I like to switch spells occasionally and as I'm upgrading my Wizard's gear, I just ran into a problem. It seems as if some builds don't benefit at all from IAS while others completely rock when you stack IAS. I tried to Google for a comprehensive list, but all the information I could find was more or less "guesswork" and much of it pre-1.04 or even earlier.
It would be interesting to have a list of the most commonly used spells and if (and to what extent) they are affected by IAS. And of course, how that's going to change with 1.05 :-)
For example, I've heard different things about the Archon beam, the last thing I've read is that Archon as a whole completely scales with IAS. Same goes for Twister and Arcane Orb. Right?
However, Blizzard and Hydra don't seem to benefit from IAS at all. Is that correct?
Spells that do X damage over Y seconds do not benefit from AIS in terms of DPS. Everything else does.
Is that so? I was under the impression that actual X (total damage done by 1 spell cast) is calculated based on char's DPS, which in turn is affected by IAS.
blizzard = X% weapon damage over Y seconds - does not benefit from AIS
channeled spells = X% weapon damage - does benefit from AIS, archon benefits indirectly via higher dmg ticks, disintegrate / ray of frost shortens the cast animation
cast spells = X weapon damage - arcane orb, etc the spells that have a single cast animation = the cast animation is shortened by the AIS, however i have seen reports that some spells have caps - i.e. animation does not go any faster than a certain rate, not sure if this affects the actual damage output or just a graphic issue
hydra - is a pet, it's in a different category, but it works exactly the same as archon beam - the ticks / attacks do not increase in speed with AIS, rather increase in damage to balance it out
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TheDemokin: strictly speaking, Twister wouldn't benefit from IAS then as well, wouldn't it? Hm. If Audacitus and SolTheDruid are right, then essentially every spell benefits from IAS: either the cast rate is increased or the damage over time as inflicted by a spell is increased.
However, doesn't every point in attack speed increase the displayed DPS in the character screen, which in turn means that every spell has increased damage for increased attack speed? This would mean that while DoT spells benefit from IAS, it offers less improvements to these spells than to spells that have an increased cast rate. Weird.
For all this theorycrafting, it would be so helpful if Diablo 3 offered a combat log option...
TheDemokin: if I interpret your post right, it means bottom line that every point IAS increases your flat damage out put to the same extent, but the way how it changes your playing style greatly varies depending on the spell's mechanics?
However, doesn't every point in attack speed increase the displayed DPS in the character screen, which in turn means that every spell has increased damage for increased attack speed? This would mean that while DoT spells benefit from IAS, it offers less improvements to these spells than to spells that have an increased cast rate. Weird.
The way I see it:
1. If a spell is "discrete", i.e. it produces any kind of projectile that does damage, the spell's damage = weapon DPS * modifiers like Int, Dex, % against elites, % damage taken debuffs and so on. IAS affects the DPS of those spells by allowing you more casts per sec. I guess channeled spells are like series of quick casts, i.e. IAS reduces intervals between ticks.
2. If a spell cannot crit, your CHC and CHD are factored in the spell's each damage done/tick - pretty much like Desintegrate or Hydra can't crit but their damage is affected by both crit stats.
3. If a spell is a DOT-like spell (X damage in Y sec - I guess Blizzard and Hydra fall into this category), IAS is also factored in the spell's "total damage done" calculation. I.e. they don't deal damage faster, but each tick hits harder.
I'm not 100% sure about any of the above, since this is all just my rough observations, I didn't do any special tests. Would like to hear some confirmations/corrections from somebody who did.
2. If a spell cannot crit, your CHC and CHD are factored in the spell's each damage done/tick - pretty much like Desintegrate or Hydra can't crit but their damage is affected by both crit stats.
Is this true? For my Barbarian, it works differently in the case of Rend: when applying the DoT, there is a roll whether or not Rend crits. If it crits, all its damage ticks are increased; if not, you should re-apply Rend ;-)
Would be interesting as to whether this is differently for Wizard DoTs and if yes, why the hell we have two different mechanics here...
WW benefits from AIS in the number of procs it produces, you were asking about DPS, the damage of WW does not change with AIS, thanks to Loroese, you can find his thread a little lower about testing of WW vs AIS
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"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Hydra damage is based on char sheet dps so it does do more damage if you increase your attack speed.
