Paladin Divine Sacrifice Question

[Gabrion]

Hopefully someone can clarify this for me since I missed it in the dev activities thread (if its there at all). Is Divine Sacrifice going to consume any smites or anything like that, or will the only cost be 10 HP and 1 SP? If those are the only costs, I can't believe people are saying the mod has no pally love - an extra 9d6 damage every 3 seconds with an increased crit chance on that attack seems pretty nice to me.

[gpk]

NEW Paladin Divine Sacrifice II:

• Prereqs: Paladin level 12, Paladin Divine Sacrifice I, Paladin Extra Smiting III, 42 Action Points spent
• Cost: 2 Action Points
• Benefit: Giving up some of your life force to win the battle, you empower your next blow against your foe. This attack deals an additional 7d6 Good damage to evil opponents and increases the critical multiplier of your weapon by 1, but costs you 10 hp and 1 sp, whether or not the attack is successful.

DS 3 is unavailable, it's 3 sec atm (I wouldnt be surprised if it was changed back to a 6 second cooldown like the pnp spell) it's based on, and I strongly suggest you do some math as well as comparisons to other things before you get too excited.

[SteeleTrueheart]

DSII and DSIII mention nothing about a change to the cooldown timer so I assume that it will stay at 3 seconds.

[Turial]

The descriptions at this point do not explicitly state if the ability uses up a smite evil attempt. I can see what your getting at though Gabe so it would be interesting to find out for sure.

[SteeleTrueheart]

It will not use a smite attempt up. It is essentially a spell that costs 10HP and 1SP and will function like smite but not use up your smite counters. (Like hitting cleave) It is a special attack that will have its own hotbar button to click and will not use up any smites. (I thought the description was pretty clear)

[Geonis]

The problem (or problems) with the whole concept behind Divine Sacrifice is that it is not only possible to do more damage to yourself than the enemy, but the ratio of [self damage to self HP] vs [enemy damage to enemy HP] is ridiculously small. My estimate is around the neighborhood of [10/300] vs [30-60/~2500] with the Vale mobs.

This means that if you work out the ratios, you're looking at 1/30th of your Hp for 1/40th to 1/80th of the mobs HP. When you combine in the assumption that the Divine Sacrifice is a stand alone swing (a la Cleave), you are actually doing much less DPS than simply continuing to swing at your regular attacks.

[Gabrion]

I mean I'm not like getting super geeked about it, but it seems like it has potential to help out dps a bit. If the activation actually worked such that it doesnt interrupt your attack sequence (it does say your next attack gets the bonus, so it should work with any attack in a line, like stuns, trips, etc.), I think it would be silly to dismiss it as useless. Think of it as throwing a DoT on your enemy that hits for 25 damage every 3 seconds - nothing good enough to build around, but not negligible either. And that's without adding the crit chance in, which is another (very minor) damage increase.

As for the damage done to self, I don't really understand that argument at all. For people who think 10 HP damage to a tank actually matters (even every 3 seconds), are you the crowd that's still afraid of vicious weapons or something? I mean if a barb had an enhancement line that made him lose damage over time for a slight DPS increase, every one of them would take it. It's just not a big deal when I only have 380 HP and half my cleric's heals are over healing anyway.

[Mhykke]

I mean I'm not like getting super geeked about it, but it seems like it has potential to help out dps a bit. If the activation actually worked such that it doesnt interrupt your attack sequence (it does say your next attack gets the bonus, so it should work with any attack in a line, like stuns, trips, etc.), I think it would be silly to dismiss it as useless. Think of it as throwing a DoT on your enemy that hits for 25 damage every 3 seconds - nothing good enough to build around, but not negligible either. And that's without adding the crit chance in, which is another (very minor) damage increase.

As for the damage done to self, I don't really understand that argument at all. For people who think 10 HP damage to a tank actually matters (even every 3 seconds), are you the crowd that's still afraid of vicious weapons or something? I mean if a barb had an enhancement line that made him lose damage over time for a slight DPS increase, every one of them would take it. It's just not a big deal when I only have 380 HP and half my cleric's heals are over healing anyway.

One of my worries is that this whole clicky thing is going to be pretty clunky. If we have a clicky for DS, and a clicky for smite, judging by the delay that smite has, combat will just be awkward for a paladin. Click DS, delay, swing, click smite, delay, swing....

I don't know, this part I'll wait and see the implementation of, but it doesn't sound smooth.


All that is ignoring the fact that I'm not happy our "love" basically came down to affecting a set (few) number of swings per rest. Meh.

[artvan_delet]

Agree with Mhykke here:

"All that is ignoring the fact that I'm not happy our "love" basically came down to affecting a set (few) number of swings per rest. Meh."

Except for decreasing BOG costs, you're talking about a few swings per rest. (And the number of smites went down, although you get regen so not an uber increase in numbers.) And the only extra real damage comes from criticals, which is 1/4 of those, assuming the mobs haven't moved. So figure 2-3 swings where damage significantly increased. Compare that to ONE cone of cold, disintegrate, blade barrier, etc., and pally love just didn't change much.

[Gabrion]

I still fail to understand I guess. How is an ability activated every 3 seconds to give an extra 25 damage only "a couple of swings each rest?"

[SteeleTrueheart]

This ability is given to level 5 paladins. At level 5 you will have approx 80-120hp depending on gear and build. 10hp as you will agree is a lot more damage at that levels. DSIII - I grant is more beneficial, but again it is a situational ability, the devil is in the detail. You do 10hp 1SP damage to yourself even if you miss. So every time you miss due to lag, mob movement or slow animation you have just created more of a cost burden for the next time you use it.

I will say it again. Anything that decreases your HP is bad. Anything that increases you DPS is good. When something does both it is not bad and not good... = useless except in certian situations. That does not equal paladin love.