Smiter doesn't even need crushing blow if you have grief, because you just deal so much base damage. Grief's damage does not show for smite, but if you use it, it is OBVIOUS that it pretty much triples your damage.
Also, my equipment is a bit different that BitWise's. I use grief, kiras, and exile. Exile gives a 15% chance to cast lifetap, and WITH dracs (5%), it is casted even more often. If you don't want to use exile, you can use Last Wish instead of Grief, which has a very high level life tap (bigger range) at 10% and might aura, but you need to make sure you get some IAS to get max frames per second.. for a phase blade and average-good fanat, you just need 6 IAS by items to get 4.1 attacks per second. Marrowwalks also have the ability to CAST life tap, which would allow you to just use whatever the heck you want and forget about life tap on other stuff.. but you do need to cast it every time
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And if you do use a hoz, try to get an uppd one. It increases your damage a little... but yet again, probably not even noticable if you use grief.
My smiter personally uses p combats, but I would suggest 20 life scs if you use Grief, because Grief already gives you enough damage.
So ya. I can solo trist with my smiter, and I generally don't die unless I get really unlucky against meph (because I am using salvation instead of fanat, not attacking as fast) and don't cast life tap soon enough. Hopefully someone can get something useful out of all that random stuff I just said :-D
EDIT:
Also, for baal, just use mana pots when he drains your mana. For me, I only use 2-4 against him every time I face him.
EDIT#2.. lol:
BitWise: The decrease in +skills does hurt your damage, but only by +4 skills. Actually, if it is a non-uppd hoz, it very well may still increase your damage, because hoz is exceptional while exiles are usually elite, giving you a lot more base damage.
Exiles are better, but if you don't mind the not-frequent life taps, hoz's are a LOT cheaper for not TOO much worse quality. But I have an uppd hoz and I still just use my exile