The DPS calculation on the weapon item cards

🎤 [ Discussion ]

I'm trying to reverse engineer the DPS calculation that appears on the item cards of guns, and I think I am close with the formula, but there's some inconsistencies with some of the cards, and I am also off by just a little bit, so I'm not sure if there's some other rounding going on or maybe the formula is more complex than mine.

I ran through the item cards in these posts and did the calculations:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands4/comments/1lhalqb/more_legendary_loot/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands4/comments/1lh6c7t/hellwalker_returns/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands4/comments/1lhzy0h/legendary_jakobsrafa_skill_synergy/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Borderlands4/comments/1lhy6cy/legendary_ar_i_havent_seen_anyone_post_about/

And ended up with this table:

|| || |Pellet Count|Damage|Reload Speed (s)|Fire Rate (s)|Magazine Size|Calculated DPS|Expected DPS|Gun| |1|222|0.9|1|1|116.8421053|120|Hot Slugger| |1|64|2.6|8.3|40|345.0470932|343|Whiskey Foxtrot| |10|22|1|2|2|220|146|Hellwalker| |4|15|2.2|1|12|50.70422535|52|Linebacker| |1|38|2.7|9|6|67.72277228|68|Phantom Flame| |1|63|1.6|2.2|6|87.35294118|87|Queen's Rest| |1|22|2.7|8|36|110|79|Ohm I Got| |1|14|2|6|14|45.23076923|46|Potato Thrower IV| |1|38|2.3|2.4|8|53.96449704|54|Roach|

The "Expected DPS" is the one that is written on the item card in-game, and the "Calculated DPS" is the following formula I made up:

(Pellet Count x Damage) ÷ ((1 ÷ Fire Rate) + (Reload Speed ÷ Magazine Size))

As you can see, in most cases this works, but it didn't work on the Hellwalker. I thought maybe the Pellet Count part created complexity, but it worked on the Linebacker, so I have no idea why the Hellwalker didn't match.

The same goes for the Ohm I Got, and that's got a single pellet so I am unsure how that formula didn't work. Especially since, for so many of the other guns, it did. What makes the Ohm I Got have a different DPS calculation?

I didn't take into effect Accuracy nor any Elemental aspects, literally just the row of values that are at the top. I didn't see a trend that needed me to include them, only outliers that I can't explain.

Any ideas? Feel free to run this formula against guns you see in streams and other footage (I'm sure there's tons to go through) and see if you can come up with a more accurate formula.

Posted Jun 23, 2025, 4:17 AM UTC

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