Damage Per Second Calculation

[JustAGuy]

I picked up a nice quest reward last night, and I'm not sure if the damage per second showing is the total, or if it's just for the blade's damage. Here is the item:


I spent about an hour getting my herbalism up to 100 so I could use it! At least the stranglekelp was easy enough to find, that gave me my last 7 points in herbalism. But I digress.

My old weapon was:


The DPS is higher on the maul, but the blade adds nature damage. If the blade's DPS is being calculated by only the blade damage, then the sword is hands-down the item to use. Since I had to learn the swords skill to use it, the damage output really isn't comparable yet; I suppose I'll know when the skill gets up to 100+.

Now, should the DPS be calculated with all modifiers in mind? Or should DPS always be the base value for the item? The DPS showing on my character screen is lower than with the maul; it appears that the nature damage isn't factored in there either.

I'll be using this item in tandem with this:

The defense increase from the shield, and the sword's comparable damage (even comparing the DPS, 10 to 12) makes the sword/shield combo a no-brainer. But that still leaves me wondering what my REAL DPS is. I would imagine this same vagueness in true DPS applies for enchanted items as well.

[Ruvanal]

To figure the weapons base DPS you would use this

DPS= ((mindam+maxdam)/2)/speed

or average damage divided by the time it takes to swing the weapon.

For the Phytoblade the base DPS is ((29+45)/2)/2.80 = 10.357142 or rounded to 10.4 which is shown right below the base parameters. The Nature damage is not included in the total for you. It would be figured in the same way and yields ((44+52)/2)/2.80 = 17.142857 or a Nature damage of 17.1 DPS. To a target that is not resistant to either type of attack the net DPS would be 27.5 DPS.

Once you start throwing in those attacks that are instant effects then the DPS figures will start getting all screwy depending on how many and fast you can deliever them. One point of curiousity would be the part where it refers to "On Hit:..."; would this extra damage also get applied for some of the paladins charge up strikes to normally do a fixed amount of damage such as the Crusader Strike? If so then this will greatly boost the characters damage output when using a weapon like this.

Note also that the DPS listed on the weapon does not take into account the modification that strength will do to you final damage output. Also many, but not all, of the damage enhancing buffs are being applied in a manner to adjust the DPS rate rather than a flat +X bonus to the min and max damage values.

[JustAGuy]

Thanks for that. Very interesting.

Appropriately, the nature damage is NOT added when performing the Crusader Strike. Still, the added nature damage is a great boon so far.

[lemekim]

From what I remember, the "On hit" for the Phytoblade did not actually mean every hit, it only did the extra damage about 5% of the time. Which would leave the damage boost at still nice, but not nearly as overpowering ~0.9 dps. It might be a higher chance however, but I am pretty sure it wasn't 100%.

[Ruvanal]

Of note on this is the information on this page
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/basics...haracters.shtml

Spirit (SPT) - Increases Health and Mana regeneration. Spirit affects all characters' Mana and Hit Point regeneration rates in and out of combat. Spirit also increases your chance to ‘proc’ with weapons.

This may be affecting how often these effects do end up going off. But with out information on base chances and just how the Spirit does effect the chance, it ishard to say what teh chance actually is.



On a side note, some may want to also take note of this from the same page.

Intellect (INT) - Increases Mana points as well as chance to Critical Hit with magic spells. Intellect also grants a higher chance to increase melee skills. (It does not affect trade skills though.)

So it may be beneficial at times to also give boosts to the INT of characters that do not normally do anything to boost this stat like the warriors or rogues.

[BEEFMOTRTON]

Keep in mind that increasing your defense by 5 means you block/resist as if you were one level higher, so while 3 may seem like a small amount it's actually a solid boost.