What do people mean by DPS?

[Karlen]

What do people mean when they refer to DPS?  I assume that "DPS" stands for damage per second, but which damage and which seconds?Is it an average over the length of the fight or does it focus on particular seconds when you are doing a lot of damage?If it is an average, do you start counting the seconds when you pull or when you actually start doing damage?For example, as a mystic, when soloing, I usually pull with a stamina debuff, follow up with another and then usually cast a ward.   I haven't done any damage yet, although the mobs health will have dropped through my debuffing his stamina.   Do I start counting the seconds when I pull the mob or when I actually start swinging my staff?Do I count the seconds at the end of the fight when I have no power left and am relying on autoattack to finish off the mob?  From a DPS point of view, I would have a very low DPS at the beginning of the fight (depending whether stamina debuffs count), a very high DPS while I rattle off my combat arts and then a low DPS at the end if the fight goes overtime.   Or do I just have a single DPS number that is based on how many seconds it takes to kill the mob?If you are fighting multiple mobs, do you consider DPS on a per-mob basis?  I can do a lot of damage with an AoE but it still might take a while to kill all the mobs.

[Junaru]

Depends on how you parse it. Most parse extended DPS. Which means when the fight starts (anyone in the group/raid attacks) till when it ends it will show how much damage you did between that time span. You can also get personal DPS. Which is from the time you start attacking till the time the mob is dead. This doesn't give the over all picture since a person could wait till a mob is about to die and then hit it with their biggest hit and get a high DPS.

[Wrapye]

Debuffs don't show up on parses, so your dps from the stamina debuff is going to be zilch.  That isn't to say that it doesn't have an impact, just that the combat text is not going to tell you how much effect it had on the mob.AoE attacks generally result in higher dps numbers, as you are being recorded as doing more damage in that second than if there was only one mob there.

[NiteWolfe]

 I run the parser for our guild during raids, We parse regular dps not ext dps due to we use a MA and ext dps is messed us by waiting on the assist call ( IE the MT starts the encounter 5 to 9s or so b4 anyone else does any damage) But we sort the parse via damage so he who did the most damage not the top dps shows at the top of the list. Its pretty easy to tell who was slacking off anyways using your example of some one waiting till the end of a fight to hit high dps numbers there total damage will be dirt. If you suspect some one of doing that you can always look at there duration compared to everyone else. We generaly look at the zone wide average  numbers for how the guild is doing over all each night not the individual fights.

[Junaru]

<cite>NiteWolfe wrote:</cite><blockquote> I run the parser for our guild during raids, We parse regular dps not ext dps due to we use a MA and ext dps is messed us by waiting on the assist call ( IE the MT starts the encounter 5 to 9s or so b4 anyone else does any damage) But we sort the parse via damage so he who did the most damage not the top dps shows at the top of the list. Its pretty easy to tell who was slacking off anyways using your example of some one waiting till the end of a fight to hit high dps numbers there total damage will be dirt. If you suspect some one of doing that you can always look at there duration compared to everyone else. We generaly look at the zone wide average  numbers for how the guild is doing over all each night not the individual fights.</blockquote>As far as I know most guilds use EXT DPS. It makes it hard to compare yourself to other guilds if you don't all use the same system. And when I say compare I don't mean who is better but more along the lines of X guild cleared VP with 35k DPS zone wide. It makes it hard to judge if you guild is up to that level if you think you are doing 35k DPS but really only doing 25k DPS.I agree with sorting by damage. It shows the real damage dealers which is what matters.

[NiteWolfe]

<cite>Junaru wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>NiteWolfe wrote:</cite><blockquote> I run the parser for our guild during raids, We parse regular dps not ext dps due to we use a MA and ext dps is messed us by waiting on the assist call ( IE the MT starts the encounter 5 to 9s or so b4 anyone else does any damage) But we sort the parse via damage so he who did the most damage not the top dps shows at the top of the list. Its pretty easy to tell who was slacking off anyways using your example of some one waiting till the end of a fight to hit high dps numbers there total damage will be dirt. If you suspect some one of doing that you can always look at there duration compared to everyone else. We generaly look at the zone wide average  numbers for how the guild is doing over all each night not the individual fights.</blockquote>As far as I know most guilds use EXT DPS. It makes it hard to compare yourself to other guilds if you don't all use the same system. And when I say compare I don't mean who is better but more along the lines of X guild cleared VP with 35k DPS zone wide. It makes it hard to judge if you guild is up to that level if you think you are doing 35k DPS but really only doing 25k DPS.I agree with sorting by damage. It shows the real damage dealers which is what matters.</blockquote> Actually and i just checked this on several log files, when you look at the zone average for the raid as a whole the dps and ext dps are the same ( edited my  text only format so it show both)The indivual players numbers varried yes but the top line that shows allies the dps and ext was the same. Probly becouse  for that figure the (one your talking about comaping to other guilds) it starts the time from when the MT first hits the mob and ends when the last mob dies.

[Junaru]

<cite>NiteWolfe wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Junaru wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>NiteWolfe wrote:</cite><blockquote> I run the parser for our guild during raids, We parse regular dps not ext dps due to we use a MA and ext dps is messed us by waiting on the assist call ( IE the MT starts the encounter 5 to 9s or so b4 anyone else does any damage) But we sort the parse via damage so he who did the most damage not the top dps shows at the top of the list. Its pretty easy to tell who was slacking off anyways using your example of some one waiting till the end of a fight to hit high dps numbers there total damage will be dirt. If you suspect some one of doing that you can always look at there duration compared to everyone else. We generaly look at the zone wide average  numbers for how the guild is doing over all each night not the individual fights.</blockquote>As far as I know most guilds use EXT DPS. It makes it hard to compare yourself to other guilds if you don't all use the same system. And when I say compare I don't mean who is better but more along the lines of X guild cleared VP with 35k DPS zone wide. It makes it hard to judge if you guild is up to that level if you think you are doing 35k DPS but really only doing 25k DPS.I agree with sorting by damage. It shows the real damage dealers which is what matters.</blockquote> Actually and i just checked this on several log files, when you look at the zone average for the raid as a whole the dps and ext dps are the same ( edited my  text only format so it show both)The indivual players numbers varried yes but the top line that shows allies the dps and ext was the same. Probly becouse  for that figure the (one your talking about comaping to other guilds) it starts the time from when the MT first hits the mob and ends when the last mob dies.</blockquote>That makes sense. If ZW is setup for EXT DPS it wouldn't matter which DPS you show from parse to parse. The end result would be the same.