deadly strike and crushing blow

[JustAGuy]

According to this:

http://www.hut.fi/~tgustafs/weapondamage.h...ml#CrushingBlow

As of the patch 1.10, the effect of Crushing Blow no longer scales with the number of players. In practice, this is implemented by dividing the damage by the life scaling factor of monsters. For example, if you score a crushing blow against a monster that has been spawned in an 8-player game, the game first calculates the damage of the crushing blow based on the current life amount of the target and then divides it by 4.5 (monsters have 450% of their normal hit points in 8 player games). In this way, the absolute damage from a crushing blow is the same regardless of how many players there are in the game.

So, in a 1 player game, a monster with 100 health is hit with a crusing blow -- the user does 1 point of damage from his fist (for simplicity's sake, he does 1 and only 1 every time). Crushing Blow's effect from melee is 1/4 the target's health.

The damage done by CB is: 1/4 * 100 = 25. Adding the 1 point of damage from the fist AFTER CB is applied, leaves the monster with 74 life.

Not bad.

In an 8 player game, that same monster has 550 health (+450%, right?). The crushing blow is scored, and calculated; the damage dealt by CB is ( (1/4 * 550) / 4.5 ) = 91.67. Add the one point of fist damage, and the monster is left with 457 life.

Not that big of a crushing blow, is it? It looks like it DOES scale a little bit, but not much for an 8-player game.

Does this mean that crushing blow is worthless for all but single player games?

So, a Venom Lord in Hell has (from the AS) 24,857 life. In an 8 player game, he has 136,713.5 life.
Crushing blow on this bugger is calculated as: ( (1/4 * 136714) /4.5 ) = 22786, leaving the monster with 113928 life (rounded down on all calcuations).

If my math is right (which it very well might NOT be), it appears that Crushing Blow isn't as crushing as it used to be, but still nice, nonetheless. I don't know many builds that can do 22K of damage, PLUS weapon/skill damage, (in this situation) in 1 swing on a full health Venom Lord using a melee attack. Considering the relatively low damage output for 1-handed weapons, Crushing Blow can really amplify your killing speed. A nice PHM with Crushing Blow combo should be all a meleer needs in Hell to be effective. Well, that and time...

EDIT: Quickly checked; the Vemon Lord I used as an example was one of the minions of Ventaur the Unholy.