DPS Calculator

How this is calculated

This is GENERIC damage maths, not any particular game's. Nothing here is a rate or constant lifted from a specific title - every number comes from you, which is what makes it safe to trust: there is no invented game data in it to be wrong. The average hit is base damage multiplied by (1 + crit chance x (crit multiplier - 1)). That formula is worth understanding rather than memorising. A crit does not add its full multiplier to your average - it replaces a normal hit. So a 2x crit adds one extra hit's worth of damage, not two, and only on the fraction of swings that crit. At 25 percent chance and 2x damage the average hit is 1.25 times base, not 1.5. DPS is that average hit multiplied by attacks per second. Time to kill is target health divided by DPS. The crit contribution figure is how much of your average hit comes from critical strikes rather than base damage. It is the number to look at when deciding between more crit chance, more crit damage, or simply more base damage - and it makes the interaction obvious: crit chance and crit damage multiply each other, so whichever you have less of is usually where the next point is worth more. What this does NOT model is everything that makes real combat messy: damage-over-time effects, resistances and armour, damage reduction, attack windup and animation cancelling, resource costs, cooldowns on your biggest abilities, buffs with uptime, and the plain fact that you will not be attacking every second of a fight. Treat the DPS figure as a ceiling for comparing two builds against each other, not as a prediction of what you will do in a real encounter. Because it is a ceiling, it is most useful as a RELATIVE measure. Run your current build, change one stat, and look at the difference. The absolute number matters far less than which of two builds comes out ahead.

Common questions

Why isn't a 25% crit chance at 2x damage a 50% DPS increase?

Because a crit REPLACES a normal hit rather than being added on top of it. A 2x crit deals one extra hit's worth of damage, not two - and only on the quarter of swings that actually crit. So the average hit is 1 + 0.25 x (2 - 1) = 1.25 times base, a 25 percent increase. This is the single most common mistake in build maths, and it always overestimates crit.

My game shows '+150% crit damage'. What do I enter?

2.5. Games are inconsistent about whether the crit stat is a multiplier or a bonus on top of the normal hit. If yours says a crit deals '+150% damage', the crit lands for 250 percent of normal, so the multiplier is 2.5. If it says 'crits deal 200% damage', enter 2. Getting this wrong is the second most common source of wrong build numbers, after the crit-replaces-a-hit mistake above.

Should I stack crit chance or crit damage?

Look at the crit contribution figure and at which of the two you have less of, because they multiply each other. Crit damage does nothing on hits that do not crit, and crit chance does little if your crits barely hit harder than normal. The usual shape is that whichever stat is lagging gives more per point - and that base damage often beats both, because it scales everything including the crits.

Why is my real DPS lower than this?

Because this is a ceiling. It assumes you attack continuously with no windup, no animation lock, no movement, no resource costs, no cooldowns and nothing on the target reducing your damage. Real armour, resistances and damage reduction all sit between this number and the health bar. Use it to compare two builds, where those factors mostly cancel out, rather than to predict a fight.

How do I compare two builds properly?

Run one, write the DPS down, change ONE stat, and look at the difference. The absolute figure is the least reliable part of this calculation and the relative one is the most - the assumptions it makes are broadly the same for both builds, so they largely cancel. That is also why 'is this upgrade better' is a question this answers well and 'how long will this boss take' is one it answers badly.

My game shows attack time, not attacks per second.

Divide 1 by it. An attack time of 0.8 seconds is 1 divided by 0.8, which is 1.25 attacks per second. Watch for games that quote a base weapon speed which is then modified by a haste or attack-speed percentage - you want the final figure your character sheet shows, after all modifiers.

Take it further with AI

Copy this into ChatGPT or Claude with your own numbers filled in. It hands over the figures this calculator worked out, so the answer is built on real arithmetic instead of a guess.

I used the DPS Calculator at https://www.bfcbrilliance.com/tools/dps-calculator.

What I entered:
- Base damage per hit: ___
- Attacks per second (/s): ___
- Crit chance (%): ___
- Crit damage multiplier (x): ___
- Target health: ___

What it calculated:
- Damage per second: ___
- Average hit: ___
- A critical hit lands for: ___
- Share of your damage from crits: ___
- Time to kill the target: ___

Use those figures as given — they are already worked out, so please don't recalculate or estimate your own. Help me turn them into a plan: what to buy or do, in what order, roughly what it should cost, and the mistakes people most often make with this job.

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