You make some excellent points based on the "ability to complete a specific task" but I have to argue your wording and description as way more complicated than it needs to be, and purposly so for some reason.

I must preface this by saying as an expert EQ player, I understand everything your saying, and can invision the examples your after, but the conclusions your comming to are overly complicated in the Real game of EQ, or in a log parser, or lastly, in the term of DPS.

Ok, so how much damage did Joe do? In practice, probably next to none.
I think you left part of that example out, which is, that when Joe blasted, the monster only had 20 hp left. I understand what your saying, if it only had 20 hp left, and he spent the mana, the the monster may as well have had 3600 more HP. But in Real EQ, it doesnt matter, when the mob is dead, the mob is dead, and no longer doing damage to you. Unless you only have enough mana for 1 single spell per fight, then nothing is wasted or lost, you didnt "increase" the mobs HP. And for all intents and purposes, you can "count" on that much dmg in any given time.

if I told you that slowing a mob made it harder to hit, you'd scoff, but would you be SURE I wasn't right?
Again, I understand what your meaning to say, but your "ability" to hit a mob has nothing to do with how much or often it can hit you. If what you really mean is, did you know that slowing a mob reduces the amount of damage in a given time a melee can do to said mob, then you are absolutly correct, factoring in riposts, and damage shields, but you will "hit" a slowed mob just as much as an unslowed mob.


It's actually possible to do 1000 times a mob's HP in damage per fight, and if you do, it doesn't matter what your dps was, you've done that fight wrong.
Couldnt agree more, but this is exactly where making an issue over complicated is a problem. In Real EQ, your DPS has everything to do with this., as well as "tactics" that have absolutly nothing to do with DPS, like pullling mobs away from others, stuns, killing healers first...ect.

Example:
Mob A has 100 hp
You do 1 dmg per second
Mob B begins complete healing Mob A at 20 HP
Complete heal finishes with mob A at 10 HP, Mob A now has 100hp

Now, change your "dps" to 30 and see what happens to the example above.


In conclusion, Pearlmonkey, it's obvious you have an excellent excellent working knowledge of the game, and how everything effects everything else. Your type of understand is what makes great players, and raids won. But you cant rope everything into the DPS category and call it a false figure.

DPS is simply the amount of damage you do in a certain amount of time, in this case (per second). This is obviously a highly variable number. I used to parse in real time with my char using a "realtime average" of DPS using the last 15 seconds of data compared for average to all other 15 second segments, and over time, you can accuratly predict what you can expect to do in "DPS" to a mob at a given time, and that is what people are looking for.

I must say again for the people that read only the first and the last sentance, if your only speaking on calculation regarding sucessfull completion of a single target, your examples hold true, but do not disprove DPS.