Revamp Smiting Prayers

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I'm not really sure that smiting is as weak as people like to say. I did a VQ the other day and we had four monks (2 heal, 2 smite) and we rolled that place. I was blown away by our damage output.

The main problem with monks is that they are ok in everything:

A monk can solo farm, but others can farm better.
A monk can be a damage dealer caster, but others can do that better.
A monk can heal, but others can heal too.
A monk can protect, so can others.

For the last two I find it a lot more apealing when playing with other people. When playing alone I want to deal damage.

But every profession has it specialisation, and when monks are to be outstanding in anything, I think that it should be healing/protting and that can use a buff. The smiting prayers are ok for solo farming and playing with hero's (and henchman) as they are now.

First off, RoJ says hi.

Second, who rolls a healer and wants DPS output?

I think the original thinking on smiting prayers were primary for enemy AI use. Monks are the best and most versatile healers and protters in the game and quite frankly do not need an offensive role.

Chin up though, ANet has heard your cries and won't stick anyone with a thankless "team healer" job in GW2

All that naysaying being said, I found your suggestions well balanced and well thought out.

You can use smiting in at least 3-4 strong offensive builds: RoJ, Mo/N buff bitch, AP/smite-pve has a few pretty good versions, plus you have the smiters boon build. This is a lot more than what most professions can do with their weaker attrib lines. Compare that to a blood necro or a channeling rit nuker.
(Hint-hint: try using Balthazar's Aura with Ausp. Inc.: free BA and tons of energy; what you are suggesting here is almost a nerf to BA.)

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Monks (and Eles) need their proficiencies moved back in line with class concepts, not widening the gap and making monks into even better nukers.

By the way...the closest direct comparison for DoT would probably be Ray of Judgement versus Savannah Heat. Ray wins every time unless the target happens to be among the rare category of things immune to burning.

I was unaware of this......

Castigation Signet
Defenders Zeal
Balth Spirit
Essence Bond
Healer's Covenant
Blessed Signet
Air of Enchantment
Healing Light
Scribes Insight
Selfless Spirit
Zealous Benediction

I dont really think smiting needs tweaking. There are already many powerful spells like smite condition/hex, reversal of damage, strength of honor, judges insight, etc. Sure there are crappy spells, and sure they could use some buffs, but there are far more pressing things that the GW1 team should be working on. First, they need to spice up paragons. Second, they need to do the same to rangers. Third, they need to make one of the ele pve only skills a maintainable +armor penetration enchantment. Fourth, they need to nerf all of the obviously OP crap like SoS and spirits in general, damage from death nova, AP or the eotn PvE skills that AP is used to abuse, SY, etc.

In short, while there is nothing wrong with buffing the crappy smite spells, I would like to see anet focus on the important stuff first. The monk profession as a whole is one of the best balanced professions in the game - I would like to see other professions either buffed (para, ranger, ele) or nerfed (necro, rit, mesmer) first. Then we can see where the overall power of the monk profession relates to that of the other professions, and can proceed from there as to how precisely to change smiting.

Of course, this probably won't happen for another 3 or so years (if some of it happens at all).

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Wasn't there talk of smiting prayers being buffed anyway? I thought I saw something on wiki a while ago...

Smiting is seriously overshadowed by the healing/protection side of monks, it pretty much always has been.

I notice some people say that others can heal/prot, but none as good as the monk. Buff smiting by all means, but I can imagine monks will always be the preferred healer in most situations rather than spikers...

unless of-course they add some faceroll buff that overpowers mesmerspikes etc.

The main problem with smiting monks imo is lack of targets in the game.

There were a decent number of undead in the catacombs of presearing then you meet comparatively few till your heading for the temple of ages.

I haven't really considered a smiting build for my monk because anything they can kill others can kill just as well.

Some undead vulnerable only to holy damage would be nice as would putting all spirit demonic or summoned creatures into their area of expertise.

I would love to go roaming nightfall beating up on abbadons minions or maybe even the destroyers in eye with a dedicated in your face smiting monk.
Get back to your plane of existence foul creatures.

oh and forget about monks healing animations that's just silly

I happen to agree the smiting prayers line is in need of some attention. The problem is you can't make the smiting prayers line better than an eles bc then the balance between professions will be skewed. What the smiting prayers line should do is offer a break from healing/proting and offer some sort of damage if other damage professions are lacking.

