Best Practices... ...and What is DPS??
   Do you want to know your sustainable DPS, or your burst DPS? The more hp on the target, the better, for determining sustainable DPS. Certain boosts are not sustainable (e.x., sneak of shadows) but are used on bosses---in this way they are a non-sustainable burst, unlike a tempest's 10k cuts. It is best practice to define how you do a test, when you put a number out. For example, to get sustained DPS a build in Fury of the Wild would only use 2 adrenalines at the start of the test, then an adrenaline every time it recharged.
   Do you want to know realistic DPS or glass cannon DPS? In the past people would twist Reign in just to increase their times on Bruntsmash. This kind of tomfoolery is fun for dick measuring, but it's not an accurate representation of a build's DPS. It's best to dps test with what you use on live. Doing DPS tests is often a good way of troubleshooting your build. You see what you're missing. You think about the correct order of clickies. You learn how to keep sustained DPS up over a period of time. Sometimes its not worth recasting buffs in the middle of a fight---sometimes it is.
   As is the case with many forms of dick-measuring, it may be necessary to post your video to youtube. This makes the test more objective---DDO is a powerfantasy but its good to have a reality check. This way you can get an even bigger dick. Lay it on the fucking anvil---and hammer away. If you post a kill time that is a 10s snapshot of prowess up on a 300k hit point target, then you're not really getting a realistic, sustainable time. We don't need your inflated dick time to assuage your fragile masculinity. On r10 Bruntsmash has 150k hp on average, that's 1,851,851 hp on r10, or almost 2 million.



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Usefulness of DPS tests, and a Note about Reaper Debuff Values
   As of writing this post, Killing Time is the endgame raid. The dragon has an ass-load (4million) hit points and you are getting hit with sustained magic damage and the occasional flip. This means that defensively you're going to need to hit a required value for the difficulty you're running. (2k hp and 100 MRR on LE seems to be doable.) The required defensive value doesn't need to be exceeded though---you might use DPS tests to see how various builds perform while meeting the requisite defensive values. The defensive requirements might shift in the future---but there is no such thing as too much DPS.
   I need to make a couple notes about the debuff values and how to use them. It is appropriate for a ranged toon to use the melee debuff values. Why? Well ranged are actually debuffed worse in reaper than melee, but you want an apples to apples number. Using the melee debuff gives a ranged damage number that is adjusted down by the relative ratio of about 20%. Casters get the same debuff as ranged (see link above). Casters should also use the melee debuff formula.





*I will edit and add to the this post as time goes on! Please criticize/ask questions. Love you guys.