Which of these to stats next to weapons should I be paying most attention to? For example I get weapons that are weaker than others according to DAM but would be stronger when comparing them through DMPS.

Both.

Take my Sniper Rifle vs the Anti-Material Rifle.

The AMR has higher DAM than my Sniper rifle, but die to the AMR's slow firing speed, my Sniper Rifle has higher DPS.

DAM is great if you plan to 1 shot kills everything.
DPS is prevalent IF you have high accuracy (ala VATS or skill)

Dam is immediate damage done per shot. I pay most attention to this because I use disciplined trigger which slows down rate of fire for accuracy. It determines how much damage will be done and is very important when up against armored foes as it dictates how much damage is done past the armor they are wearing. ie: Dam - Enemy armor = damage done per shot.
DPS is damage per second. It averages out how fast the weapon fires and how much damage is done in that time to determine how much damage you can do to an unarmored opponent per second. Use this more if you focus on holding down the trigger till your opponent is dead.

Basically, it depends on your play style. Slow and focused, Dam. Quick and nonstop shooting, DPS.
Hope that helps.

So basically it's if your using a semi automatic weapon eg. Service Rifel, use DAM and if it's a fully automatic weapon like the 10mm smg, use DPS?

Most likely you're going to want to keep at least a couple of weapons in your inventory: one that has a high DPS, and one that has a high DAM.

The high DAM is probably the most important, though, because it's needed to overcome your enemies' Damage Threshold. If a weapon has really high DPS but that's based on a high rate of fire and a very low DAM, enemies with high Damage Threshold will tear you apart. For those enemies, at least, you'll want a weapon with high DAM.

The thing with DPS is that, as far as I know, it's of very little use to you if you use VATS a lot. VATS emphasizes each individual shot, while real-time shooting emphasizes DPS. So if you use VATS a lot (or if there are certain weapons for which you prefer to use VATS than real-time), then DAM is probably more important for you. If you like pressing the trigger in real-time and backpedaling until your enemy dies, then DPS is your friend. I personally like both for different scenarios, so I keep a high DPS weapon and a high DAM weapon at all times (and if your highest DAM weapon happens to be your highest DPS as well, then yay!).

DPS just means the weapon can do that much damage per second. The higher it is means a higher rate of fire. It is good to have a mix, so you get out as much hard hitting shots as you can at long range with the slow weapons, then if they make it up close, bring out that SMG and overwhelm them with DPS.

the assault carbine, while having weak DAM, has pretty good DPS. as such, i use it on Cazadors because it takes them down quickly unlike a single shot firing weapon like the .357 or 9mm.

Basically it depends on what you're fighting. If you're fighting thugs, coyotes, or anything like that with low armor you want high DPS because their damage threshold isn't going to cut much of it.

If you are fighting things like radscorpions or BoS DPS does you no good because their damage threshold is cutting each and every shot to most likely 3 damage so you need something that packs a punch so most of the damage can get through.


If you even cast a casual thought to a sniper riffle's DPS then YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!

Has anyone confirmed the actual formula yet for damage calculations? Is it as simple as "damage done = damage per shot minus DT"?

Or does a portion of the "ignored" damage leak through?

I know that sneak attack damage works and gets through an otherwise immune enemy's armor, but that may be merely because the critical multiplier raises the damage per shot over the DT.

20% leaks through by default.

So if enemy DT (say 20) > your damage (say 15), you still do 20% of 15, or 3 damage per ordinance that connects

I think...

The 20% is a variable that can be changed to 0, or other values, if you are so inclined and want the extra challenge.