I think what your forgetting is that most direct smite skills deal holy damage which is armor ignoring.

Its time to make this skill viable again but 10 energy is too low. 15 energy and 25 recharge are good trade offs for 300+ armor ignoring damage.

This skill is used for its KD effect rather than damage unless its being used against undead. Instead of what you proposed I would make it deal 20...50 damage to the target. That target and 0..2 adjacent foes are KDed if attacking. 1/2 sec cast time and 15 second recharge. You now have a decent ccounter against the 3 melee problem in GvG and HA.

I can see this one working fine. might need to reduce the damage by just a little bit tho.

I don't get why you changed this one. You claim that there are no spammable smite spells when there's Reversal of Damage which is on a 3 second recharge, 1.5 a lot of the time with a 40/40 set. Leave this skill alone IMHO.

have it deal 10...55 damage and 10...25 damage against attacking foes. 5 energy, 8 second recharge.

I like the 3 target idea but not the rest. monks shouldn't have a snare. make it 10 energy, 2 second cast time, 20 second recharge, target foe and up to 2 adjacent foes take 30...75 holy damage and burn for 3 seconds. You would get 2 of these since stonesoul strike is a copy of holy strike.

Another spell that needs attention is smiters boon. You shouldnt be healing a decent amount while redirecting damage(proting and dealing damage). It also needs to have a place in pvp somewhat.

I think you are right about the smiting line being given some attantion by the live team. I think it was in one of the updates from one of Anet members on wiki somewhere. Can't find it now though.

Know your role. Monk is all about support, native damage potential needs to be restricted and keep within a niche. If you want that extra ability, that's what secondaries are designed to provide. You're forgetting the entire point of a secondary profession is to provide diversity.

Barrage. A rit can get higher DPS with Splinter Weapon if it wants (but heck, many people have sworn off the bow completely in PvE).

So, I don't exactly feel the OP pain. I mean they're nice suggestions, I especially would like to see energy cost and recharges examined on some skills, but, this is hardly something to get the attention of the Live Team. I've heard buzz that SP could be on the (short) list for the LT, and if it is, ahead of the wealth of other imbalances, I'm going to scream.

To be honest, revamping smite prayers won't do anything at all in both PvE and PvP. It's still possible to farm some places in PvE, thus revamping will lead to an other too OP farm ( sure, why not do it considering there are already tons of OP farms but well....)...

And for PvP, that's the same problem as water eles, paragons, some necro/mesmer skills : almost all skills are used for support and to serve a purpose in a team build , unlike invoke ele or dervishs.....
That's pretty much the problem... they stated that the game was about team-play, yet they make some skills which allow you to 123456 on any target almost and kill it in 2 sec

As long as there is a PvP skill split and the smite line does not lend itself to secondary abuse, /signed.

Some of the more powerful revamped smite skills could easily have a divine favor req, be placed in divine favor, or scale up much higher at 12 att and above, in order to prevent secondary abuse.

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I hear a lot of complaining about having to run mesmer secondary when you smite.

Try playing a paragon that has no synergy with anything but a warrior (oh yeah, you could Empath Removal, Expel Hexes, or bring a pet; but why would you do so?)

I missed that part of your post. TBH though I overall don't like this skill at all in game or our suggestions for it. Ten second AoE spells are never used for a reason and that's because usually the AI of mobs are running out about 1-3 seconds after its casting. I really think this skill should be used as some type of utility instead of damage with your suggestions to the 5 second AoE spell kirins wrath and symbol of wrath.


It actually works quite well if you can manage the energy drain. With the current skill in game and the 3 target ally spells RoD, smite cond. and smite hex you are doing good damage and offering some prot and utility. The current skill also has a strong place in JQ which is one of my favorite pvp formats.

Smiting monks are like paras, they are overpowered when there is a team of them. Smiters Boon was nerfed during a testing phase and never reverted. Its probably remained in its current pvp state to prevent a plague to the meta.



