Any plans to change the weapon attack speed Meta?

It's not normal that slower weapons deal exact same dps as fast weapons.

Several reasons :
- there are many flat damage increases
- the more damage you deal in one hit, the more damage you waste on last hit (statiscally).

Slow attack have some pros though :
- consuming less mana
- more chance to stun

But these pros aren't relevant enough. Indeed, mana is still quite easy to manage and stun threshold are too low so you permastun even with high attack speed.

I really like the idea of implicit mods.

They should also loop. This way you could build a character not only around a specific weapon type (bows, swords) but also a specific weapon subtype! I think this would be really cool. I hope a dev can get their opinion on this soon :)

bump

The problem is that every bonus damage stat would have to be rebalanced to a Percentage increase. There's no other way to balance slow vs fast weapons. That seems like way too large of an undertaking this close to open beta, but I could be wrong.

Well how about something as simple as this?

Bow with 1.2 base attack speed has armor pen?

Bow with 1.3 attack speed can have double chance of inflicted status ailments?

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laian wrote:

Well how about something as simple as this?

Bow with 1.2 base attack speed has armor pen?

Bow with 1.3 attack speed can have double chance of inflicted status ailments?

It kinda does already: higher physical damage per shot directly translates into lower mitigation from armor.

Actually that wording is completely wrong. Because armor reduction is supposedly percentage based, higher physical damage actually results in more damage mitigated through armor.

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laian wrote:

Actually that wording is completely wrong. Because armor reduction is supposedly percentage based, higher physical damage actually results in more damage mitigated through armor.

Are you familiar at all with the formula for armor mitigation?

Mitigation = armor / (armor + multiplier * incoming damage)

(The "multiplier" is around 20 or so, incidentally)

The entire point of it is that armor doesn't provide as much protection against larger hits.

Oops. Didn't know the formula.

The problem is that there isn't a significant difference between slow weapons and fast weapons when you factor everything else in.

Lets say you have these 2 weapons:
Level 58 Corsair Sword - 15-59 damage, 1.65 speed (61 dps)
Level 63 Legion Sword - 37-68 damage, 1.2 speed (63 dps)

Now enchant them with just 2 of the best physical mods:
Razor Sharp - 20-35 damage
Cruel - 149% increased physical damage

Now you have:
Corsair Sword - 87-234 damage, 160.5 average, 265 dps
Legion Sword - 142-256 damage, 199 average, 239 dps

Now you're wearing rings, an amulet, and gloves that all have the best physical damage mods:
Razor Sharp - 13-24


So your swords are:
Corsair Sword - 139-330, 234.5 average, 387 dps
Legion Sword - 194-352, 273 average, 328 dps

So you're sacrificing 18% of your BASE DPS, which is what everything else multiplies on top of, to have a 16% higher base damage.

Without even adding in any elemental damage or auras or any passives, you're sacrificing almost 1/5 of your base DPS so that your physical hits can be 16% higher.

Then you add in things like additional attack speed, elemental damage, and the attack skills themselves, and you wind up doing 30-50% less DPS than the guy next to you that has the exact same gear and mods, but is using a weapon that had a higher base attack speed.

I'm not saying that it is imperative that they change the system or anything, I'm just saying that you, as a player, should only be using the fastest weapon available to you until they change something. Otherwise you're just gimping yourself.