Best offset cam 2024

Offset Cams 

Everyone is making them, Metolius, Wild Country, Black Diamond, Fixe, DMM. We truly are spoilt for choice, but the question remains, who fits best? Unlike normal cams where narrower generally means fitting in more placements offset cams I imagine benefit more by matching the taper of the pin scar they fit into and while every pin scar is different I imagine there is a trend. One really good valley climber I talked to said the Z4 offsets were better than aliens but I figured I'd open it out to the forum and make it more for posterity instead of addressing my specific racking needs (yes I have totems).

As is typical we are talking Yosemite pin scars unless said otherwise.

I don't have offset aliens so won't speak to them but on the few trade walls I've done in Yosemite (and Zion) I found that I used the off-set metolius sizes more than offset X4 (haven't tried Z4s). It seemed like the lobe sizes just matched more specific pods, rather than being a quality difference. I used the blue/yellow Metolius noticeably more than either blue/yellow or blue/gray BD. 

Bad news. It’s Totem Basics. 

Having used X4s, Z4s, and totems in Yosemite, Totems will hold in spots that the others just can't, and there's kind of 2 reasons for this:

1) Yosemite pin scars don't tend to have flat internal faces, they have these grooves in them caused by the steel edges of angle pitons.  Getting the cam lobes to properly interface in these grooves is usually what makes for a solid placement.  Totems seem to have an easier time getting the shallower lobes to articulate into these grooves, and the fact that you can rotate the cam 180 degrees gives you more options on getting everything to line up.

2) The 2 deeper cam lobes provide a lot of the holding power, and the individually-loaded lobes of the totem tend to make for better grip on those deep lobes.  In a more standard solid-axle cam design, what tends to happen is that the shallow lobes can't grip properly, the axle rotates, then the deeper lobes are in a bad orientation and pull out (or if you're lucky, they jam in passively and the mangled cam still holds the fall)

Rprops wrote:

Bad news. It’s Totem Basics. 

RIP Totem Basics.

Slim Pickens wrote:

Dragonfly offsets are my drug of choice. 

Surprised to see someone on here using them, I can get offset dragon flys for cheap-ish. Why do you like them?