Monks having to run mesmer as a secondary is a different story than paragons with warrior. When running a pve RoJ build a good bar will have more mesmer skill than actual smiting skills. Auspicious Incantation to get energy from a costly skill such as arcane echo, arcane echo to copy RoJ and mantra of resolve to make sure you get both RoJs off. Even with a smite update mesmer will always be the best secondary for a monk so they will still share the paragons pain.

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I am saying they were incredibly overpowered when there was a team of them. I remember when signet of mystic wrath was rolling the meta and it wasn't pretty. What was really plaguing the meta were the skills from the other monk trees like P&H. 8 monks wielding tremendous spike,pressure and support all rolled into one still makes me shudder.

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I've played for a long time with the idea of buffing the worthless smiting elites first and then playing off of them for the rest of the line. I think the important aspect is making them do damage in a less direct way and instead having it be a more tactical, defensive damage condition.

Balthazar's Pendulum (5e, 1/4s, 8r): Elite Enchantment Spell. For 5 second, the next time target ally is attacked, that foe is knocked down and takes 5...85 damage.

Now we have a sort of elite Reversal of Damage with added functionality, similar to how Life Sheath relates to Reversal of Fortune. All three of these are very good skills, and set a great precedent for the functionality comparison between elite and common skills. Notice the recharge is upped as a balancer for the extra damage and knockdown. Also notice the "protective" aspect rather than direct damage.

Defender's Zeal (5e, 1s, 10r): Elite Hex Spell. For 8 seconds, target and adjacent foes are hexed with Defender's Zeal. The next time each foe attacks or casts a spell, you gain 0...2 energy and the attack deals 5...25 less damage.

DZ now has a one-shot usefulness that is more effective than a maintained hex in today's high-damage, spike heavy meta game. It also has a defensive aspect in the damage debuff. The recharge is adjusted slightly to prevent this from being infinite energy. 12 or 15 seconds would probably still be an acceptable recharge time, perhaps paired with more damage negation.

Shield of Judgment (10e, 1s, 20r): Elite Enchantment Spell. For 1...6 seconds, anyone striking target ally with an attack is knocked down and suffers 5...35 holy damage.

Shield of Judgment is actually a really fun skill to throw on a Smite Monk in PvE as-is, but the recharge makes a poor placement very painful, and again, the long-duration plus long-recharge is not suited to the meta. This version cannot be maintained indefinitely with Arcane Echo and an enchanting mod, and has a little less damage, but is far more useful in general PvE with a lower cost and recharge. As my other suggestions, it offers a protective aspect that includes damage rather than just raw damage. The damage value is really insignificant for everything but farmers, as the knockdown is the main defensive element anyway.

Signet of Judgment (0e, 1s, 15r): Target foe and all adjacent foes are knocked down and take 15...63 holy damage.

This one's pretty easy I think. Being a signet, it's a great energy management/utility skill by default. Its downfall is an absurd recharge for little damage and little utility in the single knockdown. Consider PI as an example. Yes, it's partially balanced by energy cost and requiring a spell interrupt, but the knockdown/disability/utility is FAR better and with Fast Casting it recharges in under 10s. In fact, leaving the recharge at 15s and the cast time at 1s could probably justify more damage, considering Unnatural Signet's functionality, but I think this version is most definitely not OVER powered and would get this skill some hero play.

Word of Censure (10e, 1s, 8r): Target foe takes 15...63 holy damage. If your target was below 33% health, that foe and all adjacent foes take 10...50 holy damage and are set on fire for 1...4 seconds.

Word of Censure is an interesting skill. Healing Prayers has Word of Healing, which rewards tactical play with a big additional healing packet. Protection Prayers has Zealous Benediction, which rewards tactical play with a big energy regain. This skill, however, PUNISHES well-timed play without rewarding it at all. Also, considering those other two precedent skills have their bonuses enacted under 50%, WoC's bonus should be just that much more rewarding for having a more stringent requirement. It remains a very subpar skill when used poorly, but becomes incredibly powerful when used properly.

