^^^I agree...
As soon as you say both exercises suck (even though you are obviously smoking something if you think that
) then that should tell you what you need to do. If something sucks then you aren't going to bring it up to it's full potential while coupling it with another problem exercise.
But I think that most of your questions revolve around the reactive arthritis. Everything is about volume rather than strength and yet you are concerned with weight on the bar. I think a very clear statement of your goals and needs would help. But I will say that it seems like you are limited by a certain way of thinking about it. Even when bringing up "volume" you have other parameters you can tweak to increase things. I think you do all these things but you do them sepearately...you don't put them together.
All this impacts strength but only impacts absolute strength to a limited degree. If you can't actually work at strength training levels you will always be limited in terms of displaying your potential capability. But when it comes to volume, or strength endurance, density is related to that, time is related to that, workload, etc....