I always look at Cruzz's AoE score on his dps sheet as a quick and dirty way to check how good an AoE weapon is against infantry.
I take it at face value, because it's usually in-line with my own experience, altough I have no idea what the exact calculation behind it is. I only know it takes all AoE damage values and scatter values into account, but not accuracy and reload time.
I think it can be kinda misleading. It's better to understand how to read AoE profiles than rely on that number.
Why?
Well, i'll start with a simple question. What do you think it's more lethal. A normal mortar round or a Zis barrage round ?
The AoE chart gives the mortar a better value, but that's only because the mid to far AoE damage is better.
Now, do you think the the pre nerf Zis barrage was roughly 40% worse than the current one even though it was nerfed?
Mid to far dmg masquerades the AoE value. If i were to give a weapon with a huge AoE radius an improvement on the far damage from say 5 to 10, the AoE value will rise drastically. Even though we both can agree it's pretty much negligible. If you were to cut down the dmg of a grenade in near dmg by 2, the effects are great even though the change is minimal.
The reason why the Comet is far better than the T85 while having a smaller 0HK is due to the far damage not been meaningless at 32 vs 8.