Newb question: what DPS stat to use?

ralf_tiede

I'm trying to compare gear loadouts. I'm playing Neverwinter, and taking 8 min combat samples by myself in a training room against a summoned "boss puppet".

I read in the FAQ that encDPS is usually the most relevant number, but I'm getting pretty wild variations sometimes, and wondering if I should look at DPS or damage instead?

EQAditu

If you're getting a lot of variation with EncDPS... it usually means your test isn't long enough to give a level reading.

If you're the only combatant you're recording, DPS will be the same because your duration and the encounter duration will be the same.

Damage doesn't usually make sense because the longer you spend, the more damage you do... so unless your tests are all the same duration, damage won't give you an indication for comparison.  If you do something extremely controlled like cast each of your spells exactly once over a variable time then damage would tell you the most stable and comparable thing.

ralf_tiede

Hm, that's really odd, because I'm the only combatant and my DPS and encDPS are wildly different (see screenshot).

Kodama is my companion/pet, and conjured fighter is the enemy.


How long do people usually run their tests?

EQAditu

You said you're the only combatant and then listed another combatant(your pet).

It's hard to tell, but it's almost like you attacked for a while(17 seconds) and then stopped completely while letting your pet attack.  The graph would say more about what happened over time.

There are a lot of strange things about this screenshot...  why is the encounter called 'All' while in the "Import/Merge" listing?  ACT will not make an 'All' encounter in that listing and there's no combatant named 'All', so it shouldn't be automatic.

Essentially it seems like you're using it in such a way that it is making odd encounters.

ralf_tiede

Yeah, this is what the graph looks like. Doesn't look right, does it?



Here's another example. What could be causing this?

EQAditu

Your treeview doesn't make sense, essentially. 

Unless you're importing from the clipboard/.act file or manually merging and deleting encounters... your data should not be in the Import/Merge zone category.  Your encounters definitely should not be labeled "All" unless it is a merged encounter that ACT automatically makes... and it will not make one in the Import/Merge zone heading.

If the parsing plugin doesn't do any work regarding zone changes, new data should appear in the Unknown Zone heading.  Apparently your data is from days in the past somehow... so how exactly are you getting data into ACT... because it appears to be wrong somehow.

The graph also seems to show non-zero values in-between spikes... so perhaps something is keeping an encounter going infinitely.

I have no idea how Neverwinter works for an MMO, but there are many things wrong here or things you're not telling me.

ralf_tiede

What I can tell you is that yes, those are encounters that I have exported to save them and look at later. Then I imported them back to compare. That's why they're showing up like that in the tree.

EQAditu

I wonder if there's some sort of bug that isn't calculating the time correctly for these.  Does the duration look the same as before you exported/imported these?  I'm trying to figure out if there's something wrong with the *.act file building/reading.

You don't necessarily have to do another live parse...  you should be able to use the History Database tab to look up past encounters or use the Import/Export tab to just re-parse the log file that was created.  (assuming you don't just delete them)

As I said, I know very little about this game and how well the parsing plugin you might be using is supposed to work.  The fact that you always show "Unknown Zone" doesn't bode well, but perhaps the game just doesn't output anything useful in that regard.

ralf_tiede

This always pops up when I start ACT:



But it seems to run normal otherwise.

ralf_tiede

And this is what I got when I imported the latest log:

ralf_tiede

Actually, I think it may not be a problem with ACT at all. I started trying a different DPS tracker and it does something very similar: it seems to track the first few seconds of combat, but then the DPS starts to decline at a pretty steady rate, whether I continue attacking or not. As if it stopped recording damage after a few seconds.

EQAditu

The first error makes me wonder if you're using a very old version of ACT that is missing some things.  (It will say in the About tab)

Secondly, it seems you have the FFXIV Plugin running which is very bad.  Never have two different parsing plugins running at the same time.  You should take a look at your Plugins tab.

ralf_tiede

Well, I uninstalled and reinstalled ACT and the Neverwinter plugin completely. I now have version 3.5.0. I have disabled the FF XIV plugin. Still getting this graph and a discrepancy between DPS and EncDPS. Which makes me think there's something wrong with the combat log.

zephdef

Im wondering if I'm experiencing a similar issue. Im running version 3.5.0 and My tree looks the same, grouped under all in the import/merge

EQAditu

You have nothing under Import/Merge...  there's no plus icon and nothing is indented.

My guess is that you enabled some Encounter Culling settings.