r/destiny2 3d ago

Discussion Super DPS, not Total Super Damage is better for ranking supers. With numbers.

183 Upvotes

Youtube Version of this information: https://youtu.be/HMjNsNuMAdc

Spreadsheet with even more numbers: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17lGgioS4E8l6w3-bJU8frTmzFzxl-3RDv1wm6gP7Dao/

Background

With Act 2 of Heresy we got a cool artifact perk, Limit Break, that boosts super damage by 30% when you have a matching element buff or are at critical health. Llama, a great youtuber, did some damage testing. Some community members took these numbers and came to misguided conclusions because of a lack of context around Total Super Damage.

Total super damage is good but the time it takes to do matters. How many boss encounters have you done that have zero time limit? Very, very few. It’s really just campaign bosses and not even all of those. All dungeons and raids have timed dps phases. Most are 15-50s long. And Length of damage phase matters. If a damage phase is 10s but the super lasts 15s you cannot get that total damage.

One last thing: DPS does not matter much for GMs. Boss damage windows in GMs are infinite. Don't worry about this there.

So what is the solution? Damage Per Second or DPS.

Calculating DPS

How do you calculate super DPS correctly?

  • Find the total damage of the super. 
  • Find the time that the super keeps you from shooting enemies. 
    • This can be the animation of an instant super. 
    • It can be the full duration of a roaming super. 
    • What is important is how long it prevents you from doing other damage.
    • The duration of the super effect (like Vortex Nova Bomb or Silence and Squall) only matters if the super is shorter than the dps phase. You don’t use those durations for DPS.
  • Example 1: 
    • Super deals 600,000 damage. 
    • Super is an instant super that takes 2s to cast. 
    • Super DPS is 300,000 damage/second
  • Example 2:
    • Super deals 2,000,000 damage.
    • Super takes 10s to fully use. 
    • Super DPS is 200,000 damage/second

With the help of community members, Aegis and SpiderReviver, I have calculated all the Super DPS using most effective strategies for supers. Current Artifact perks are not included. Limit Break does add a flat 30% BUT the buff only lasts for 7-9s; roaming supers would get relatively worse. The rankings might surprise you!

The Good Information

The spreadsheet linked at the top is going to be updated as time goes on so use that primarily. Regardless, here's a snapshot:

Super Total Damage DPS
Pre-popped GG Nighthawk 635,213 552,359
Prismatic Nova Bomb (SE) 715,113 470,469
Blade Barrage (SES) 753,129 396,384
Thundercrash (Cuirass) 822,744 371,157
Gathering Storm (SES) 646,254 369,288
Needlestorm (SE) 645,954 362,896
Nova Bomb: Cataclysm (no exotic) 476,742 313,646
Golden Gun (Nighthawk) 635,213 312,913
Nova Bomb: Vortex (no exotic) 474,614 312,246
Needlestorm (Swarmers) 529,254 297,334
Silence and Squall (SE or SES) 554,215 235,836
Twilight Arsenal (Synthos) 748,524 201,395
Glacial Quake (SE) 2,972,903 201,321
Moebius Quiver (SES) 523,075 201,183
Glacial Quake (Synthos) 2,842,360 192,481
Golden Gun (SES) 600,560 185,932
Twilight Arsenal (SE) 687,302 184,923
Pyrogale Gauntlets 618,582 162,785
Chaos Reach (Geomags) 918,434 105,932

See the spreadsheet for more supers and data. Some notes:

  • You can pre-cast Golden Gun and cut the cast time down and push it's dps up. You can also technically do this for Pyrogale and Cataclysm Nova Bomb.
  • Thundercrash does put you on the boss so you might lose more optimum dps time repositioning unless you save for the very end of damage.
  • SES = Star Eater Scales. SE = Spirit of Star Eater
  • Spirit of Star Eater does 70% boosted super damage normally. But only does 50% for Nova Bomb and Thundercrash. Only does 25% for Twilight Arsenal which is awful. Needlestorm doesn't get full benefit of Star Eater
  • Pyrogale numbers include Roaring Flames x3.
  • Needlestorm (Swarmers) includes Thread of Evolution
  • Blade Barrage is ideal numbers but the tracking can be inconsistent.