Blizzard and all other spells that do X damage over Y seconds do not scale with attack speed, so even though your char sheet dps is higher with more IAS, it doesn't mean these spells do more damage. They scale with your weapon damage, total primary stat, crit % and crit damage. While they typically do not display crits as yellow numbers, they still crit because the game calculates damage events at a rate faster than the damage is displayed, and just totals the damage every 0.5s then displays that, lumping crits and normal hits together.
Casted spells do scale with attack speed in that you can cast them more frequent, but if they cost AP they scale poorly because your limiting factor is AP. It's probably best to neglect the IAS affect on their dps.
Signature spells are the main castable spell that totally scales with attack speed because you can spam it regardless of AP, so if you double your attack speed, you can cast it twice as fast, thus doubling your effective dps with that spell.
Channeled spells, like disintigrate, Archon beam, ray of frost, etc, scale with your displayed dps, like hydra, though the faster your attack speed the faster your resources are consumed, so they are very similar to casted spells with AP cost, just with a more continual damage output. They can crit, but since the displayed damage is just a total of damage done every 0.5s the crits are not displayed as yellow numbers.
Hydra damage is based on char sheet dps so it does do more damage if you increase your attack speed.
Blizzard and all other spells that do X damage over Y seconds do not scale with attack speed, so even though your char sheet dps is higher with more IAS, it doesn't mean these spells do more damage. They scale with your weapon damage, total primary stat, crit % and crit damage. While they typically do not display crits as yellow numbers, they still crit because the game calculates damage events at a rate faster than the damage is displayed, and just totals the damage every 0.5s then displays that, lumping crits and normal hits together.
Casted spells do scale with attack speed in that you can cast them more frequent, but if they cost AP they scale poorly because your limiting factor is AP. It's probably best to neglect the IAS affect on their dps.
Signature spells are the main castable spell that totally scales with attack speed because you can spam it regardless of AP, so if you double your attack speed, you can cast it twice as fast, thus doubling your effective dps with that spell.
Channeled spells, like disintigrate, Archon beam, ray of frost, etc, scale with your displayed dps, like hydra, though the faster your attack speed the faster your resources are consumed, so they are very similar to casted spells with AP cost, just with a more continual damage output. They can crit, but since the displayed damage is just a total of damage done every 0.5s the crits are not displayed as yellow numbers.
This is accurate, although slightly confusing. The game has so many different types of spells and damage that it is hard to come up with general rules without examining each spell individually.
Projectiles: Single cast, does weapon damage regardless of Attack Speed (AS or IAS). IAS just means you can fire them faster, resulting in increased dps but burning through AP faster. This actually results in lower damage over time unless you are using a free signature spell (or you kill the mob before running out of AP).
Channeled beam spells (Ray of frost, disintegrate, archon beam): Deals damage on a continuous basis but only displays damage at certain "intervals" (I'm not sure if the display intervals are the same for all three spells, but it doesn't matter anyway). This means that they are affected by both crit and attack speed, but you don't actually see the yellow crit numbers. The interval sums up all the damage it does in that time and displays it as a single number. For example, a 1.0 speed cast of disintegrate will do 155% weapon damage and cost 20 AP in 1.0 seconds. A 2.0 speed cast of disintegrate will do 155% weapon damage and cost 20 AP in .5 seconds, meaning it will do 310% weapon damage and cost 40 AP in 1.0 seconds.
A side note: since you regen 10 AP a second base, that 1.0 spd cast will actually cost 10 AP while that 2.0 spd cast will cost 30 AP per sec. This ends up meaning that you do double damage but at three times the cost. This is why IAS isn't very good for channeled spells, except for the AP-free archon beam.
Hydra is special. It attacks at the same rate, but uses your displayed dps for its damage. So anything that can bump up dps makes hydra hit harder.
Damage over time spells (Blizzard, energy twister, etc): Damage is not affected by IAS. However, Life on Hit is still affected. I'm not 100% sure on blizzard, but there is an awesome post right below this one examining energy twister and life on hit. Still, if you use blizzard or twister the attack speed only makes you cast faster, it doesn't affect damage at all. This actually makes them similar to projectile spells in that you can create more twisters the faster you cast but the damage is only based on weapon damage. Since LoH is tied to the spell hitting a monster rather than the act of casting, attack speed makes those ticks happen more often even though it doesn't affect the damage ticks. I hope that makes as much sense as it did in my head.
So... I'm trying to figure out an easy way to spell everything out...
