Basic DPS explained

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Elrojo
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Basic DPS explained

Post by Elrojo »

Hey dudes,

I perused my ACT for a basic stats expedition and after talking to some people in the org I thought i would post some explanations about DPS and how you can improve it. It has become obvious that DPS is about reducing the "bad" hits as much as possible. More on this later.

Types of hits

When you attack a mob there are several things that can happen

1) Crit or no crit
2) Normal/Block/Glance/Evade
3) Penetrated or not

From this you can see that you can have many combinations, i have ranked them in order, highest to lowest;
1) Penetrated Crit
2) Penetrated, no crit
3) Normal, Crit
4) Normal, no crit
5) Glanced, penetrated, crit
6) Glanced, penetrated, no crit
7) Glanced, crit
8) Glanced, no crit
9) Blocked, crit
10) Blocked
11) Evaded

So in this case you can see that 2 things influence DPS alot, the % of penetration and the % of crit (more on crit a bit later). The 2 most detrimental for DPS are Blocks and Glances.

High penetration reduces block and evades
High Hit reduces glance

DPS reduction

A blocked hit may be as little as 10% of the DPS of a normal hit. For example one blocked, crit anima shot hit for 129 and one crit, normal hit for 870 and one normal penetrated, no crit hit for 1279.

To extrapolate if you did say 60 hits in a min of just anima shot every block will significantly reduce DPS. for even numbers lets say penetrated = 1000. normal = 700 & block = 100.

for 60 normal hits this is 700 DPS
with 10% pene = 730 DPS
20% pene = 760dpm

While the numbers are low, you can see that you can improve DPS by around 10% by increasing Pen chances. When you are talking higher numbers, say on consumers, you can be improving DPS by a signficant amount.

See over 7 seconds I can do 5 anima shot with 1 transfuse anima.

Lets say all do normal hits thats 5x 700 + 1x 3500 = 1000 DPS
If my TA hits for pene its 5x700 + 1x 4500 = 1142 DPS
If 1 AS penetrates then its 1x1000 + 4x700 + 1x 4500 = 1185 DPS

While its small numbers you can extrapolate this out.

HOWEVER

If we start to add in things like blocked hit, you can see the real discrepancy.

1 blocked TA might only hit for 350

giving 5x700 + 1x350 = 550 DPS.

You can see that just 1 blocked hit on a consumer is disasterous.

Critical hits

A critical hit is a multiplier on damage. the amount it multiplies depends on the crit power rating. The more the rating, the higher the damage on a critical hit.

The trade off, is the max amount of points to be spent between all the stats. SO often people will chose to go high crit rating. however this is incorrect. It is far better to go for high crit power.

Why?

In most NMs you will have people using buffs that will increase Crit for enough time to negate a low crit rating in stats. You can always increase crit with animas and tools.

Stat Balance

Normally at end game you will want 650ish hit, 800+ pene, 150ish Crit + 400 Crit power.

Progressing from no purples to 10.4

Ideally you will want to get to 10.1 or 10.2 in talismans and then raise glyphs so that stats are high. As you can see, high pene and high hit rating will improve DPS, or at least reduce DPS loss from "bad" hits. Once you get a good % of pene and very low % of glance (0% is the goal), then improve your AR again.
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Crash
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Crash »

Yep. I also think it's important to understand the sequence of "dice rolls" that determine how far you progress into Rojo's list above.

In pvp, some players throw stat balance completely out the window and attempt to stop the bleeding at the first dice roll. (ex: glance tanks gratuitously amping up Defense to foul a sensible Hit stat)

It's set up like a logic table. From Yokai's page:

1) Evaded? (If yes, stop here)
2) Glancing? (If yes, skip the Crit roll)
3) Critical?
4) Blocked? (If yes, skip the Penetration roll)
5) Penetrated? (Ouch. That's gonna leave a mark)

The base stats all have a counterpart on the enemy. (Like Hit vs Def). These then feed into a combined metric like your Evade Chance vs the dirty Smurf's Evade chance. Stats like magical and physical protection also factor in, but I'm a bit fuzzy on how.

