In game DPS number and the wiki say 4.15 attacks per second...but it sure as hell isn't animating 4 attacks per second. And I'm clicking faster than it is animating. Is the animation inaccurate? Or does it only do like 2~3 per second?

Wondering because I've been using Chance's knife, which should be amazing, but doesn't feel like its killing things as fast as the listed DPS.

Random other question: is there a way to get rid of the power attack and just make holding down the mouse button spam the normal attack as fast as possible? It is really a huge pain to spamclick my mouse while maneuvering in combat.

DPS in Pip-boy take into account of your average crit damage with the weapon.

Ah, you're right. So the wiki is incorrect :/

Now I have to do a little math to calculate the actual attacks/s (

EDIT: the Cowboy +25% bonus applies to the critical bonus too right?

Ok with crits factored in the knife should be attacking at about 3.6 time per second according to in game DPS (assuming that the crit bonus damage is the same as the knife attack damage, it would be ~3.75 aps otherwise)

Then I timed how many knife swings I could get in 1 minute: came out to about 120ish swings. So the animation is only giving ~2 aps, still WAY less than what the DPS indicates.

Yeah the damage/DPS calculations seem a bit wonky. I've been using Chance's Knife for a while now, and although it does pretty decent damage, it's doing nowhere near the listed damage. And yes, I made sure I'm only using it on non armorered to light armored foes. I think I read somewhere that while the attack rate is listed as 4.13, it doesn't actually swing 4 times a second but rather much slower than that but instead there's an attack multiplier of 1.8. The problem is that the attack multiplier doesn't seem to work. So basically, half of the damage of Chance's Knife is gone.

But that's just what I've read, I can't claim that it's fact but it seems to support my experience as well.

Hrm interesting. Strange that they would put an attack multiplier instead of just making the knife do more base damage!

Well if that's not working then it would definitely make a lot of sense. Kind of a shame...I was all pumped for my Cowboy revolver/knife character

The entry point for Perks/Ammo/Drug varies. I yet to get Cowboy but if you see the Knife's attack jump after ward that means it apply before DT.

DPS for chance's knife is definitely wrong.

With decent luck it's DPS is closer to 35.

Who knows what it is?

The gauss rifle also has completely bogus DPS,.

Well that leaves the question: what is the best weapon for a crit based melee build?

If Chance's knife actually attacked 4 times per second it would be the best. Since it doesn't...mantis gauntlet maybe? Shishkebab with Pyromaniac?

I guess nobody knows the story with the knife

Quite sad, it was melee's only hope of doing comparable DPS to guns, every other melee weapon isn't even close. I think the highest you can get with a melee wep is like 200ish DPS? Vs. a sniper rifle rolling at like 400+ DPS, pinpoint accurate up to any range.

Ripper and Knock-Knock. Former just destroy things (though still behind Heavy Hand Chainsaw/Thremic Lanc), later is a balance between speed and hitting power, thus make it decent.....

DPS isn't everything. Even if Chance's Knife's DPS stats were accurate, it still wouldn't do as much damage to armored enemies as some of the higher damage melee/unarmed weapons. Plus, as your character progresses towards the level cap, with some of the higher damage melee weapons, the damage is front loaded and can kill things in one or two hits. So DPS means little when these front loaded damage weapons are killing things in one hit even if they're slower. They kill faster than some of the highest DPS guns.

I also wanted to make a Cowboy/Chance's Knife character but was disappointed by it because even with the Cowboy perk, weapons like Knock Knock, Ballistic Fist, Oh Baby, and Shishabob were killing things a hell of a lot faster. Maybe if they fixed the attack multiplier on Chance's Knife it would be comparable but not in the current state.

Not in VATS you can actually do more damage in VATS with unarmed than you can with guns. Just knock em down and stomp them to death.

Yeah that's a good point. How many things can you 1 hit with a melee weapon (is Oh Baby the strongest?) on Vhard?

Probably most of the unarmored foes. Heavily armored foes like Death Claws still take a couple of hits from a Ballistic Fist. Now if there were unarmored foes with tons and tons of HP, I think higher DPS would be better than high frontloaded damage. But there's none that I know of.

I think Oh Baby is the best for melee and Ballistic Fist for unarmed. I prefer the fist because it's more efficient in VATS.

Hrm don't seem be able to 1hit many things. For example I just cleaned out the Omertas, and all their gaurds took 2 hits to kill unless I got a crit (either Oh Baby or the Ballistic Fist). And yes that's with a power attack. I'm at lvl 25 with 100 in both Melee and Unarmed and all the melee relevant perks, and 10 strength, so short of drugs my 1hit damage isn't going to go up.

So close combat seems pretty bad, frankly. I guess I should have expected it to be a lot worse than guns though. It's fine vs everything humanoid, but deathclaws are a huge pain, since you die in 3 hits (even in full PA), so anything past 1 deathclaw is pretty much GG.

Pushy is definitely king of Unarmed.

Thermic Lance and Chainsaw also get Oh!Baby good run for caps.