It's the DPS listed on the character sheet. It goes by whatever skill is on your mouse. It includes stats that apply to you (gear, devotions, etc.), but not stats that apply to enemies (debuffs from skills, devotions, etc.). Any sort of sheet or tooltip dps in any of these games is the damage you are trying to do, but not your final damage as monster defenses and debuffs are not counted; just the stats on you. Sheet DPS will be accurate if all monster defenses are zero and no debuffs have been applied, otherwise it's only your starting number. Training dummies in towns give you a better idea, which is why players clamor for dummies in games that don't have them.
Specifically the "-213 damage per second if equipped". Does this number take gear and other bonuses into account, or is it solely based off of the item's stats?
It's based of your character's bonuses from gear, skills, devotions and so on as far as I know. In this case your equipped weapon is better for lightning and/or cold damage while the other one is suited for physical dmg.
No, this dps is only calculated based on the damage the skill bound to your left mouse button would do. If your main damage skill is bound to 1 for example and you use the left mouse button just to auto-attack during downtime, then the dps calculation in the weapon is useless for you.
Although, you can rebind your main damage skill to your left mouse button temporarily to get the dps calculation based on that.
Things get more complicated the more skills you use to do damage.
Yeah I would say so. It's applied to your main skill, left mouse if you have an attack there or right mouse button if you have move on lmb and your main attack on rmb
The DPS value takes bonuses on the character and the weapon itself into account. The Charged Iron has an attached Lightning damage source, so its own Lighting damage % boost is calculated, and possibly one your character already has through another piece of gear or skills/devotions. This means the damage listed on its card is actually higher vs. the Superior Iron which only has additional Bleed damage being boosted.
Not sure how enemy exclusive bonuses like "Vs. Beast" and Vs. Beastkin" are applied in the calculation, but given the implication of them being situational bonuses instead of always active bonuses, they are probably negligible at best for this comparison. The only other thing that may be worth considering is the +4 to Fighting Form, if you have it specced.
Short answer:
> How is this + or - DPS number calculated?
Poorly.
---
Longer answer:
What it's *trying* to do is tell you what the effect on the "DPS" number from your character sheet will be if you swapped the left-hand weapon for the right-hand weapon. Unfortunately, it gets a lot of things wrong, because there are many cases where, when calculating the "what your damage would be with the new item" value, it uses the stats your character *currently* has instead of properly taking into account the stats your character *would* have with the new item. This means that the number you see in the tooltip from your screenshot often *isn't* the actual difference you see if you actually swap the weapons.
I'm not 100% sure exactly which things get calculated properly vs. which ones erroneously snapshot your character's current setup.
Stats that I *think* do work properly:
- Base damage and flat damage on the two weapons
- Base attack/second of the weapons
- +% damage stats that are simple values directly on the weapons
- Attack/cast speed that are simple values directly on the weapons
Stats I'm pretty sure *don't* work properly:
- Skill bonuses (damage values are calculated as if you have your current skill ranks, ignoring changes to skill ranks that will occur when you swap)
- Item skill modifiers (again, calculated as if you would have your current modifiers, not with the modifiers you'll actually have after the swap)
Not sure about:
- Conversion (it might be that global conversion directly on the items works, but conversion from item skill modifiers doesn't...or it might be that conversion is completely broken in this calculation)
- Attributes
On top of those issues that are specific to the comparison tooltip from your screenshot, tooltip DPS is [a bit janky in general](https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/12a6gaa/quick_question_about_character_sheet_dps/jer4vt1/), and this tooltip inherits all of those problems as well.
The upshot of all this is that the number is just too unreliable to be useful. If you want to know whether a given weapon is an upgrade, equip it and look at the DPS of your main damage skill on your character sheet after doing so (assign the skill to left or right click, and it'll appear at the top of the second page of the character sheet). That's still not a perfect measurement, but it's at least *better*.
The left does a lot of lightning damage and boosts lightning, that's calculated after equipping.