Dammit, I wish I had more time to post but it's time to work.

Here's Yokai's page: http://yokaiblog.wikidot.com/

Combat mechanics are under Yokai's TSW FAQs.

Rojo - Once again, great post.

P.S. - Since it's my final day in San Antonio, I'm going to tell all the Mexican kids I meet today that my real job is semi-pro wrestling. Hopefully I can get at least one youth of San Antonio to look for "El Rojo" on local wrestling flyers. (Of which there are a surprising amount)
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Chrisax
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Chrisax »

Good posts:) One thing, though, makes the situations much more complex: the passive powers and what triggers them (when something does).


A lot of passive powers are activated by a condition "IF <a certain thing happens>", for example "each time you critically hit" or "whenever you penetrate" or "when you afflict (DoT) a target", "whenever you attack", or "when you hit", etc.

In this case, the passive power gives you some advantage, like putting a DoT on the target, add damage to the value of your hit, impair or hinder the target, gives you more chances to hit/penetrate/crit/impair/evade/etc.

For some passive the result is certain; for others the result is a % chance.

For certain passives, the result is immediate; for some, a counter is incremented each time the trigger event happens and, when the counter reaches a certain number, you get the beneficial effect or the target gets the detrimental one, and the counter restarts from zero.

For some passive, the effects stack each time they are triggered; for others it's a flat, one-shot effect.


Now, the problems is that, for a given weapon, the trigger is most often a unique one: for example, for Elemental magic, passives are mostly triggered by your critical hits; for blade or shotgun, passives are mostly triggered by your penetrated hits; etc.

The situation is less clear for some weapons but the principle remains.

And, here, you see the problem: for example, penetrated hits do more damage than critical hits but if an Elementalist or a Pistol user focuses his gear on penetration, he will lose a part of his critical hits, and, therefore, a part of his triggers which will make a part of his passives less relevant. (Hence, also, one reason why people tend to favor the number of crits over the value of crits: to trigger passives that will do more than an increase of the crit bonus itself.)

This can make a huge difference... but not always.

When soloing or with one teammate, this will often be important.

In a full team, it's somewhat random, usually less important but that can't be neglected either: will the team run enough powers that will either give you what you lack (for example increase critical or penetration, etc,) or will produce enough effects so the global damage will be high enough even if your passive are triggering less or if you had to equip passive without your "natural" trigger?

There is no miracle formula: it's about optimizing.

You can also see here why pre-made teams can be so over-powered: if well done, the synergy between all powers can produce gigantic effects. On the other hand, those highly tuned setups can be very situational, and totally fail when situations (or opponents' tactics in PvP) change.

Last thing, and it's in Rojo's post but I'll stress it again: to penetrate or crit, you FIRST need to hit your target! So pushing Pen or Crit without assuring first you can hit is of course pointless: you can try to raise Penetration to 1000+ with glyphs and equip a QL 1 weapon and heal talismans and go to Transylvania, you'll understand very fast that your superb penetration is useless.
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Elrojo »

ya the post was more aimed at progression in the higher order of things. Basically when you have a choice. From Qls 1-purple its basically use what you can find and hope it works. Likely set ups are not optimal.

I really started this since i saw a member with purple weapons but no glyphs in them. And in-fact I did the same thing in PvP. Got lots of BMs, bought stuff, but didnt glyph anything. This is the trap of not fully understanding the mechanics of DPS.

Regarding raising crit, its a classic mistake in NMs, but yes for soloing it may be useful. As stated most times you can artificially raise crit with potions or using buffs. For example, DA will make crit chances 40% for 10 secs. While this doesnt seem a lot, it actually is. Elemental force auto-crits every 7th hit. Aidelon gives blaze a 40% crit chance on afflicted wth blaze. You can use your advanced stimulant - crit for 20% more crit for 20 secs per 2 mins. You are actually better to put stats in crit power so that when you do crit, you can crit for a lot.

