I was told today that this changed in patch 3.2, and now p8 monsters only have +80% hp vs p1.

well does anyone notice tainted IAS bug ?

This post was edited by llsri on Jul 8 2026 08:33pm

Even so, 120k health is still a lot. And this bastard is very durable. In my experience, his health was only depleted by two powerful packs of Heralds. Those were the club-wielding guys and the bulls. Both packs had two damage auras, and I was playing 4-player. Ancients and uber bosses couldn't break him.

Here is my baby, he has conc aura, but he's from a p8 :

I don't care about the aura, the main thing is the curse)

So hard to roll a cursed hf lister
But yea, he’s a beast!

What the datamining and testing showed:

lister & hephasto are capped at about 50% higher HP than basic mobs like spearwomen, and the spearwomen HP is just under the cap for uniques, half it for normal, so lister has about 3x the hp of a normal spearwoman, 1.5x a unique
Lister has an ~8 frame ai delay between attacks unlike every other monster with 15 ai delay, which makes him attack much faster. But he also has an incredibly awful random delay between attacks. Lister has a 10% chance to idle for 17 frames, while an urdar has a 3% chance to idle for 7 frames. Maybe lister's idle is tied to his regen ability, its unclear, since he sometimes regenerates in spurts but has 0 passive regen. Hephasto by contrast always attacks at the same slower 15 frame delayed speed.

Spearwoman has AI parameters of 70/90/6/60/10/30/20
Which are used as;
70 (unused- on corrupt rogues, is chance to approach vs idle at range, but spearwomen always approach, effectively 100% instead of 70%)
90% chance to attack when in melee range, 10% chance to idle on each attack
6 frame idle when idle is selected
60% chance to run instead of walk on approach ONLY if within the minimum range
10 radius, beyond which spearwomen will ALWAYS use run instead of walk (and run % frw for spearwoman is hardcoded, not a parameter unlike corrupt rogues. Don't know exactly how much, but presumably +50% since they list 12 run / 8 walk)
30% chance to use skill 1 instead of attack
20% chance to use skill 2 instead of attack or skill 1
Skill1 is jab, skill2 is either MonIceSpear or MonPowerStrike

So presumably this means on every attack attempt, a spearwoman has a 50.4% chance to normal attack, 21.6% chance to jab, 18% chance to use ice spear / power strike and 10% chance to idle (6 extra frames besides the ai delay)
Their A1 2HT animation is 18 FPD / 256 SPD / 0 SF / 11 AF. So by default 17 frames per attack, and you get +60% eias without fanat, +75% with fanat, so 11 frames without, 10 frames with, hence 26/25 FPA normal attacks including ai delay.

Now I'm not entirely sure how jab speed is calculated. It may even just override the animation parameters. Zons have a similar 18 fpd animation for 2HT A1 but with startingframe 2, so it has 15 FPA with 0% ias instead of 17 on a spearwoman. And zons have different 1HT vs 2HT speeds. At 0/60/75% eias, 2HT zons have 31/17/15 total attack frames in their 3 hit sequence hence 10.33/5.66/5 average fpa
do spearwomen use the same jab speeds, or have a slower one like the 2 frames above? I don't know.

So lets assume its the same. That means without fanat, spearwoman would have 68.4% chance to attack or power strike at 26 fpa (11+15), 21.6% chance to jab for 3 hits at 32 fpa (17+15), and 10% chance to idle for 21 frames
if it had 1000 attacks thats 684 normal in 17784 frames, 3x 216 jabs in 6912 frames, 100 idles in 2100 frames = 1332 attacks in
That means on average a spearwoman attacks at ~20.12 FPA

Lister without fanat and assuming 8 aidelay has 45% chance to attack at 16 fpa, 45% chance to smite at 17 fpa and 10% chance to idle for 25 frames
Which means lister on average attacks at = ~19.23 FPA


So if my math holds up and the AI delay is indeed ~8 frames, lister should on average be attacking slightly faster than a spearwoman. But I also need to watch spearwoman to make sure they are actually hobbling with a similar ~21 frame pause between attacks 10% of the time. Because lister very obviously has that problem, I don't notice it as much with spearwomans but maybe its there. She clearly has spastic DPS from the jabs anyway. If spearwomen aren't pausing, they would be significantly faster

lister seems much tankier too, more than just HP would account for, perhaps it's due to the higher resistances.

Listers got 66% dr, spearwoman has 49%, and after blood oath they're both immune to fire/cold/light, only lister is poison immune but has no regen to disable so it doesn't matter
I think I see an argument for lister being better than spearwoman, though I'd want to do some more testing, like count the number of hits in 20 seconds for each a few times
The times I've used him, lister feels particularly vulnerable if you use blood boil, you NEED to be adding in aggressive engorge usage because he doesn't passively heal, and that can also matter against some lower DPS but tankier heralds where demon regen might outpace them but you don't have corpses, which I guess is really only true for frozen terrors.

Besides the 50% higher hp and extra %dr lister has 42% higher base defense and 50% more base attack rating. The spearwoman has super high attack rating added from jab & power strike, but her normal attacks don't get a bonus, so only on half her hits, while lister is just naturally high AR.

so I think its worth some actual testing and recorded footage, lister has faster base attack speed but longer pauses when idling that make him unreliable, spearwoman has unreliable super fast jabs
I also wonder if the jab speed is just a copy from zon 2HT animation and how its scaling is capped, if its really 17 frames for 3 attacks

he does regen, his regen is even faster than spearwoman somehow, at least it feels that way. Hephasto for example definitely does not regen and it's really annoying to use with blood boil. Lister and spearwoman and to an even greater extent the urdars regen very nicely.

But he is hard to hunt down with all the preferred afixes, but not harder than unique spearwoman imo.

His and spearwoman's pauses aren't a big deal if you use death mark often, which I think is optimal playstyle anyways. deathmark is like a telestomp and they seem to attack right away upon landing.

In the end, not sure if he's better, but certainly comparable.

Lister/Spearwoman and Urdar are my current favorites, in that order.

Lister and Urdar can survive uber tristram and uber ancients whereas the spearwoman (base, non unique spearwoman) has a harder time during their second phase.

This post was edited by FoldersUnite on Jul 10 2026 09:21pm