Parsing is basically dealing as much damage as possible during a given time without running out of resources. That's *what* it is. Now.. how to do that depends on your class, your builds and your prefered rotation. Generally, you are trying to drop all your "over-time" effects and use your spammable when you have nothing else to do. There are static rotations where you are performing the same routing over and over again, and there are dynamic rotations, where you basically refresh your over-time effects whenever you find time to do so.
Look up some tutorials on youtube. Skinny Cheeks has some very good ones for almost every class out there.

Get yourself some parse food (max resource, resource recovery. Lava stomp for stamina, I don’t remember the name of the magicka one but its one of the eyeball soups). Find an iron atronach dummy in someones house. Kill it 100%-0% health. Use the shard synergy it sends out as needed for sustain.

Parsing is a combat simulation to guage your effectiveness as a damage dealer in a Trial group.

The purpose is to make your performance comparable to that of other players. With the help off an addon, it will be measured and reduced to a number: DPS.

In order to reflect a Trial environment, the "trial" dummy will provide you a couple of buffs and debuffs, that a Trial group would normally have. It also has a high health to flatten out damage spikes mathematically and simultaneously test your ability to sustain your damage dealing performance over a long period of time.

When you kill the dummy it will post a number in chat which shows the DPS output for that parse.

The iron atronach is 21m health and you divide that number by the seconds taken to kill it to get the DPS number.

If you are on PC getting Combat Metrics will show it much clearer and break down damage per skill, crits, your penetration, crit damage etc and really give you more granular detail to show what’s contributing to your damage. You can compare that to others and see where you are doing well or can improve.

Amethyst_Unearthed wrote: »

i know WHAT it is, its the math and process to figure out the end DPS # that im having issues with

There’s really two parts that determine the final parse number.

1) The build- including stats like crit%, crit damage (capped at 125%), weapon/spell damage, maximum resource like stamina/magicka, penetration (capped at 18200), using sets that deal free damage like pillar of nirn

Weapon/Spell damage buff:
Damage bonus% = 100x (Weapon or spell damage buff)x (1+ damage multipliers) ÷ (Total Existing weapon or spell damage + total stamina or magicka ÷ 10.46)

Stamina/Magicka buff:
Damage bonus% = 100x (extra stamina or magicka buff) ÷ 10.46 x (1+ stamina or magicka multipliers) ÷ (Total weapon or spell damage + total Existing stamina or magicka ÷ 10.46)

Crit Rating buff:
Damage bonus% = 100x ((1- (Existing Crit% + Extra Crit%)/100 + Crit Multiplier x (Existing Crit% + Extra Crit%)/100) - (1- Existing Crit%/100 + crit multiplier x Existing Crit%/100)) ÷ (1- Existing Crit%/100 + crit multiplier x Existing Crit%/100)

Crit Multiplier buff (always aim to get 125% of this):
Damage bonus% = 100x ((1- Crit%/100 + (Existing Crit Multiplier + Crit Multiplier buff) x Crit%/100) - (1- Crit%/100 + Existing Crit Multiplier x Crit%/100)) ÷ (1- Crit%/100 + Existing Crit Multiplier x Crit%/100)



2) Executing skills quickly.

With any build the maximum parse will occur when every skill is cast as quickly as possible between the light or heavy attack. Some skills are instantaneous with a one-second cooldown like Nightblade’s surprise attack, some take time to finish and deal more damage like Wall of Elements from a staff (but still have a one-second cooldown), a few are channeled like Arcanist’s Fatecarver which lasts around 5 seconds. Typically you wouldn’t want to recast damage over time skills too early, to help get the most out of its damage per cast.

With a light attack build, damage over time (DOT) skills deal a lot more damage than instant skills but they last such a long time we really have no choice but to use a combination of instant or channel skills between the DOT skills.


Here’s an example of my own build:

Nightblade archer (15 skill rotation with light attacks between each skill, some skills are recast too early but I don’t really care to complicate the rotation. Each skill has a 1 second cooldown and there’s around .07 seconds added between each skill due to my slow response)

Endless Hail (120k total damage per cast)
Twisting Path (95k)
Poison Injection (120k)
Dark Shade (90k)
Assassins Will (80k)
Barbed trap (75k)
Concealed weapon (40k)
Lethal Arrow (45k)
Lethal Arrow (45k)
Assassins Will (80k)
Lethal Arrow (45k)
Lethal Arrow (45k)
Lethal Arrow (45k)
Lethal Arrow (45k)
Assassins Will (80k)

Add it all up and divide by the total time of the rotation: (120+95+120+80+90+75+40+45+45+80+45+45+45+45+80)/ 16.1 seconds = 65 kdps

Next add in all the free damage (per second):
Bleeding (2.8kdps)
Poison (2.9kdps)
Burning (3.8kdps)
Relequen set (10kdps)
Zaan set (4.5kdps)
Pillar of Nirn (8kdps)
Light attacks (14Kdps)

The total comes to around 111,000 dps. I’m leaving out a few details like the ultimate but that’s the gist of how parsing works


Ranged Arcanist: (maelstrom bow back bar, lightning staff front, one light attack before each fatecarver to build ultimate, .03 seconds added between each skill due to slow response)

Endless hail (180k)
Inspired Scolarship (80k)
Cephaliarchs flail (48k)
Pragmatic fatecarver (450k)
Cephaliarchs flail (48k)
Lightning wall (95k)
Barbed trap (77k)
Cephaliarchs flail (48k)
Pragmatic fatecarver (450k)
Cephaliarchs flail (48k)

(180+70+48+450+48+95+77+48+450+48) /17.3 seconds = 87.5 kdps

Next add in all the extra damage (per second):
Bleeding (3.3kdps)
Poison (2.9kdps)
Glyph (.8kdps)
Languid Eye (11kdps)
Miscellaneous (.5kdps)

The total comes to roughly 107,000 dps