Protoss units are expensive too - DPS/cost would be a better metric, or DPS/supply.

The biggest shock for me was that who ever made this list wrote reavers do explosive damage AND that Arty didn't catch it! They do normal damage!

Infested Terran highest DPs in game bro arty

I think DPS as a stat is pretty useless to focus on in SC due to how armor reduces damage by a flat amount, favoring slower attacks with higher damage output over faster attacks with lower damage output. The reason people expected Tanks to be so much higher is because out of the 75 damage, you're usually losing like 2-3 points of damage against most units, which is reduction of around 3-4%, whereas going for Valks high DPS is practically useless against Carriers since their 6x8 attack is automatically reduced by 66% against the Carrier's 4 armor before the upgrades. Damage types, unit costs, and microability also make it even more complicated.

This list really goes to show how dynamic the game really is. Some interesting facts though, a single ling without crack out damaging a Zealot is pretty crazy for instance

Distance absolutely matters. With melee units like lings, ultras, DTs and Zealots they have very high dps but they are not always hitting. Units with range hut far more consistently and the longer your range is, the more likely they will hit.

the huge differences between scv, probe and drone are quite interesting when you for example want to kill a gas steal or a proxy pylon, cannon rush or something like that you need to pull way less scvs so i guess thats also why the scv pull against nexus first is possible

There's at least one error on the list Artosis was given (Reavers deal normal damage, not explosive damage; doublechecked in game to be sure). Also as chat notes, the speed of fire is faster than the speed of building scarabs, so reaver damage isn't technically sustain damage. The carrier one, from what I understand, depends a lot on micro. As far as missile turrets almost never dealing full damage--they deal full damage to almost every air unit in the game...except half damage to mutas. So like...technically not wrong in a practical sense since mutas are the most common target for missile turrets. But missile turrets get full damage to Shuttles, Arbiters, Carriers, Scouts, Battlecruisers, Wraiths, Dropships, Valkyries, Science Vessels, Zerg air cocoons, Devourer, Guardian, Overlord, and flying terran buildings. Less than full damage to mutas of course (50%), queens (75%), interceptors, corsairs, and observers (but full damage to the shields on those three protoss units, so not even that bad). Technically full damage to about 3/4 of all flying units in the game. Just...not the one unit terran cares about (mutas). A general comment on these numbers is that they assume +3 attack upgrades, but also an enemy with 0 defence. Which is...unrealistic. If you have +3 attack upgrades, usually at best you attack something with 1 defence (enemy buildings). And it's pretty common to find yourself attacking things with 3 defence (+3 upgraded enemy units) or even 4 defence (+3 upgraded units that have 1 natural armour, which a lot of units do). Generally the un-upgraded numbers are a more realistic guess as to how well a unit will do in combat (not the upgraded numbers against a 0 defence enemy, which is what the table is sorted by). And yeah, obviously price needs to be considered. One ultra might out-damage two marines, but not four marines (same supply) and definitely not 8 marines (same overall cost).

Interceptors/Carriers have a lot of weird mechanics that make getting an exact DPS value for them pretty much impossible (well, maybe not impossible, but really annoying). On paper, the values here are correct but in practice its DPS is constantly varying in a certain range (sometimes higher than shown here, sometimes lower) also, fun fact: If the Infested Terran *didn't* explode when attacking, it would have *11,904 dps* lol for anyone that is wondering, the attack speed values are calculated by doing: weapon cooldown frames * current game speed / 1000 (or, cooldown / (1000 / gamespeed), which can be simpler if you need to do a lot of these calculations in bulk) game speed in BW is a number of milliseconds to wait before each game frame. on the Fastest speed, this is 42ms. the Infested Terran's cooldown is 1 frame. so, 1 * 42 / 1000 = 0.042. then the actual DPS is 500 / 0.042 = ~11,904 also @ ~18:39 for people wondering, the SCV _technically_ has higher DPS if you spam-click it to attack. its normally brought down to about the same DPS as a Probe/Drone if it's just auto-attacking. all workers have a kind of weirdness with their range but its much much easier to abuse on Probes and Drones, and both Probes and Drones regenerate HP, so this is why they are overall better than an SCV even though the SCV on paper has better DPS and more HP. something like that anyway, im not 100% privy to how exactly it works, but its more or less something like that iirc

