Meet the alts: Glamis the Smite Zealot!

Meet Glamis…

Back in the days of Dark Age of Camelot he was a mighty Smite Cleric. Without a single thought to healing his companions he’d call down the lightning, stun and tickle the enemy to death. Managed to get him to the lofty heights of Realm Rank 7 in my time (which is 70 realm levels, so more akin to RR70 in WAR). Not particularly impressive in the grand scheme of things but it’s not like people were queuing up to get a Smite Cleric in their group 😉

Recreated in WAR we have as close a thing as we can get – the smite zealot. He has the smites, he has the buffs (marks), he has the stun (a good 3 seconds from one of the spec line) and he has the derision of anyone who realises you’re playing as DPS first, healer second.

He doesn’t have the pbaoe mezz, but he can sometimes manage to cast whilst in melee which makes up for it.

So, how’s it going? Rank 17/15 so far and it’s been up and down – first 8 levels were pretty miserable all told. Target number 1 in Nordenwatch due to being a “healer” and the damage was pretty pathetic.  Levels 9/10/11 things picked up – better armour and more damage than the average in scenarios and you can start to actually make a difference. More often than not though I was the only healer or just one of two in the scenario which left me having to healing people more often than not. (I’m too soft, should just smite them and /mock the corpses of those begging for heals really…). When there were other healers around though it was seriously good fun – the odd HoT here and there to keep people topped up but the rest of the time debuffing, dotting and smiting away at the enemy dps/healers.

Was expecting scenarios to be pretty miserable again once I hit rank 12 but wasn’t nearly as bad as 1-8, at rank 17 I’m beginning to feel like I’m contributing a decent amount again, usually about halfway up the chart in damage done, came in first out of both sides one scenario – not sure what happened there 😉

Tools of the trade

If you want to max out damage in scenarios – you should just spam the dot on every single enemy… you’ll never kill anything and probably not contribute an awful lot to your side’s chances of winning. I’m looking to smite things instead, damage and deathblows please, so I’m currently using the following combo (pretty much been using this since late tier 1, will see how it changes as I get more abilities).

PvE killing is Scourge (1), a 2s cast DD then Tzeentch’s Cry (3), an instant DD on a 5s timer. Once that’s landed I’ll place the harbinger (4) for its corporeal debuff followed by Warp Reality (2) the DoT.  By this time Tzeentch’s Cry has just about recycled so I’ll fire it again and rotate Scourge and Tzeentch’s Cry until the mob dies.

RvR killing isn’t much different but landing Scourge, Tzeentch’s Cry and the granted ability from Mark of Daemonic Fury (5) in quick succession is a good finisher (does about 600 damage before crits at rank 17, which won’t sound much to a proper DPS class 😉 but that”s almost 1/3 of my hp, lands almost all at once and is range 100…)

Equipment-wise I’ve not gone particularly out of my way to stack stats but if I get quest rewards that choose between intelligence and anything else – I’ll take the int reward.

The smite zealot is good fun so far – we’ll see how far I get before I give up or break down and start healing people 🙂

For those tempted to try something similar – be warned, your mileage may vary and copying any class/spec that I try can lead to a horrible amount of frustration, weight gain and loss of all fashion sense.