My Deadeye does less DPS than my Willbender but the fights are shorter too - why?

[Eram the Liar.5720]

DISCLAIMER: I'm not a terribly great player at this game, so you're going to find the dps values I post... erm... "adorable." 😄

I've mainly played a Power Willbender over the last year, which I found a heck of a lot of fun even though I'll never be a top tier player. I was at the point where I could mostly regularly get 10-11k dps on ArcDPS when soloing, which is the "adorable" part I mentioned above.

But over the last few weeks I wanted to try something new, so I decided to try a pistol/pistol deadeye. Why? I dunno. But I'm having fun with it. The thing is, according to ArcDPS my dps is lower - averaging between 8-10K - but the fights are ending faster. It feels like I'm doing more damage, even though according to ArcDPS I'm not. And I don't know what to do with that information.

Here's the perfect example:

I'm taking the deadeye through Living World Season One, just started it, so it's at the point where the commander meets Rox and helps her with the attack on the hatchery, then meets Braham and helps him free the villagers of Cragstead. I very painfully remember these fights with my willbender (remember 10-11k dps) not because they were hard but because they took so long. I remember having to slog through these missions and they'd make me a little crazy.

On the deadeye (remember 8-10k dps) the fights are over much faster. There's a certain enforced time limit because in each fight taking each location (getting rid of a portal at the hatchery, or freeing citizens from a fire dome at Cragstead) requires multiple waves of enemies to spawn, but it absolutely took less time for my deadeye, who is apparently doing on average 2k less damage than my Willbender, to mow them all down.

I only have a few hypotheses:

1. ArcDPS doesn't properly capture Thief DPS for some reason (or specifically Deadeye DPS).

2. Both my Willbender and my Deadeye are producing more than enough damage to take down the enemies quickly but because Deadeye is ranged it has better "time on target" - with Willbender I was always having to chase enemies around the map, though with its movement abilities I never really thought of it as being much of a handicap, whereas Deadeye movement isn't so much "chasing them down" as it is moving into a better position to make the best use of Deadly Aim. So the length of the fight I'm experiencing with the Willbender vs Deadeye is that switching targets on Willbender includes jumping/sliding/running over to the next target, whereas with Deadeye it's just applying Deadeye's Mark to a new target.

3. ArcDPS is working just fine, but I'm fundamentally misunderstanding how DPS fits into the overall picture of combat, damage, and speed.

The problem with hypothesis #1 is that I'd have expected to have heard something about it. I haven't. I have heard that it measures condition damage by simulating what that damage "should be" rather than capturing it in game, but that shouldn't come into play because both Willbender and Deadeye are power builds (though to be fair even power Willbender will be a little condi, since I'd have to work really hard not to apply burning when you play it).

The problem with hypothesis #2 is that my willbender damage didn't really change when I was fighting groups vs fighting solo. I would assume that if the issue was a gap in damage when changing targets, fighting a single target for a longer period of time would result in an increase in DPS for the willbender because that handicap was removed. That said, single target fights are usually harder and have more red zones you have to dodge out of, so that might account for it not changing much overall.

Hypothesis #3, summarized as "well the problem is you don't actually know how any of this works" is probably the most likely, but I don't know what I don' t know. 😄

Anyway, that's my question - why is my Deadeye going through fights faster than my Willbender, even though according to ArcDPS my Willbender is doing more damage?

[AliamRationem.5172]

Why not test it yourself?  Go to the test golem in the aerodrome and compare its DPS readout to arc.  Set arcdps to display combat time so you can see if it's actually taking longer.

[bq pd.2148]

did you look at combat time too?
if you do drop out of combat between enemies on your willbender but not on your deadeye, the time switching targets can drag your supposed DPS down.

[Eram the Liar.5720]

Hmmm. I'm really only familiar with the basic options in ArcDPS. I guess I'll have to play around with that to get more consistent data. That said, Willbender is already the higher DPS, so it should be the one clearing the room faster.

[AliamRationem.5172]

4 hours ago, Eram the Liar.5720 said:

Hmmm. I'm really only familiar with the basic options in ArcDPS. I guess I'll have to play around with that to get more consistent data. That said, Willbender is already the higher DPS, so it should be the one clearing the room faster.

If you don't know how long you're in combat, how can you be sure it isn't clearing faster?

[Tinker.6924]

19 hours ago, Eram the Liar.5720 said:

I only have a few hypotheses:

You forgot several additional scenarios:

4. Anet has nerfed the encounter and/or buffed player abilities since that time.  The last LW4 release was in 2019 and a lot of nerfs and buffs can happen in 5 years.  No idea how long ago you did the fight in question with your willbender.

5. Your deadeye is way better geared (or properly geared) than your other character was at the time of the fight. Even if your other character had ascended gear at the time, if it was the wrong stats for your build then you were suboptimal during that fight.

6. You know the fight mechanics now and didn't then.  Simply not bursting during a time when your enemy is immune/resistant improves your effective damage and can make a weak build work better

7. Some enemies and or fights are better for certain damage types.  If your willbender did strike damage primarily and they were resistant to it or moved around a lot, your condi-focused deadeye will do much better for that fight.