Originally Posted by
Caliper
I disagree. If you want to work through every ratio all the time, half-step will keep your fingers busy. But, it can also be run as a wide range cassette with the option to fine-tune your ratio.
Yeah, that was the point I was making. The overlap issue for climbing is less of an issue for half-step than any other kind of gearing arrangement; if you're caught in the big ring, you can still get very close to your lowest gear.
The "non-overlap" drivetrain on the right in my image is the sort of situation where being caught in the big ring can suck, but it's basically the opposite of half-step.
With modern 9-12sp drivetrains, a road cassette has gears spaced far too closely to work with a half step setup. But I've thought for a while that half step would be a great pair with some of these super-wide-range MTB cassettes. A 12sp 10-50 gives you all your big jumps, then use your half step to dial in.
What would
really make sense is Di2 synchro half-step. You could have reasonably-even tight steps across a >500% gearing range with a 2x11, and the user would hardly need to think about the fact that it's half-step.