Anyway these are my suggestions. In PvE, the Smiter's Boon buffer is amazing for support, both offensively and defensively, and I think these elites could be paired with that build to tweak it to certain areas or for people who don't like any of the standard elites it's run with (RoJ, Tease, Signet of Removal/Empathic Removal). Plus, these are more fun and effective for the player in several instances, making a human Monk capable of dealing respectable damage with more than one skill. Lastly, it serves as a good start for the kind of functionality the other smiting skills should have if they were to be reworked afterwards.

Think it's strange? RoJ nukers with a blood necro for e-management were the bread and butter of VSF when Cry of Pain got nerfed. Their energy is so good this way in fact that with multiples they carry Arcane Mimicry for an additional copy to chain.

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Fun fact - in most situations, especially when there are several people running it, RoJ is one of the most overpowered skills in the game. In terms of dps, especially.
When i RoJed on my monk i found NO NEED of using any other monk skills, save an occasional res. Arcane Echo + RoJ were more than enough.
If you want to buff any smiting skills, go ahead, but please don't forget about the other side of the balance - if other skills are buffed, RoJ has to be nerfed.

More so, it reminds me of a necromancer whining that if he wants to heal, he has to go /Mo or /Rt secondary. I mean, come on, monks - and healers in general - are not usually designed to dish out holy AoE damage. RoJ build, and some other useful smiting skills, is a nice gesture from ANet, realising that healers sometimes would like to wreak havoc, too. You want to do something your profession ain't really cut for, you have to rely on your secondary. Would it really change much if you could go /N (well, BiP, hi...) or /Rt (hi there, Spirit Siphon and Life on Razah) for e-management, instead of being limited to Mo/Me?

The brutal truth is: you can't think about your char in terms of its primary profession, only. The way GW is designed, it's the primary + possible secondaries that has to be taken into account when balancing stuff. If there were no secondaries, however, it would be another topic... but there they are, and (a) the ultimate balance is impossible to achieve in GW, and (b) you can't expect every profession to be great at everything without using secondary skills, thus monk shouldn't have extensive e-management nor dps.

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[QUOTE=Siver;5531324]Monks easily out damage paragons, rangers and depending on armor lvls: elementalists as well.

I can only assume this pure build is implying Arcane Echo. In this case, it means energy management is a necessity because of that skill and its subsequent uses of RoJ, not RoJ itself. It's 10e/20s recharge, that's not breaking any monk's energy.

Pure Barrage builds actually use secondaries/PvE skills, not because they need energy, but because without them Barrage is pretty underwhelming.

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[QUOTE=Siver;5531402]AP builds are still there (monks are ok with AP, rangers and paras are terrible). SoH is incredibly OP and it is not even elite. Balt Aura (that you wanted to nerf) is pretty good nuke, the touch skills are nasty. I use (d to use) teh wrath spells to farm vaettirs and UW, they are strong skills.

Smiting IS cluttered with completely useless skills: word of censure is probably teh worst elite of the whole game, anybody taking Judge's Intervention should uninstall, but every attrib line has trash.

And they're almost all terrible.


Do you think Shield of Absorption is a bad spell? Of course when a person is only being attacked by one enemy then it's going to activate only a couple of times but what if they're being attacked by 5 enemies?
I'd be careful with the duration on that suggestion, in fact I might even go so far as to suggest it were turned into a Skill, not an Enchantment Spell.



Rits are broken and stupidly overpowered; this is hardly news.


Remember that Smiting Prayers is not primarily a damage line. It may have initially been designed that way, but a lot of the good skills are actually in a sort of support role and it's that sort of trend you want to focus on. Turning Monks into the new best nuker isn't progress.
On that note:

I'm not certain on the numbers but I think this is a pretty good suggestion.

I'm not too fond of making Signet of Judgment an AoE knock down though.


Note: Just clarifying that this is all for PvE only. The last thing we need is a massive buff to Smiting Prayers in PvP.

Certainly agreed. I forgot to mention that those changes were intended for PvE. Although some may be appropriate in PvP with tweaking. The numbers are far from perfect, but I really like the functions of them.

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Skills shouldn't be changed to "shut everyone up". They should be changed to increase balance, ideally while keeping power creep from increasing.

If balance is going to be attempted, mesmers, rits and necros need nerfs. If balance is achieved, and mesmer/rit/necro damage isn't nerfed, PvE will be even more of a large-damage fest than it already is.