damage per cost or supply would be more informative i think

BTW, all these numbers are available on Liquipedia on the individual unit pages. You can also get them from the weapon type data by dividing DamageAmount by DamageCooldown and then dividing by 0.042. Exceptions are things like the Reaver and Carrier which need to be computed separately due to their unique logic, and units that shoot twice, like the goliath, which need to be doubled. Doing this can also get you some silly/meaningless results like the nuclear missile or infested Terran. That's because these all have a nominal cooldown of 1 frame, though in reality, that cooldown is not used. There are also a couple of unused attacks with undefined 0/0 damage/cd. The highest meaningful dps in an unmodified Brood War map is Zeratul, a dark templar hero, with108.2 dps. His attack is also normal (so no type reductions) and extremely resilient to armor (dealing 100 damage per hit). Next is a tie between Infested Kerrigan, and Torrasque with 79.4, but Torrasque's attack beats Kerrigans with upgrades, at +3 bonus instead of +1. After that, you get the unused Tassadar/Zeratul archon hero with 71.4 dps, and then, believe it or not, is Fenix the Dragoon (48.7). Then Edmund Duke in siege mode (47.6) and not in siege mode (45.0), Tom Kazansky wraith AA (43.3), Alan Schezar goliath AA tied with Fenix zealot (43.3), and then Norad II tied with the calculation for the reaver given in the video (39.7). After that is the pre-expansion DT hero tied with the regular archon (35.7), then Gui Montag (34.6 if it hits twice), and then Raynor tied with Kerrigan, Stukov, and Hyperion (32.5), and so on. At the very bottom, you have a bunch of 0s for spells that don't deal damage like stasis field, then the arbiter at 5.3, which shouldn't really surprise you. After that is a tie between the broodling, drone and, probe (5.4), devourer (6.0), wraith AG tied with scout AG (6.3), mutalisk (excluding bounces, 7.1), an unused unit called "Special Independent Starport" (7.6), SCV (7.9), marine without stim (9.5), mutalisk (including bounces, 10.3), Danimoth arbiter hero (10.6), floor and wall trap missiles and autocannons tied with ghosts (10.8), Tom Kazansky AG (12.7), lurkers (12.9), goliath AG (13.0), and so on. For this, I used v 1.16.1, but the results should be the same in every version since 1.04 when BW was introduced.

the crakling is incredible for a 25 mineral unit

I appreciate Artosis pretending he doesn't know this for the sake of a fun video.

probe drone beat scv KEKW in what game arty?

The guy in the chat saying ,,Guys he s making a point about protoss again" ... deserves an award, he understands. The discussion wouldnt even happen if it was all terran units lmao :D

I'd be curious about dps per cost or dps per supply.

I'd like to see a list where DPS for units is separated for different targets (small, big, buildings etc.) Also a list with DPS per cost

Would be interested to see this with cost and build time factored in

Artosis what do you think about starcraft original and brood war art. I think its all interesting. Make a video about your opinions. I am writing from my mothers account.

I appreciate your use of trigonometric identities in the screenshot for this video!

This is, indeed, an intriguing list

Interesting no Infested Terran Science V. Defiler Templar Scorge Curious what they would be.

What about the lurker?

Where is the scourge? I thought for sure it had the highest dps because it literally does all its damage in 1 frame

I feel it’s a problem to not factor in distance. Does a marine have more DPS if you factor in it can start hitting before the other unit walks up to it? You could take the sum of all damage once in marine range, if you wanted a more realistic damage amount

Very interesting list. I didn't knew that workers have different DPS. Also, it confirms that tanks do more damage when sieged. This reminds me of my research for unit selection ranks, made 13 years ago: note that, there the terran race is superior :)

One thing I remember trying to explain to someone in a UMS game: range was far more important than damage. He had rigged the map with him playing as zerglings with 100 attack and I was playing with Ghosts with only 10 attack. But once I hit critical mass, zerglings could never get to ghosts. Still holds true in every "real" map for every RTS, arguably the most important stat any unit has is range, followed by movement speed, then actual damage, because the first two effectively show how you can micro or take advantage of other units.

funfact missile turrets doing explosive is pretty good, nearly all air units are actually large (every terran air unit is large) unfortunately mutas are small and are one of the most relevant units turrets have to fight, but in TvT or TvP turrets are doing full dps to everything except corsairs also before you reply, yes wraiths are large, yes scouts are large

Screaming bird guy in the chat, I love you

but no infested terran?

