Re: Uber Tristram
@Jel
CB only goes so far. The slowest aspect of killing an uber is once the CB loses its effect. As Boss life goes down, CB drops in effectiveness. Once CB stops making a significant difference in extra damage - pure damage makes the difference in speed. A black flail is cheap and effective - but a grief blade will outperform.
I agree with the first part, but if you calculate the difference in time, then crushing blow will usually be the part that reduces life so much that when it comes to it, it may be the difference of 20 seconds at most, where as it may very well take over a week (maybe even a month?) more for the general player to go from a black flail to a grief phase blade. What I believe is the relevant question is what is by a time/cost analyses the most efficient way of getting torches, and there, unless you cheat (dupes) or have "friends" who'll give you duped stuff that flail outshines grief.
I assumed the crushing blow with both black and grief was the same, just to put it is as simple as I could.
@Jel
If you're in uberland, you're most likely able to afford a grief. Last Wish adds a nice might aura, and ctc fade, but a grief takes fewer hrs and supplies additional damage. On a Smiter I'd take the grief, since I'd rather have the venom over the fade. Since you don't miss with a smiter (unless you're zealing) you don't need to worry about a string of misses keeping you from lifetapping.
Well me and my friend did a lot of ubers a year ago or something like that, I was a smite paladin and he was a summon necromancer, we had no fancy gear at all, he would often give me a meat shield through his minions (teleport circlet), cast life tap and otherwise cast dim vision and terror, while I had a blood belt (open wounds), blood gloves, black flail, gulliame's, 4 pdiamond elite paladin shield with resist mod, treachery armor that got replaced by a smoke after fade buff, and some other stuff I don't remember. Anyway the point was that we both had some very low gear and we managed quite well. I think we used two sorcs for finding keys as our plan was to harvest torches in the beginning of the ladder and then selling those for equipment for pvp, anyway as we ended up playing only a few hours once a week many went before us.
So you don't have to be able to afford anything special while übering, heck a harmony bow with its revive charges can be sufficient for many chars as long as they have a few other areas taken care of by other means.
I don't think venom works with smite.
I don't know why you're writing the last part, but yes I agree with that as well.
