ArenaNet talk:Skill feedback/Monk/Divine Favor

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Zealot's Fire and Balthazar's Aura were just ridiculous in the past; have any other smiting skills been powered out for their scalar effects by secondaries?

Izzy's issue with smiting is not on secondaries; It's about Primary Monks themselves. The fear is that if Smiting becomes too strong an attribute line, then we'll end up with teams of 8 Monks powering out strong heals, prots, and making kills with smites, which would be a ridiculous metagame. To this effect, I think your change would work to exacerbate, not improve, smiting.

But really, a line heavily based in dealing armor-ignoring damage is going to have a lot of problems independent of the rest of the profession's attributes. See: Necromancer Blood Magic. Blood attacks are largely pathetic due to the fears of hard-to-prot, or even entirely unprottable, damage. (Which is ironic, because the original lifesteal mechanic didn't have unprottable drain. It got switched, as I understand, to its current mechanic because of Frenzy doubling.) MA Anathe 17:11, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Zealot's Fire doesn't affect skills which directly target foes, this buff wouldn't affect skills which target allies, so it wouldn't have any synergy with Balthazar's Aura or Zealot's Fire. -- Gordon Ecker 03:57, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

That was addressing the "smiting skills can be abused by secondaries" issue. Those skills were abused by whoever could afford to exploit them because they were nuts. The only other skills sought taken by secondaries tend to be things like Signet of Judgment, which are used for a non-scalar effect. Well, except the old A/Mo DP build.

Why this won't be implemented is for the same reason the skills themselves aren't buffed. An Assassin or Elementalist with a 60 damage Banish isn't the issue; A Monk with an 80-90 damage Banish is getting there (that's at 2 points per DF). All of the targeted smiting damage spells deal at least 60 armor-ignoring damage and cast in 1 second already, and what you're asking for will push them too far. 95 damage Signet of Judgment, 110 damage Smite, 120 damage Mystic Wrath, and 140 damage Spear of Light are not going to fly. (All 2 points DF, ~10 DF, ~15 smiting) Almost all of the skills affected by the buff are going to get their damage scaled right back to where it was, and those very few that don't could have been changed safely without a reworking of the Divine Favor mechanic. MA Anathe 06:39, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I see what you are saying and I already thought about that issue, please read the part where I state that IN turn izzy could nerf smiting skills general damage so monk primaries could have an advantage for that class. so SoJ could be a soild 95 or 100 damage with the divine favor I'm talking about. The fact still stands that there is almost no reason to be a primary monk for smiting other then the fact that they can rune up in smiting. I personally think right now as it is smiting is stuck where is is because any more nerfs and it's more then dead, and any buff makes it imba. I personally think the way Izzy could balance this is by forcing smiters back into monk primaries where smiting skills would not be able to be abused by other classes due to damage nerfs + this Divine Favor buff. ---Betrayed Tiaga

Moved discussion

→ moved from User talk:Isaiah Cartwright/DivineFavor/DivinFavor

Smiting should not be focused on damage. NUKLEAR IIV 11:36, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I see what you are saying and I already thought about that issue, please read the part where I state that IN turn izzy could nerf smiting skills general damage so monk primaries could have an advantage for that class. so SoJ could be a soild 95 or 100 damage with the divine favor I'm talking about. The fact still stands that there is almost no reason to be a primary monk for smiting other then the fact that they can rune up in smiting. I personally think right now as it is smiting is stuck where is is because any more nerfs and it's more then dead, and any buff makes it imba. I personally think the way Izzy could balance this is by forcing smiters back into monk primaries where smiting skills would not be able to be abused by other classes due to damage nerfs + this Divine Favor buff. ---Betrayed Tiaga

When we get smiting spells that hit for 100sih damage, we get retarded shit like this. NUKLEAR IIV 10:13, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Nuke, You should read my wall of text again, in that wall I explain that while Izzy buffs Divine favor he ALSO nerfs Smiting damage, this won't effect damage scales at all. For example, if he makes it so For each rank in D-favor smiting does +10, he would nerf All smiting damage by the same amount added. So no real buff is here, all it does is make D-favor a factor in a good smiter, right now as it is, and can not be buffed in anyway because of the fact that primary Atts. of other classes make this over powered off the top of my head (Me/ele) with my buff/nerf Izzy could now add better effects to smiting without worrying about smiters abusing other primaries. --- Betrayed Tiaga

