DPS?

Please help me understand dps a little better. It equals damage per second, right?

there are a few things that confuse me a little about that.

1. essence drain: the dps right now is 43 but in its stated description says it is doing 92 chaos damage per second.

2. multi shot vs. single shot: if i hit 3 targets i'm actually doing more combined damage per second but the single shot has a higher dps.

3. how is it calculated vs. resist, armor: when it says dps, is it just calculated assuming target has no type of defense.

DPS doesn't really assume anything, it gives the raw dps output of your skill and sometimes not even that, it's very basic. Crits are included in the display, however it omits crit confirmation roll for attacks so those display a bit higher dps than they really have.

1. Essence drain displays only the dps you get from the direct hit it deals, it doesn't account for damage over time at all.

2. Right, you get the dps of a single hit on a single target, for multihit skills like ball lightning or bladefall it's grossly inaccurate.

3. The tooltip assumes the average evasion rating of a same level monster when calculatiog attack dps, in other words it uses your chance to hit estimate from character sheet in the calcualtion but that's about it.

I'm going to get a little philosophical here.

The actual rate at which you deal damage can nearly never be captured in a single number. A well-developed game is one with nuance, enough complexity to amuse and challenge. Factors like risk of death causing you to stop attacking to run away often have a much bigger impact on the amount of damage you deal than + some small amount of increased attack speed.

That said, every single number you see for DPS is some form of estimate.

The number you seem to be pointing out is often called "tool tip DPS" by the community. It is based on presumed damage while Hitting one target. Thus:

1. Tool tip DPS calculates the Hit damage. Damage over Time is not Hit damage; Hits are one-time packets of damage.

2. Tool tip DPS assumes 1 target.

3. It assumes 0 Armour and 0 resists. However it does take into account average Evasion of a target of the same level (which is why +1 level can lower your tooltip DPS)

EDIT: tooltip also does not account for penetration. It also occasionally gives damage per hit instead of damage per second depending on the exact skill

Tooltip DPS includes crit calculations.

great, that helps, thxs for the replys