Cle/FvS Smiting to include fire spells?

[Matuse]

Mostly question in title.

Currently, the Divine Smiting enhancements improve the following spells:
Nimbus of Light
Searing Light
Divine Punishment (when U9 goes up)
Deific Vengeance
Holy Smite
Chaos Hammer
Order's Wrath
Unholy Blight

What do all of those spells have in common? Two things.

1) None of them (except the one that isn't out yet) are above level 4. The one that isn't out yet is level 5.
2) Most of them (except the one that isn't out yet, and Searing Light) are -bad-. They either just do woeful damage in general, or have significant restrictions on what targets they can be used on...or both.

This makes people disinclined to bother investing in the Smiting line at all...there just isn't a lot of payoff for doing so. Primary spell offense comes from things that the Smiting line doesn't do anything to improve: Blade Barrier, Cometfall, Destruction, Implosion.

But now we have Update 9, and the Angel of Vengeance PrE, as well as the spell pass. The spell pass drastically reduced the SP cost of the following spells:

Symbol Of Flame (cost reduced from 25 to 10)
Flamestrike (cost reduced from 30 to 20)
Firestorm (cost reduced from 40 to 25)

As it happens, that's every fire based spell in the divine arsenal. Turbine is clearly recognizing that these spells are almost never used at all, and is trying to make them more appealing.

The Angel of Vengeance PrE includes built-in boosts to fire spells at the second tier. Presumably, when the Cleric offensive casting PrE comes out, it will do something similar. So here again we also have Turbine trying to get divines to use fire spells. Ok then.

There are 3 reasons why those fire spells don't get used very often:

1) No enhancement line to boost them
2) Without an enhancement boost, there's not much reason to carry around a Combustion/Fire Lore item, since the damage is already bad, it's better to just not use the spell at all.
3) From level 15 on, late and endgame was heavily dominated by devils who are fire immune.

With only 3 fire spells, that's not enough to justify an entire enhancement line, and as previously mentioned, the existing spells on the Smiting line are...pretty bad. Folding them into the Smiting line will give them a much needed boost to make them viable killing tools.

With an available enhancement line, clerics and FvS who look into these spells might well invest in fire boosting equipment for them. More gear options! More grind! More inventory space taken up! Woohooo!

As more packs are released, and with more epics becoming available that do not revolve around devils, the list of targets where fire actually works is becoming larger.

I'd certainly not advocate throwing the ENTIRE offensive spell list into Smiting. If there was going to be something to boost untyped/physical spells (and there's more of those than you think), that -would- justify its own enhancement line, if only for Blade Barrier.

[elujin]

they should be boosted by the smiting line there clearly divine fire spells

[mystafyi]

blade barrier is boosted by fvs pre. fire boosted by fvs pre. clerics get to be a glorified hireling sorry.

[patang01]

Not all cleric PRes are released. Im happy they did AoV, If they would've done the fighter or healing pre it would have been so boring since there's no shortage on healing or dps in the game.

[vasa00]

/signed

[richieelias27]

Symbol of Flame does zero divine damage and thus has no reason to be included in the smiting line.

Flame strike does half fire damage and half divine damage, if it is not boosted by the smite line then I would bug report it until they fix it, as there is zero reason that it should not be.

Firestorm does not do any divine damage, only fire damage. Thus it should also not be boosted by the smite line.

Clerics likely do need some way to boost flame damage, and possible Blade Barrier damage, but the smiting line isnt it unless they change it to something other than "boosts good/divine damage"

[Matuse]

Clerics likely do need some way to boost flame damage, and possible Blade Barrier damage, but the smiting line isnt it unless they change it to something other than "boosts good/divine damage"

Why do you reply to posts that you didn't bother to read?

[phalaeo]

blade barrier is boosted by fvs pre. fire boosted by fvs pre. clerics get to be a glorified hireling sorry.

That's pretty offensive.

[elujin]

blade barrier is boosted by fvs pre. fire boosted by fvs pre. clerics get to be a glorified hireling sorry.

an outher reason it should have a boosting line or be included in smiting

[mystafyi]

That's pretty offensive.

i didnt design the cleric... turbine did. but you must take into account cleric is f2p, while fvs is 2500 favor unlock or ddostore. even vip dont get for free... there has to be a reason to get folks to buy fvs, so dont expect much boosts to cleric.

[richieelias27]

Why do you reply to posts that you didn't bother to read?

How about you read my entire post instead of just one line. The line you quoted was in agreement with what you were saying. You said nothing about flamestrike being half divine, and as such should already be boosted by the smite line. It absolutely should be included. If it is not, it should be bug reported.

Did you mention that in your post? I dont believe you did.

The rest was an agreement with what you posted.

