How to find/test my DPS?

exsteele

I was going to make a thread asking how to increase my DPS, but then I figured I should, you know, figure out what my DPS currently IS so that I have a baseline to test against.

Thing is, my main ship right now is a Fleet Nebula, and even with MK12 VR Fleet Dual Beam arrays, things don't die very quickly when I shoot them. Gravity well, Eject Warp Plasma, Sensor analysis, launching full barrages of Quantum torpedoes when a shield facing goes down... it takes a lot of time and effort to take bigger ships down. It's really vexing in PvE queues when every other ship is doing everything solo and I'm struggling to keep minion ships in line.

Compare that to, say, my Klingon character, who has out-leveled weapons and not even a full compliment of tac consoles, which can still melt anything with judicious use of BOFF canon abilities and I just feel... unsatisfied with my current Sci set-up.

So, yeah, how can I figure out my DPS?

(Edit: Typos)

ferdzso0

hi

the basics are in the dps channel thread. you need combatlog reader (I prefer ACT, but I use it as a secondary nowadays), and some runs of ISE.

ISE is the basis of DPS, so I suggest doing some runs, in PESTF teams.

also it is good, if you ask for a specific build, showing yours, because even if you have your DPS, the issue, why it is low, is still going to be unclear.

ryakidrys

Combatlogreader, is really good, very little setup is required to use it, it is highly recommended.
ACT, Advanced Combat Tracker, takes more to setup properly, but can be very useful too, especially in instances where installing combatlogreader is not possible for some odd reason.

Please take note that DPS can be interpreted in 2 fundamentally different ways.
CRL and ACT essentially calculate DPS as the damage output from the first engagement through the final engagement. Meaning, if ISE takes 5 minutes, then the total damage output is divided by 300 seconds. It's actually more complicated than that, but I'm keeping it simple.
In the first description, it isn't likely that a player will only get the duration of 1 cycle of buffs/ enhancements and will also spread out critical damage hits across a longer period of time. That spread of crits across a longer period of time will allow the average damage to be lower than the instant spike in damage one can achieve over a few seconds.

The other way that DPS is viewed is that damage across a few seconds that is much higher than the average, especially when taking into account the time wasted when not firing.

ISE is often used as a basis for DPS because, whether you split into 2 groups with one going right and the other going to the left, or working as a team of 5 that starts on the left and works to the right, you can always be in range of something to shoot, and can continually rack up damage.

For those wielding science abilities, some of what you can do does not do damage, per se. Disabling subsystems and draining power do not do damage. Grav well collects foes, but does little damage unless you purposefully enhance particle generator skills. This does not mean that science does not kill stuff, it's just that some things aren't actually damage.


As far as soloing a side in STFs, I must run the game at the wrong time because it's so rare that I find other players in a pugged run that have that kind of DPS and piloting skill. When I run with fleetmates, it can be done, though some of us often fall back to lower level ships to make it more challenging instead.

As for your build, you can use the skill planner at stoacademy, http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/ , to create a link you can add to the thread so others can look at what you have and may be able to help. The playstyle is also very helpful to describe.

vetteguy904

if you want DPS based not only on you but on the buffs/debuffs others are throwing the STFs as mentioned.

I prefer using starbase 234, because it's just you and single target, which will give you your lowest DPS, not artificial inflation via AOE spam