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04-16-11, 05:57 PM   #1
tobindax
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How can an addon report DPS different from overall damage?

I notice recount routinely reports differences, big differences.

e.g. a guy with DPS 1st; on the 'Overall Damage' list he is 4th; big difference.

Why?

Simple math says Damage per Second will have a flat equality with Damage in overall since well, the 'seconds' are specific.

Ah wait. Is it dead people that 'screw' the numbers?

Though if it's dead people the reason, why can't it be compensated on the meter and accordingly put them at the same order (in DPS and 'Overall Damage').

Hrm, DOTs that are on after you die? Though I think those despawn. Or do they.

Or wait, is it because if I die, I get no 'data' from others?

But wait, that still doesn't explain a DPS-Overall Data discrepancy at all.

Last edited by tobindax : 04-16-11 at 06:02 PM.
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04-16-11, 06:43 PM   #2
Nibelheim
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A few factors. Presence and Uptime being the two big ones. This results in total dps vs active dps vs overall damage done.
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04-16-11, 07:37 PM   #3
karl_w_w
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It's obviously true that dps x time = total damage, but the time is not time from start to end of the fight, it's time spent dpsing.
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04-17-11, 03:35 AM   #4
tobindax
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Originally Posted by karl_w_w View Post
It's obviously true that dps x time = total damage, but the time is not time from start to end of the fight, it's time spent dpsing.
So it's dead people or people out of range etc. right?

No wait, dead or offlines, out of range would count normally, I guess.

Or those that left the group obviously.

Last edited by tobindax : 04-17-11 at 03:38 AM.
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04-17-11, 05:55 AM   #5
Rilgamon
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And when does a fight start ?
When do tanks, dps enter combat ? When the healer ?

damage meters are statistics tools. and for statistics it is important to have rules for collecting data. the numbers of one player are not important when playing in a group because you're looking only at a subset of available data.

there is no easy way to share your collected data with a friend in a honest way.
if someone tells you he is doing 20k dps that means nothing. i can do 20k dps with my warrior tank when I have enough targets and heal.

the "best" results you get from webservices where you can upload different logs for the same fight.
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04-17-11, 05:56 AM   #6
Xinhuan
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It's all about how you measure "time" in the "Damage Done divided by Time Taken".

Is it time from first damage event, to last damage event? What if the player dies and DoTs continue ticking?

Or should time be "boss engage" to "boss death"?

What if you enter combat before/stay in combat after boss dies?

How about the time players aren't doing anything, and how would you measure this?

Every addon and combat log parser will treat "time" differently. AddOns also generally have more information (in real time) than from a saved /combatlog.
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04-17-11, 12:33 PM   #7
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Say the tank runs ahead and starts the next group of mobs. I was left behind looting all of the cloth from the mobs (GO tailoring!) and catch up a few seconds behind everyone else.

I start to cast Arcane Blast, and do not enter combat until my cast goes off and hits the target. Time in combat starts ticking away.

Now, say I have a string of huge crits and the tank was slacking off. The mob runs towards me and I hit Invisibility. I go out of combat and invisible before the tank pulls the mob back. Time in combat stops counting.

I start to cast Arcane Blast, and do not enter combat until my cast goes off and hits the target. Time in combat starts ticking away....



In addition to the example above, keep in mind the following information. DPS and total damage done as presented by these addons are (as mentioned above) statistics. Not a picture of the entire fight. The following are examples of GOOD things to do which NEGATIVELY impact your DPS and damage done.
  • staying out of the fire
  • silencing the target
  • crowd control
  • kiting (and having to stay in range)
  • threat-reducers (invis, etc)
  • healing oneself (pots, self-heals, etc)
  • changing targets
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04-17-11, 02:36 PM   #8
eqsanctum
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Originally Posted by Seerah View Post
Say the tank runs ahead and starts the next group of mobs. I was left behind looting all of the cloth from the mobs (GO tailoring!) and catch up a few seconds behind everyone else.

