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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4129307" data-attributes="member: 40961">You can't directly compare Shielding Smite with Displacement.  The most simple reason is that they are different action types that happen to be compatible within the same turn.What makes it awesome that Shielding Smite doesn't use up your immediate action?  Well, the fact that you can now save your immediate action so that you can use effects like Displacement.What makes it awesome that Displacement is an immediate action?  The fact that you can save your regular actions so that you can use stuff like Shielding Smite.That means that what you SHOULD compare is what you can get in a single round while expending a single per encounter ability.If you use Shielding Smite, thats your per encounter ability.  You probably don't have any at will immediate actions, I'm guessing, so that's pretty much all you get to compare, barring unusual circumstances.If you use Displacement, that's a per encounter ability that costs an immediate action.  You also get to use a regular At Will ability.How do these measure up?  Well, Shielding Smite deals damage, and gives +3 AC.  Displacement + At Will Ability X gives you the benefit of the at will ability (probably damage) and a reroll.Odds are the damage of Shielding Smite will beat your typical at will attack power.  But, a reroll is vastly superior to +3 ac.*So I'm calling it a wash.  There are some further complexities related to how you can or cannot combine the different abilities with other daily, per encounter, at will, and item generated abilities, but overall I'm going to call it a wash.***Why vastly superior?  Because the mathematical point where +3 AC is of about the same or better defensive value as a rerolled attack is if the target is presently being struck on approximately a 4+ or below, and that's WITHOUT the fact that you can choose whether to use displacement after you know whether your ally was hit, whether he got a critical, and what ability your foe chose to use for his attack.  The value of Shielding Smite comes from its damage, not the AC boost.**I agree that Displacement could have been made available at a lower level.  Given that it is an auto scaling ability with a power level that automatically scales to match your foes, it technically could be made available at level 1.  I'm just not much bothered by this.  With a sufficiently robust scaling system, almost every power could be made available at level 1.  But for better or worse that's not the system D&D uses.</blockquote>

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