The trouble is the stat balancing. There is a hard cap on how much you can raise due to available glyph slots. You get more benefit from high penetration hits, than normal crit hits and you get that extra bite in that they can penetrate AND crit, so penetration is a better stat to raise. Higher pen gives you two rolls at increasing DPS since you can penetrate and not crit, penetrate and crit, or you can not penetrate and crit. But the chances are you will do one of those 3 things more often than a low pen rating relying mostly on crit. Going with no more than 200 Crit, then raising with buffs will be a good way to go.

The stats in the guide is intended for NMs in groups, not for PvP and soloing, since they are more highly dependent on the opposition at the time. You can roll with no hit, go chaos, slot in armor fati, no contest, a costigation sig and not glance at all in pvp. So the rules dont apply. For soloing you cant get the stats I illustrated as you will need some block or defence.
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Rurik Nogard
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Rurik Nogard »

Well is not a waste to put up Crit Rating and a lil power, I have a crit build and well yeah the buffs are good fron like a like 30 secs with huge crits if u focus on crit power like 8k when u have full crit power or so but like someone say all depends of the build, I have a NM build of Crits based on hits, let me explain:

Live Wire Special Passive does a good damage every 7 crit hit and is the base of mine deck, I think what I want to do maximize the output of damage, sooo if I get full crit damage power I will do large amount of damage for 30 secs every 2 mins like 25% crits from a 100% with huge damage, but remember also not all hits crit when skills used so lets put like 20% of hits in 2 min, so live wire doesnt really work for this build, soooooooo....

I increase my crit rating now I crit like 70% of hits I do and do like 1k-3k damage per crit, and maximize the number of hits I can do per rotation, I like i say Blaze+Aidelon for my build suks, same elemental crit every 7 a sure crit, waste of crit deck passive, so I put brawler or some damage or crit build passive, all my skills are regulary doing 3 hits per skill, so increase number of hits=more crit hits and more lil damage, but in dps output I get 1.8k-2k dps...

My equipment are hit= weapon and head, crit rating and power= ring and belt and the other penetration, Im still working on crit build gear but well my damage output is good till now, obiously Im still upgrading and testing, but what my experience says better output damage with crit rating than crit power, better hit 10 lets say 6 crit and 4 normal, cause glanced, block etc, crit 4 and normal 3 miss 3,than 10 hits, 1 crit, 9 normal and 3 glanced blocked etc, and one of those are my crit hit x_x, like Elrojo say from 8k my glanced crit do 800 dmg... than crit low making 400-500 dmg, but well is only an opinión, If ure in group for NM better to have DA+BS from party to increase lil crit hits= more lil dmg+more live wire dmg and other buffs and is not for soloing is plenty useful in a NM group, when Im doing NM always stay in 2nd place or maybe 1st dmg output, so I cans ay it Works :D
Crimson Sun is coming dawn u must search for a safe place to stay alive...Crimson Sun is going up you must wish for a good burial cause it has no mercy...Rurik Vlein Nogard
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Aesop
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Aesop »

Thanks rojo for a great post. A couple things I wanted to add that are important to consider.

Penetration Rating improves your chances to penetrate, not the damage from penetration. The exact added damage percentage for penetrating hits is fixed, but debatable, most seem to think its around 40-60%. The only increase in penetration damage really comes from the effect of a Signet of Breaching, which explicitly increases damage from penetrating hits. Because of the order of rolling on attacks, if you penetrate you will either penetrate + glance, penetrate, or critical + penetrate; with corresponding increase in damage.

Critical Rating improves your chances to make a critical hit, Critical Damage increases the amount of damage that comes from a critical hit. In practice, this means that you must have some threshold of critical damage to do the same damage as a penetrating hit; but once that threshold is met, you can do more damage than a penetrating hit. To further muddy the waters, critical hits can not be glanced. So if you have a critical hit, you will either critical + blocked, critical, or critical + penetrate; with corresponding increase in damage.

