Is the DPS cap on bosses per HIT or per SECOND?

[Dutczar]

So I've been struggling for the past few days trying to beat HotK on 1-cell after almost effortlessly facerolling the game, almost one shotting most enemies including the ones in the castle with Tactics builds with stats usually around 4/28/7 or so (stopping when the health increase was like 10%) and getting ♥♥♥♥ing shredded by the final boss. I was aware of the damage cap, but literally everywhere I heard people mentioned it proccing per hit and staying at 5%, which to be fair sounds pretty generous. I mean, you'd need like 25 brutality with assasin's dagger to reach that point, and even then, you'd only need to backstab him 20 times for him to die. Assasin's dag hits like 2-3 times a second, so that's like, 10 seconds? It seemed fair enough.

Then after dying like 6 times by getting two-shot by Hand's spear (which, as I stated in pretty much ever discussion I made, I still think the attack in entirety is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥t with a 0.3 second tell,
no way to just just use a normal roll three times because of the cooldown and the animation not even appearing along the hitbox ), I kept watching guides on the internet and wondering why in all of them, not only does that attack take like roughly 10-20% health on all of them, but it also deals like 800 damage, compared to when he takes off like 2500 with a single hit on me. I knew there was scaling involved, but not that it was THAT ridiculous.

And the fact that they were doing almost the same damage as me made it even fishier, even more so when some guy stated having 30 in a stat makes killing the boss only SLIGHTLY faster than 20.

Especially since as I'm writing this, I realised I beat HotK once, on my second try... back when I didn't go for timed doors or cursed chests. That's like, 7-8 less scrolls 2 from stages and 1 from the cell door in Sepulchere? I remember he wasn't too tanky either, though tbh I was panicing too much trying to get out of the spike pits and dodge his attacks to remember how much exactly it took to kill him.

So does the damage cap actually proc per hit or per second? Because if it's per second, that'd make WAY more sense with how most weapons calculate DPS instead of damage per hit anyways, but also would make it stupidly unfair, not really because of the damage cap existing in the first place (honestly making the boss fight last 20 seconds + the time spent fighting enemies is still generous) but because it's way faster to reach that point where scrolls become useless.

Going with that above example of Assasin's dagger, that means you'd need like 2-3 times less DPS to reach the cap, so like 17 brutality of constant backstabs. That's 8 less points, and if you had 25 instead the enemies would have like 1.8 more damage AND health. (well, I didn't do proper calculations, but it should be close enough)

I plan to try a 8/18/13 build (I want tankiness, but I'd rather not use a survival build till I unlock more survival weapons. Also, being able to wipe the enemies somewhat fast will make the rest of the game easier) tommorow since I should be going to sleep and not pick up any scrolls afterwards to see if it's actually easier that way.

(I know that a glass cannon build will probably be necessary for 4-cell difficulty, but rn I just want to get 3 boss cells so I can get more cells and upgrade the forge to S rank, I'm almost done with maxing ++)

[MajesticIX]

Pretty sure the cap is per hit. I always go for glass cannon build and max DPS. The point here is some weapons, like an explosive crossbow, can deal 60,000 damage and one shot everything.

If you have unlocked pyrotechnics yet, that combined with oil is probably the single best tactic. Drop a wolf trap and you'll melt HotK. I wrecked him on both Expert and Nightmare with this build--though I didn't have a trap on nightmare. Had an ice bow which somewhat held him at bay but it becomes much less effective when his health drops below 50%.

Try and always bring a wolf trap for the hand as it glitches him and is still effective near the end when he is resistant to virtually everything. Try and stand in front of the empty trap and he can get trapped twice on you.

ALWAYS go for damage. Forget health. The more health you have, the more health they have which in turn requires more DPS. You're fighting a losing battle that way usually. And of course, max out the 75% damage reduction modifiers on yourself :)

Glass cannon FTW!

[esco1979]

The HOTK's 3 hit weapon combo has been MASSIVELY slowed down since it first came out it seems. Please don't ♥♥♥♥♥ to all of us, because you can't figure out the simple concept of Roll, jump, roll to dodge his swipes. :)

[Gem of Temporarity]

Per hit, making heavy weapons kinda sucky(the higher range slow swords have comparing to faster ones doesn't matter much).

[Sirius]

The damage cap is pretty high, so heavy weapons arent really invalidated by it. Just means you arent doing crazy things like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B7PIUMr4Sw

[Dutczar]

It's weird, my tactis skill was always pretty high but I was never even close to the damage cap, at most I took like 10% off him per second, assuming I was hitting him with literaly everything I got.

Then again, my builds usually consisted of a sentry, firebrands, and random skill and weapon (most often electric whip with +100% burning for range and either another sentry or a CC skill),
the sentry always dealt most of the damage and maybe got destroyed quickly and I didn't notice.

Haven't unlocked death orb, and to be fair, literally all the videos I've seen of glass cannon builds or speed runs used one, so maybe this (or any other non-sentry damage dealing skill) is necessary to get close. (Or just a brutality build, I only ocassionally tried that one)