What is the difference between burst and sustained DPS?

Burst DPS is the damage rate while firing a single magazine with no reload. Sustained DPS averages in the reload time between magazines, so it is always lower. Burst matters for short damage windows; sustained matters for long boss phases.

How do damage buffs combine?

In Destiny 2 most empowering and weaken effects multiply together rather than add. Enter your total combined multiplier — for example a 25 percent empower and a 15 percent weaken give 1.25 times 1.15, about 1.4375 — and the tool applies it to every hit.

How is fire rate turned into a damage rate?

Rounds per minute divided by 60 gives rounds per second. Multiply by per-hit damage and your accuracy fraction to get raw damage per second, then apply the buff multiplier. That is the burst DPS figure.

Why does accuracy lower my DPS?

A missed shot deals no damage but still consumes time and ammo. The tool multiplies your damage rate by your accuracy fraction, so 90 percent accuracy keeps 90 percent of the theoretical maximum.

Does this account for reload during a damage phase?

Sustained DPS does. It computes the time to empty a magazine, adds the reload time, and divides total magazine damage by that full cycle time. Burst DPS ignores reloads for the in-magazine rate.

Destiny 2 DPS Calculator

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Comparing Destiny 2 weapons by their raw numbers is misleading because reload downtime and accuracy quietly eat into real output. This calculator computes both burst DPS (while firing) and sustained DPS (including reloads) using the same mechanics the game applies, so you can rank builds honestly.

How it works

The weapon fires at a rate set by its RPM, and buffs multiply per-hit damage:

roundsPerSec  = rpm / 60
burstDPS      = perHitDamage × roundsPerSec × accuracy × buffMultiplier
magDamage     = perHitDamage × magazine × accuracy × buffMultiplier
fireTime      = magazine / roundsPerSec
sustainedDPS  = magDamage / (fireTime + reloadTime)

Buffs in Destiny 2 stack multiplicatively, so enter your combined multiplier. Sustained DPS folds reload into the cycle, which is why it sits below burst DPS.

Example and tips

A 200 RPM weapon hitting for 15,000 with a 4-round magazine, a 3-second reload, 95 percent accuracy and a 1.25 buff fires about 3.3 rounds per second for a burst DPS near 59,000, but sustained drops because the reload is long relative to a tiny magazine. Larger magazines and faster reloads close the gap between burst and sustained, which is why DPS rankings shift between short and long boss phases.