Calculating Damage - There's no way that DPS report is "correct." So, what it is?

I'm running a build that has some difficult-to-calculate DPS concerns. Last night, I tried out a piece of gear, a weapon, that "looked awesome" in the DPS report for the spell, at least a ten percent gain in DPS, but in reality, sucked compared to the weapon I was using before.

Apparently, attack speed is a diety the DPS calcs worship. Sure, it's a great booster, but it's "not all that."

I had my reservations when looking at the new DPS, since what I was using cut down on the primary damage modifiers significantly in all respects. (+Spell Damage and +Lightning Damage) Instead, it seemed to just think that because it had a great attack speed, it was "more betterer" than the previous weapon which had twice the multipliers... Somehow, a gain of 18 percent increased attack speed was better than over two-times the multipliers to spell/lighting damage. /scratches head

So, does anyone have a link to or know what the DPS reports do or do not take into account?

Will I have to somehow manage to put everything in PoB by hand, and then spend ten+ minutes for every item I consider equipping or buying, laboriously slaving away on the PC in order to play the game on the console?

(I'm probably going to do it, regardless, because this build is complicated. But, where I thought I could rely, at least in some measure, on the DPS calcs in game to give me a rough idea of comparable damage, I'm discovering that it's full of crap... Or, at least thinks too highly of itself. :) )

Manual PoB entry is the only option we have on console, which requires a PC... Not very intuitive for us unfortunately.

You will have problems with a vast majority of skills, specifically with DoT's or channel skills when trying to see any kind of damage numbers. Typically just how much mana a sec it cost along with cast / attack speed.

My first xbox character was a basic physical cycloner with no extra everything.
Hes tooltip said about 140k average damage and i think that was quite spot on.

Tooltip says like this:

Average damage =
Attack speed =
Crit chance =
Crit damage =
Bleed =
Shock =
Poison =
Ignite =
Extra totems =
Whatever you like =

---------------------------

The game does not add all these, and because of that the tooltip lies..
But your first character ever will likely only focus on average and only then tooltip is accurate.

Dont forget stuff like monsters take increase damage, its not your damage its the monsters that force you to hit harder than you actually do :P

Actually its alot about the skill itself..
A skill like heavy strike will be quite accurate with attack speed and crits, but a skill liketoxic rain wont be one bit close, because the game dont calculate the second effect and even less several second effects and if they can crit then the game lost it long ago.