Calculating DPS - Am I doing it wrong?

[Vresiberba]

So I have maxed out Heavy Weapons with my Minotaur Barbarian, and the best two-handed weapon I found so far is the Great Axe, but if I calculate its DPS I get;

50-137 which added together (187) and divided by two gets me an average damage of about 93.5, divided by the cooldown, which is a massive 7 seconds, I get 13.4 DPS, which you would think is okay considering my firearm Rouge does half that with the Arquebus.

But then I do the same calculations with my old and scruffy one-handed Morning Star, a weapon that needs just 1 skill point in Heavy Weapons to use and a weapon I found like 5-6 levels ago, I get 35-95 = 131 divided by two, 65.5 and divided by the cooldown which is just 4.5 seconds, I get a DPS of 14.6.

I mean, really? Wasn't the fifth point in Heavy Weapons supposed to give me a great advantage in using two-handed heavy weapons with one hand? Am I doing something wrong?

[Phitt]

That sounds about right. The dps of some of the weapons is a bit off, I did a complete list of all weapon in the game and compared them. Wait till you find Maul, a weapon that is marked as 'legendary', you even have to solve a rather complicated puzzle to get it. And its dps is worse than that of both weapons you mentioned. To be fair most weapons are rather balanced though and dps isn't everything since a slow weapon that causes more damage per hit is more useful than a fast weapon with low damage. The slow weapon's damage isn't affected by armor as much, plus it's easier to handle during a fight (more time inbetween hits to do something else).

Firearms are by far the worst weapons in the game btw, they have very low dps (with the exception of the Hand Cannon, which has other disadvantages), limited ammo and a chance to malfunction on top of that.

[Vresiberba]

That sounds about right. The dps of some of the weapons is a bit off, I did a complete list of all weapon in the game and compared them. Wait till you find Maul, a weapon that is marked as 'legendary', you even have to solve a rather complicated puzzle to get it. And its dps is worse than that of both weapons you mentioned.

I know, I already found it and its DPS is indeed worse than that of the Great Axe.

To be fair most weapons are rather balanced though and dps isn't everything since a slow weapon that causes more damage per hit is more useful than a fast weapon with low damage.

How do you figure? The only reason I can think of is like you say, that since it's so slow to hit with it's easier to manage, but to be perfectly honest, I hit that button within half a second in both cases and that isn't enough to offset the lower DPS.

[Phitt]

How do you figure? The only reason I can think of is like you say, that since it's so slow to hit with it's easier to manage, but to be perfectly honest, I hit that button within half a second in both cases and that isn't enough to offset the lower DPS.

I'm not 100% sure how armor works, but as far as I can tell it is not a relative but a total damage reduction (I remember that my heavily armored characters sometimes only got 1 point of damage from a hit). In other words not a percentage, but a fixed number. So for example if your target has decent armor and weapon A normally deals 20 damage per hit while weapon B deals 40 damage then you may deal only 10 damage with weapon A and 30 damage with weapon B if the armor reduces damage by 10 points. That's why heavy hitting weapons are more useful than light weapons. Not all enemies have armor (or noticeable armor) though and I'm not so sure about the exact formula, but I guess that's how it is.

[Sarumorpheus]

The thing is, since the combat here isn't "locked"; like in World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2, where your character automatically deals base damage with you using special abilities; damage per second isn't as relevant. After having attacked an enemy with a certain weapon, by the time you have sidestepped or moved backwards to avoid an enemy hit and waited for the monster to get into position, many times the cooldown has already refreshed by then. For this reason, I value single damage over dps in Legend of Grimrock 2.

The cooldowns and dps considerations are more relevant when you are forced to fight an enemy by being pushed into a corner, for instance, which actually can happen more times than desired.

[Vresiberba]

The thing is, since the combat here isn't "locked"; like in World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2, where your character automatically deals base damage with you using special abilities; damage per second isn't as relevant. After having attacked an enemy with a certain weapon, by the time you have sidestepped or moved backwards to avoid an enemy hit and waited for the monster to get into position, many times the cooldown has already refreshed by then. For this reason, I value single damage over dps in Legend of Grimrock 2.

The cooldowns and dps considerations are more relevant when you are forced to fight an enemy by being pushed into a corner, for instance, which actually can happen more times than desired.

Yeah, that's a good point, actually.

[Phitt]

The cooldowns and dps considerations are more relevant when you are forced to fight an enemy by being pushed into a corner, for instance, which actually can happen more times than desired.

The problem is as long as you can avoid enemies in Grimrock it's not a dangerous situation. You can use the usual kiting tactic and kill them without ever getting hit. But in dangerous situations where you get cornered or at least get constantly attack from all directions (and unlike in Grimrock 1 this happens quite a lot in Grimrock 2) dps is what matters most.

[Shadowlordx]

Its pretty evident certain two handed heavy weapons just aren't as good in terms of raw dps as faster 1 handed heavy weapons. At end-game this isn't really the case as I believe Ancient Claymore and Meteor Hammer (this especially) beat out all 1 handed heavy weapons. The two handers will win out in damage per swing which as has been mentioned may be more important in certain kiting scenarios, although I don't really see the kiting ever taking 7 seconds between attack excepting versus enemies that rely on you waiting on them and who move slowly (trolls and the like).

Also armor is more relevant for faster weapons compared to slower weapons, since armor is increasingly effective the more times you hit to get a dps value. On the other hand attribute damage bonus is more effective for faster weapons since its an additive damage bonus.

[Vresiberba]

And now I just found...

SpoilerShow

... the Meteor Hammer (two-handed heavy weapon) which nearly doubled my DPS (from 14.6 to 25.8) and my average damage per swing from 93.5 to 116. Woooho!

[Phitt]

And now I just found...

SpoilerShow

Meteor Hammer is the weapon with the highest dps in the game by far (I calculated with max skills and str/dex 20, Meteor Hammer has 23 dps, second place is Assassin's Dagger with 'only' 20.5 dps). And on top of that it has the second best total damage (damage per hit) as well. Only the special attack isn't that great imo.