Basically turbine saw fit to include boosts to damage spells. It's not a small boost either. What this means is that, in the end, if a pure damage spell is boosted by enhancements it is useful. If it is not boosted by enhancements, it is not worth using at all. They need to do something about this whether it is just one missed spell in the spellbook, or 20. Otherwise they just wasted their time putting fluff spells into the game.

Obviously as noted by the changes in update 9 they are beginning to address this.

[Udalric]

/signed

Add fire spells to smiting line or create another enhancements line for fire/untyped/negative spells

[voodoogroves]

There is a line for negative ... it's bundled in Life Magic w/ healing spells.

I'd love an additional line (or more) to catch other spells. Maybe that's coming in the next pass.

[patang01]

I agree; arcane gets a opportunity to specialize and boost the damage type of their spells; it stands that divine should have the same opportunity. Partly because Divine only have one AOE type spell but that firestorm as nice as they might be have the negative of reflex save and it's instant. I have to think really hard before I get it.

About the FvS boost to fire and untyped; it's not automatic. It has to proc. A FvS have to get hit with a chance to proc it for it to actually take effect. In most situations you'll may get it on one of the mobs attacking you and it's for 20 seconds. The actual chance and the time makes the boost to the damage fairly trivial.

I'd say the best use of it is if you're fighting a boss or mini boss and use divine punishment. That extra damage will do good on the third stack with divine punishment and a possible crit - hitting your target on a fully loaded smite line with about 1k or more light damage.

For all other use I might see it one one critter out of maybe 10 kiting them through BB's.

[richieelias27]

...
About the FvS boost to fire and untyped; it's not automatic. It has to proc. A FvS have to get hit with a chance to proc it for it to actually take effect. In most situations you'll may get it on one of the mobs attacking you and it's for 20 seconds. The actual chance and the time makes the boost to the damage fairly trivial.
...

That is not what the release notes state:

Favored Soul Angel of Vengeance II
Prereqs: Level 12 Favored Soul, Favored Soul Smiting III, Favored Soul Energy of the Scion III, Favored Soul Angel of Vengeance I, and any of: Silver Flame Exorcism, Unyielding Sovereignty, Undying Call, Bladesworn Transformation, or Vulkoor’s Avatar
Cost: 2 AP
Benefit: Your wrath against those who stand against you continues to grow. Your Aura of Menace now lowers Spell Resistance by 2. You now deal 30% additional damage with spells that deal fire, physical, or untyped damage. You can summon a small lantern archon that hovers over your shoulder, attacking foes within your Aura of Menace with beams of light.

Perhaps you are thinking of:

Shield of Condemnation
Benefit: Enemies that strike you have a chance of suffering divine condemnation, increasing their vulnerability to light and alignment-based damage by 20%, and decreasing their fortification by 10%. This debuff stacks up to 5 times, and is dispelled by Bless effects.

[moops]

It would be awesome. Ive always been an offensive caster, and have been hoping for a pre for Offensive clerics ( who dont just use Blade Barrier) forever, or even for a Blade Barrier Pre.

My Necro Cleric has been running with Full Smiting Lines and Negative/Heal lines since her final life 6 or 7 months ago. I have never used RS, and it has not been a problem.

I also use Firestorm in a lot of the Epics and between clickies and eardweller I hit from 300- 600 to many mobs, Im looking forward to running the new Epics later on In non Epic quests Ive seen as high as 900. My Inflict Critical wounds Mass hits for 100 - 430ish depending on Quest.

I tried out Divine Punishment today and with the way she is spec'd it completely rocks

I currently only use Maximize, and might drop a spell pen feat for Empower since I have Past Live Spell Pen, I will have to try the new Epics out first and see how well my Insta Death gets past SR.

Yes the FVS pres are nice, but my Cleric can carry twice as many good damage spells + CC spells, and since I run in groups where my SP is not always needed for healing and where blade barrier does not work with the strategy of the group, I still prefer my Cleric so Im not bored to death. I still use my FVS to solo certain things tho

[Yagi]

it would be nice to have a realistic way to boost the fire spells a bit, as it stands except for a very few situations, its way better to use commetfall or heals against things that fire would even matter on, imo.

[mr420247]

blade barrier is boosted by fvs pre. fire boosted by fvs pre. clerics get to be a glorified hireling sorry.

Necro Kills Instantly and Harm Gets no SpRes

[butcheredspirit]

blade barrier is boosted by fvs pre. fire boosted by fvs pre. clerics get to be a glorified hireling sorry.

I don't think the person who said this knows very much about clerics.

[dasomdas]

change flame damage spells to 'silver flame' damage spells for diviners. and enhancements should boost them.
so they can be usefull