I start to cast Arcane Blast, and do not enter combat until my cast goes off and hits the target. Time in combat starts ticking away.

Now, say I have a string of huge crits and the tank was slacking off. The mob runs towards me and I hit Invisibility. I go out of combat and invisible before the tank pulls the mob back. Time in combat stops counting.

I start to cast Arcane Blast, and do not enter combat until my cast goes off and hits the target. Time in combat starts ticking away....
After reading the whole post I would ask what are you using to record the statistics, and how? I use recount and through fine tweaking keeps a within 200 damage / 50 dps difference between all fights. I also have it set to record on any damage event in the combat log or any healing event that takes place within an damage event rofl


So back to your question. I think it's as simple as this. Every DPS meter counts damage based on a time window. Lets say 1 second. If You do no damage from time window to time window your dps is 0 and considered 0 therefor dropping your dps as it is a measure of damage you are doing per second. However your damage done, will always be your damage done. If you did 1 million damage to something it doesn't matter how so slow or fast you did it, it's still 1 million damage.

So essentially, you can do 77k dps every single time in a fight, but the reported dps number may be when cd's kicked in or something. However your overall or actual damage is lets say 1 mil if you got to that 1 mil faster then you'd have higher dps. If you got to it slower then you'd have lower dps. Pretty much it.
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04-17-11, 06:55 PM   #9
tobindax
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I believe there's a myth surrounding "recount bugs" when people simply don't understand when someone dies or goes offline or simply leaves the raid may keep a high DPS and a low damage.

Simple as that.


However, counters could have an option to 'divide all damage by whole time and ignore offlines/out of raid' just to get a general idea of 'average real DPS'.

Last edited by tobindax : 04-17-11 at 06:57 PM.
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04-17-11, 07:13 PM   #10
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If you describe a new ruleset for collecting data I guess you have to create your own dmgmeter
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04-18-11, 08:23 AM   #11
Xinhuan
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Originally Posted by tobindax View Post
However, counters could have an option to 'divide all damage by whole time and ignore offlines/out of raid' just to get a general idea of 'average real DPS'.
But you see, that's about as useless as it gets. If everyone's damage is divided by the exact same amount of time, then why even bother dividing it in the first place? It's like having a list that says 5 people did 10, 8, 6, 8 and 2 damage total, and if it was 2 seconds duration, the DPS is 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

The rankings don't change if you divide everyone's damage by the same constant number (time), and by extension, the ratio you obtain is not useful when you could just look at the actual damage done instead.
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04-18-11, 10:12 AM   #12
Chibi
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In my raid-leading experience, Damage done is a more useful in-game quick-metric anyway. I don't care what you claim or what the meter says your DPS is if you're not actually delivering that to the target. Almost any dps class can (for a very brief period with procs and cooldowns) spike at or above 20k dps depending on gear. And if like a rogue I used to run with, you do all your dps and then die 20-40 seconds into the fight because you don't actually know what you're doing, it's easy to be high on the dps chart and the bottom of damage done.

The discrepancy between dps and damage-done on most meters is just that, actual dps uptime. Outside of burn phases and enrage timers, 10k dps over the course of 3 minutes is better than 20k dps if they die a minute and a half in or can't maintain the same uptime as the 10k person.
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04-18-11, 10:16 AM   #13
Dawn
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Originally Posted by Chibi View Post
In my raid-leading experience, Damage done is a more useful in-game quick-metric anyway. I don't care what you claim or what the meter says your DPS is if you're not actually delivering that to the target. Almost any dps class can (for a very brief period with procs and cooldowns) spike at or above 20k dps depending on gear. And if like a rogue I used to run with, you do all your dps and then die 20-40 seconds into the fight because you don't actually know what you're doing, it's easy to be high on the dps chart and the bottom of damage done.