Coming from someone who has played paragons since nightfall's release, merely reverting the paragon's skills to their original functionality will not be enough. Ritualist and Necromancer support options are too powerful for the paragon's support options, even with their original functionality to compete. Anet did say that they were doing no more profession overhauls but paragons don't need a 9 month profession overhaul like the dervs got - they need a 3 month large-scale skill update like what the mesmers got prior to the dervs.

Your suggestion for eles is spot on though. It would be a quick and easy fix and would allow eles to do what they should be able to do anyway without making them too OP.

Honestly, shadow form isn't the biggest problem with assassins. Balance should be focused on general PvE, and shadow form is used in not used in general PvE. While I'm all for a shadow form nerf, I think that the more pressing issue is nerfing the DB spam build. Giving it a 6 sec recharge, like the PvP version, would be nice. Upping fox fang's recharge to match wild strike's recharge would also be a good tweak.

The problem with Paragons is that their quality skills can simply be thrown on another character's secondary at nearly full effect. Personally, I use a primary Paragon in most hero builds because I like Command for offensive and defensive support (SYG! mostly), and it adds another physical attack. But it's far from essential or even preferred.

If you're going to take Jagged Fox Blossom, you'll have to take other physicals down a peg too, and not just effective bars or skill chains. Assassins may have the best single target damage (always hotly debated) but Dervishes since the rework are excellent and Warriors have always had ways to produce quality physical damage. I realize it's power creep, but considering the freshness of the Mesmer and Ritualist buffs, I don't see them being nerfed any time soon.

Paragon, Elementalist, and Ranger are the laggards right now. Eles just need a way to get around ridiculous HM armor. Paragons need a niche functionality that makes them necessary or highly beneficial as a primary. Rangers have promise as physical damage, but so many of their preparations are worthless, and beyond that, their traps, spirits, and pets suck.

Ranger is the hardest rework in my opinion. Elementalist is the easiest.

At any rate, I'd like to see some attribute lines see some love. I think a good bit of progress could be made to Smiting, Deadly Arts, and the other oft-mentioned underpowered lines.

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Anet ruined the original class intentions for the most part. Giving AOE to certain professions (Death blossom and HB) and Mesmers getting better Single target and AOE damage as a support profession. Power creep just made it worsened the previous. This should be known.

Ritualist is actually one of the only professions where the original intentions are uphold ( they were supposed to be able deal damage, summon spirits, protect and heal) but power creep let it become OP and it didn't balance to what 1 ritualist can do by itself (SoS bar is the best example)

I disagree, warriors should have higher armor but their damage should scale towards it. as you say assassins are glass cannons but warriors are sturdy front liners who should pack a punch (that is how Anet intended them).

adjusting mobs health and armor doesn't work as it is something that affects all professions and not a certain attribute line or build you want to balance (also adjusting mobs health and armor would only work if there was near perfect balance, which is near impossible to achieve).

Comparing the 100B and VoS bars to the standard Assassin bar in a vacuum is going to lead to skewed results. The power of 100B and VoS is only realised once you start stacking it with Mark of Pain.
A DSlash bar would be more appropriate for the Warrior, or even an Axe bar. Similarly a Pious Renewal bar would be a better comparison for the Derv.

This betrays your lack of understanding.
First of all, the historical standard of balance across the entirety of Guild Wars was GvG but a lot of what will follow relates to PvE as well.

The Warrior has high armour precisely because he does a lot of damage. If he didn't, he would be unable to do his job. You see, a Warrior aims to threaten the other team and that means he will, at times, be required to push very deep into enemy ranks, sometimes beyond the range of his own Monks. This makes it very easy for the enemy to collapse onto him and pour a lot of damage onto him; if he wants to threaten the other team he needs to be able to withstand this that bit longer than anyone else. If you still don't understand this concept then consider why a real-life tank is so heavily armoured.
The Assassin wasn't designed with this role in mind; they're much more mobile; able to move around the battlefield quickly with their shadowsteps. An Assassin is much more vulnerable but they are not trying to do the job of a Warrior. We do note however that Assassins have always been a balance problem.

Now in PvE we simply get three professions all doing the job of the Warrior, but that's because PvE is very simple.