What is attack speed?

What is attack speed, exactly?

Does it impact the cool down time before you can swing a sword?
Does it impact spells?

I can't tell what it's doing.

 

Besides auto attack speed?

 

Yes.

I don't use auto-attack. So I haven't noticed anything else of value from it. Should I?

 

It will decrease the time needed to charge free attack, grab a bow which is a 7 notched free attack run "Reckless Stance", "Flurry" and a haste potion should give around 60% attack speed and watch how fast your bow free attack charges. Currently I have around 85% increased attack speed with haste potion, buffs, passives and 10% from weapon. My bow free attack charges almost twice as fast. Considering you use very little focus you can run Shield of Air to use your focus as extra hp. When I run my attack speed deck I lock aim shot and weave it after 2 fully charged free attacks for better dps. You could throw in rapid shot as well if you cancel the root by double tapping [w, a, s or d] so you can move during it. It's a great deck for this release since you can run gust and sprint without losing any dps and effectively kill all wolves and bears trying to run from you =)

 

On a side note, I'd love if it also reduced cast times/GCD, because I could make some interesting mage decks based around attack speed, rather than just weapon decks. I'm fairly obsessed with chaotic feedback and fire arrow, which would be even more fun with faster cast times.

 

It would be nice if there was something in the description of these skills that said "This only applies to auto attack".

To be very direct, I find auto attack used as you've described with ranged weapons to be completely unnecessary and unbalancing. A 60% increase to the rate of fire for something you're not even actively managing seems completely OP. I'm glad spells are not considered in attack speed, it would pretty much force me to use auto-attack.

 

He said charged attack,

 

Oh ok, so it's not rate of fire, it's just charge up? That would work for weapons too then right?

Wait, I guess I don't understand how charging up weapons with free attack works.

 

Bdf what spec do you play?

 

Pure Mage

 

What weapon do you use with free attack?

There is a reason why im asking ive done alot of play testing latey between the two.

 

I don't use free attack.
I rarely use a weapon at all.

 

My disclaimer here : ive not played pure mage and im not sure how wands work..

If you equiped a bow and only used it with auto attacks enabled you would see a really nice damage output increase I suspect wands would do the same and be more inline with the mage theme.

The cool thing about auto attack is with timing practice you get attacks that land between your spell strikes.

@Baron Drocis Fondorlatos

 

I don't think staves or wands fire at range anymore.

 

Well id subimt a bug report cause thats broken.

 

No, I don't think it is. I think several releases ago wands and staves were changed to blunt weapons that just don't do a lot of damage. They're meant to be crafted items that improve your casting abilities. I like the change, a lot.

 

It's by design, they didn't like wands being a resource free source of ranged damage.
So instead they reduce fizzle cost and allow enhancements to make spells better.

Personally, I didn't see what the big deal was, wands did very little damage but had a huge range, which let my melees pull one out of the pack then switch gear before they arrived.
Now they seem mostly useless, just a way to use slightly better armor for the same fizzle chance at the expense of auto attacks.

 

But its broken if everyone else gets free/autoattack except mages.

Esp since archer have ranged just like mages and they have epic free attacks. Mages focus just got increased it seams to me archers have a serious advantage over mages now.

 

As a pure mage (Weapon) attack speed does nothing for you. So haste unless it affects global cooldowns is a wasted stat for mages. As a hybrid mage like I used to play Weapon attack speed helped in the middle of Global cooldowns as a small increase in dps. Since I ran with 2hd the charge attack was nice for heavy hits in-between casts.

 

@Baron Drocis Fondorlatos there is a free attack that kills 2 or 3 oranges in 2 attacks (no resource cost or anything). U still think pure mages got a fair deal?