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In the Diablo 2 Resurrected skill guide, a portion of the game manual series we have probably the most influential ability in the paladin's arsenal, combined with one of the most used but least talked about utility skills in the game, that funnily enough lends a decent amount of punch to the former. The skills in question are Smite and Holy shield - the one-two combo that is core picks for Uber slayers and an amazing sidearm for general progression, especially against bosses.
A skill you see every paladin use outside of the rarity that is two-handed paladins, the skill is a great defensive skill. Even the source of a myth thanks to its common use and its synergy with Defiance, on more than one occasion the comment about defiance providing a passive defense boost has come up, when the reality is this defense boost is strictly from holy shield synergy. Only applies while the holy shield is active which should tell you just how integral this skill is.
Besides boosting the total defense of your character, not just the shield, it actually provides a lot of other key bonuses ranging from increased block chance which is stacked on top of other increased block chance mods and is essential to keeping your dexterity requirements for max blocking in check. Since the 7525 block cap is only applied after all the calculations are done, with 75 being the standing walking cap and 25 being the running cap. This is stacked on top of it also providing drastically improved block speed dropping you to a two frame block with no other modifiers involved, which is faster than most characters can get even with hundreds of percent of faster block rate.
The last boost and the reason this is paired with smite is that it increases the base damage of shields for use with smite, it's not a massive amount but it can still easily double the base damage of even elite shield before the percent boost from elsewhere take effect and can even be used to make an exceptional shield closer to competitive with even elites.
To prevent any confusion about pre-buffing holy shield functions at the level, you originally casted at, much like enchant does for a sorceress regardless of what your character screen says. The only way to change the level of your holy shield cast is to cast a higher level version of it to override it. Though since the only way to get plus skills specifically for holy shield on scepters is through a bug that people have claimed no longer exists in Diablo 2 Resurrected, and you'd be hard pressed to get much better holy shields than your standard skiller gear setup for casters.
With holy shield done the real star of this episode is going to be the skill, everyone loves to talk about smite or more commonly the skill everyone from budget uber slayers to fully tweaked uber farmers use.
The range and speed of your smiting are actually based on your choice of weapons, so a Phase Blade will be relatively short range but fast while a Berserker Axe will be slightly longer range but a little slower. Your choice of weapons should also consider the durability of the weapon since smite will use that up, though it will never break the weapon until you perform a non-smite attack. And since smite always hits, cannot be blocked, and usually wants to swing fast, you definitely want something packing at least a reasonable amount of durability.
Smite actually does have a few drawbacks whenever it comes to normal use probably:
The first one you'll notice is that it has knockback which is one big reason it's generally used on bosses rather than your average enemy since bosses can't be knocked back so no having to play the chase game as you knock something across the field. Though that knockback can be useful in interrupting more annoying enemy attack patterns, so it's not entirely useless and the stun effect smite provides makes this interruption last quite a bit longer which can be nice as well.
The other big drawback is that smite has a very limited set of modifiers, it can take advantage of the big one being the fact that it cannot leach, so you need to use skills such as life tap to restore life while using it and you generally want to have some sort of mana regeneration effect to keep your mana topped off.
In terms of what modifier, smite can bring with it probably the most important one is damage plus which you can only find on Grief, Stone Crusher, Astron's Iron Ward and the Redeemer. This damage is added to the base damage of the shield before the smite stat or aura percent boost to your damage done, so you'll notice a grief paladin dealing many times the base damage per hit compared to non-grief paladins. Don't confuse this with plus minimum or maximum damage effects as those are not added, they are completely different modifiers.
The other super important effects you'll be carrying on smite are crushing blow and open wound as these are essential to being a strong smiting paladin as they will serve to chunk enemy life down much quicker than your base damage, as well as prevent enemies from healing thanks to the tick damage on bleed. In terms of the percent boost, the only percent boost you'll be getting on smite are going to be one of your strength modifier to your aura modifiers, three of your off D2R weapon enhanced damage percent effects and for your smite modifier itself, and you will not get enhanced damage to demons or undead so laying of hands doesn't do that much. You won't get the enhanced damage on your weapon proper just like you'll not get any a form of elemental magic or poison damage for smite.
You'll also never get critical strike with smite as these do not carry on to the attacks, so no doubling your damage on a lucky hit with a crit or deadly strike. That said this is fine since the percent boost from smite and auras can get fairly high with enough plus skills, and the lack of elemental damage isn't too big of an issue since you still do get the status effect modifiers like freeze target, blind target and slow, in addition to the crushing blow and bleed we mentioned earlier.
So in general, smite is a complicated beast but it gets enough modifiers to be useful and when combined with the right status effect-oriented gear can be just as useful as other attack types if not more, so thanks to the auto hit, especially since it can get to a fairly fast 6 frames or a little over 4 attacks per second. As usual, your character screen will not give you the full story of this, so take the numbers you see there with a grain of salt.