An interesting stat would be the DPS / cost.

thinking fully upped stim'd marine, ditto ling, carrier...

Makes you think if firebats are underused. 2x the damage of vultures while also being easier to produce because a barracks is significantly cheaper than a factory. But I suppose reavers stomp so hard on bio that it's not worth it to go bio at all.

I was kinda hoping for a deep dive lecture format instead of a game show to learn how the actual calculations worked but ah well, it was worth a skim to learn that Reavers have sneakily been doing explosive damage all along when I thought the scarab just glitched

Clearly dark arcon mc reaver then equal until new mc and then goes up.

Why no guardians in the list?

We all know Infested Terran and Scourge have the best dps, dont try to lie to us. Kinda confused on why Hydra spines and Sunken tendril are explosive damage...

Muta isn't that surprising. It only fights wimpy units (ie: Marines, SCVs, Templars) and you use a stack of them.

If dragoons did normal damage protoss would win every PvZ

crackling really is the highest though, there's two of em

I always felt like even pros use devourers wrong. Theyre a support unit designed to buff muta bounces, but every once in a while youll see a pro use guardians and for air support they build a single devourer that dies instantly

Crackling is top of the list for dps/cost

crackling should be technically be #1 since you literally can’t make only 1 crackling. they come in pairs

Wow didn't know SCVs attacked faster than Drones and Probes.

Inrested carrier

Hey Arty, I think it would be nice to have a chart/explanation with which units beat which other. Something like… 2 marines lose to 1 zealot 3 marines beat 1 zealot (heavy micro) … 12 mutas beat 12 goliaths … Something like that. Please and thank you

this isnt correct. units with splash should be way higher when hitting multiple targets, should math that out properly. also need to calculate the dps/cost and dps/supply etc

This kind of blew my mind. I don't think I got a single one right.

I am shocked that Hydralisks somehow have higher DPS than Lurkers.

Bunker with 4 marines is on top of everything, except arty pic ofc

'BVUUUUUUUT ARTOSIS' - DPS is only an illusion with such high damage. You have to assumne that you've done damage with reaver (even with +damage upgrade), where you have to minus the over-kill damage. You can't pretend that doing a NUKE'S worth of damage against a 1 hp zergling technically has such massive damage. WHICH technically according to the situation here since nukes cost minerals and gas and take supply is the most DPSing unit in the game!

Artosis when will you learn to use ghosts artosis

Ghost via Nuke

Reavers, Archons, and Dark Templars, Firebats and Ultralisks need high DPS to compensate for how slow, expensive, inefficient and short ranged they are, telling you this as an honest zerg main, not as a pesagi propagandist.

Protoss might have the top spots but its a blowout after DT and scout is useless.

DPS is pretty silly for starcraft since it wildly differs depending on the target.

You just can't give cheap and microanle terran and especially zerg units like marines, zerglings and mutas high DPS otherwise will be too IMBA

I mean ultras are pretty huge, makes sense they have huge DPS

Stimmed Marines give Mutas fever dreams

You divide the dps by the supply of each unit and the results stop being surprising, I think

OF COURSE IT IS ZERATUL!!

ultralisk with stim is best

Yeah, as soon as you throw in COST of a unit, the list loses most of it's use, but it IS interesting. There is a mission in BW where you get marines and you can put single marines into Goliaths... but turns out that even when NOT stimmed, the marine has better DPS. lol

I thought Tank mode had better dps than Siege mode. Interesting.

Technically, the Nuke is a unit. It has the highest DPS by far.

