How to Use the Online DPS Calculator!
August 11, 2009[edit 12 aug: fixed broken link, sorry for fat-fingering the first link to the site in question]
You’ve probably all been told at one point or another to “use the spreadsheet”. They mean this spreadsheet, and here’s the guide I wrote for it. Since then, the cries for a version that would work for people who don’t have access to Microsoft Office could be heard for miles. Luckily for us, the always effervescent Zeherah has created an amazing online tool that does just this.
Let’s start at the beginning! How can you tell whether you should be gemming agility or armor penetration? How can you see whether it’s worth breaking your 4 piece T8 bonus to use a better T9 non-tier piece? How can you see how much DPS not having judgment of wisdom on your target costs? How about improved and glyphed hunter’s mark? All these questions are too complex to be estimated. The only way is to either test it yourself under raid conditions (and believe you me, the last thing your raid leader wants to hear from a hunter is “Guys, mind if I try something different on this fight?”) or use a simulator that models our DPS based on the algorithms measured in game.
www.femaledwarf.com is one of those simulators. Basically, you can import your character, make changes, and see how they affect you. Let’s go over the steps:
Sign In or Create Your Account
You need an account to save profiles, which we’ll be doing.
Import Your Character
Now that you’re signed in, you want to import your character. Don’t start filling anything out until you’ve done this, as it might get overwritten. Note that if you use your secondary spec mainly (as I do) you’ll need to check the “secondary spec: box. Also, now that the armory supports pets, you can import your raiding pet by name.
Check On The Settings
This is an important step many people forget. The default settings have to be changed in several places in order to properly reflect your DPS in game:
Here’s the shot rotation section. Clicking on “enable common shot rotation” will pre-populate the normal rotation for your spec, however if you’re a little bit of a statistical outlier and have a non-standard rotation (like I don’t use arcane shot), go ahead and drag it off to the right. Don’t check the “rotation test” check because it introduces server lag. It can be used if you have a unique rotation and latency combination that’s not correctly being represented in the algorithms.
Here’s the buffs and debuffs. “Enable best raid” button will just go ahead and give you everything, however if you’re in a guild where some things are just not readilly available, go ahead and make those changes. I remove judgment of wisdom.
Lastly, you have the settings:
This is where alchemists have to check the mixology box, and where we need to verify our latency. Other than those, the rest is usually fine left default.
Calculate Your DPS and Save Your Baseline Profile
Now that we have our gear, talents, glyphs, and pet imported, and our rotation, buffs, and settings set up, let’s see where we start from by clicking “update DPS” to get our baseline.
Now here we can save the profile to go back if we need to.
Note I gave it a name without special characters, and elected to share it publicly. To find the link for sharing your profile, you need to go to the load profile button at the top of the page:
Lastly, if you don’t need to be able to go back and look at your profile, but instead want to do the equivalent of writing down the final DPS on a notepad, click on the DPS scratchpad button next to the “save settings” button:
Test Your Changes!
Here’s the interesting part. Want to see how much DPS you’ll get by replacing those last few gems? Go to the gear area and make the changes you want, and the update the DPS again and it will tell you your new DPS.
That’s it- you now know how to properly use the DPS calculator! Enjoy :)
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Faeghleis
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And its work friendly!!! :D
The question I have is how close to the calculated do you find your real world numbers to be? I wouldn’t expect it to be exact, but how close would you say it is?
It’s not meant for that purpose- it’s meant to be used as a comparison. It can tell you that you get more DPS with SV than MM at your gear level, but it can not accurately tell you how much DPS you can do on patchwerk. The percent difference should be close to the in game percent increase you see, but once again, that’s a relative number.
I notice a considerable difference when I select the “Use Rotation Test” option (and invariably lower).
I’m operating on about 350ms latency rather than the default 150, but use a standard MM rotation.
I had assumed that the rotation test was effectively simulating my rotation literally rather than averaging cooldown usages and so it would more accurately represent my live situation. Or am I missing something there?
I’d have to check with Zeherah to be sure, but as I understand it, the rotation test does exactly as you say- tests your rotation with your latency and takes the average shot frequency from that instead of just calculating it with a formula. I believe high lag situations is one of the reasons she built that feature into the calculator.
Thanks… I certainly find using this feature gives a reasonably accurate result for a fight like Patchwerk, though I realise it is really more for comparison of gear/spec changes etc. rather than predicting an ideal dps figure.
What is interesting is that whether or not something increases dps can vary depending on whether or not I select this option, so it is worth understanding and using if it is relevant to your own individual situation.
The default setting will only figure out how many GCDs are required for each shot so it can estimate the shot frequency you should roughly expect in the time period and it also does rough math on how LnL will affect your shot frequency.
The rotation test does a simulated rotation and takes the number of total shots and then figures the frequency from there . If you enable the debug data option it will print out what the rotation looks like at the bottom of the page (along with a lot of random variable data that will probably give you a headache) so that you can see what the actual shot breakdown looks like. LnL and ISS procs are put roughly when they would be expected based on the proc rate, rather than trying to randomize them.
Neither method is perfect for determining dps, but the rotation test should theoretically be more accurate. It’s just a lot more work for the server which is why it’s not enabled by default. The gap is bigger for survival, probably due to the way LnL works.
Note that it looks right now like the LnL proc rate is increased, the site won’t reflect the new rate till we have more solid data on the new rate.
Thanks very much for clarifying that. :)
:( My work just blocked off the website and listed it under Games T_T
[...] more DPS than 15 seconds of haste. If you want to find out whether this is true for you, you should import your hunter into http://www.femaledwarf.com and check [...]
Hi there, this is great article but would it be possible to explain how to interpret the stat dps per budget section
Sure! The DPS per budget means how much DPS would you get from adding a single budget unit. For example, a single agility or crit is a single budget unit (you get 20 of these per epic gem) however 2 attack power is a budget unit, as this on an epic gem would give you 40.
So comparing a point in crit and a point in AP is not valid because it costs you twice as many budget points (or epic gems) to get a single crit as it does an AP.
I’ve found the dps calculator really useful in evaluating potential gear upgrades.