Introduction
There is no substitute to assess damage dealing capabilities other than rigorous testing under a variety of conditions, maintaining static values for other variables to assess the sensitivity of the parameter in question. Unfortunately, testing conditions are rarely, if ever suitable for such scientific evaluation. Furthermore, reports of capability of DPS are nearly always biased slightly towards the recorder - but not so much that it invalidates the record. No, all records of DPM and total damage done are valid, in general. But understanding their relevance is nearly an art form in itself.
The bottom line is, it's hard to understand what conditions the tester or poster of the damage dump had when the dump was recorded. Invariably, the most appropriate logs start at the beginning of a fight, and end when the last fight in the series/instance is completed. Obviously, some instances will be biased due to pauses, breaks or intermittent absences which can be attributed to "I needed to find the next mob".
Regardless, the dump, any dump helps fill out our vast emptiness of understanding of real capability. Prior to dumping, one needs to set up. And setting up can be very costly. Do you opt to spend months to years camping a artillery shroud, or do you spend 2B on an ERBP? Do you slap on the DB crit set which cost all of 6 hours of camping, or do you break the bank for a 12B set of 300CC?
Clearly, there are choices. This guide will help you assess the value of the different options - hopefully prior to spending years perfecting a setup before realising you were striving for a sub-optimal setup for DD.
Preliminary Configurations
One of the first things to do is find your baseline offense. This includes weapon choices, perk choice and procs which you intend to use in combat.
http://auno.org/ao/perk.php?saveid=89896
Here is, for example a perk setup for a DPS oriented engineer.
I will assume for the purpose of this assessment that the weapons of choice are: AMEP and 300 Peregrine MK 6.
Preliminary Calculations
The first thing to do is assess two things:
1. The number of hits per minute your setup affords you that are affected by critical %
2. The number hits (points of contact) per minute your setup affords you under optimal conditions
3. Calculate the relative gain in DPS for any tradeoff in crit for add dmg, or vice versa
Here is how to do that.
Part 1
First of all you compile a list of all specials, and normal hits:
36 normal hits/minute affected by crit
10 fling shots affected by crit
For a total of 46 critical affected points of contact per minute.
Because the weapon damage critical value is different for each weapon we must assess the bonus damage separately.
NOTE: I'm going to also show here how to calculate the expected damage range of any weapon based on your AR as well as this is a good time to do so.
AMEP: 1925
PER: 1166
Next we find what this crit will affect:
18 AMEP normal hits
18 PER normal hits
10 fling shots on PER
0 burst, 0 perks/procs
Next we multiply the isolated crit bonus by the number of hits over a minute:
The difference 1% crit makes in damage gained per minute is, on average, over continuous fighting:
1%*[18*1925+(10+18)*1166] = 673 damage
Part 2
The next thing to do is assess the number points of contact that add dmg will affect per optimal, average minute of play.
Procs
Only regular hits and fling proc; resulting in 46 chances for procs to land per minute (we will multiply this number by the probability of a proc to fire)
Perks
Based on the setup posted above, and normalizing the number of perks per minute of play (i.e. if the recharge of a perk is 65 seconds, then it's only possible to perk 60/65 = 0.92 times per minute) , and poison sprinkle and taint wounds don't actually count add dmg for the first hit in the dot so they are removed from this section.
When we multiply each perk frequency by 60s and divide by the recharge time, and multiply the chance for proc's by the number of hits per minute, we get 13.45 perks and procs hitting the target per minute (continuous fighting) of play.
Now I'll add all regulars/specials to find the total number of actions/bullets/everything affected by 1 point of add dmg:
13.45 (perks/procs)
36 normal
10 fling
60s*3 bullets/burst *1burst/8s = 22.5 (burst)
for a total of: 81.95 (round up to 82).
So, any single point of add dmg affects a total of 82 contacts per minute.
Now, the question is, how many points of add dmg does it take to make up the difference that 1% crit makes?
1% crit produces 673dmg per minute.
since 1 point of add dmg produces 82 dmg per minute then 673dmg/min/1crit /82dmg/min = 8.2 dmg
Therefore, 1% crit is approximately equal to 8.2 add dmg.
Part 3
Assessing value of an item:
Lets take the big kahuna, right off the bat:
http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=269414 research attunement device level 3 - Offence
vs.
http://auno.org/ao/db.php?id=251241 QL 300 viral targeting subunit
100 dmg/8.2 dmg/crit = 12.2 crit.
So, any VTS adding 12 crit or LESS, you're losing damage by using that item. For any VTS 13% or greater, you'll gain damage.
Clearly, then the 100 add dmg is considerably valuable already. Also, we can immediately start to see the incredible value of raid buffs and soldiers/keepers team add dmg auras. And this is only for an engineer.
I'll do more calcs for more profs later in the thread.