I’ve been trying out a spell Smite Multistrike build (using Hallowed Arsenal node), and I’ve noticed something regarding the use of multistrike for this particular purpose - none of the enemies hit by the original attack can be hit by swords (in this case, smites).
It’s obviously an intended mechanic, and makes sense for pretty much every other intended purpose of the skill, but for a spell smite build - which deals basically no damage at all with the actual multistrike hit - it’s a little bit awkward.
It doesn’t really matter in most cases, but when you have, say, only three enemies squished together (which can often happen, if they’re average-size melee enemies (normal humanoid or smaller)) and you hit all three with the initial strike, nothing at all happens. I have to purposefully angle myself to hit only one of them for the smites to proc on the others - especially since the reach of a staff is pretty long.
Would it be possible to make smites only not apply to the first enemy hit?
(Or make them apply to everyone, but that’s probably too strong).
(As a sidenote, it not working on enemies hit also means that it’s completely pointless in singletarget fights, but that’s probably intended).
That’s how it’s supposed to work. Since Hallowed Arsenal only converts the additional swords to Smite, and you only get the additional swords when there are additional mobs.
Yeah, as I’ve said, that’s not actually a problem - it’s the fact that none of the multiple mobs hit by the initial hit are considered additional mobs.
If you target, for example, five mini-spiders and hit all of them with the initial hit, even if you have four stacks of Armament you won’t proc the swords even once, because you hit them with the initial strike. You’d need to kite back and only hit one out of five to smite the four others.
Yeah, I suspect that might be for balance reasons. If there were 4 mobs that got hit by your initial hit and the swords also hit them, they’d all get hit by 5 attacks (your initial swing plus the 4 swords assuming you have 4 stacks).
Yep, which is why it totally makes sense for the other uses, but, for Smite, unless it’s some weird hybrid build that scales both the physical melee of Multistrike and the elemental spell damage of Smite, the initial hit is going to deal absolutely negligible damage.
That’s an issue that all hybrid builds suffer from, though for the Paladin they have several passives that give you base spell damage while using a shield, then you can use a sceptre if you want more spell damage.
I’ve tried a hybrid VK build (post was made with lightning spell pally), and it actually works much better! VK has tons of flat void melee everywhere to scale off of, so it’s much easier to do a strong hybrid build with it.
I am still wondering about pure spellcaster, though, and, would a node doing something like
“Additional strikes can hit all enemies. Initial strike deals no damage.”
be possible? This wouldn’t make hybrid any stronger, but would fit pure spellcaster perfectly.
