Attack speed, how useful?

[trutanen]

Certain marksman and ranger abilities (among others of course) give an increase in attack speed. My question is, how useful is it? Does it increase anything but autoattacking ? Of course every buff is a buff, but too small a buff is just .. too small. Anyone have any calculations or numbers to throw around ?

[airflow]

It seems completely useless when playing. I don't notice an ounce of difference between having them and not since you're mostly spamming abilities which don't benefit from it.

[jaym7018]

Weapon damage is attack speed times weapon dps so if you increase your attack speed you increase ability damage on abilities that benefit from weapon damage and as a rogue thats pretty much everything.

[wordington]

Weapon damage is attack speed times weapon dps so if you increase your attack speed you increase ability damage on abilities that benefit from weapon damage and as a rogue thats pretty much everything.

Is that something anyone can back up empirically? It would be counterintuitive to me for that to be true, based on what I expect faster attacking to do and from my experience with similar mechanics in other games. The maths also doesn't really make a lot of intuitive sense. Weapons are listed as x-y damage every z seconds. If you suddenly do damage every 0.5*z seconds, your weapon damage is still x-y. If 20% haste is also +20% damage, it would certainly be extra appealing, but that seems unlikely. Tested/confirmed anywhere?

[Valadar]

I don't have proof, but I'm pretty sure Weapon Damage calculations are based off of the base speed of the weapon, before haste / attack speed modifiers.

[Grid]

Weapon speed does take a huge part in determining the DPS of a weapon. I know for a fact that a 20% increase in speed is roughly a 20% increase in damage.

You have to keep in mind that a speed increase isn't 20% less time between attacks, its a 20% increase in frequency of attacks.
Meaning that it decreases the base speed a weapon has.

As an example, if one had 40% increased attack speed:

+40% haste = swing time reduced by 1-(1/(1+0.40)) or 28.57%

=>2.5 weapon speed reduced to ~1.786 sec
or 2.0 weapon speed reduced to ~1.429 sec
or 1.5 weapon speed reduced to ~1.071 sec

It is an all around increase in base speed of a weapon. This increases the WHITE damage of a weapon (aka the auto-attacks) and not necessarily the ability damage. If you have a skill which procs on some auto-attacks however, that will still have a higher frequency of activating.

This information is going off of a skill for the rogue within WoW, which increases attack speed by 40% for X number of seconds based on combo points. I know, for a fact, that it is one of, if not the most, important abilities for a WoW rogue since they, and any other weapon based dpser, relies the most on white damage.

As another example, this picture shows the proportions of how much damage a WoW rogue did with auto-attacks as opposed to abilities: http://westkarana.com/wp-content/upl...0-28-58-51.jpg
Notice how auto-attacks did the MOST damage over every other ability and skill. The overall effect of even the tiniest increase in attack speed is massive.

[ScorpionDK]

I would say its pretty useless.. because you do 99 % of the damage from skills

[jaym7018]

I would say its pretty useless.. because you do 99 % of the damage from skills

not as you get better weapons ill provide an example. for the sake of arguement we have a 3.8 speed weapon that does 45 dps and swift shot hits for 100.

Without factoring attack power or mitigation swift shot will hit fot

3.8x45+100= 271 damage

Now lets say we increase attack spped by 30 %

3.8+1.14 x 45 + 100= 322 damage

[wordington]

...
As another example, this picture shows the proportions of how much damage a WoW rogue did with auto-attacks as opposed to abilities: http://westkarana.com/wp-content/upl...0-28-58-51.jpg
Notice how auto-attacks did the MOST damage over every other ability and skill. The overall effect of even the tiniest increase in attack speed is massive.

Your comments about wow mechanics are fine; they're what I'm most familiar with, also. They also don't carry over entirely to this game. In a 40 minutes parse through Foul Cascade, the level 35 rogue who was dpsing the run with me did ~6% of his damage from auto attacks. It's not the same game, even though many of the mechanics are similar and some are identical.

[cyberdine]

not as you get better weapons ill provide an example. for the sake of arguement we have a 3.8 speed weapon that does 45 dps and swift shot hits for 100.

Without factoring attack power or mitigation swift shot will hit fot

3.8x45+100= 271 damage

Now lets say we increase attack spped by 30 %

3.8+1.14 x 45 + 100= 322 damage

Especially if you grab the +50% AA damage from blade dancer.

[wordington]

not as you get better weapons ill provide an example. for the sake of arguement we have a 3.8 speed weapon that does 45 dps and swift shot hits for 100.

Without factoring attack power or mitigation swift shot will hit fot

3.8x45+100= 271 damage

Now lets say we increase attack spped by 30 %

3.8+1.14 x 45 + 100= 322 damage

I highly doubt this, as I've already said. Do you or anyone else happen to have any empirical backing for this or just your claim that it works that way? Weapon damage was normalized to attack speed recently which, along with the inherent lack of intuitive sense in your claim, makes it hard for me to accept that claim without something more solid.

[wordington]

Especially if you grab the +50% AA damage from blade dancer.

Increasing your auto attack damage doesn't increase the damage of your special abilities.

[jaym7018]

Especially if you grab the +50% AA damage from blade dancer.

that ability is garbage BDs got screwed with the AA nerf. increasing your attack speed benefits your abilities way more than auto attacks.

[jaym7018]

I highly doubt this, as I've already said. Do you or anyone else happen to have any empirical backing for this or just your claim that it works that way? Weapon damage was normalized to attack speed recently which, along with the inherent lack of intuitive sense in your claim, makes it hard for me to accept that claim without something more solid.

feel free to try it. Casting rapid fire significantly increased ability damage as a marksman. Sorry i didnt fraps me doing damage with and without 30% increased attacks speed. how i described it is how it works. please remove WoW combat mechanics from your head cause its not how it works here.

[Fasc]

Your comments about wow mechanics are fine; they're what I'm most familiar with, also. They also don't carry over entirely to this game. In a 40 minutes parse through Foul Cascade, the level 35 rogue who was dpsing the run with me did ~6% of his damage from auto attacks. It's not the same game, even though many of the mechanics are similar and some are identical.

Then in this case hasted attacks are only going to be super meaningful when:

A) We have zero other means of improving our DPS with different point allocations, or at least worse options and we aren't bothering with utility skills

B) We have autoattack procs that aren't hindered by any sort of ICD that provide other means of improved DPS

The first thing that comes to mind is the Assassin and his/her poisons. They have a chance to proc on attacks and while I have really no parses or data to confirm X% increases, improving poison uptime/proc rate could be a significantly decent source of DPS improvement, even if the raw autoattack damage is fairly trivial.

EDIT: However if abilities are scaling directly with Haste then it is essentially a stat that might as well read "X% increase to damage dealt" and it becomes a very strong stat/mechanic to look for.