On DPS and why it is irrelevant

DPS = damage per second

DPS as a stat in Path of Exile is not used in any of the known game mechanics. Not under any circumstances is the DPS value, shown at tool tip or in character sheet, used for any calculation in the game. What DPS is used for is mainly to get an overview of a skill's power. The DPS value over shadows the damage range of a skill where DPS is easier to glance compared to the damage range. We can call this the benefit of DPS.

My aim with this feedback is to show how the DPS value is an irrelevant stat in Path of Exile. It will remain, however, my personal point of view. Others are welcome to see it otherwise.

In order for the DPS value to be relevant to your and my gaming in Path of Exile all of the following conditions need to be true.

1. You character cannot move.
2. The target's armor rating needs to be zero.
3. You cannot be stunned/frozen.
4. You cannot miss due to accuracy rating.
5. You cannot miss due to faulty aim with your mouse.

Let us take a close look at the above conditions.

1. If you move you are dealing zero damage, exception for Cyclone, Lightning Warp and damage over time skills, therefore the DPS becomes irrelevant, as DPS is a value calculated over time where as the damage range is calculated per hit. The damage range is never relevant when moving where as DPS should be relevant when moving. This becomes an important distinction when kiting, being stunned, frozen or missing.

2. Physical damage reduction in Path of Exile is calculated like this:

Damage Reduction = Armour / ( Armour + (12 * Damage)

Let us see how two different characters that has 100 DPS but different attack speeds compare. They attack the same target with an armor rating of 100.

Character A has 10 attacks per second and 10 damage per hit. This gives:

Damage Reduction = 100 / (100 + (12 * 10) = 45.5 %. Final damage is 5.5 per hit which gives a final DPS of 55.

Character B has 1 attack per second and 100 damage per hit. This gives:

Damage Reduction = 100 / (100 + (12 * 100) = 7.8 %. Final damage is 92.2 per hit which gives a final DPS of 92.2.

As you can see, character B does almost twice as much damage as character A.

3. If you get stunned or frozen you cannot deal any damage, exception for damage over time skills or spells cast on taking damage. Therefore your DPS value has no relevance. If you recover from being stunned or frozen your next hit will be determined by your damage and not your DPS.

4 & 5. The DPS on your character sheet takes your accuracy rating into consideration. It is then true that the DPS will remain accurate even though you miss but during the time that you miss you are vulnerable to being hit yourself. Being hit can cause a stun, freeze or shock among other things. Any of these might cause you to consider running away. If so, your damage per hit is more important than your DPS as kiting/hit and run might become a better option than standing still.
The second thing a miss can do is to disable you to stun/freeze enemies. Stunning enemies gives you a defensive advantage where it might give you the possibility to get more hits on the enemy before the enemy hit you.

Now, if you can make a character that can fulfill all of the above conditions you can rely on the DPS value stated on your character sheet. If you cannot fulfill any of the conditions above you cannot rely on the DPS value on your character sheet.

The counter argument

A counter argument, or a different perspective, to the above points is that DPS is only a rough estimate of your damage potential. This can be true, however, that rough estimate is inaccurate in calculation as it does not care about any situation in particular that you might be in, but most importantly it is a trivialization of a complex system.

In Path of Exile there are damage mechanics based on how much damage you do per hit. In particular I am talking about Physical damage, Chill, Freeze, Stun, Ignite, Shock. None of these game mechanics take your DPS into consideration. These mechanics care about your damage per hit and the target's life, armor rating, resistances and affixes. It therefore is more important to consider the damage range per hit rather than the damage calculation per second. The trivialization of this system happens when you take all of the above mechanics and reduce them to one number. You might ask then why all these game mechanics are in place if we at the end only are interested in one number, ie DPS?

It seems to me that we are indeed interested in the DPS. I gather this from the forum and trading where the only stat that seems relevant is the DPS number. There is, to me, an obvious explanation to why we talk about the DPS rather than the intricacies of the game mechanics (we like seeing numbers go up) but I wonder if such a beautiful game as Path of Exile only deserves to be reduced to one single number? The fact that the DPS number is displayed at the top of any tool tip makes this seem hierarchically more important than the damage range or any other stat that might be relevant. If the DPS in fact is a relevant stat in the game I would like to see the game mechanics reflect this, otherwise if I have understood the game mechanics correctly I would not like to see the DPS number at all.

Also, if contrary to what I understand of this game is true, I would gladly like to know how the DPS value is a relevant stat.

