The most screwed over Attribute line: Smiting

Beast Mastery isnt screwed over, it just sucks

Personally, smiting prayers would be my favorite attribute line, IF, it was viable, think about it, aside from shield of judgment which seems to be the only mass used smiting skill and its only really for 1 build smiting skills are screwed over for the following reasons:
-Our most effective smiting skill was nerfed beause of AoE
-Our highest damage smiting skill (unconditional) does 63 dmg at level 12, and takes half a minute to recharge, and is an elite
-Only way holy dmg does good dmg is if used against undead, and from what i hear, are mostly only in 1 area, which also means it is the weakest dmg dealing attribute line in PvP (for spellcasters)
-Another effective skill of ours was also nerfed and is now duplicated for factions, double the nerf, double the dissapointment
-Our 1 "spammable" spell takes 10 seconds to recharge, not very spammable
-Many other effective skills require the monk to be up close and personal right into the combat (zealots fire, judges, strength of honor) and sure they're good for tanks and melee, but a monk is a spellcaster, not a tank, you dont see Warriors throwing stones or callin upon gods wrath to strike their foe from a range

Yes my friends, my favorite attribute line is the most screwed over, and when i heard about factions, i was ecstatic: "FINALLY we get new, good smiting skills" well, no, once again, smiting got the short end of an already short stick:
Touched target foe takes 10...46 holy damage. If knocked down, your target takes an additional 10...46 holy damage -exactly the same as Holy Strike
For 5 seconds, foes adjacent to the location in which the spell was cast take 8...27 holy damage each second -exactly the same as symbol of wrath, and theese spells are only good to runners, to get enmies out of their way, so basically, another useless duplicated skill
Target foe takes 10...34 holy damage and +5...10 holy damage for each adrenaline skill that foe has -only useful against warriors, and even then they will probabaly only have 2 maybe 3 adrenaline skills

*sniff* the line had so much potential

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A monk is a primary support class, so if you're not happy with this you might want to play something else.

He never said anything about being unsatisfied with it being a support class, he's unsatisfied with smiting being now basically useless for anything but farming.

i completely agree with the sentiment that there should me some added ability to deal damage as a monk. it may not be the class primary purpose ill grant you, but there are those of us that like to think outside the box .. and a damage dealing monk would be cool, and VERY unexpected.

in factions we get basically the same things we already have in Prophecies .. but look at it this way, that doubles your smite power as you can carry all on the bar

i play my monk as a smiter.. Monk/Necro

smiting prayers is pretty terrible because of the AoE nerf, but with factions coming out ther eare 2 smiting skills that i think will work wonders, they are: Ray of Judgement and Spear of Light. at 16 smiting prayers Ray of Judgement does 101 dmg to target foe and adjecent foes... now imagine 4 smiters in a hoh team echoing that and spamming, owage anyone?

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There's something here that's been very much overlooked:

Holy Damage is not resistable. There is armor for fire damage, armor for water, armor for air, and armor for earth... the only armor that even mentions smiting effects it is the necromancer armor that makes smiting do MORE damage.

Smiting is not really for gvg or team arenas, not for HoH either, but more for CA. It's there because it's funny to mess with.

I dont care for PvP btw, and Ray of Judgment, yeah skills disabled for 10seconds, i think all your smiting skills, so um yeah im not a fan of that

Only 2 spells (i think) were copied for factions, 1 is the AoE one, the other is just another holy strike and the problem with that is you have to touch the foe, so no matter how much dmg it deals you have to put yourself in harms way, and even then, it still doesnt do great dmg

Yes holy dmg is un-negateable, but it only boosts vs undead, so your pretty much always going to be doing 40-50 dmg, compared to an ele or mesmers that can get into the 100+ mark

And another thing: ANet prides themselves on making GW a balanced game, meaning they dont want any classes, builds, weapons etc. . . to be incredibly over powered or underpwoered, yet IMO, smiting fall into the underpowered category, and it needs to be brought up to the other skills standards

how bout pve monks running constant zealot's fire (since it lasts a minute) so when their ppl are being ganged by melee mobs they double cast to heal and then the monsters flee :P
that's about all i can think of to redeem smiting, but i also think it shouldn't be redeemed cuz it's not a monk's job to kill, they're there to keep their buddies alive

Dark pact probably owns most of the smiting skills, armor ignoring damage is all fine and everything but its overrated. Lightning orb isn't armor ignoring yet it usually does more than obsidian flame. Dark pact only needs a 10% health sac and you get a better recharge and similar damage than half the crap in smiting.