Overall a pretty ‘meh’ ranking list. Armor negation and damage types really makes this list obsolete. Abilities like Plagguuuuu and Storm out DPS everything, ignoring armor. Ultras pathing is really sketchy and reavers scarabs duds often. That is why siege tanks are so good at DPSing (albeit at a critical mass): they don’t miss nor need to path to their targets, making their DPS consistent on a defensive stance. On a funny final note, a single infested terran in the middle of a mass of units and nukes would probably be at the top of the list since all their DPS is in a single frame!

1. Crackling 2. Stimmed firebat 3. DT 4. Siege mode Siege tank See if I'm correct.. :P

Ghost

Poor Terrans 😂

Lings are OPAF.

OG Brood War infested terran has 500 damage with splash. When they engage it is not a slow buildup to explode

daily validation that terran is hardest race ✅

OMG, unupgraded zergling and corsair damage is so unsulting!!

infested terrans in shambles

Protoss cant win an ASL even with the top 3 highest dps units, When can we get a buff?

Wait if Goliath has so high damage, why are they such a piece of shit at killing Scourge? Like they are worse than marines in every way?

yeah this list is pretty useless without adjusting for cost.

There are at least 5 numerical mistakes here, assuming we are only talking about a single unit hitting a single target. But i might as well talk about all mistakes in general. The most DPS comes from a stimmed firebat if all 3 lines of attack hit the target. That is 24/11 = 2.181818... But i can let that one slide cuz it's too esoteric. Normally only 2 lines of attack hit the target so it is 16/11 = 1.454545... The Reaver does NORMAL damage, not explosive. "The Carrier"...You mean 8 interceptors? See this is why u gotta be clear about single unit. But no big deal i guess. The stimmed firebat (2 hits) and goliath air attack have the same DPS. 16/11 = 32/22 = 1.454545... The crackling and missile turret are tied too, 8/6 = 20/15 = 1.333333... The Tank (Siege) and BC are tied too, 85/75 = 34/30 = 1.133333... After the Valk, the next unit should be the stimmed marine. 9/8 = 1.125. This is assuming that the Cooldown of a simmed marine is equal to half of it's normal Cooldown, but 15/2 = 7.5 and that gets rounded up to 8. Then after that it is the Tank (Unsieged), 39/37 = 1.054054... Then finally we get to the zergling, no adrenal (8/8), but it turns out there are THREE OTHER things tied with it. Spore Colony (15/15), zealot (22/22), and Corsair (8/8). These all exactly = 1. Okay after that i think there are still some mistakes but i'm not gonna go that far. I would like to end this by explaining why these mistakes are so common. First, whoever made that chart was using actual seconds, so you have to use that ridiculous time factor of 1000/42 which is an absurd number. Ppl punch it into the calculator wrong all the time. It is way way WAY better to just use integers in the FRAME COUNT. Go by frames, not seconds. Both of these things use damage-per-time. Second, ppl get confused on the upgrade numbers. For example, a zealot starts with 16 and gets +2 per upgrade, so the total upgraded attack is 22. A pompom tank starts with 30 and gets +3 per upgrade, so the total upgraded attack is 39. And it gets more confusing when there are 2 hits, or multiple hits, from the unit. You have to very carefully add and multiple things there. And to whoever made the chart, double check your numbers plz. This is WAY EASIER if you go by frame count, not seconds.

nonsense

Reavers do not do explosive damage!!!! They would suk balls if they only did 50 damage to scvs

A work of love, but extremely meaningless and quite misleading. The tests are done vs protoss shields meaning all damage is done in full. The DPS for most units is even lower than that, due to the failed damage type vs unit type . The DPS for all units is lower vs units with native armor.

ive heard casters of sc2 say "DPS" and mean "damage per second" and "damage per shot".

I find it interesting how Artosis says the missile turret deals full damage to basically nothing that flies, when in reality there are only 6 air units that don't take full damage. (Interceptor, Corsair, Observer, Queen, Mutalisk, Scourge). Literally every other air unit takes full damage, and only one of the listed units can attack the turret directly.

Okay but counters exist so dps is not uniform

Technically infested Terran has the highest dps

Artosis, you killed your channel by going on hiatus.