Look, I’ve been playing online games forever, and I know all about DPS and why virtually all games use DPS to “simplify” damage as a way for players to “compare” items or skill layouts to determine which is “better” in one simple number. Totally get why Devs do that.
But in all seriousness, DPS is a horrible metric, and should be replaced with better info.
My suggestion is to replace DPS with a few simple numbers:
Damage per Hit (DPH)
Hits per Second (HPS)
Damage per Tick (DPT) - this would EXCLUDE ignite, bleed, poison, etc. because those are not related to the skill, they have their own base damage calculated separately.
Some examples of how it would display:
Flurry:
Old format:
– DPS: 960
New Format:
– DPH: 400
– HPS: 2.4
– DPT: n/a (because it has no skill-based DoT damage)
Spirit Plague:
Old format:
– DPS: 2,368
New Format:
– DPH: n/a
– HPS: n/a
– DPT: 2,368
Judgement: (5 second cooldown)
Old format:
– DPS: 1,340
New Format:
– DPH: 6,700
– HPS: 0.2
– DPT: n/a
Now, it would also be nice to show “Chance to Ignite/Bleed/Poison/Frostbite/Doom/Time Rot/etc.” for each skill as well. I’d suggest changing the existing tab which shows those to show 5 numbers, like this:
Chance to Bleed: 0%/55%/60%/55%/55%
Chance to Poison: 0%/0%/0%/40%/0%
etc.
Each position would represent your slotted skills in order left to right across the action bar.
These two improvements would go a long way towards understanding our real damage output.
Edit:
Just putting in a visual, sometimes that helps:
I agree with you that DPS is not always the perfect way to represent total dmg output.
We know that the character sheet and new dps tooltip for skills are not finished yet and as far as i know we will get informations like this what you have mentioned (IAS,Crit,DoT etc.)
The DPH would also be very important for me, currently there is alot of confusion especially while leveling you recognize how DoT (something like 30% ignite chance) totally skyrockets your DPS which makes it hard to compare base/crit hits weapons.
What we have now is at least a good improvement to what we had before. And it will get better with developement.
While we wait for Mike to rework the character screen with all the skill data we want, we’ll just have to live with what we’ve got which isn’t perfect but is a lot better than what we had & usually a reasonable proxy to help players of all skill levels make more informed decisions in most cases as to how gear affects their skill damage.
If you’re going to ignore/not display DoTs (which can only be applied by skills) then you’d have to ignore any secondary effects the skill has, such as Fissure, lightning bolts, consecrated ground, detonating ground, etc. Also, what about AoE/multi-target?
IMO, that would be confusing, similar/related data should be in a similar place, which is why Mike is reworking the character screen.
For those competent with maths & data, yes, what about the other 90% of players?
HPS tells you how many hits you can apply per second.
Ignite chance per skill (on separate tab) tells you the chance of that skill applying ignite.
Ignite damage shows how much each one deals per tick.
Its pretty straight forward and easy to understand.
As far as Fissure, Consecrated Ground, etc. those should use the “embedded” skill display we often see (at least, we see it on the build planner). That embedded display would use the same format (DPH+HPS or DPT).
It’s a bit more complex than this. Many skills have nodes increasing ailment effects applied specifically for that skill (e.g. Shatter Srike’s Razor Ice node increasing Frostbite effect). And furthermore there are passives that behave similarly (Spellblade’s Volka’s Razor and Bladeweaving) which increase both hit and ailment effect for skills meeting certain criteria.
Generally I really like the idea you’ve outlined, but the underlying problem certainly is not simple. And as @Llama8 mentions it’s currently being worked on, and by people very aware of all these complexities
And the way that they’ll do that in almost every case is by using those two numbers to calculate DPS, and pick the thing that makes the final result bigger. So, all your idea is really doing is adding an extra step for most people, in most cases.
Not really. I play some builds that do not stand in one spot and SPAM an attack button, so “HPS” (aka attack speed) actually means NOTHING, and all I would look at is 400 vs 500.
But are you spamming it at 1 attacks per second or 10? There’s a fairly big difference.
