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I'm interested to know which factors affect the calculation of the DPS number. It seems from some minor experimentation that adding mods which boost Accuracy or Crit Damage increase your DPS score, yet Stability does not.

This minor experiment yields some odd results when equipping weapon mods, as to me it means that a DPS focused build would just stack lots of Accuracy and Crit Damage, but there must be more to it than that. As that would make most other mods pretty useless.

To me a high Stability score would mean more shots landing on target due to reduced recoil which would surely increase your damage. Whereas a highly accurate assault rifle, for example, with low stability fired for a sustained period wouldn't land as many shots, due to it needing far more 'manual correction' to compensate for the recoil.

To compound matters, there is a loading hint which even states that DPS isn't the be all and end all of if a weapon is good, and to consider other aspects. Which is very pertinent when considering my First Wave M1A with both Balanced and Accurate talents.

If this is the case then why, when browsing weapon mods, are these 'other' bonuses not made apparent to the player through the UI?

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  • actual DPS or DPS displayed in the inventory? Because these are not the same.
    – vartec
    Apr 19, 2016 at 20:43
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    I would think in the UI, as calculations of actual DPS would need to take into account the number of rounds hitting a target, which is down to player skill.
    – Neon1024
    Apr 20, 2016 at 10:15
  • @DavidYell And the RNG which makes DPS even more worthless. Compare weapons of the same type based on their Damage (base effect of a single shot) and talents. May 5, 2016 at 18:06

2 Answers 2

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The DPS value as you say is influenced by many things which aren't possible to show as a number.

As you point out, if you don't land any shots your DPS is zero and if you headshot everything then your DPS will be higher than shown on your character sheet. DPS is not feasible to calculate for stats like stability/accuracy as their impact will be specific for every player.

Add to that things like skills (pulses) dmg bonuses for different enemy types and it becomes very tricky to give 'one number'.

This video gives a good breakdown of why the DPS number is 'wrong' and goes a long way to showing the types of numbers you could use to calculate your own DPS. There is link to their DPS calculator in the video.

You can find the spreadsheet I mention during the video at:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lOh5fD3l1xhh1NE8HG0iQfY-d2Q_3-Yi9euvx_MH4Lg/

The link to the mentioned website www.divisiondps.com is currently dead (and redirects to an unrelated advert).

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  • I can't watch the video right now, but would it be possible to summarize some of their arguments? That's just considered good practice as this video may go down at some point and without a summary your answer would lose some of it's usefulness.
    – two bugs
    Apr 21, 2016 at 12:55
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    @twobugs If you can summarise a 16 minute video with that much maths, you'd be some kind of genius. Perhaps a link to the mentioned spreadsheet would be better. I had the same thought, but there is a lot of information to summarise.
    – Neon1024
    Apr 21, 2016 at 13:46
  • That's a fair response. A link to the calculator would be a very good middle ground.
    – two bugs
    Apr 21, 2016 at 13:48
  • I've added the description from the YouTube page, with the mentioned links.
    – Neon1024
    Apr 25, 2016 at 9:50
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According to this page:

A weapon's DPS is calculated as such: weapons damage · mag size · RPM / 60 - weapons damage · RPM · reload time / 60

But there are some online calculators that also take into consideration the accuracy and head-shot chance.

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  • 1
    That is a reasonable DPS calculation, but it's not the one the game uses, as it doesn't take into account accuracy, headshot damage, etc.
    – DCShannon
    Apr 19, 2016 at 15:06
  • I agree. This is definitely what the wiki says, but it ignores the accuracy stat which heavily influences the character sheet dps value.
    – two bugs
    Apr 19, 2016 at 15:15
  • I have a few issues with this, first that I don't know what a middot means, is that multiplication? Also the linked wiki page mentions the Firearms stat, yet doesn't include it in the calculation.
    – Neon1024
    Apr 19, 2016 at 15:52
  • @DavidYell Yes, that would be multiplication. This is a standard symbol for multiplication in higher mathematics.
    – DCShannon
    Apr 19, 2016 at 16:03
  • This is definitely not the actual calculation. Critical damage and critical chance is another stat that increases reported DPS, but is not touched on in this equation.
    – user106385
    Apr 20, 2016 at 0:24

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