Normally for paladins, I avoid shock trooper: too many feats, and they have acces to the spells find the gap and wraithstrike, which means they can attack with touch attacks and full power attacks anyway, without the AC loss.
K, you complain 3 feats for the de facto minimum for uber charging is far too much then to support this you claim trading away Turning for a 3/day hit boost is superior? I'm just going to assume you're new here and avoid the patronizing tone and insults.
Buy a Large Claws of the Leopard (CAd, 38k), as a One Handed Weapon you can use it Two Handed at the expense of a -2 attack penalty.
PA for 20, and charge. Your 4th attack has a -35 penalty to hit from BAB, for a 50% chance to hit that average Touch AC of 10 or so you need a +35 bonus. The Trooper on the other hand still has a +3 bonus (bab-large) vs the highest AC rating of CR 20s (35) he only needs a +22 bonus for the same 50% chance. It means the Trooper deals more damage, either though hitting more often or PAing for significantly higher values. Mindful, this doesn't mandate trading Turning away for Mystic Fire Knight and it doesn't consume your already limited spell slots each and every time you charge. And if you meant Waithstrike via UMDing Wands, hey guess what so can the Trooper only he gets a near auto hit out of the deal. As for AC, it was worthless by level 5 or so and should have been replaced with Miss Chances long before we got to a level 20 example.
Ok.... eh, please, do make some insults on a patronizing tone to me
I never experienced it, and I think it could be interesting. On the internet even! And no, I never posted here before.
To get back to the discussion: we're talking about smiting characters, paladins in this case. Let's see:
- shock trooper (heedless charge) allows powerattack for full, costs 3 feats, at the cost of AC
- the feat 'sword of the arcane order' (HoV) allows a paladin to use wizard spells; with that, you can use wraithstrike, make attacks as touch attacks, and power attack for full; at the cost of 1 feat and a spell/use
- the spell 'find the gap' (SpC) allows making one touch attack/round for 1 round/level. 1 touch attack, well... that's enough for charging, smiting paladin, since with full power attack and enough multipliers (easily x5), you're one shotting anyway; available at level 11, by that time most paladins will have battle blessing, and use find the gap as a swift action.
So at the most, the shock trooper route, for a charging smiting paladin, only has some advantages at level 6-10; during those levels, without shock trooper a paladin can only power attack for full a limited times/day. With the 3 feats paid for shock trooper though, a charging paladin could otherwise tripled its damage on every attack with the mounted combat feats. So, yes, really, I do complain about those 3 feats spent and don't think 'em worth it, especially for the feat starved paladin that has much better feats to choose from.
The example you give seems to assume pounce. Fine, if you're optimizing ubercharging, but this thread is about optimizing smiting. If you want to ubercharge with pounce, why smite in the first place, since that only works on one attack? A decently optimized smiting charge can one-shot almost every appropriate CR anyway, so as far as I'm concerned it's a decent alternative to pouncing, with the added advantage that after you're attack, even if it failed, you're nowhere near your enemy. Contrary to the pouncing shock trooper, who is standing with his pants down next to his enemy/enemies, grabbing his ankles and waiting for things to come.
Btw, AC being useless from 5th level onward is highly exagerated imho. Your comment on "'trading away turning for a 3/day hit boost is superior" I can't place, since I didn't mention anything like it.
If somehow I failed to make myself clear, look here:
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=10057.0 in the first post for some extensive examples of what I'm talking about.
