Gearing a ranger

[bcbrown]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

((Weapon Min Damage + Weapon Max Damage) / 2) * Mitigation Offset * Swings Per Second = Weapon DPS

Your formula is neither descriptive nor predictive. A descriptive formula would illustrate the actual mechanics of how combat works, but this is rather obviously not how combat works. A predictive formula would let you predict how a given weapon would perform against a given mob, but this formula requires you to have already parsed against a mob. If you've already done a parse, you don't need this formula.

Average damage per swing multiplied by swings per second is rather obviously damage per second. There's nothing interesting in this observation; it's just the definition of DPS. Furthermore it hides all the interesting mechanics; breaking it into a hit% and an average damage per hit would be an immediate improvement. Similarly, swings per second hides the double attack % and dual wield %.

This "mitigation offset" is also uninteresting. Like sure, you can parse damage against a giant and a turtle and find that the same weapon does 55% as much damage against the turtle compared to the giant. Ok? Yes, that's a number, but it's not an interesting number. You can't use it for anything. It doesn't do anything. If you know the DPS is 55%, of course the average damage per swing will be 55%. Now what?

Finally, the average damage per swing is not the same thing as (Weapon Min Damage + Weapon Max Damage) / 2). The only interesting thing here is that it comes out kinda close, but you don't have any explanation for why that's true. I do know why, and it is interesting. And if you did know why, you'd know why there's a better way to estimate average damage than (Weapon Min Damage + Weapon Max Damage) / 2).