Hit Rating reduces your chances of glancing or being evaded. If you hit the target, crit rating increases your chance of that hit being critical. Penetration Rating, on the other hand, actively works against block rating, reducing your chance of being blocked.

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One of the great falsehoods of this game is the importance of Attack Rating (AR) and to some degree Combat Power (CP). AR is based strictly on your talismans (not glyphs), Pure Anima, and Signet of Violence. This combined with Weapon Power (in some wacky formula) is your CP. Your CP combined w/ your attack ability determines the base damage of the attack. As mentioned above, critical hits, penetrating hits, and passives will greatly increase that base damage. So while glyphs and passives are effectively more important than AR or CP (beyond some threshold) when looking for a pug, all they care about are usually AR or CP.

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Duplication of effort happens a lot in pugs, mostly because people don't ask. Pen heavy builds almost always run Iron Maiden, for the 10% pen chance increase, which requires an affliction running on the target. Talking to people in pugs, I've run into cases where all the dps and the tank were running bloodsport; effectively wasting 3 passives from the group. It becomes important to be able to alter you build on the fly to meet the needs of the group. Think of various combos for your passives that assume you will or wont need to include an affliction, dabil, or can't have one of the above.

----

Learn to love the Shotgun. Many of the speed groups want to either have a breech shot party or need 3 cleanups for a boss (i.e. Machine Tyrant). Its worthwhile to at least have a build w/ shottie as the secondary build if only for these 2 abilities.

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Once you are in purples, upgrade from head to toe. The best stat increases come from head, weapons, uppers, then lower talismans. Head and Weapons give the same stat increase for the same glyph level (i.e., 10.4 Pen Glyph yields 319 Pen). Weapons provide a better increase in CP, but cost twice as much to upgrade. Focus on a single item to upgrade. Using the head as an example, the increase in going from 10 to 10.1 is 19 pen whereas the increase from 10.3 to 10.4 is 43 pen. There is a similar curve for AR and WP. Finally, be prepared to re-glyph. As you upgrade your upper talismans, you will find that 700 hit is enough and you now have room for crit power on the lowers. This works out nicely if you haven't yet invested in upgrades for the lowers.

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Also, do HE early and hope to get a Gula's Bloated Dice. This 10.2 luck talisman comes in handy for a long time. It's one of the only purple drop items I've seen that has both HP and AR, which comes in handy in areas where DPS needs to swap out for an HP piece. Its a minimal drop in AR for the extra HP you need in those areas. Also handy for non-dungeon pve.

----

Hope this helps.

-Aesop
a.k.a. DreamsDotter and DreamTheif
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Rurik Nogard
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Rurik Nogard »

OMG I been live a liar :shock: :shock: :shock: always think DD was a super ultra hot chick 90-60-90 ginger hair girl, and result is Aesop XD, well I prefer the hot chick but well I was thinking take DD to a movies and to dinner but well now only to kill bosses XD

Btw great posts guys all becoming experts :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
Crimson Sun is coming dawn u must search for a safe place to stay alive...Crimson Sun is going up you must wish for a good burial cause it has no mercy...Rurik Vlein Nogard
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Chrisax
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Chrisax »

Very nice post, Aesop/DD. :)

And, on a side note, yes, pick-up groups often look for stupid criteria like "bigger is better", based on one stat.
Elrojo
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Elrojo »

I saw a PUG asking for a 4K tank the other day.....
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Chrisax
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Chrisax »

Elrojo wrote:I saw a PUG asking for a 4K tank the other day.....
Here you go for 4K tank:

http://www.tanks-direct.co.uk/4000_litr ... water_tank

Image
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Crash
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Crash »

Hee hee. :D
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Rurik Nogard
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Re: Basic DPS explained

Post by Rurik Nogard »

LOL =D> :lol: :lol:
Crimson Sun is coming dawn u must search for a safe place to stay alive...Crimson Sun is going up you must wish for a good burial cause it has no mercy...Rurik Vlein Nogard
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