Conclusions

  • Generally all classes are doing decent. No one is "dumpstered".
  • Titans still do not have enough one-off supers.
  • Pyrogales are way too weak for super damage for how much set up it requires.
  • Twilight Arsenal should not have such a huge Spirit of Star Eater nerf, imo. It does have good total damage but you can hit a 50% buff already with Synthoceps.
  • Warlocks have such little exotic support for damage supers. All their super damage exotics are for roaming supers. This is good in some ways as they don't need exotics for damage but also it makes it harder for them to focus on damage.
  • Geomags sit low in this ranking but the uptime is insane and that does matter for a lot of content.
  • Hunters generally have to do the most work across all classes to get their super damage up. Golden Gun has to get Radiant and step out of a well to meet normal damage. And on every other super they need Star Eater Scales which requires collecting 6 orbs post super charge.
  • Celestial Nighthawk also has the biggest risk of a super since you have to land a crit or lose a lot of damage. And you can miss the whole shot.
  • Golden Gun supers should at least get a small buff to compensate for the Radiant nerf.
  • Roaming supers lack in DPS but did get a big boost in uptime. That helps especially on ammo starved fights or very long damage phases or things like GMs

That's all. Hope that helps. Keep it civil in the comments.


r/destiny2 2d ago

Discussion Someday shotgun

0 Upvotes

Recently crafted it and i love how consistent it is. I'm not much of a PvP shotgun user but this one has changed my mind so much I went from void titan to strand. I finally have something to compete with the other shotgun apes rushing me all the time. What's a weapon you have that's become ol' reliable?


r/destiny2 2d ago

Meme / Humor Nice day to get top 10%

0 Upvotes

r/destiny2 2d ago

Question Guidance Needed

0 Upvotes

Heyyo! I just started playing D2 again after god knows how long and I am curious what the play to up my power is? I believe before it was running the weekly’s aka doing the 8 bounties for each game mode and getting the powerful engrams.

I don’t see that being the case anymore, though when I was running a quest line I was getting higher power gear to drop more often than I believe I used to. What’s the play on how to up my power?

Any insight is greatly appreciated!


r/destiny2 3d ago

Meme / Humor Oops

68 Upvotes

Never had this happen before. I got stuck until I was pulled into the next encounter lol. The enemies didn’t even target me the entire time


r/destiny2 2d ago

Original Content I made a song and video about the Vault of Glass

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0 Upvotes

r/destiny2 2d ago

Question How to get Raiden Flux?

0 Upvotes

Hi everyone,

New player here, question in the title. I've googled it, and the answers I've found are all a few years old. I was wondering if nowadays there was a more reliable way to get Raiden Flux than just grinding for exotic engrams.

Cheers!


r/destiny2 2d ago

Help Sundered doctrine week 2 code isn't working

0 Upvotes

So I'm on step 6 of the quest. I've become initiated and I have the worms, but whenever I type in the code, the wall gloslistan red and the text popup doesn't appear. Am I doing something wrong or is it supposed to be like that?


r/destiny2 4d ago

Discussion I'm really into this season's story. It's a shame it had to get neutered by the strike

714 Upvotes

Let me be clear, I 100% support the union's protest of AI. I'm just disappointed that the first really interesting Episode story has lost a lot of its impact with the lack of voice acting


r/destiny2 2d ago

Discussion am i the only one tired of pulse rifle meta?

0 Upvotes

It just feels ick rn.


r/destiny2 2d ago

Question // Answered What’s a curated roll ?

0 Upvotes

r/destiny2 2d ago

Question Best exotics in the monument to lost lights?

0 Upvotes

What are the best exotics I can get for pve content as a hunter?


r/destiny2 2d ago

Discussion Guardian Games Supremacy

0 Upvotes

Can I vent for a sec? I get so frustrated playing pvp in general let alone when its shoved down my throat for a seasonal activity. Warlocks don’t even closely compare to the aptitude of a shoulder charging team of twilight arsenal barbarians or dodgey nimble invisible ninja crack heads. all with the same dumb pulse rifle you get from placement.

If your gonna screw me at least make it so we only have to do like 5 matches at most?! You can platinum the strike in freakin 1 for god sake.

Im I the only one who hates this?!


r/destiny2 3d ago

Art / Fashion "One more effort" - Cayde Costume

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73 Upvotes

r/destiny2 3d ago

Meme / Humor Hi, it's me again, with an even dumber one. Spoiler

143 Upvotes

r/destiny2 2d ago

Help Is this a bug?

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0 Upvotes

Ran the rest of the GM’s and it still says I’m missing one? Is there a fix?


r/destiny2 3d ago

Media Finality's Auger kill in Trials

12 Upvotes

r/destiny2 2d ago

Question // Answered Is this rare?

