I know that one is mental + divine against undead and the other is just divine yet against every mob I've ever fought the power to damage ratio has always been very much in favor of admonishing smite. Anyone else notice this?
I have noticed that any new damage spell will not be more efficient than your old spell. This is because you have not mastered the spell yet. A good example is the Smite - Admonishing Smite spell comparison. When I started my Templar Quest, I found that using Smite to kill the dudes in the Down Below and Vermin Snye was MUCH more efficient than using my new Admonishing Smite, but now that I am higher level and my Disruption skill is higher, the Admonishing Smite does alot more damage than it did back then. This system of skill controlling damage is much better than what they had in EQ1, and I feel it is a good way to keep things in check comparitively speaking. The best way to judge how well your spells stack up against one another is to find some green con group encounters, and test the two spells by using them on 3+ fights and comparing damage per mana cost of each. It makes a HUGE difference, my Smite spell would cost me half my mana to complete a 2 man group encounter down in VS, while my Admonishing Smite spell used almost a full bar of mana for the same encounter. Also make sure that you do use the same encounter to test this, as different mobs have different resist factors. If you get the same event with the same Con you should be able to make an accurate comparison.
Well I have noticed this trend in all my nuke upgrades actually. I have to wait like 4-5 levels before the new spell is worth using over an app2 sometimes, it's really bad design IMO. To compare celestial strike and admonishing strike, i have the adept 1 of the latter, so it's pretty hard to compare.
Resist wise, the higher lvl spells seem to be resisted less by mobs, otherwise smite does seem better then celestial despite being several lvls lower.
Neither spell is new for me and if you do the numbers you'll see that Celestial Strike is never worth using. Never.
Actually, I use it against undead at level 34 now. It's just starting to be a bit better than admonishing trike. The update to admonishing smite is still in my book though...
When you say "better" are you referring to power cost vs. damage done? Can you post the numbers here?
