Quote Originally Posted by winsock View Post
I appreciate the analogy as it helps me understand your line of thinking. You've missed something critical in your analogy however. "DPS" = "Damage per second" i.e. a "rate". It's not about how much tower you've built, it's about the "rate" at which you've built.

Root of the problem in this example is the same that it has been in previous ones: time.

When comparing "sustained DPS" in the tower example, we're comparing the rates at which the SCH and WHM can build a tower. WHM can build more tower per second than the SCH, which is why it has the highest "sustained DPS". This metric is important in selecting the right job for the task/use case. For example, if the WHM can only build towers up to 3 feet tall, but can build them faster than SCH, it is preferred over SCH for any job requiring a 3 foot tower or smaller.

Directly addressing the topic: you are combining the categories of "MP management" and "sustained DPS". While "MP management" and even "mobility" can negatively impact a WHM's DPS, you cant know in advance if, or the degree to which, the use case will cause MP or mobility problems that negatively impact the WHM's DPS. The term "sustained DPS", at least in part, exists a measure to see where you stand before taking penalties.
The problem here is that in practice, that "rate" isn't a constant value. Therefore, we are comparing an average rate.
The idea is that some classes can have a high rate for a limited amount of time (so, a high dps potential), after which it drops significantly, while other classes have a lower potential, but also don't have a drop as significantly. That's what that analogy was about.

For sustained DPS, we are generally smoothing away that limited high rate (generally called burst), so that these different classes can be compared for their overall result.

Now we can consider multiple ways to do that smoothing:
- consider the ENTIRE fight in which you want to compare classes, this of course has the issue that it's fight-dependent
- consider a theoretical situation in which a fight has no downtime and lasts forever, this has the problem that the burst part no longer has any influence, but you can reason about this theoretically, by determining the optimal/a resource-neutral rotation.
- consider an arbitrary amount of time, this isn't fight-dependent, and takes burst in account, which is nice, but it's hard to agree on what time period to choose.

I'd say the best definition for sustained dps is the 2nd method.. Every class can have a resource neutral rotation, although it might involve some planned idling (or foregoing skill/spell speed stats, which is essentially equivalent). This is a clear definition without any dependence on specific fight mechanics.