Orb isnt 100% piercing but has 25% piercing

Where did I say it had 100% AP?

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I totally agree. I just wished they removed the whole AoE run away thing from the monster AI (and maybe henchie too, altough it's no use since henchies are useless no matter what you do to them less than a complete makeover). It has made lots of build inviable and lots of skills useless. It's sad. I also think the whole AoE run away thing is shabby, they just ping pong back into battle again, it's not very realistic. It would be more realistic if the monster like moved to take on another party member rather than just run away then attack again.

Also, I agree Smiting needs buffing. I love the theme of smiting, I mean, a monk calls upon holy wrath to undo his enemies, it's very cool. I'd like to see things like Holy Thunder (huge area, strike one enemy every few seconds, armor penetration), Balthazar's Aim (target ally has a certain extra % of critical striking), and so on.

More things to deal damage from range, as well as more enchantments that buff your allies' ability to defeat the opposistion. I don't like hexes for Smiting, I don't think it really fits the whole theme.

If you treat Smiting like an elementalist set, then yes, it'll suck. Play to your strengths, not your weaknesses. (Hint: try buffs.)

Smiting is still limited to Elementalists as they have all the good energy elites. E/Mo Smiters are still very nice damage in PvP

Yeah, smiting is a bit crap atm, which is a shame.

However, Beast Mastery ia actually pretty sweet now since the buff, but the pets are still too stupid to change targets when you want them 2, or move out of AoE, or do anything that a single celled organism would do.

I want smiting to be buffed up. The holy strike copy is a plus if anything, u really need 2 of them to do effective dmg. As for Signet of Judgement, 1 sec cast i think, and reduce recharge on ALL smiting skills. Smiting still works, did a 4 monk team for Team arena, one boon prot and 3 hammer smiters, and we beat most others. we even did Smite in GvG, with 4 hammer smiters, 2 snarers, and 2 boon prots. Most memorable victory was against GameAmp Guides when the ladder was down. Good times...

They can't really remove AoE triggering fleeing can they.

Remove AoE triggering, all 55 monks don Balthazaars Aura, Zealots Fire and Symbol of Wrath and start taking the piss again.

After deleting my monk to remake him on my new account, i played the game as a smiter, believe me its more effective than you think. Later on since the enemies hurt more i used partial prot and max smiting to stop them killing me.

Plus my monk actually did more damage to mursaat/jade bosses than my ele (whos damage against there armour was absolutely pathetic).

Most of the smiting skills are totally outdone by the spammable blood skills though.
Judges Insight is quite useful though for FoW trips with barrage teams. Drop a point from marks and boost smiting a bit and you give yourself over double damage to the skeletons.

I agree smiting could use some work, but every job type has some sort of attribute line that doesn't happen to be "uber" in terms of popularity.

They're all sortof sub-par in most cases, but I believe that's only because they don't fit into any of the current sling of builds. However, during Factions I was seeing quite alot of people smiting off of pets in 12v12s so perhaps in the near future we'll see an increase in the demand for smite monks.

I'm also seeing alot more Smiting builds pop up for Heros Ascent and GvG so perhaps there's hope yet for the good'ol smiting line.

I wouldnt mind the Holy Strike copy IF both are 3/4 or less casts and Smiting has a viable KD move that lasts at least two seconds.

AoE AI effect should be changed somewhat, although it does forces for using snares something Smiting really lacks. Im not totally against the AoE AI effect since thats what a person would do (AoE! Get the hell out of there pronto!!) but soemtimes its way to unreal, a normal player would at least try sometimes to bypass the damage and tank it to kill the enemy.