Damage over time: X% weapon damage over Y seconds (Energy Twister: 360% damage over 6 seconds, Blizzard: 210% damage over 6 seconds) - never affected by attack speed. Always will do a set amount of damage over a set amount of time.
Damage per second: X% weapon damage per second (Venom Hydra: 18% damage per second, Disintegrate: 155% damage per tick of damage) - always affected by attack speed. Has no cap and will do higher damage the more you pump up your DPS.
So... I'm trying to figure out an easy way to spell everything out...
Damage over time: X% weapon damage over Y seconds (Energy Twister: 360% damage over 6 seconds, Blizzard: 210% damage over 6 seconds) - never affected by attack speed. Always will do a set amount of damage over a set amount of time.
Damage per second: X% weapon damage per second (Venom Hydra: 18% damage per second, Disintegrate: 155% damage per tick of damage) - always affected by attack speed. Has no cap and will do higher damage the more you pump up your DPS.
Damage over time is correct. Just remember that attack speed still affects cast speed, but not damage.
Damage per second is oversimplifying. Disintegrate is not damage per second. It is damage per attack period, which means that it acts like a single-cast spell like Magic Missile. It just averages its damage over a certain period. Attack speed makes channeled spells "cast" faster. The only difference is that because it's channeled there is no visual delay between casts. The cast times still sync up directly to attack speed like MM or Arcane Orb, you just don't have separate projectiles. Channel disintegrate in town one day, and you can see your AP fall in jumps, not smoothly like you would expect.
Hydra counts as a pet. It isn't a spell. You can't generalize how other spells cast by looking at hydra's mechanics.
Thanks Jaetch for summing it up so nicely. And thanks everyone else here for contributing to the discussion. As there is no conclusive study yet and there are so many open questions, I'm thinking about performing a study similar to what Loroese did for WW/LoH. But as I'll have to take a one week break from D3 now, it won't happen within the next few days... maybe I'll even wait for 1.05.
Edit: Okay, I read it in the other thread. Well, these are the breakthrough points for a WW build; if you're playing something different, these breakpoints are different as well, of course.
So... I'm trying to figure out an easy way to spell everything out...
Damage over time: X% weapon damage over Y seconds (Energy Twister: 360% damage over 6 seconds, Blizzard: 210% damage over 6 seconds) - never affected by attack speed. Always will do a set amount of damage over a set amount of time.
Damage per second: X% weapon damage per second (Venom Hydra: 18% damage per second, Disintegrate: 155% damage per tick of damage) - always affected by attack speed. Has no cap and will do higher damage the more you pump up your DPS.
No. First, LOH and CM procs do benefit from IAS on Energy Twister and Blizzard. Also, Venom Hydra and Disintegrate work differently. Hydras damage is actually increased off your Character Sheet DPS. Disintegrate basically allows you to cast faster, for more AP. It is different because Disintegrates damage/AP does not change with IAS, only DPS while cahnneled. However Hydra DPS and Damage/AP go up with IAS.
As was stated, there is no set rule to clump spells into. They are all a bit different, and you will need to know how the spells you use work to determine is IAS benefits you. I will follow this up with a real dumbed down list to try and help you as the replies here seem to be confusing you with too much info.
All Signatures: IAS makes then fire off faster. These increases DPS, and does not change Damge/AP (since they cost 0 AP).
Additionally, this increases mobility because you will be able to react faster due to the cast animation ending sooner. (i.e. not getting stuck in a cast animation as a mortar is coming at you)
Channeled spells: Archon Beam, Disintegrate, ROF: IAS increases damage, does not change AP/Damage, but increases the speed you use AP. Damage ticks happen faster, and you spend AP faster. Ticks will still show every .5 seconds, as a total of damage done over the last .5 second. These ticks will increase with IAS, as you will be ticking more times in each .5 second interval, and increases how fast you spend AP proportionally.
Direct Spells using AP: IAS makes them fire faster. These increase DPS and does not change AP/Damage, but increase the speed you use AP.Additionally, this increases mobility because you will be able to react faster due to the cast animation ending sooner.
Damage over X time spells: (blizzard, energy twister) IAS does not effect these. The cast animations will finish faster (increasing mobility); this does not change the length of the actual spell (i.e. 6 seconds for ET). NOTE: Ticks of energy twister do happen more often as proven by Loroes. However, this only effects the number of LOH and CM procs you get, it does not increase damage at all. Blizzard has not been tested in this manner.
