Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Gaming terms, a quick rundown

As someone who travels the gaming sphere a bit, certain terms continue to pop up and remain relevant from game to game.  I'd like to go through some of those terms tonight, and basically explain what they mean, and how they are generally calculated.

DPS - Damage per second.  This is a calculation of a players damage per second.  This translates to every second of combat, a character is doing X amount of damage.  This is calculated by taking the total length of the fight in seconds and dividing the total amount of damage done by the player.

TPS - Threat per second.  This is the amount of threat a character generates per second of combat.  Calculated in the same manner as DPS, this stat is generally more appropriate to tanks and such.

HPS - Health per second.  This is a calculation of the amount a character heals over a set period of time.

HOTS - Heals over time - This is a mechanic where a heal  will hit a character, and every few seconds afterwards, will give them back some health towards their full health.

DOTS - Damage over time - This is a mechanic where an effect will hit a target, and over the course of a set amount of time, deal damage to that target based upon an in-game calculation.

This is just a quick overview, hopefully Thursdayay I will have a much more in-depth look at some mechanics.

2 comments:

  1. Let's not forget how TPS is a part of all DPS, and likewise the inverse for all players within games. In this, I mean that a player who is a damage dealer, such as a rogue or warlock with generate Threat per Second (TPS) just as they do Damage per second, it should be an obvious logical flow. Therefore, it would then seem logical if, 1 damage = 1 threat, that tanks, or vanguards who hold the attention of the big monsters are also doing a substantial amount of damage.

    They are not.

    Tanks often have special abilities that produce multiplied threat. Thus the 500 damage weapon hit does 1.6x threat, or 800 threat.

    The reverse is true of most damage classes (confusingly for new players, also called DPS, you are what you do). Most DPS classes have threat reduction abilities, from turning invisible, to making the monster believe someone else (often the Tank) did the actual attack. They also often have a passive multiplier as well on their damage. Such that the 2000 damage strike they just did only gets 80% threat, so it's treated as a 1600 damage strike.

    I'm sure most of this will be brought into greater light come Thursday as well plunge deeper down the rabbit-hole of terminology.

    Oh and hello readers! I am the aforementioned guest blogger that will once in a great while chime in!

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  2. One term i can think of is:

    Zerging: Taking a huge amount of players and using them to overwhelm an opponent with sher numbers.

    -Redwind.

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