Imagine you are a hybrid smiter with blessed hammer or foh.

You usually max out FCR and skill levels to increase damage output from hammer or foh.
Thus leading to no CB gears on him except Goblin Toe (25%).


Now, hybrid smiter usually use either Grief or Last Wish.
If you want to use smite for boss fighter in varying player count, Usually Last Wish wins in terms of killing speed because of high CB.
For P1, Grief is slightly faster than last wish since its pure damage output is higher but not in a great margin.

For assaulting normal mobs, Grief will have so much faster killing speed due to Damage +400 mod. Since we are hybrid smiter that has already skills for mass AoE,
let's not Grief as weapon anymore

So Conclusion is Last Wish is the best weapon for killing boss fast.

Now, let's consider "Amplify Damage" curse into equation.
It turns out P8 Baal with this curse dies about 2 times faster compared to not having the curse.

Last Wish Smite will destroy P8 Baal within 7 seconds with Amplify Damage vs ~17 seconds without the curse!!!




Now, then how do we get Amplify Damage?
Gavel, Lacerator etc, but since we are hybrid smiters, which holds swap weapon for hammer or foh damage, there's no spot for this weapons.

Only way to have this curse on your arsenal is either from Atma Amulet or 5% CtC as mod in weapon.
Atma will be 2% and it takes away FCR and Skill levels so it doesn't optimize hammer or foh damage output.

Solution is "Jeweler's weapon of Amplify Damage" which has 4os (slap in 4 bers, now you have 80% CB) and 5% CtC Amplify Damage.

Now, this has max damage potential when the curse kicks in. Some drawbacks are
- 5% chance is too low for curse to kick in. <- even though without curse, it has similar speed with last wish due to higher CB.
- Extremely rare to find and expensive <- I have never seen this item posted in the internet, it's possible to roll, but 33 times rarer thatn JMOD!
- No life tab <- this is due to having no life tab curse available, this will be issue when doing ubers

But it has the most damage potential against boss mobs.
What do you guys think of my theory craft?

Imagine same weapon of Classic d2 and nothing changed.

sorry what do you mean?

Another consideration for my simulation is that it assumes killing speed difference is based on the assumption that amplify kicks in the first hit.
This is unlike situation, since we expect on average 20 hits for curse to kick in.

And since the CB damage decreases drastically over time (as mobs' health decreases), practical usage might not make too much difference since curse will usually take quite a while to kick in.
But the point is even though the curse doesn't kick in, it still as fast as last wish. It just has potential to make it so much faster from time to time.

All of this was figured out 20 years ago.

please stop

Could you maybe elaborate a little bit?

Last wish is terrible

The answer is always grief for smite

I know it's terrible for Normal Mob but here I'm only looking at boss kill speed since it's hybrid smiter.
For Boss mobs, last wish is so much faster as player count increases and similar in P1.

There is a important constraint for this discussion.
- No CB Gears other than Goblin Toe. It's hybrid smiter and the rest of the gears other than weapon, shield and boots. It goes for maximizing hammer or foh. If we can wrap up CB gears with Grief than, yes It absolutely beats out last wish.


Am I getting something wrong about this?

This post was edited by furytoronto on May 30 2022 02:30pm

Yes.

Grief is better