This question is closely related to: In point-blank range, is Winston's melee preferable to his gun?
However, I'm not asking what's preferable, I'm just interested in the raw DPS data, because I'd like to draw my own conclusions. Let's ignore reload times and armor for DPS calculations.
As far as I'm informed (and I thought I confirmed this with a few quick experiments), this is how it works:
- LMB does 60 DPS
- Melee does 30 DPS
After you melee you can't do anything else for 0.5 seconds. After those 0.5 seconds you can use LMB, but you can't melee again for another 0.5 seconds (melee has 1 second of "cooldown"). That's why, when you just continuously interrupt the LMB with melees, you still use the tesla gun for 0.5 seconds inbetween the punches.
This means: you give up 0.5 seconds of LMB every second, in order to do 30 damage with the melee. 0.5 seconds of LMB also equals 30 damage. Meaning:
total DPS = (LMB / 2) + melee = (60 / 2) + 30 = 60
So the basic DPS should be the same. Which makes continuously interrupting LMB with melee technically better, because it's better vs armor and conserves ammo. The downsides are obvious: you run the risk of missing a melee, thereby missing out on a ton of DPS, and you can't really cleave with melee. Therefore, this is only applicable against a single target and it's still somewhat high risk.
Today, I was using the melee interrupts on an enemy in a 1v1 and after the match he said I should stop it because it does less DPS. He said it's something like 67 vs 75 DPS with vs without melee. So now I'm doubting myself, which is why I'm asking this: what is the DPS of Winstons LMB, and what is the DPS of his LMB when it's continuously interrupted with melee?
Best Answer
If we use your calculation then you would find that a punch plus half a second of tesla deals the same amount of DPS as the tesla on its own (against non-armor). Though in practice I was using 9-10 between punches meaning you potentially lose out on 3 DPS with the punch interrupts. Not to mention the potential of missing a punch which then cuts DPS in half.
Pros of adding the punch:
Better against armor
Saves ammo
Cons of the punch:
Small DPS loss (noticed using 9 instead of 10 rounds)
Potential to miss
Only hits a single target
Shorter range than tesla
The caveat is that punching is instant and equal to half a second of the tesla. So if you kill an enemy with a punch you will kill them up to a half a second faster than waiting for the tesla to kill them.
This test was done in the training range against the 200 HP test bots
To kill a bot with the tesla alone takes 66 rounds or 3.3 seconds.
If you add a punch as the killing blow then it will take 57 rounds at minimum and the punch. 57 rounds takes ~2.85 seconds and the punch is instant. So it should take less than 3 seconds with the punch at the end.