Players use DPS, mostly without knowing how many game mechanics it is disregarding or trivializing, because it makes for a simple comparison. In trading, that means you can easily evaluate which weapon is better. Aha - this one has more dps - nevermind that my build scales better with attack speed(elemental) or with damage(physical). If you want to compare two builds, but aren't willing to commit any time into it, DPS becomes the go-to. The DPS numbers people post on their builds become less and less relevant as they compare awfully contrived situations or simply look at tooltip DPS.

This is even more flawed when people compare a spell's damage to an attack's damage. Since the tooltip doesn't show the actual effects of being able to shotgun your MP, spell damage seems multiple times less than attack damage. Penetration, possibly the best/second best damage increase, is not shown at all either.


If you look at D3, it brings the DPS concept even further - somehow lobbing your stats into "damage" "toughness" and "healing". Either the game's mechanics really are that shallow, or those are terrible approximations of a complex system, which players will use daily, constantly erring in their judgement of whether a piece of gear is better than the other.


The only upside to such stats is for those people who do not care at all about min-maxing, do not care at all if they're using an optimal setup, and simply want to go out there and kill monsters. For them, even a rough approximation is good, because wasting time to optimize their character is worse than spending time slashing at monsters.


In conclusion, DPS is both a deeply flawed, and useful stat.

Tooltip DPS is currently slightly over-rated.

Tooltip DPS is a useful stat for estimating what I call "real DPS" and what most people would call clear speed.

Having tooltip DPS displayed is probably better than no tooltip DPS displayed, because it is "good enough" for the unaware/ignorant and eases estimation for those "in the know" as it were.

Also, your number 4 is incorrect. Accuracy vs. average monster evasion for your level is factored into tooltip DPS.

You've got to admit, though, 500,000 tooltip DPS is pretty impressive. Extenuating circumstances or not, you could probably make short work of Dominus with that kind of DPS.

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anteolsson wrote:

[..]

You seem to mix theoretical dps and effective dps.
It is just a tooltip.

Now while I do not believe the DPS tooltip in Path of Exile to be very representative of a characters true damage and clearing potential, I do however not believe the reasons you listed to be very relevant. I would like to note that I read your post as an argument against attack speed as the primary way of scaling damage.

Armour: While the true armour values of the enemies remains unknown as far as I am aware, testing done by the community do however point towards enemies having close to nonexistent armour values. Using the wiki’s max value of 930 armour and say two characters with 20.000DPS, one with 10 APS and the other with 1 (unrealistic, but anyways)

10 APS = 3.73 % reduction
1APS = 0.386 % reduction

The guy with 10 APS will indeed do lower damage, but the difference is pretty much nonexistent. From a true optimization perspective this could of course be relevant, but at the end of the day attack speed is another multiplicative source for scaling damage. Getting to 20.000 in 1 APS would most likely involve using Critical Strike and Multiplier, which have their own problems in reflect damage.

For kiting, being stunned and frozen my arguments will build under the assumptions listed below, which from my quick Ledge test seemed relatively accurate:

1) There is a delay from when an attack is activated until damage is applied. This delay is related to attack speed.

2) There is a delay after damage is applied until you regain control of your character. This delay is also related to attack speed.

3) The total delay of a single attack activation is the attack speed listed in the DPS tooltip. During this duration your character may be considered as “stunned”.

Under point 3 the scenarios involving kiting, being stunned and being frozen will depending on the duration have an optimal APS for a characters DPS in these scenarios. This optimal value will of course depend on the duration of the stun or freeze, or the interval at which you must kite. Disregarding armours effect on DPS does however make one thing clear: A character with the same DPS and twice the APS of another will in very few scenarios be worse off than the slower character. For kiting I can’t see the situation where the slower character is better off. For stun and freeze the situations does exist, but building around it seems very challenging (not to mention all the situations in which the faster character is superior).

Your arguments for status ailments are true for ignite and stun, but for shock and freeze it will only hold true if you are unable to meet the minimum requirement.

Right now attack speed makes accuracy less important, life/mana leech more consistent, reflect easier, kiting easier, and is one of the easiest way to scale your characters damage and clearing potential. Now as others have mentioned the DPS tooltip does not take into account LMP/GMP or Chains, nor –reflect and penetration, which to me seems more important for the characters “true” DPS than attack speed.

There are important distinctions between "irrelevant," "only somewhat relevant," and "the most important." DPS falls in the middle, which is indeed news to some who think it's the end-all and be-all. And you don't need a wall of text to explain it.

i go by kill/clear speed. sure i will look at the DPS tool tip when comparing items but ultimately my perception of kill/clear speed is what i focus on.