Most Smiting skills where nerfed do to the Elmo's (I knew that would happen) which was totally unfair for any other Smiter. Balthazar's Aura already costed a lot, making it a two second cast was worse for it as well as increasing its cost. Symbol of Wrath is cheap I give you that but its charge and cast time are screwed over. No one in their right minds will use Holy Wrath with its incredible energy cost (10 energy loss every hit wtf?!!??)

About the only viable moves I use are Banish (slow recharge) Smite (slow recharge) Bane Signet (conditional KD doesnt last too much, slow recharge because its a signet) Holy Strike (Must get into harms way)

Symbol of Wrath should be a 1 second cast OR affect a much larger area.

Balthazar's Aura can stay on its two second cast but they should lower the recharge and/or the energy cost.

As for 55 monks they want to get rid of that without having to screw over the lines or give unreal AoE AI effects? Simple add Necro and Mesmer enemies (or Necro and Mesmer secondary proffesion to most enemies) with every group of enemies with the ability to strip/remove/shatter enchantments and you'll see that 55 monk drop. Problem Solved.

I don't think that buffing the Smite line would balance the Monk with the other classes. Wouldn't it make the monk totally uber?

If Monks had damage dealing that was on par (or close to) with warrior, ranger, ele, necro, mesmer, or whatever, it would then give them the best healing/protection in the game AND the best (or close to) damage in the game. Why would anyone play anything else? Right now you can use smite as a secondary on something else and do pretty well, or you can use a secondary on a monk and do pretty well (why not spike with mo/r).

If you made smite more powerful you would also have to make mesmer have some better healing and more direct damage...it would create problems IMO

I would like to see some more support types of damage on a monk, similar to judge's or strength of honor (strength of honor would have to be better than it is), and I'd like to see holy wrath fixed so it didn't cost your left nut every time it redirects damage.

Also, I wanted to point out that Zealot's does damage to foes adjacent to your target, not adjacent to you (unless you were the target). Someone seemed to have that a little wrong...

Was there ever a time when Holy Wrath was actually useful. It seems that every spell this game has to offer with an energy penalty was useful before Anet nerfed it. Thunderclap is honestly the single worst energy dependant spell i've seen. The only way you could sustain that is using Ether Prodigy, the problem there been they're both elite...

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Thanks for all the replies

I've been churnning in my mind over a build that specializes in support smiting, in other words:
Judges Insight
Strength of Honor
Smite Hex
Zealots Fire
Retribution
Shield of Judgment
And for the last 2 i;'d consider 2 of theese:
Smite, Banish, Bane Signet, Reversal of Fortune, some mesmer energy management skill etc. . .

What you guys think?

I'm not sure Zealot's Fire is worth it when you have so few spells to cast on allies.

You might want to try Blessed Signet, especially if you're going to buff more than one warrior at a time.

Possibly i thought about that, but lets say there only 1 warrior, im only maintaining 2 enchants (only ones wil a -1 upkeep contribute to blessed sig) thats only a gain of 6 energy, if there's more im sure it'd work though

You see more e/mo thn mo/* smiters simply because you need energy management...

but now you don't see many smiters because of AOE changes.

I still can remember the old good dual smite LOL. Infinitiv energy, huge damage and easy for warrior becouse e/mo spamming condition and hex removals on u (damage trought zealots fire).

But nowadays, one e/mo gives good damage with renewal, balthazar aura and judges inside in HA, specialy in altar maps. But one nuker overpowers this guy pretty fast.

Forget about the little guy Scourge Healing?

Smite hex, scourge healing and judges insight are also very nice smiting skills.

Judges insight on a barrage ranger is amazing how much more damage it can cause. It may be situational and better in certain areas (FoW it shines).

Combine JI with a Horn Bow (10% AP built in) + the extra dmg from barrage, and if you want to go against the grain, 10% sundering and you have a very nice attack.

Smiting is a weak line and seems to be better suited to spot skill fills rather than dedicating a whole build to smiting.

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