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Settings → DPS Meter

The counting rules behind the DPS Meter overlay. Everything on this page applies as soon as you hit Apply — no restart, including on fights already running.

Setting What it does
Count damage from Which damage a row may count: melee only, melee + my spells (default), or all damage. See below.
Spell credit window How long after one of your casts a non-melee hit still counts as yours (default 2 s). Only used by the two modes that count non-melee damage.
Count pet damage as mine Off by default. Adds your pet's damage to the session Best / Now / Last footer. The pet keeps its own row, marked (pet) and highlighted as yours, either way — this only decides whose damage the footer is a reading of.
Attacker dropoff How long a target's group stays on screen after the last hit against it from anyone (default 40 s; never keeps groups until you zone, camp or die). Individual attackers are never dropped, so an opener who stops swinging does not vanish mid-fight.
DPS averaging window The span each row's dps number is averaged over (default 12 s, EQTool's value). Damage is always divided by the full window, so a burst reads low until the window fills: 400 damage two seconds in shows 33 dps at 12 s. Shorter reacts faster; longer is steadier.
Session stat minimum fight A fight must run longer than this before it counts toward the footer (default 20 s, EQTool's rule). Most trash dies faster, which is why that footer can sit at zero all session.

What each mode counts

EverQuest logs spell, proc and damage-over-time damage as <target> was hit by non-melee for N points of damage. — a line that names no attacker. Every mode here is a different answer to that.

Mode Counts Trade-off
Melee only Weapon and fist damage: slashes, crushes, pierces, kicks, punches, backstabs. A caster's row stays empty all night. This is what nParse+ 2.2–2.4 did by default.
Melee + my spells (default) Melee, plus non-melee damage landing while you cast or within the credit window after. Another player nuking the same target in that moment can be miscredited to you.
All damage Melee, plus every non-melee line. The ones that follow no cast of yours are listed under (spell damage) instead of being credited to you. Group totals include damage nobody can be identified as the source of.

If you never cast anything, melee + my spells behaves exactly like melee only — nothing ever arms the credit window.

Three limits are worth knowing, and no setting removes them:

  • Damage shields and weapon procs follow no cast, so they are never attributed. A tank's proc damage is under-counted.
  • Two casters nuking one target inside the same window are indistinguishable from your log.
  • Damage over time cannot appear in any mode. Project 1999 does not log DoT ticks — the per-tick message was added in 2003 and removed as non-classic — so there is nothing for any parser to read.

Best and Now are running maxima, so nothing in them can be recomputed once the rule that produced them moves. A best-DPS measured over a 12-second window is not comparable to one over 4; a best measured while spell damage counted is unreachable once you switch to melee only. Changing Count damage from, Spell credit window, Count pet damage as mine, DPS averaging window or Session stat minimum fight therefore clears them. Last is untouched — you moved that aside deliberately.

Attacker dropoff does not clear anything: it decides how long a row is displayed, never what a reading measured.

Counting your pet

A magician reasonably reads their pet as part of their own output; someone comparing numbers against a raid parse reasonably does not. nParse+ does not pick for you — Count pet damage as mine is off, so your headline number means the same thing after upgrading as it did before, and one checkbox gives you the combined figure if that is what you want.

The pet's row is always marked (pet) and highlighted as yours regardless. Saying whose pet that is, is identification; adding its damage to your number is measurement, and only the second one is a matter of taste.

Upgrading from 2.4 or earlier

The old Melee damage only checkbox became this page's three-way mode, and your existing setting is carried over literally: ticked becomes melee only, unticked becomes all damage. Nothing about what your meter counts changes because you updated.

If you play a caster, this is the one setting to change. Set Count damage from to melee + my spells and your nukes start counting. A fresh install of nParse+ 2.5 or later starts there already; existing configs are left alone on purpose, because a number that quietly starts meaning something else after an update is worse than one you had to opt into.

Likewise Count pet damage as mine is off, so a pet's damage stays its own row until you say otherwise.