First off, I apologize for not reading your wall of text. My comment was basically directed at this: "so SoJ could be a soild 95 or 100 damage with the divine favor I'm talking about". Second - After reading this block, I have to say this: When we enrf skills cause one other factor makes them broken, we make that factor irreplaceable. I'll point out some incidents like that in the past: Deadly Paradox, Soul Reaping, and, while most players won't remember it, Mantra Of Persistence. Because of them, many skills that didn't need nerfing get nerfed, and we had a single cookie cutter build running around raeping everything. NUKLEAR IIV 22:07, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, so I see, I see your point Nuke, but you have to agree with me that right now as it is there is almost no reason to be a primary monk smiter, right now smiting can't be buffed or nerfed anymore, but by focusing on the problems with D-favor there may be a chance to balance these worthless skills. It doesn't have to be damage, it could be a number of other things, now my job is to find what use could high Divine be useful for on a smiter --- Betrayed Tiaga

"It doesn't have to be damage, it could be a number of other things, now my job is to find what use could high Divine be useful for on a smiter" Precisely. It doesn't have to be damage. The solution here would be having more decent smiting skills, and having primary monks be smiters to take advantage of runes. NUKLEAR IIV 11:45, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I was thinking the same thing, but I had the ill-feeling that by buffing smiting skills to be use able would make off Primary classes with smiting too powerful, for example, before smiting was balanced by energy cost, but with the introduction of both Master of Magic and Air of Enchantment made it very possible to make smiting overpowered, another way that tried to balance smiting was to make many of the skills have longer recharges, but then people got smart and started to roll Me/Mo for the Mantras and the fast casting. My reasoning is this, by providing more options for Izzy, it will allow him to make better better, more balanced updates. In no way am I saying my idea is spot on, but with the help of people like yourself maybe one day it will be a viable option. --- Betrayed Tiaga

Smiting was conceived badly. It was the "monks way to deal damage", but that turned out broken, so they nerfed it by upping energy costs. The poor birth is the problem. Smiting needs to be something else than "deal holy damage". It needs to be reworked, not buffed. The entire line needs to be reworked. It needs to be more support oriented. It needs to have less focus on holy damage that really doesn't add to much in the long run. That's why I'm against this. NUKLEAR IIV 14:10, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh I totally agree, smiting should have less "deal holy damage" skills and more of a prot feel to it imo, like...instead of having Prot+ a heal bonus when active, have it deal damage instead, skills like smite hex, RoD, and so on are great examples of a good way to make this smiting stuff much better. --- Betrayed Tiaga

soo... you are contradicting your suggestion? also, you can indent with : and sign you comments with 4 tildes. NUKLEAR IIV 16:47, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't view contradictions as a negative, but a way to progress towards something better, many people get stuck in a rut with their ideas, and can't let them go even when they are wrong (See Iraq War) you presented a point that effected my ideology on the damage aspect, not the issue itself. The issue is Divine Favor does nothing for smiters at the moment, but with the prot/damage idea it would fix my issue all the same. And thanks for informing me about how to indent, as for the 4 tilde part I already knew about that but am unable to make an account on wiki, it never send the confirmation letter to my E-mail (Yes the address was correct, and it isn't in a junk box or anything either). Thanks for the info anyways though. --- Betrayed Tiaga

Try Smiter's Boon in conjunction with target ally smite skills. 90 health for each spell cast at 14 DF.~>Sins WDB 13:37, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I never liked that smiting build. Personally, just bring another prot monk and get moar efficiency. -- NUKLEAR IIV 18:08, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with the deletion reason. Smiting should not "suck", it should just not be a damage attribute. --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:72.71.230.18 (talk).

You are confusing the differences between "should" and "meant" please re-read the deletion reason. -- NUKLEAR IIV 09:22, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

The fact that smiting has been intentionally pushed out of the metagame does not necessarily mean that it should be pushed out of the metagame, it merely means that, at the time of the nerf, Izzy and the rest of the balance team considered it preferable to the status quo and any alternate solutions they may have seriously considered. -- Gordon Ecker 10:04, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Tbh, 3 years of uselessness... -- NUKLEAR IIV 10:50, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Deletion, again

I've undeleted this page for now, but kept the deletion tag on until this is resolved. Once again, I oppose deletion. These skill feedback pages do not exist to pat Izzy's back or agree with all of the balance team's decisions. They exist to improve game balance through constructive criticism, in other words, they exist to point out the balance team's mistakes and tell them how to fix them. If the balance team was infallible, they'd never release balance updates, and if they never changed their minds, they'd never revert balance changes. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 10:18, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

It's been over a week, I'm removing the tag for now. -- Gordon Ecker (talk) 01:29, 27 November 2008 (UTC)