Reduce end game Attack/Cast speed

Its been unchanged for so long and completely ruins the feel of the game. Being able to attack/cast at the speed of light is the only thing that all builds strive for in the end and kills gameplay. It grows stagnant at high levels and I start to fall asleep because every build ends up having to build the same.

Where is the slower, heavy hitting builds? Why are there no viable trade-off builds?

There is an extremely easy way to fix this which is to add a support gem:

--------------------------------------
Support Gem Idea: Measured Support Gem

Reduce attack/cast speed by "x%" but increase attack/spell damage by "x%".

Each gem level slows attack/cast speed more, but increases damage.

--------------------------------------

Basically it would have to enable people to have similar or the same DPS as all those crazy attack speed builds but offer a different style of gameplay. Instead of trying to always spec your gear for max attack/cast speed you could now get away with having a slower, calculated heavy hitting build.

This would fit nicely with say bow Ranger who takes their time to aim a shot and down a target or a 2 hander melee who wants to see big damage numbers in one swing. Though its biggest purpose would be to make the game not feel so stupid at max level when all you do is spam left mouse button as fast as possible. It would put some "feel" back into the game and open up more options of gameplay.

I see nothing to lose for GGG on this and would be fun for all builds, both non and full crit.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Also, I probably gave a bad example as there is a gem for Bow users which slows their projectile/attack speed but ups their damage. However nothing exists for Melee or Casters.

So maybe having 2 support gems, one for Melee and one for Casters would be perfect.

Also making uniques or items that have a modifier on it would help too. But one step at a time.

Honestly I'd just like to see the overall DPS sheets changed so that attack speed suffers from big nerfs at higher tiers (diminishing returns or something) and the overall damage increased across the board. Because you would have to compensate for the DPS lost from the lack of attack speed for end game content.

This would change some life leech builds, but overall I'm in favour or more diversity in the game and less emphasis on LMB spam with 1 skill.

Of course the next step then is to add more ACTIVE skills to the game so you press more than 1 button when you fight. But we'll see what the expansion content brings.

you are right in that attack speed seems to be the ultimate goal, main problem i see here is that flat damage does not scale well with low attack speed, may be if weapons had a damage multiplier like skills GGG could create viable weapons with 0.3 - 0.5 attack speed.


so far the easy solution is to create a new suport gem or a keystone with a big more damage and an equaly big less attack/cast speed say:

115% more melee damage
100% more bow/wand damage
85% more spell damage
50% less attack and cast speed

"

Panini_aux_olives wrote:

Remember also that hitting harder but slower is generally more dangerous. Your are more prone to hurt yourself badly on reflect, and your leech is less continuous.

These are the two reasons why noone likes slow hard hitters.

High attack/cast speed is generally the best way to increase your DPS, no matter what the source of your damage is. That difference is the reason why you don't see slow hard hitters. When you scale attack/cast speed, you're scaling all sources of damage (phys, ele, even chaos lol), while otherwise, you aren't efficiently scaling all sources of base damage - except melee/projectile/spell damage modifiers. However, those are more rare and also don't come in the form of support gems (there is no general melee/proj/spell damage support gem, only specific phys/ele ones, or ele penetrations etc).

Guess what else does this; crit! And guess what; crit is also extremely popular. However, crit has a hard cap on the crit chance. So once you achieve 95% crit chance, the way to get more damage is, once again, attack speed (and crit multi, but that is more limited now after the nerfs - not to mention scaling attack speed is safer due to reflect and better leech as mentioned, though those become moot after instant leech is acquired).

Thankfully, the GGG balance team has actually taken one good step towards fixing this on awakening: skill gems and support gems now work with base damage multipliers instead of "increased phys damage" on gems. This is a MASSIVE, HUGE step forward towards finally fixing the damage scaling inconsistencies in the game, from which this issue arises, and also a huge step towards making increased damage modifiers more valuable.

"

PrimordialDarkness wrote:

High attack/cast speed is generally the best way to increase your DPS, no matter what the source of your damage is. That difference is the reason why you don't see slow hard hitters. When you scale attack/cast speed, you're scaling all sources of damage (phys, ele, even chaos lol), while otherwise, you aren't efficiently scaling all sources of base damage - except melee/projectile/spell damage modifiers. However, those are more rare and also don't come in the form of support gems (there is no general melee/proj/spell damage support gem, only specific phys/ele ones, or ele penetrations etc).

Guess what else does this; crit! And guess what; crit is also extremely popular. However, crit has a hard cap on the crit chance. So once you achieve 95% crit chance, the way to get more damage is, once again, attack speed (and crit multi, but that is more limited now after the nerfs - not to mention scaling attack speed is safer due to reflect and better leech as mentioned, though those become moot after instant leech is acquired).

Thankfully, the GGG balance team has actually taken one good step towards fixing this on awakening: skill gems and support gems now work with base damage multipliers instead of "increased phys damage" on gems. This is a MASSIVE, HUGE step forward towards finally fixing the damage scaling inconsistencies in the game, from which this issue arises, and also a huge step towards making increased damage modifiers more valuable.

Wait you bash me and say GGG has done nothing worth noting with the beta changes, then come post in another thread praising them for a change to melee.....

I hadn't read into all the changes that were being promised for the new expansion and am currently still awaiting beta access.

But if that's true that GGG will fix the damage scaling (of all types), then we might just be saved. One reason I took a big break from this game after grinding maps was because a) no content b) all the builds except for maybe minion master were the same.

The other thing I'm hoping along with more keystones/support gems for slower builds is more active skills.

Currently you 'roid yourself up with as many passives from gear, keystones, auras as possible and then go to town with 1-2 skills. Normally 1 attack and 1 get away skill like leap slam.

It makes for the most mundane gameplay. Diablo 3 doesn't really do much better because they have the most boring skills in the world that you can't really alter or change. So I'm damned with either game I play.

Please GGG add more options for non-attack speed builds in expansion. K thnx.

You're not alone in this, I also think the game loses something in high level play. Playing melee in low levels means you have to mind the positioning and targeting, all that is lost once you socket the multistrike gem.