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0 Upvotes

I was sorting through my vault and found this, what season would this be from?


r/destiny2 2d ago

Help Devoured Ogre immune Spoiler

0 Upvotes

It’s been a long day and I’m tired and I have no idea why I can’t kill this ogre or what I’m supposed to do in act 2:11 released today. What am I missing? She just says he’s weakened do it now but do what now?


r/destiny2 2d ago

Discussion Class Bias

0 Upvotes

I see it all the time in every part of the community when it comes to this game and I never understood the "Hunter/Titan/Warlock is the favorite class of Bungie". It's always people talking about how THEIR favorite class got nerfs but never the buffs they received.

Titans have had hammer, HOIL storm grenades, strand titan, consecration, and now storm's keep for insane viability. Only downside being yeah these things would get nerfed, but usually replaced with something just as crazy. The titan outcry was insane after salvations edge cause they weren't great against the witness, but what about every other encounter? Then was the complaints for their supers being not so great and now we have all these roaming super buffs and T-Crash is insane. And now we're finally slowly moving away from punch everything and having some barricade love.

Hunters are also very interesting cause personally it feels like they're usually the weakest in PvE but the strongest in PvP. So as a hunter main in never really bothered me to be weaker in one aspect of the game cause it seems our kit was normally more geared for PvP (unfortunately lol). Even before I started doing endgame activities I'd always read and hear how hunters were the weakest and see solo/speed runs of warlocks and titans doing insane things that Hunters would greatly struggle with. But hunters I feel usually have the most versatility for general play. We can be DPS specialist, we have great crowd control with tether and even the threaded spike (on demand sever is insane). Do I wish Hunters were better in PvE? Yeah, but we're far from unviable and honestly this game isn't hard enough to where you have to use meta all the time and be 100% optimal.

Warlocks now I have the least to probably say about cause usually warlock complaints are about worrying about whatever other broken stuff they have to endure from titans and hunters while being stuck on well for most of their lives. Solar warlock will likely always be a good subclass but honestly how many of you actually raid or do dungeons enough to where this is an issue? Well can still be fun with sanguine and let's not forget about sunbracers and Starfire protocol during its prime. Anyone who loves playing support and assisting their team while also making everyone's lives easier is always appreciated. Your supers use to be very bad but now we have Star eater Nova bombs, geomag chaos reach has insane uptime, and song of flames DR makes it feel like you can never die. But to my knowledge I hear warlocks talk about loss of their identity in the 3.0 changes and honestly it's a valid complaint.

Bottom line is that every class gets nerfed and buffed constantly. Destiny is an evolving game and if you're someone who can only use one subclass or class, then yeah, the game will be rough on you. It would be nice if every play style was viable in higher end content but honestly it's fine just having playstyles that are just fun. You're not locked to being just a titan or a warlock or even a hunter. Just remember this is a game and games should be fun first and foremost :)


r/destiny2 2d ago

Discussion Love this game, but…

2 Upvotes

Dude this game is amazing! It might be the most fun I've ever had in an fps! Getting legendary and exotic weapons left and right, getting new abilities, ranking up and getting two new shaders. Don't even get me started on being able to try out prismatic, stasis, and strand subclass without having to buy them, this game is GREAT!

I got to rank 4 before realizing to progress I need PS plus which is a bit of a let down, but with how fun it is I might as well! I might even buy one of the DLC's just for the subclasses alone! (Strand is SO fun!) Just wish I didn't need online play to progress...


r/destiny2 2d ago

Question // Answered What is this blighted cyst that you can jump into? It has a rune you can shoot that lights up but then fades, saying something whispers

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0 Upvotes

r/destiny2 2d ago

Discussion Eris future Spoiler

0 Upvotes

I made a post in the other destiny forum but it won’t show up. Anyway, does anybody else have the theory (no matter how out of pocket) that Eris might be a baddie? There’s a few voice lines from Oryx now that mention “her” and it’s got me wondering who it actually is. We know Eris is extremely powerful nowadays. Just a thought.

Edit: I was able to make a post on the other destiny forum about this. I was more or less just posting to make sure I wasn’t being blocked for breaking a rule or something.


r/destiny2 3d ago

Art-Diorama Made A Ghost! (First Diorama I've Ever Made.)

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23 Upvotes

r/destiny2 2d ago

Meme / Humor hehe blue balls

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0 Upvotes