I like to switch spells occasionally and as I'm upgrading my Wizard's gear, I just ran into a problem. It seems as if some builds don't benefit at all from IAS while others completely rock when you stack IAS. I tried to Google for a comprehensive list, but all the information I could find was more or less "guesswork" and much of it pre-1.04 or even earlier.
It would be interesting to have a list of the most commonly used spells and if (and to what extent) they are affected by IAS. And of course, how that's going to change with 1.05 :-)
For example, I've heard different things about the Archon beam, the last thing I've read is that Archon as a whole completely scales with IAS. Same goes for Twister and Arcane Orb. Right?
However, Blizzard and Hydra don't seem to benefit from IAS at all. Is that correct?
Any help greatly appreciated, thanks.
However, doesn't every point in attack speed increase the displayed DPS in the character screen, which in turn means that every spell has increased damage for increased attack speed? This would mean that while DoT spells benefit from IAS, it offers less improvements to these spells than to spells that have an increased cast rate. Weird.
For all this theorycrafting, it would be so helpful if Diablo 3 offered a combat log option...
1. If a spell is "discrete", i.e. it produces any kind of projectile that does damage, the spell's damage = weapon DPS * modifiers like Int, Dex, % against elites, % damage taken debuffs and so on. IAS affects the DPS of those spells by allowing you more casts per sec. I guess channeled spells are like series of quick casts, i.e. IAS reduces intervals between ticks.
2. If a spell cannot crit, your CHC and CHD are factored in the spell's each damage done/tick - pretty much like Desintegrate or Hydra can't crit but their damage is affected by both crit stats.
3. If a spell is a DOT-like spell (X damage in Y sec - I guess Blizzard and Hydra fall into this category), IAS is also factored in the spell's "total damage done" calculation. I.e. they don't deal damage faster, but each tick hits harder.
I'm not 100% sure about any of the above, since this is all just my rough observations, I didn't do any special tests. Would like to hear some confirmations/corrections from somebody who did.
Is this true? For my Barbarian, it works differently in the case of Rend: when applying the DoT, there is a roll whether or not Rend crits. If it crits, all its damage ticks are increased; if not, you should re-apply Rend ;-)
Would be interesting as to whether this is differently for Wizard DoTs and if yes, why the hell we have two different mechanics here...
Absolutely, same here :-)
Hydra damage is based on char sheet dps so it does do more damage if you increase your attack speed.
Blizzard and all other spells that do X damage over Y seconds do not scale with attack speed, so even though your char sheet dps is higher with more IAS, it doesn't mean these spells do more damage. They scale with your weapon damage, total primary stat, crit % and crit damage. While they typically do not display crits as yellow numbers, they still crit because the game calculates damage events at a rate faster than the damage is displayed, and just totals the damage every 0.5s then displays that, lumping crits and normal hits together.
Casted spells do scale with attack speed in that you can cast them more frequent, but if they cost AP they scale poorly because your limiting factor is AP. It's probably best to neglect the IAS affect on their dps.
Signature spells are the main castable spell that totally scales with attack speed because you can spam it regardless of AP, so if you double your attack speed, you can cast it twice as fast, thus doubling your effective dps with that spell.
Channeled spells, like disintigrate, Archon beam, ray of frost, etc, scale with your displayed dps, like hydra, though the faster your attack speed the faster your resources are consumed, so they are very similar to casted spells with AP cost, just with a more continual damage output. They can crit, but since the displayed damage is just a total of damage done every 0.5s the crits are not displayed as yellow numbers.
Crusader DPS and EHP Spreadsheet, meant for Crusaders
My Wizard
This is accurate, although slightly confusing. The game has so many different types of spells and damage that it is hard to come up with general rules without examining each spell individually.
Projectiles: Single cast, does weapon damage regardless of Attack Speed (AS or IAS). IAS just means you can fire them faster, resulting in increased dps but burning through AP faster. This actually results in lower damage over time unless you are using a free signature spell (or you kill the mob before running out of AP).
