Okay, here is I hope definite answer on how damage influences running times and how important Infinity is for running Travincal with sorc on p3.
3 tests were made:
Sorc with lowish damage (anyone should be able to have more than her)
Sorc with lowish damage with Reaper's merc (let us pretend we don't have Infinity)
My normal sorc from RFO
Test were done to be as similar as possible. Each sorc visited stash same amount of time, cubed gems etc. So, most typical Travincal running there can be. Also each sorc did same amount of runs. Without Infinity I always waited for merc to kill all bosses that were cold immune, usually it is only Torc. It could as well be more efficient to skip him every run since waiting was quite long from time to time.
Sorc with lowish damage blizzard damage: 5520-5772, 5646 average
Normal sorc blizzard damage: 9744 average
Lowish damage sorc gear used: (2k life, 1k mana)
Ist 1.13 Shako (could be Ptopaz)
Ist 1.13 Skullder's (could be Ptopaz)
2 sorc 10 fcr amulet
Hoto 36@
35 fcr Spirit
Arachnid Mesh
Chance Guards
War Traveler's
2x Dwarf Star
Inventory: Gheed's, 3x skillers with GF, 1x mana/gf GC, 5x GF/res SC's
Merc: Infinity, Fortitude, Steel Shade
Merc without Infinity: Reaper's, Kira's Guardian, Guardian Angel
Normal sorc gear:
Cham 1.07 Shako
CoH
2 sorc 10 fcr amulet
35% csd Fathom
35% fcr Spirit
Arachnid Mesh
Trang Claws
War Traveler's
2x beta BKWB
Inventory: 4x skillers with life, Gheed's, 2x mf/mana SCs, 3x SC life/res
Results of testing:
Test analysts:
Drop of blizzard damage from 9744 to 5645, aka losing 73% damage, results in having 11% slower running.
Comparing sorc with and without Infinity, I ran 16% slower. So, if without Infinity your running time is ~35 seconds, with Infinity it could possibly be at ~30 seconds.
Final conclusion is: map masterrace. It is by far most important part of your Travincal sorc. Gear comes far second as these demonstrations has shown running times do not drop as much as one would expect by reducing your damage output by this much as I did. Perhaps I should now test will I see any difference between having 9.7k damage and 8k damage. It is not possible to estimate that since drop in running times is not linear to drop in damage (obviously!). Maybe I will test that later, maybe I wont. For now this is enough Trav running. ^^
Hopefully this info is helpful.