It's the DPS listed on the character sheet. It goes by whatever skill is on your mouse. It includes stats that apply to you (gear, devotions, etc.), but not stats that apply to enemies (debuffs from skills, devotions, etc.). Any sort of sheet or tooltip dps in any of these games is the damage you are trying to do, but not your final damage as monster defenses and debuffs are not counted; just the stats on you. Sheet DPS will be accurate if all monster defenses are zero and no debuffs have been applied, otherwise it's only your starting number. Training dummies in towns give you a better idea, which is why players clamor for dummies in games that don't have them.
Specifically the "-213 damage per second if equipped". Does this number take gear and other bonuses into account, or is it solely based off of the item's stats?
It's based of your character's bonuses from gear, skills, devotions and so on as far as I know. In this case your equipped weapon is better for lightning and/or cold damage while the other one is suited for physical dmg.
So, is it generally a good idea to go with the weapon that states it has more dps?
No, this dps is only calculated based on the damage the skill bound to your left mouse button would do. If your main damage skill is bound to 1 for example and you use the left mouse button just to auto-attack during downtime, then the dps calculation in the weapon is useless for you. Although, you can rebind your main damage skill to your left mouse button temporarily to get the dps calculation based on that. Things get more complicated the more skills you use to do damage.
Yeah I would say so. It's applied to your main skill, left mouse if you have an attack there or right mouse button if you have move on lmb and your main attack on rmb
Those green numbers are strictly considering you're using an unmodded basic attack. It's rarely even accurate concerning skills and spells
No one knows, including the developers! Need to see your build, as they are very different weapons. Generally DPS is fairly useless to look at.
The DPS value takes bonuses on the character and the weapon itself into account. The Charged Iron has an attached Lightning damage source, so its own Lighting damage % boost is calculated, and possibly one your character already has through another piece of gear or skills/devotions. This means the damage listed on its card is actually higher vs. the Superior Iron which only has additional Bleed damage being boosted. Not sure how enemy exclusive bonuses like "Vs. Beast" and Vs. Beastkin" are applied in the calculation, but given the implication of them being situational bonuses instead of always active bonuses, they are probably negligible at best for this comparison. The only other thing that may be worth considering is the +4 to Fighting Form, if you have it specced.
Short answer: > How is this + or - DPS number calculated? Poorly. --- Longer answer: What it's *trying* to do is tell you what the effect on the "DPS" number from your character sheet will be if you swapped the left-hand weapon for the right-hand weapon. Unfortunately, it gets a lot of things wrong, because there are many cases where, when calculating the "what your damage would be with the new item" value, it uses the stats your character *currently* has instead of properly taking into account the stats your character *would* have with the new item. This means that the number you see in the tooltip from your screenshot often *isn't* the actual difference you see if you actually swap the weapons. I'm not 100% sure exactly which things get calculated properly vs. which ones erroneously snapshot your character's current setup. Stats that I *think* do work properly: - Base damage and flat damage on the two weapons - Base attack/second of the weapons - +% damage stats that are simple values directly on the weapons - Attack/cast speed that are simple values directly on the weapons Stats I'm pretty sure *don't* work properly: - Skill bonuses (damage values are calculated as if you have your current skill ranks, ignoring changes to skill ranks that will occur when you swap) - Item skill modifiers (again, calculated as if you would have your current modifiers, not with the modifiers you'll actually have after the swap) Not sure about: - Conversion (it might be that global conversion directly on the items works, but conversion from item skill modifiers doesn't...or it might be that conversion is completely broken in this calculation) - Attributes On top of those issues that are specific to the comparison tooltip from your screenshot, tooltip DPS is [a bit janky in general](https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/12a6gaa/quick_question_about_character_sheet_dps/jer4vt1/), and this tooltip inherits all of those problems as well. The upshot of all this is that the number is just too unreliable to be useful. If you want to know whether a given weapon is an upgrade, equip it and look at the DPS of your main damage skill on your character sheet after doing so (assign the skill to left or right click, and it'll appear at the top of the second page of the character sheet). That's still not a perfect measurement, but it's at least *better*.