Damage Per Second, Damage Per Activation or Damage Per Animation Second: Which Metric Should I Use?

In a recent thread posted in the Tanker forums I was trying to get some feed back on the redesign of my Shield / Energy Tank. Previously I was under the impression that Total Focus was not a wise choice when it came to damage output despite its ability to hit hard and I removed it from my build. Now in the more recent thread I was told to put it back in, w/o much of any explanation. Below is a link to the other thread and a quote of what my current dilemma is, but asked more generally -When looking at damage output should I be looking at Per Second, Per Activation or Per Animation Second?

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=265353

"The issue now, I guess is should I rework my build to include Total Focus and drop something like Energy Punch. Would this actually improve my Damage Per Second? Is this even the right metric to be looking at? Energy Punch has a DPS of 47.9 while Total Focus has a DPS of only 37.1 while slotted the same. Per Activation TF is the King with an output of 361 and Energy Punch only 101. One I have not looked at is Damage Per Animation Second and Energy Punch beats Total Focus 122 to 109 while slotted the same. Seems like to me that Total Focus while being a harder hitter just dose not have the ability to sustain a damage output.

The question is - Would you include, in a chain of Barrage, Bone Smasher and Energy Transfer, Total Focus or Energy Punch?"

Well you need to build your attack chain and see what it looks like. Provided you have no gaps in that attack chain, then composing it of the highest available damage-per-animation-second powers will yield the highest damage-per-second. Generally speaking, it's assumed you'll be able to eventually, with some amount of recharge, build an attack chain with no gaps in it. So damage-per-animation-second (what most people here abbreviate DPA, not to be confused with damage-per-activation) is usually regarded as king.

But again, if you're trying to decide between two powers then construct your attack chain in each case and see what it looks like. How much damage do you do per cycle of that entire chain (until it repeats) and how long does that cycle take?

Damage Per Arcanatime. The server works on 0.132s intervals and you can only activate another power after the server has registered that the previous one is over.

DPA = [Damage] / (0.132 * (1 + roundup([Animation Time] / 0.132))

I don't know the answer to the specific question about Energy Melee.

The answer to the question in the title of the post though, is "all of these, and a bit more."

I don't happen off hand to know the DPAnimation (which I will refer to as DPAnim from here on for clarity) of Energy Melee attacks. However, the animation time itself is pretty easy to look up, and the attacks are long.* Without knowing anything about how much damage they do, we can say that using them is an investment of those number of seconds.

Basically, pure DPAnim isn't a totally accurate view of the data. It assumes that three powers that chain and do 100 damage are equivalent to one power that takes the same time to do the same damage. However, this assessment assumes the enemy never moves, doesn't die from overkill, the player doesn't need to break the chain to do something else, and that all attacks actually hit the target. While it is true they do the same damage on average, average situations can be surprisingly rare.

For example, a Blaster with a very high damage attack that takes 3 seconds to animate is at both a disadvantage and advantage next to one with 2 attacks that have the same DPAnim and combined total animation time. The disadvantage is it could mean the Blaster has to spend 3 seconds at melee, unable to respond or change actions, and at a minimum has a 5% chance to completely miss and do no damage at all. The advantage is the Blaster can joust with a very powerful attack and thus spend less actual time in melee, while also being subject to only one ToHit roll instead of two. In other words, the slower attack has a greater chance to miss while the faster combined one has a lower chance that both miss, and a higher chance that at least one misses.

Anyway, the reason animation time is so hard to evaluate is that the resulting DPA calculations are a lie. A power that takes 3.5 seconds to animate takes that long to animate no matter what its DPAnim is; it doesn't matter if the DPA is the same or more or less than other powers if the animation time itself doesn't warrant using the power.


[*NOTE: Some people suggest always using Arcanatime in calculations. I think that can be useful, but that in general that level of detail is not always needed when you're making a decision like "is this power ever useful?"]

Short answer: it depends on what you want to focus on. If you are interested in sustained damage output then the most important thing is DPA (damage / activation time). On the other hand, if you want maximum burst damage capability then the hardest hitting attacks tend to be best even if they aren't that great on DPA.

In general, sustained DPS is probably the most important factor for single target attacks since you ideally want a nonstop attack chain which you will be using over and over... the only exception would be if you intend to joust or hit and run and aren't going to be standing there trading blows (but that would be rare for a melee AT outside of PvP). For AoEs it's more about total damage... you aren't likely to have a nonstop chain so DPA isn't as important as raw damage output.

Personally I'd take Total Focus simply because it hits like a freight train and is a guaranteed stun. However, I wouldn't actually use it in my attack chain unless I had low recharge and couldn't make a gapless chain without it... instead I'd use it to stun annoying targets or to help stack stuns on bosses. You could use Stun instead for that, but why not deal a ton of damage too while you're staggering them?