Melee weapon · Base game · tier I–IV

Lightning Shiv

PreciseElemental

At the game default stat block

21.23 DPS

Expected primary-target DPS (before enemy armor)

Tier IV · steady-state mean cycle 0.78 s · one equipped weapon

The coefficients competitors leave out

What Lightning Shiv scales from

Melee Damage × 0.8

Every point of Melee Damage adds 0.8 raw damage to each hit before rounding and % Damage.

Use your current stats

Your Lightning Shiv numbers

Weapon tier

Player stats

Enter the final values shown on your character. Fields start at the game’s own default stat block, where every stat but Max HP starts at zero — a 0 here is that default, not an empty field. These values stay on this device when you open another weapon.

Melee Damagescales damage % Damage % Attack Speed % Crit Chance Equipped Weaponstiming context

Using 1 equipped weapon

Expected damage / hit16.50one primary-target hit

Expected primary-target DPS (before enemy armor)21.230.78 s mean cycle

The keep-stacking answer

What +1 more point is worth now

+1 Melee Damage+0.00 DPS

Takes +2 Melee Damage before this DPS figure moves.

Exact discrete change after the game’s truncation and rounding steps—not a smoothed estimate.

Outside the number above

What Lightning Shiv does that its DPS does not count

The DPS figure on this page measures direct damage to one target. Lightning Shiv also carries the following, and none of it is in that figure. These are stated, not quantified: an amount the game itself declares is quoted as it stands, and no DPS is computed for a channel this site has not modelled.

Extra projectiles on hit Damage the ranking does not count
A hit spawns further projectiles. Their damage is not in the DPS figure.

Metric boundary

What this number means

Expected primary-target DPS (before enemy armor) includes weapon base damage, the listed scaling coefficients, % Damage, weapon and player crit chance, projectile count, shooting duration, and steady-state mean cooldown. It assumes every projectile aimed at the primary target connects.

It excludes enemy armor, weapon-set damage bonuses, later pierce or bounce targets, melee area targets, misses, overkill, burning, explosions, spawned projectiles, on-hit effects, and weapon-scripted damage changes. The chain figure is separate and assumes enough distinct targets for every listed bounce and pierce. Neither figure is “actual DPS.”

Every figure here is measured with one equipped weapon. A character page ranks this same weapon inside that character’s own loadout, at the weapon-slot count that character starts with, and that count changes the steady-state cycle — so the same tier can show a different DPS there. Each character page states the count its figures use.

For melee cycle timing, the calculation uses the weapon’s listed maximum range as attack distance, matching the damage model’s cross-validation method; runtime target distance can change that timing.

Listed values + computed output

All available tiers

Zero player bonus stats

Metric	Tier I	Tier II	Tier III	Tier IV
Base damage	3	6	9	15
Cooldown	27 ticks0.45 seconds	22 ticks0.37 seconds	18 ticks0.3 seconds	13 ticks0.22 seconds
Critical hit	4% × 2	6% × 2	8% × 2	10% × 2
Melee Damage scaling	× 0.8	× 0.8	× 0.8	× 0.8
Shop price	18	36	66	142
Expected damage / hit	3.12	6.36	9.72	16.50
Expected primary-target DPS before enemy armor	3.09	6.86	11.29	21.23

Read from the character pages

Characters that can start with Lightning Shiv

Lightning Shiv is one of the starting weapon choices for 22 of the 64 characters, at the tier each character’s own pool record declares. Each of those pages ranks that character’s whole opening pool by computed DPS, so you can see where this weapon lands before the first wave.

Apprentice offers it at Tier I
Captain offers it at Tier I
Crazy offers it at Tier I
Cryptid offers it at Tier I
Curious offers it at Tier I
Demon offers it at Tier I
Gangster offers it at Tier I
Generalist offers it at Tier I
Gladiator offers it at Tier I
King offers it at Tier II

Showing 10 of 22 characters, alphabetically.

Same computation, read by weapon

Where Lightning Shiv is a notable outlier

This reads the character rankings the other way: which characters can’t equip Lightning Shiv at all, and which ones its computed rank moves materially away from the generic, zero-bonus order. Same comparison each character page uses — default 10 Max HP, zero other bonus stats, weapons at their highest usable tier, before enemy armor; full stated assumptions are on each character’s own page.

Cannot use this weapon

Ranger — Melee weapons filtered from offers and cannot be bought
Renegade — Melee weapons filtered from offers and cannot be bought

Ranks notably higher than generic

Ranks 23 places higher for Masochist than generic (#17 of 48 melee weapons here, #40 generic)
Ranks 23 places higher for Pacifist than generic (#17 of 48 melee weapons here, #40 generic)
Ranks 21 places higher for Artificer than generic (#19 of 48 melee weapons here, #40 generic)