Terraria Wiki:Projects/DPS
This is a project that will be dedicated to listing the average (due to critical hits) DPS of all weapons in the game on their respective pages. This will definitely be easier on the 
Desktop version, 
Console version, and 
Mobile version because of the DPS Meter, but weapons like the Tizona(Old-gen console and 3DS versions) still need to be measured. The base attack damage/speed and crit chance of the weapon itself is all that will be taken into account, although the DPS increases caused by potions/accessories/armor will be displayed on their respective pages. There could also be a chart displaying: minimum DPS (no crits, somewhat useful), average DPS (average crits, very useful) and max DPS (all crits, not very useful). This will help inexperienced players see how well high attack compares to high attack speed or crit chance, because most inexperienced players just see a high damage stat and pick that, but it is not always the best.
The progress of this project can be found on Weapon DPS chart.
Rules
- Use 3 Target Dummies for each weapon – allows for a moderate amount of piercing from certain weapons.
- Use base stats for all weapons (no armor, modifiers or accessories or buffs/bonuses/imbuing).
- Use autoswing if present (maximizes reproducibility of results) – not based on how fast different people can click in instances such as the Terra Blade. Otherwise attack as often as possible.
- Capture footage of 10 seconds of continuous weapon usage for each average, and calculate a mean by taking the DPS displayed once for each second and adding them up, before dividing by 10. This is because variations in critical strike chance rates can cause different values to be higher or lower, so an average is more desirable
- All ranges are taken from the base of the target dummy closest to the attacker.
- Melee weapons without a ranged attack must be done on the target dummies, standing at the adjacent block (so piercing weapons such as spears can do crowd control DPS).
- Melee weapons with a ranged attack (but not spreading, e.g. beam swords) should be done twice for two values – at point-blank range, and at 15 blocks away.
- Weapons with spreading projectiles (Vampire Knives, Shotgun, etc.) should be done at 5-block, 10-block and 15-block ranges, with separate averages.
- Use only default ammo (recommended are Endless Quiver/Musket Pouch) to further maximize reproducibility – this is the most important factor as we want DPS to be as accurate as possible in a normal situation, which is how players will use this statistic.
- Ranged weapons that do not have spread projectiles should be used at a 15-block range from the dummy, to factor in velocities.
- Magic weapons must be used following the criteria of either a ranged weapon, a shotgun, or a melee weapon, or a beam sword, depending on how it attacks. Do two averages – once with a Mana Flower and extremely large numbers of mana potions and once without a Mana Flower, to factor in mana recharge times as well as constant usage at the expensive of Mana Sickness.
- Summoning weapons will be difficult, so please suggest ideas for rules on the talk page.