As someone who likes numbers, I want to see both the base data & the calculated numbers (both damage per hit & dps). I could do a big thread for it (& I did back in the day) but nothing’s going to change until Mike & co finishes the character screen work. And we need to have something to chat about eh?
One reason I’d personally prefer DPH + HPS is that it makes it much easier to reason about mana requirements, but it is an extra step for sure.
I disagree with this notion. Having a single number serves amazingly as a simple comparison point, so long as it’s reasonably accurate (something that still needs work). Simply because, in those cases you can often take “All things being equal” as a pretty safe context. Of course some skill nodes make it so that doesn’t really apply and does make things tougher.
Playing the game enough, I know how often you Ring of Shields, Dash/Lunge, Sigil, Anamoly, and just plain old move out of the way/reposition, that DPS almost instantly becomes a misleading measure of damage.
Standing in one spot? Sure, DPS is nearly perfect.
The SECOND you move or cast something else, its horribly inaccurate. Especially with skills which have a cooldown. I mean, those are just flat wrong.
Compare 1handed sword Rive vs 2handed mace Judgement if you want to see how inaccurate the DPS number is.
No you just made it 10 times harder. Now everytime you get something new like maybe better gear, but youre not sure if its actually better for you. You have to stop and start doing maths.
Imagine you have 5 different swords all affecting your effective DPS in some way, but with your new system it would be hellish trying to figure out whats the best sword or whatever.
People would quit in droves if they put your suggestion in the game. What they need to do is make the DPS stat more accurate.
Yes, in niche cases, they are. But they are not meaningfully wrong. And they’re not meaningfully wrong in enough cases that there’s any value in completely throwing out “DPS”, and there is definitely not any basis whatsoever for calling it “worthless”.
I think you’re getting hung up on technicality and ignoring practicality, here. It doesn’t matter if a number is technically wrong when what you do with it in practicality doesn’t change by it being wrong.
Your point is misguided at best. and flat out bad if I’m being completely frank. DPS is a “close enough” proxy for evaluating upgrades almost all of the time - which is why it’s been used that way in theorycrafting for decades, and always with the understanding that it’s a best case number (ie, Patchwerk) that goes down with interruption and movement. If it were “100% useless”, we wouldn’t have spent the last 20+ years of gaming calculating and using it.
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Showing damage per hit and hit rate is not a bad idea. Adding information is generally good. What’s bad is the thought process behind the idea, and that you want to force people to manually calculate the information they’ll actually use by removing it from display.
Then don’t call it “DPS”, call it “Gear Score”.
And then have the DPH + HPS (for hitting skills) and DPT (for DoT skills, which is the most straight forward).
Adding is fine, so long as people know not to think DPS means “Damage per Second” which is totally isn’t.
p.s. I’ve seen countless threads on this forum to the effect of “My DPS is 12,000 but I only hit the dummy for 2500. Is this bugged?” Search if you don’t believe me.
It’s a reasonable approximation and a significantly easier one for the majority of the player base to get their heads round rather than requiring them to do some maths on a handful of numbers.
And people still ask how to respec their mastery despite the game telling them it’s a permanent choice.
And the numerous threads about how unfair the crafting is shows just how bad people are with maths. Asking them to do more on paper/outside of the game isn’t going to end well.
My point remains:
If EHG renames “DPS” to “Damage Ranking” or “Gear Score” or anything else, they maintain the “I’m dumb at math and need just 1 number to compare to know if my choice is good”. Then, they can add the new values for those of us who know 3rd grade math (Yes, google it if you don’t believe me).
I’m just going cut the red tape and say it: What you’re doing here - the only thing you are doing here - is called being pedantic, and that term is a pejorative rather than a compliment for very good reason.
And your solution to some people - who by asking such questions show that they are not the target audience for heavy theorycrafting and math related features - being confused by numbers would be to add more numbers for them to keep track of and further obfuscate the only number they actually care about?
To put it in the vernacular - “Bruh.”
Oh, I see what we’re doing here. This isn’t about trying to make anything less confusing or more accurate, it’s just you trying to feel superior. Thanks for saying the quiet part out loud.
