Answered.
Get your geek on!
Thats alot of stats and opinion to say 3 words… Eth Cryptic Axe.
Actually if you ask me it just says the same thing I’ve always used. Eth Thresher + Andy + Treachery. Overall time saves on all the targets that aren’t 1 shot + higher IAS to keep the mobs in hit recovery, + fade proc for better survivability + nearly the same damage as Giant Thresher but can be equipped on an alt’s merc at a lower level.
Fort CA setups are great… at occasionally 1 shotting a mob I’ve probably already 1 shot with an AoE. Most of the time though if 1 or 2 swings kills it from a Fort + CA… then 1 or 2 swings would have also killed it with Treachery + Thresher. Mainly any mob that takes 2,3,4 swings to kill with a CA/Fort setup would STILL die first to the Thresher/Treachery setup due to the higher IAS. At 4 swings It’s Jab/Attack/Attack vs Jab/Attack/Attack/Attack. After you figure in CB Thresher/Treachery is still ahead. It’s also more consistent due to mob block.
Basically every mob that doesn’t get 1 shot by the CA but not the Thresher, the Thresher/Treachery setup is better… and most mobs that DO get 1 shot vt CA/Fort… also get 1 shot by Thresher/Treachery.
If his calculations are right then I think he can’t to the wrong conclusion. There is a large difference in “Target Dummy” tests… and applying it to gameplay. You can’t ignore putting mobs into hit recovery, fade proc, and the fact that the merc will typically either kill the target before it pulls ahead on DPS… or the mob has high enough HP that the Crushing blow is more effective.
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It boiled down to bosses. The new Mancatcher Infinity/ Treach was better on bosses where CB had time to be effective and removed large chunks of life… For anything else the CA/fort was better, like immunes, due to normal strike doing more damage. the differences were all negligible in kill times, like < a second.
If a Unique only has 1k health left the normal hit will kill it but the CB will only do like 60 damage. It was that kind of detail.
Here is the thing though. You aren’t accounting for the players damage. CB is also front loaded. Faster swinging mean lowering the targets HP quicker in the fight for the player to finish quicker.
You aren’t accounting for mobs that get chain 1 shot getting killed faster by the thresh/treachery. If the player tosses a CL into a pack and leaves a few of them at low HP… the Thresher/Treachery is going to mop up MUCH faster. And you aren’t accounting for the mobs that die in 2-4 swings from the CA/Fort dying to the faster weapon before the damage per hit can pull ahead.
We’re also completely ignoring the DPS loss from a dead merc, and fade is arguably the best survival tool in D2.
I’m not accounting or not accounting for anything. Just saying what was in the information. The answers to observations like your are in the comments by the OP of that thread. You’d be surprised what he did account for. And it works for an assumed 10% LL. It’s been known that 35% IAS negated the advantage of thresher over CA due to breakpoints for damage. I agree Fade is remarkable for survivability.
I guess what I’m getting at… is there is damage… then there is damage. None of those calcs account for player damage. Or situations like Telestomping an immune and it walking away because it didn’t get hit recovery locked. They also don’t take into account Holy Freeze/Decrep.
I’m sure on a target dummy that sits there, and never attacks back those numbers are going to be perfectly accurate. In reality though what tends to happen is the merc constantly losses damage getting stuck in FHR by a pack and falls over dead trying to slowly swing.
I’ve ran both many many many times over the years and the Thresher/Treachery setup saves more time overall. CA/Fort setups die more, get stuck in FHR not dealing damage, and are slower at procing CB to let me personally kill sooner.
Let’s not forget that Treachery is practically free compared to Fort and you should prob use that Lo on a pb grief!
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OVERALL - it doesn’t really make a big difference and I wouldn’t worry about it. Grab a 4os Eth base and have a party!
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Damn it. Since I have the runes for Infinity I´m trying to figure out which one of my 2 choices I found were best would be better: Eth Manchatcher or Eth CA, both laying around in my stash for weeks now. Those tables only prove me right in my 2 choices, but I wish there was a clear winner.
Yeah the OP stated this was perfect world damage.
This was an interesting comment too on treach/ fort:
I know Treachery vs Fortitude has been debated a thousand times, but when focused purely on damage, there’s two additional things that stand out:
The Venom on Treachery does more damage than the Chilling Armor on Fortitude. I'm not quite sure I understand all the mechanics of Venom, but the raw numbers are 305–325 (Venom) vs 28–38 (Chilling Armor).
The Faster Hit Recovery on Treachery takes the FHR from 11 frames to 8 frames, whereas with Fortitude, there is none. This means that the Treachery merc recovers more quickly and gets back to doing more damage earlier. This is perhaps best compared to Fortitude having massive defense, meaning that merc is just getting hit less, and the Chilling Armor on top of it boosts that defense even further. Furthermore, the ice bolts from Chilling Armor are slowing enemies, giving them less chance to do more attacks that put the merc into hit recovery.You want the CA if it’s between those two. You’ll be killing the boss, not the merc, so more damage on bosses is meh. Let the merc have the power to blast everything else you don’t get to. As Jhaerik said threshers are just good, but not if you don’t have one.
I think long story short as long as people don’t do weird stuff like mixing CA with treachery or Fort with Thresher the results will be “fairly” close.
Personally I think the new Mancatcher setups are the worst of all as frankly as its overkill on what Thresher already does well, while losing so much 1 shot potential. I haven’t personally tested them though.
My biggest issue with Fort/CA is consistency. Most of the time it’s fine… then it randomly falls over from a small cow pack. Getting stuck not being able to leech with no DR can suck.
TBH the setup I’m actually more interested in seeing info on… is Mancatcher/Vamp Gaze/Treachery. In my head it sounds like it would be super consistent if your goal is to “have merc providing conviction that I don’t have to micro.” No fire resist hole to get LR pit lorded on… high DR… still very reasonable damage.