noticed that on my Paladin with 162 ranks in Conviction I only get 5 Free Smites in my pool. According to Elanthipedia, it should be 6 Free Smites at or above 150 Conviction.

skill conviction

SKILL: Rank/Percent towards next rank/Amount learning/Mindstate fraction
Conviction: 162 05.32% clear (0/34)

>smite check
You contemplate the strength of your conviction.
Your conviction is enough to deliver five blows against your enemies before you must either rest or draw upon your spiritual strength to continue.

Can we confirm if this is a bug or working as intended?

Malzian "What do you do when life throws monsters at you? Kill them and wait for more monsters, of course."

>With 1320 Conviction I am seeing 8 free strikes. EXTREME diminishing returns with ranks.

8 is probably the cap. Diminishing returns on abilities is typical at higher ranks, i.e. you get fewer spell slots and need more ranks to circle, for example.

SMITE seems to give a significant boost to both damage and accuracy, and you get eight of these strikes per minute. It's so much better than old SMITE, there's no comparison. Even if SMITE is all Conviction ever did I would be quite happy, any glyph changes to make glyphs more appealing are just icing on the cake. Thanks a lot Armifer!

Played with smite in PVP a little bit. It was awesome to be able to unleash a flurry of powered up blows against an opponent when the time was right. As in PVE, it seemed most noticeable when the gap between my offense and their defense was high, because I started landing hits.

It could be cool at higher levels of conviction to gain some ways options to modify the smite bonus, which could make melee fights feel more dynamic. Like >smite chop power to put maximum emphasis on damage, and a way to balance even more towards accuracy, or even speed.

>8 is probably the cap. Diminishing returns on abilities is typical at higher ranks, i.e. you get fewer spell slots and need more ranks to circle, for example.

Most likely 8 is cap. However it still seems strange that a paladin with 162 ranks has 5 free smites and a paladin with 1320 has 8. Just my opinion though.

My pie in the sky dream would be keeping the strike scaling to where it is - front loaded and modest, but improve recovery rate by say, 5 seconds per 250/ranks or something.

Samsaren

Probably also worth recognizing that those are the "free" strikes, not explicitly all available strikes.

Not that I know the explicit amount of soul mojo used in smite, but given the way soul pool works (at least how I think it still works!), which is based heavily on circle and charisma, a higher level Paladin will have a lot more soul mojo available to use on strikes than a lower level Paladin, so higher level Paladins should still be a lot better off in the long run.

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Uzmam! The Chairman will NOT be pleased to know you're trying to build outside of approved zones. I'd hate for you to be charged the taxes needed to have this place re-zoned. Head for the manor if you're feeling creative.

I think the number of free strikes and scale is fine considering it's a 1st circle paladin ability. Plus, there's usually an implicit tradeoff between ability uses and potency with abilities like these. I'd rather have 1 strong smite than 100 weak ones. I tend to prefer abilities that reward parsimony over profligacy. I'd even be on board with using up multiple smite charges for a bigger effect in the future if that's feasible/acceptable with The Powers That Be (RL, not the gods).

>Not that I know the explicit amount of soul mojo used in smite, but given the way soul pool works (at least how I think it still works!), which is based heavily on circle and charisma, a higher level Paladin will have a lot more soul mojo available to use on strikes than a lower level Paladin, so higher level Paladins should still be a lot better off in the long run.

This is true, but I wouldn't advise powering smites by soul pool. At least right now, they'll drain ya fast and soul pool replenishment sans favor sacrifice via AG is super slow. I believe Armifer stated soul pool is going to be enhanced later, at which point this may be moot.

>It sounds like you're talking about Soul State, which is separate from Soul Pool. Pool is the stuff that runs glyphs, which AFAIK are barely used by Paladins these days. Soul State, which is the one AG can help restore (right?), determines the size of your soul pool, unlocks if you can do certain spells/abilities, influences sixth sense, etc.

I was talking about the pool, but you're right on all that stuff. Smites empty the bucket of water (good analogy) rather quickly, at least in the test instance when I tried it. AG replenishes soul pool at the cost of a favor, so you probably don't want to replenish it that way too often if you can help it. The nice thing is costly smites won't tank soul state now, make your bucket smaller.

The soul pool cost for non-free smites is less of an issue than soul pool recovery, which is crazy slow from empty to full. I think it's exacerbated by having a bigger bucket, although I may be wrong on that. Even if you're committed to not using glyphs during a hunt, your free smites will replenish way before your bucket gets even a quarter full under the leaky faucet of auto-recovery. Hell, you'll have several free smites back before you can use even one costly smite after depleting your soul pool to empty.

The pool is just an old system that'll come into modernity in time and probably work better as an ancillary smite facilitator once it does, but I'm more excited to see what other spell changes and new stuff is in the pipeline ahead of it.

>Didn't know AG restored pool, either! From epedia it looked like it only restored soul state (or should it only be pool?).

I never noticed that. I think it's a typo. Above that description it correctly states pool. It doesn't replenish soul state... Actually now I'm doubting what I know and afraid to speak out of turn. Maybe someone can confirm. AG definitely replenishes pool, but I don't recall it affecting state at all. Pretty sure state can only be fixed by doing certain good paladin stuff, like tithing and praying under certain circumstances.

>>Ashaman1: improve recovery rate by say, 5 seconds per 250/ranks or something.

Great idea.

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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

To report back on more testing. The reason I had a hard time noticing the smite bonus is cabalists are not as hard as I thought and rank buffs are the ultimate equalizer.

Without RW, regular slices missed about a quarter of the time and smites missed less than 5 percent of the time and smites to kill were about 2-3 strikes lower (7/8 vs 10-11) with a 108-stone HCS greatsword. This raises something that's not an issues per se, just food for thought. Unless one's back-training weapons or not using RW, smite bonuses will be difficult to notice in PvE because people are generally going to train on creatures they can hit regularly without smite. Really, this just speaks to OF bonus efficacy when you already have an advantage in skill due to buffs/debuffs, which is something that we all know about and probably not solvable, assuming a desire to solve it, without making hunting way harder and enraging a lot of players.

Note: I've been using really small samples due to limited number of strikes, although I said screw it a couple of times and AG'ed for testing. I don't think that matters much in this case (i.e. you shouldn't need a sample of 100+ strikes to feel smite doing its thing), but it's worth noting in case I made really (un)lucky dice rolls.

>I guess I still don't get how higher conviction rates translate into better smites?

My understanding is more conviction contributes to smite potency, albeit less so than charisma. I played with smite (PvE only) in the test instance with both 0 and 1k conviction skill and I didn't notice a difference in potency, BUT I tested poorly. If we're throwing an end game wish list together, it would be cool if high conviction skill could bonus held weapon skill for the smite. I have far more success landing weak shield slam against difficult opponents by virtue of the skill set gap and not many debil options at 1k+. I'm pretty sure that accounts for some of my experiences with smite at my ranks, but I'm apprehensive about hyperfocusing on the one ability, which I find totally cool anyway, before other changes take place.

I have my sights set on the QoL spell changes and glyph stuff. In spite of exp mods, for instance, I never noticed that glyph light capped the bonus at 100 ranks until Sam posted about it somewhere. That's effectively ~10% for me vs 20% for other buffs. That actually explains a lot of annoyance with some stealthies in PvP.