What's So Great About Rends?

[Camden]

Faster 4fpa vs 6fpa, can deliver deadly strike and elemental damage. Now smite bypasses block and ignores defense, which normaly and rightfully makes it a better attack in pvp. But what if the block advantage of smite is taken away? You are left with the faster attack which is zeal, and that applies against claw block assassins (both zeal and smite blockable) and shieldless or very low block opponents. Zeal has its applications in pvp, especially when you can maintain a very high smite damage in a hybrid build.

Eh... the only time zeal ever even had a potential advantage over smite was pre-.10, going with what you said, before they added a "cool down" to block animations. That way even if they did block, it left them either in an almost constant block lock or, obviously, hit them.

Smiter's primary weakness imo is the inability to stun. =\

I think I went off on a tangent. Oh well.

 

[Queen Mebd]

An underground army of zealers quietly shift+zealing?

I root for Zealers, but they are not viable in standard pubs these days (or in non-zeal games)

They can't be the only market for rends...

I can see 'rends being useful to pure fury wolves, for the added str and ed and to an extent the cb. The str could also be useful for those couple druids you see with high defense yet high strength requirement sacred armor Fortitudes.