Channeled beam spells (Ray of frost, disintegrate, archon beam): Deals damage on a continuous basis but only displays damage at certain "intervals" (I'm not sure if the display intervals are the same for all three spells, but it doesn't matter anyway). This means that they are affected by both crit and attack speed, but you don't actually see the yellow crit numbers. The interval sums up all the damage it does in that time and displays it as a single number. For example, a 1.0 speed cast of disintegrate will do 155% weapon damage and cost 20 AP in 1.0 seconds. A 2.0 speed cast of disintegrate will do 155% weapon damage and cost 20 AP in .5 seconds, meaning it will do 310% weapon damage and cost 40 AP in 1.0 seconds.
A side note: since you regen 10 AP a second base, that 1.0 spd cast will actually cost 10 AP while that 2.0 spd cast will cost 30 AP per sec. This ends up meaning that you do double damage but at three times the cost. This is why IAS isn't very good for channeled spells, except for the AP-free archon beam.
Hydra is special. It attacks at the same rate, but uses your displayed dps for its damage. So anything that can bump up dps makes hydra hit harder.
Damage over time spells (Blizzard, energy twister, etc): Damage is not affected by IAS. However, Life on Hit is still affected. I'm not 100% sure on blizzard, but there is an awesome post right below this one examining energy twister and life on hit. Still, if you use blizzard or twister the attack speed only makes you cast faster, it doesn't affect damage at all. This actually makes them similar to projectile spells in that you can create more twisters the faster you cast but the damage is only based on weapon damage. Since LoH is tied to the spell hitting a monster rather than the act of casting, attack speed makes those ticks happen more often even though it doesn't affect the damage ticks. I hope that makes as much sense as it did in my head.
Damage over time: X% weapon damage over Y seconds (Energy Twister: 360% damage over 6 seconds, Blizzard: 210% damage over 6 seconds) - never affected by attack speed. Always will do a set amount of damage over a set amount of time.
Damage per second: X% weapon damage per second (Venom Hydra: 18% damage per second, Disintegrate: 155% damage per tick of damage) - always affected by attack speed. Has no cap and will do higher damage the more you pump up your DPS.
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Damage over time is correct. Just remember that attack speed still affects cast speed, but not damage.
Damage per second is oversimplifying. Disintegrate is not damage per second. It is damage per attack period, which means that it acts like a single-cast spell like Magic Missile. It just averages its damage over a certain period. Attack speed makes channeled spells "cast" faster. The only difference is that because it's channeled there is no visual delay between casts. The cast times still sync up directly to attack speed like MM or Arcane Orb, you just don't have separate projectiles. Channel disintegrate in town one day, and you can see your AP fall in jumps, not smoothly like you would expect.
Hydra counts as a pet. It isn't a spell. You can't generalize how other spells cast by looking at hydra's mechanics.
Edit: Okay, I read it in the other thread. Well, these are the breakthrough points for a WW build; if you're playing something different, these breakpoints are different as well, of course.
No. First, LOH and CM procs do benefit from IAS on Energy Twister and Blizzard. Also, Venom Hydra and Disintegrate work differently. Hydras damage is actually increased off your Character Sheet DPS. Disintegrate basically allows you to cast faster, for more AP. It is different because Disintegrates damage/AP does not change with IAS, only DPS while cahnneled. However Hydra DPS and Damage/AP go up with IAS.
As was stated, there is no set rule to clump spells into. They are all a bit different, and you will need to know how the spells you use work to determine is IAS benefits you. I will follow this up with a real dumbed down list to try and help you as the replies here seem to be confusing you with too much info.
Additionally, this increases mobility because you will be able to react faster due to the cast animation ending sooner. (i.e. not getting stuck in a cast animation as a mortar is coming at you)
Channeled spells: Archon Beam, Disintegrate, ROF: IAS increases damage, does not change AP/Damage, but increases the speed you use AP. Damage ticks happen faster, and you spend AP faster. Ticks will still show every .5 seconds, as a total of damage done over the last .5 second. These ticks will increase with IAS, as you will be ticking more times in each .5 second interval, and increases how fast you spend AP proportionally.
Direct Spells using AP: IAS makes them fire faster. These increase DPS and does not change AP/Damage, but increase the speed you use AP.Additionally, this increases mobility because you will be able to react faster due to the cast animation ending sooner.
Damage over X time spells: (blizzard, energy twister) IAS does not effect these. The cast animations will finish faster (increasing mobility); this does not change the length of the actual spell (i.e. 6 seconds for ET). NOTE: Ticks of energy twister do happen more often as proven by Loroes. However, this only effects the number of LOH and CM procs you get, it does not increase damage at all. Blizzard has not been tested in this manner.