DPS Calculator
Enter your weapon's damage range. Use the same value in both fields for a fixed-damage weapon.
How many times the weapon hits per second (also called fire rate or attack speed).
Enter Weapon Stats
Fill in your weapon's damage and attack speed above to instantly see burst DPS, sustained DPS, critical hit analysis, and your performance rating.
How to Use the DPS Calculator
Enter Your Damage Range
Type your weapon's minimum and maximum damage values into the Damage Per Hit fields. For fixed-damage weapons, enter the same value in both fields. The calculator automatically averages the range for all further computations.
Set Attack Speed and Crits
Enter your attacks per second (fire rate), then fill in your critical hit chance as a percentage and your critical multiplier (e.g., 2.0 for double damage on crits). The results update instantly to show DPS with and without crits.
Switch to Advanced Mode for Full Analysis
Click Advanced mode to unlock magazine size and reload time for sustained DPS, elemental damage and proc chance, global damage bonus from buffs or skills, target armor and your armor penetration, projectile count for multi-pellet weapons, and a target HP field for Time to Kill calculation.
Read the Breakdown and Optimize
Review the Effective DPS, performance rating, and the stacked bar chart showing how much damage comes from base hits, critical bonus, and elemental procs. The optimizer tip at the bottom tells you exactly which stat to improve next for the biggest DPS gain.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between burst DPS and sustained DPS?
Burst DPS is your maximum damage rate during continuous firing, ignoring any pauses for reloading. It represents the theoretical ceiling of your output in a short window. Sustained DPS factors in the reload cycle — the time spent reloading reduces your average damage over longer fights. For weapons with small magazines and long reload times, sustained DPS can be 20–50% lower than burst DPS. In boss fights or extended encounters, sustained DPS is the more accurate predictor of performance. Use burst DPS to compare weapons with similar reload profiles, and sustained DPS when magazine management is part of the gameplay.
How does the critical hit formula work?
The crit-adjusted average damage formula is: Base Avg × (1 + Crit Chance × (Crit Multiplier − 1)). For example, with 100 average damage, 30% crit chance, and 2.0x multiplier: 100 × (1 + 0.30 × (2.0 − 1)) = 100 × 1.30 = 130 average damage per hit. This reflects the expected value across many hits — in 100 hits, 30 would crit for 200 damage and 70 would deal 100, averaging to 130 each. The formula works identically regardless of whether your multiplier is stated as 2x, 200%, or +100% bonus damage.
How is effective DPS calculated against armored targets?
Effective DPS applies your armor penetration against the target's armor to find the residual damage reduction. Effective Armor = max(0, Target Armor% − Armor Pen%). If the target has 40% armor and you have 15% armor penetration, effective armor is 25%. The final effective DPS is then Total DPS × (1 − 0.25) = 75% of your raw DPS. This means armor penetration stats only help when you face armored targets, and the benefit is exactly linear — each 1% of armor penetration against a 40%-armored enemy increases your effective DPS by about 1.33% of the mitigated portion.
What does the performance rating (S/A/B/C/D) mean?
The performance rating evaluates your weapon setup's overall efficiency. It factors in how close your sustained DPS is to your burst DPS (good reload efficiency scores higher), and how much of your damage comes from high-value critical hits. An S rating means your setup is highly optimized — strong crit contribution and minimal reload downtime. A D rating means significant room for improvement, typically from very low crit chance or a poor magazine-to-reload-time ratio that severely hurts sustained output. The rating is relative to your own setup and is meant as a quick self-assessment guide rather than a comparison against other players.
How do I calculate DPS for a shotgun with multiple pellets?
In Advanced mode, enter the damage per pellet in the damage fields, set your fire rate (shots per second), and enter the pellet count in the Projectiles field. The calculator multiplies damage per hit by the projectile count so that one trigger pull contributing 8 pellets of 50 damage each is correctly treated as 400 damage per shot before further modifiers. Magazine size for shotguns should reflect the number of shells, not pellets, since you fire one shell per trigger pull.
Why is my sustained DPS much lower than burst DPS?
Sustained DPS drops when reload time is long relative to your magazine size. If you fire your entire magazine in 2 seconds and spend 3 seconds reloading, you are effectively only attacking for 40% of the time, meaning your sustained DPS is around 40% of burst. To improve this ratio, either increase magazine size (more shots before the mandatory reload pause) or reduce reload time (shorter downtime between bursts). Many high-damage, slow-reload weapons suffer this problem, making them weaker in sustained encounters than their burst numbers suggest.