The discrepancy between dps and damage-done on most meters is just that, actual dps uptime. Outside of burn phases and enrage timers, 10k dps over the course of 3 minutes is better than 20k dps if they die a minute and a half in or can't maintain the same uptime as the 10k person.

This. ^^

The problem is that most WoW players don't even care to understand a statistic or the meaning of certain numbers (like DPS). Stereotype thinking kicks in and the result is: "THE BIGGER THE BETTER WOOTLAWL!"
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04-18-11, 02:46 PM   #14
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I'm using Skada, which is configured to switch to Threat-meter in combat and DMG/Heal ooc.

It provides me with the useful information at the right time. In 90% of all content I've seen in this game, movement is always more useful than DpS. I'll take a 10k dps DD, who fullfills his duties throughout the whole fight (may it be decursing, aggro-boosting or whatever) over an 15k dps DD who doesn't survive the fight at any time.

Speaking as warrior tank, who is kidding the DDs after every Halfus-fight with whelps for their "low" dps^^.
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04-18-11, 03:06 PM   #15
Cowmonster
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dps = damage/time

It varies from meter-to-meter as to how they measure time.

Being 30k dps for the first 20 seconds of a 10 minute fight and then being another corpse on the ground is of course bad, but total damage is not the important number. Sustained DPS is what maters most. If you can do enough damage to kill the boss, wonderful, but if you can't do it before the enrage timer or the healers go oom then that's bad.

Damage done, dps, number of CCs, number of dispells and threat management are all to be considered. If a person is having to devote a lot of time to dispells (IE the mage is the other person who can get rid of the curse that gets applied frequently, so he's spending his time removing curses instead of damage). Time = damage done/dps, so we can determine how much of a person's time is devoted to actually doing damage. This is helpful in determining if someone is slacking by determining if they only spent 20% of their time in the boss fight doing damage then was the rest of the time spend on something important? Were they dispelling or were they forced to wait for a tank with slow threat gen? Ultimately if they spend 99% of their time during the fight causing damage then their sustained dps through the fight is what matters.

This is just my two cents on the subject anyway.
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04-18-11, 08:36 PM   #16
tobindax
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Originally Posted by Xinhuan View Post
But you see, that's about as useless as it gets. If everyone's damage is divided by the exact same amount of time, then why even bother dividing it in the first place? It's like having a list that says 5 people did 10, 8, 6, 8 and 2 damage total, and if it was 2 seconds duration, the DPS is 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

The rankings don't change if you divide everyone's damage by the same constant number (time), and by extension, the ratio you obtain is not useful when you could just look at the actual damage done instead.
True, true. If people know what's going on with the numbers they won't need it.

Though it'd be a little perk for someone checking the total damage done.

Last edited by tobindax : 04-18-11 at 08:39 PM.
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04-20-11, 08:05 PM   #17
Crissa
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Yeah, I've totally been there - bottom of the dps, but I show up high on the damage soaked, healed, etc. And I've spiked and flamed out by the unlucky dodge into the damage aura that wasn't displayed or being the poor unlucky sot to get the 'x is about to explode' several times in a row. (Oh how I hated Molten Core)

Since everyone isn't in combat the same amount of time (via positioning, when they have to wait to engage, on FIRE, or whatever) the DPS and total damage scales are going to be different.

Sometimes this is fair; someone pulled aggro and died, someone was too far away, someone wasn't using the right attacks. Sometimes this isn't fair; they got more debuffs, the healer on their side got nuked or lagged off, it's a fight that favors a type of damage or makes the melee run around like crazy while the ranged doesn't have to move... Etc.

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04-22-11, 12:49 PM   #18
eqsanctum
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Originally Posted by Dawn View Post
"THE BIGGER THE BETTER WOOTLAWL!"
I know this is totally offtopic but wootlawl is now my new word fo the day.
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WoWInterface » General Discussion » General WoW Chat » How can an addon report DPS different from overall damage?

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