DPS on snipe

What's the dps on snipe given the smallest cooldown between subsequent snipes (may have to animation cancel for this)

This question is riddled with so many minefields..i can see why no one has taken a shot at it yet. But I 42 the answer to the great question (ref Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy) shall take a snipe(pun intended) at this great question.

*My assumption
** all sec are game sec
** I could find energy regen rate ..so im assuming 1 energy/1sec
** snipe does 45 damage
** snipe needs 25 energy
** shot is instant
** Not sure if they ignore shields ?

*Simple dps ..not taking into account energy regen.
**Minimum ie 25 energy
*** just 1 shorts so 45=45/sec or 45 dps
*** if target has 3 Armour (45+3)=48 in a sec or 48dps
**Maximum ie 200 energy
*** 8 shots so 45*8=360 in a sec or 360 dps
*** if targets has 3 Armour , its (45+3)*8=384 dps

Now people might argue ..that even recharge rate has to be taken into account . If we do that , then the numbers drops like a stone

*Taking regen rate into account
**Minimum ie 25 energy
*** just 1 shorts so 45=45/25sec or 1.8 dps
*** if target has 3 Armour (45+3)=48 in 25 sec or 1.92 dps
**Maximum ie 200 energy
*** 8 shots so 45*8=360 in 200 sec or 1.8 dps
*** if tragets has 3 armour , its (45+3)*8=384 in 200sec or 1.92 dps

Considering marines do 6.97, and marauders do 6.67 dps..1.92dps is bad. But Ghosts do 6.67 base dps ..so a well micro ed snips improve the ghosts dps to a 6.67+1.92=8.59


What do you guys think, did i hit the mark(aka snipe)..or am i way off.

I think the idea was much less about recharge rate, more about just a few seconds in battle.

Also, Agent42, I don't think I've seen an application thread from you. Feel free to go ahead and make one

Oh I love to..but im only in gold

Leargle is right about the dps thing here. The question isn't "What's the dps on ghosts with snipe if we rely on their energy regen and such" The question is - if a ghost uses multiple snipes in a row - what is the overall dps of the ability.

The cooldown between each subsequent snipe is needed as well as the total amount of time it takes to cast all the snipes. (Also animation canceling needs to be taken into account if relevant)

For example - ghost can cast snipe 4 times over 2 seconds which yields a dps of roughly 90. (45 * 4) / 2 but I just made those numbers up.

I had already studied snipe some weeks ago, so I'll share my results. My goal was to get an idea of how the DPS of a ghost behave during a battle.
For this study, I used a method of analysis based on numerical simulations and some numerical values taken from liquipedia and tested in-game. I simulated one ghost entering the battle with 200/200 energy, shooting his snipes as fast as possible, and then resuming his normal attacks - the entire battle lasting 180 seconds. The idea was not to simulate a 3 minutes-long battle (which is ridiculously long!), but to get a clear idea of how the DPS behave after his initial snipes, and what factors would need to be taken into consideration.


The first case I considered was simulating a battle with the ghost not using snipe when is energy was recharged (which would be a non-microed ghost). The second one used a ghost which used snipe during the battle as soon as his energy was recharged. I made two versions of the last one (one with the DPS as scale, and one with the equivalent DPS of stimmed marines).
Here are the results:






We can see here that the DPS of the ghost starts at 90 for 4 seconds: indeed, each snipe deals 45 damage and is fired in 0.5 seconds. After the snipes, the ghost starts shooting normally. His DPS starts crumbling quickly. The first snipe will eventually come at the 45th second : way to late. The battle is probably already over, and the total damage dealt by the ghost is too high for the 45 damage of the snipe to increase the overall DPS significantly. As a first estimation, we can suppose that the average length of a head-to-head battle is around 15 seconds. The ghost would then have an overall DPS of 29 against pure non-light, and 35 against pure light - respectively as much as 2.8 and 3.3 stimmed marines. However, being able to burst his damage at the beginning of the battle makes the ghost significantly better than his equivalent number of stimmed marines (granted he can survive long enough). It is still at a rough guess way weaker than the first EMP against Protoss in terms of damage alone.


NB1: This is not proper experimentation, but is only a numerical simulation. As such, it only pictures boundary cases and is not meant to be over-interpreted.

NB2: Some technical precisions about how I proceeded.
I divided in-game time into 0.5 seconds fragments (hence the weird time scale on the graphs) and used the following reference values:

Ghost - 10 (+10 vs light) damage every 1.5 seconds. Regenerate 0,5625 energy per second.
Snipe - 45 damage. 25 energy. 0,5 second duration.
Stimmed marine - 10.5 DPS

No armor on the target. Ghost continuously shooting. Uses snipe as soon as possible (during battle if in case 2).