DPS on Cleave

Dear Community,

I'm using cleave on my Duelist and when I find new weapons, I first try to compare the DPS first and then think about some other abilities. But I wonder, how the DPS works and if I can rely on it.

Here is the example, to weapons compared (the rest especially the other hand stays the same). I am using a yellow axe:

Physical Damage: 98-153
Elemental Damage: 7-12
Attackspeed: 1,51

The DPS shown for cleave is here 6.900,7.

I then have the unique axe "Dyadus Infernal axe":

Physical Damage: 45-75
Elemental Damage Fire: 180-200
Elemental Damage Ice: 190-206
Attackspeed: 1,44

The DPS shown for cleave here is just 5.617.

How can there be a difference of 23% when the numbers on the unique axe are so much higher? Is the DPS counter not reliable? Is it a special thing about cleave? How can I compare weapons I use?

Thanks for any help.

You most likely Have a lot of physical increases and dyadus has a lot of flat elemental damage.

Also, this
Elemental Damage Fire: 180-200
Elemental Damage Ice: 190-206
You got only one of those active, depending on which hand you hold dyadus in.

And third, when you dual-wield cleave it uses average attack speed, if you use a slow, low damage weapon, it will bring your dps down considerably.

But to put it all together, the DPS that is shown for cleave IS the DPS and there is nothing ignored for example the elemental damage?

"

6a6y6orn wrote:

But to put it all together, the DPS that is shown for cleave IS the DPS and there is nothing ignored for example the elemental damage?

It's mostly correct, except with skills that use mainhand only.

yeah the details are important in this game as you are starting to see.

If you look at your passive tree, the damage nodes you took are most likely "increased physical damage with.." "increased melee physical damage with..." etc. Then your gem links, are you using "melee physical damage" support gem? If so that gives you 49% more melee physical damage.




Are you using added fire gem or hatred aura? If so they give you fire and cold damage based off your total physical damage



the wording on the gems and passive nodes is very important for understanding how your damage is being scaled and what weapons/gems/passives you need to combine. Physical and different elemental damage types are separate technical terms if you like, when you see them written in the game they are specifying exactly what is going on.

Spells and Attacks are two different things, these are also specific terms, cast speed works on spells not attacks, attack speed works on attacks not spells. Spell damage, Melee damage, they apply to different things, Physical damage, Fire damage, Elemental damage, Chaos damage etc.

Increased damage and More damage are also different technical terms, when you see them used they are used for a reason to explain different stages of calculation. Not just to damage, 'Increased' and 'More' are used throughout the game. Increases to a thing multiply it, if you get '10% increased melee physical damage' and then '30% increased physical damage with axes' and then '20% increased Physical damage' they will all be added together and your physical melee damage with your axe will be increased by 60%. If you then get '49% More melee physical damage' it doesnt add on to the increased damage to make 109% increased, instead it takes the final damage figure that results from all your 'increases' and multiplies it AGAIN by 49%, so its a second stage of multiplying.

You have your base damage x your 'increased damage' x your 'more damage'.

Increased/Reduced effects the first layer of multiplication, More/Less effects the second layer, works the same for anything that is being effected by a multiplier like damage, life, energy shield, area of effect.. anywhere you see those terms used theyre used intentionally to specify exactly what is going on maths wise.


It seems a bit of a brainfuck at first but once all the terms become second nature and you get used to reading the details of the gems/nodes etc it actually becomes a lot more understandable than most games, you can see exactly what is going on and theory craft with a degree of certainty. More often than not atm melee builds are physical based, phys nodes, phys weapon, phys gem supports and the only elemental damage that matters to them is elemental damage that is scaled off physical damage, aka added fire and hatred aura. 'Flat' elemental damage like the 180-200 fire on the unique axe or Anger aura which gives flat fire damage or 'adds 15-30 fire damage' on a ring for example is not being scaled by anything in their tree or gem linkups so it does virtually nothing for them compared to flat physical damage on weapons/items etc that is heavily multiplied and then scales added fire/hatred as a result. 1 point of flat phys damage might end up being worth more than 4 points of flat elemental/chaos damage.