From what it says online smite is based on attack speed rather than cast speed so the faster cast on spirit won’t help. According to the smite guide elemental damage from equipment isn’t added so spirit is loosing a lot.
Smite is gear dependent, like Zeal. Get a better shield, get + to skills as well. Max Smite, Holy Shield, and Fanat. to best increase your damage. Lastly, get a weapon with IAS, and stack IAS on your gears. Good runewords like Grief (best on a phase blade) add a lot to your smite damage. I 1-hit KO most adds with smite, and it only takes a few hits to down a magical or rare mob, unless it’s stoneskin (on Hell difficulty, even in a party)
Try to buy redeemer or astreon from someone, they are usualy not expensive and they have +dmg which works as dmg from grief. Also spirit is nice but try to focus on having best shield with shield dmg you can.
If knockback is issues, try to get mobs to obstackles or wals and kill them against that.
Join secret cow levels like a vulture and eventually you’ll find yourself a 2 socket Paladin shield laying around. People are pretty sloppy in what they leave behind. Simply put the very cheap runeword Shael Eth “Rhyme” into it and your ready to go as a starter.
If you can’t find a better Shield by hell mode, simply vulture hell mode secret cow games. If your lucky enough to find a superior 2 socket elite Paladin shield, you can “rhyme” it to give +60 all resist.
ok so if you change to smiter your building the wrong way. You no longer need attack rating. smite always hits. You need a smiter shield. Im not sure if anyone else answered you yet but you should go look at budget smiter builds and get pointed in the right direction.
ps. i leveled to 80 as a hammerdin before switching to smiter. Its was a cake walk and i could facetank every boss without dropping below half hp.
Don’t level with smite. Level with zeal, then respec to smite for ubers and if you ‘farm’ with a smitedin, get enigma and use treachery to get the fade proc.
Hoz/exile for shield, Bk ring, ravenfrost, highlords, grief, G-Face, enigma&trachery(just coh/fort if running just uber tristram) Naz puzzler if you don’t wanna get enigma. CTA, dracs. That should be simple enough. If you can’t get the higher tier runewords duress works good too… can’t forget goreriders.
If you can’t get grief, use a lightsabre. works good with zeal too.
As someone who has a straight up zealot, do you even need to respec to smite if you have a well built zealot? Will the basic 1 pt + skillerz work if I need to smite?
Yes. I’ve made 1 point smite builds in the past that have easily cleared the ubers, just max out holy shield. The paladin I’m making now is a zealot with 1 point into smite. You just need the ability to smite and you’ll be fine.
i believe what makes smite so effective with ubers is that it removes attack rating from the equation. if you are in range to hit them, smite always hits, and never misses, meaning life tap can sustain you indefinitely against them.
if you have high enough attack rating using zeal, and enough leech, you might not even need smite+lifetap would be my thinking. with high enough chance of crushing blow, and a fast weapon, i would think a well geared zealot could melt ubers bosses.
i haven’t got enough keys to try yet though, so i welcome any correction from people more knowledgeable than me
Follow up question. Does smite carry the weapon ‘mods’. Specifically if I have -target def on my weapon, will that hit through smite? If I have AR issues with a basic zeal, could I use smite till the targets def was lower then just zeal away?
Also I read a lot that you can’t leech from the ubers. Is this true? So not mater how LL my zealot has I still need life tap?
Smite doesn’t use AR - it’s supposed to autohit but i notice sometimes it misses. It doesn’t carry elemental dmg/leech mana+life mods. not sure if it carries ‘do x on striking’. Smite does trigger lifetap on Dracul’s Grasp (gloves) which is how smiters primarliy life leech in Ubers. redemption aura is also handy for smiters.
I’m mid-level smiter right now and this is what i know.
You don’t need fanaticism for a 6 frame smite if you have Coldsteel Eye with a Shael, or a Phase blade with 20% IAS (such as Silence which also gives 75% resist all), along with Sigons belt and gloves (Deaths gloves and sash work too and give 15% resist all if you can live with only 2 rows in the belt, IK belt and gloves will leave you 5% short in IAS). You don’t need any other Sigons stuff at Lvl 45. Personally I’d replace Fanaticism with Defiance and have a Holy Freeze merc. You don’t mention Holy Shield. It is essential for Smite and should be maxed by 45. Lvl 1 Smite with Lvl 20 HS is much better than the other way around.
For crowd control I’d use Conversion but that’s just me. Conversion seems the perfect partner for Smite and you only need one hard point in it.
Well you can use cheap … err “budget” approach for armor
Get good base for Treachery (45IAS, 20FHR and best of all proc of Fade which will take care about resist and DR)
From my playing with Ubers - you don’t need Fana to smite them - Salvation is way to go
As for Shield … Make a good Spirit and call it the day lol you will get tones of resist, 2 skills and 55FHR (but of course HOZ is better)
For crowd control I also prefer to use Holy Freeze Merc but w/o good weapon you merc will be weak on DPS side. Basically for budget built of merc give him also Treachery or Duress armor good LL Helm (even Tal Mask will do) and decent Eth Elite rune word Pole…I’d cheapest would Obedience slightly. If you you will be able to get Reapers Toll than you can instantly switch on Might Merc and with high FHR/IAS you merc will spreading Decrify like Covid-19
