Attack Speed bonus values on weapons and armor have been reduced by 50%
Remember this? The game has changed a lot since 1.0.3, and in retrospect it looks like Attack Speed wasn't really the problem. IAS looked like a problem mainly because of how it interacted with some other problematic things, such as certain crowd control procs and other effects. IAS was also a problem because we didn't have many stats that promoted build diversity. The best builds were likely to be those that took the most advantage of Increased Attack Speed.
Patch 1.0.3 was released almost 2 years ago. Nowadays most of the things that were the root of pre-1.0.3 problems, have long been fixed.
We have been left with a gimped Increased Attack Speed stat. If you bother to do the math you will realize that when Cooldown Reduction and Resource Cost Reduction are utilized on the right build, they blow Increased Attack Speed out of the water.
Attack speed has remained prevalent because of its "star power", just like famous past-their-prime fighters can still get a payday and be hyped up like a big deal because of their past glories. IAS has clung to hearts of many players in a way that to this day, they are still proud of their "Trifecta" items.
Mainly thanks to CDR and RCR totally invigorating the game. Now more than ever, people are starting to realize the downfalls of high attack speeds. Some have even asked for attack speed to be buffed to its pre-1.0.3 status.
Fixing Increased Attack Speed is an interesting exercise on design and balance. If you were to buff the numbers on attack speed, you would make it compete withResource Cost Reduction andCooldown Reduction on all builds. You shouldn't need Increased Attack Speed on builds that are heavily cooldown based, nor you should need it on those that provide passive resource regeneration or straight-up cost reductions.
Increasing the numbers on IAS could artificially make attack speed optimal for builds where intuition tells you that attack speed wouldn't help. Moreso, it would continue to shift gearing from an intuitive process into a heavy math excercise. Increasing IAS numbers on items would also make it super OP for some builds like pet-based builds or the furnace.
To summarize:
Attack Speed shouldn't compete with Cooldown Reduction or Resource Cost Reduction, instead it should provide a completely different alternative. Attack Speed doesn't need to rise numerically as much as it needs more skills and item stats that support IAS-based builds.
Attack speed seems to be in a good and manageable place right now. The big issue seems to be making the player base understand that attack speed does have his places. Maybe creating or modifying a few skills and stats here and there could help drive the point home. Things like Crushing Blow, an improved version of bleed%, or just anything else that benefits from having sky-high attack speeds.
What do you think on the subject? Are you still running with heavy attack speed builds or have you started toying around with CDR and RCR builds?
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Diablo Player and theorycrafter, also editor at BlizzPro.com
I think attack speed is fine where it is, the issue is that most builds are limited by resources or cooldowns, limiting AS to builds that don't use heavy resource spenders or cooldowns for their damage, which limits them to generators/signatures, which seriously hurts damage (short of a couple legendaries that buff said skills).
Take for example my barbarian, who runs boulder build. Attack speed has almost zero benefit, because most of his skills aren't affected by attack speed, and the ones that are you are using only ~10-20% of the time.
Now switch classes to a velvet camaral/myken's build as a wizard and use electrocute as a powerhouse. Here, your primary attack benefits fully from attack speed and you don't have to worry much about resources and cooldowns. Here you would take attack speed because it benefits you far more from the other two. The only issue is that builds like this often don't have damage that is competitive with resource spender/cooldown builds (Moreso when these are buffed up with said stats).
AS might also work for a spending build that also generates from attacking only, but with spirit regen stat on monks, that leaves just barbarians, who use other skills most the time.
Also not only AS fell out of favor to other stats because most builds favor them, we have to factor in the diminishing of on hit effects around the board. Stuff like Critical Mass, Vanilla Thrive on Chaos, and Life on hit were really major back then and all benefited from attack speed making them score more hits and increasing their power. With most of these mechanics gone (I don't know anyone who stacks Life on hit, globes/life per kill/class skills regen now from what I see.) the boost that they receive from attack speed became irrelevant, effectively "nerfing" attack speed.
Although if I remember right their rationale behind nerfing AS was because of these bonuses in addition to the damage bonus, so if the bonuses from High AS outside of DPS really don't significantly exist anymore, that might be grounds for buffing it back up.
So, really I would say it depends on the influence of "on hit" effects, if they are much less powerful and widespread now it would be a good idea to buff it back up.
But if you buff Attack Speed, then RCR and CDR might become bad in comparison. We could be left with a situation that you have to run a build that makes most use of Attack Speed just because the numbers are too high.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Diablo Player and theorycrafter, also editor at BlizzPro.com
Attack speed is quite fine where it is, to be honest - everything shines in some builds. Crit and crit damage are stables for most, but they never really do *better* in one build over another as they always have the same effect (and barely anything I can recall scales with critical hits/high dmg hits).
Attack speed, for example, is probably the strongest stat for a Mirrorball wizard who relies on stacking up Ignite on strong enemies, and it can be the strongest stat for 6pc marauder demonhunters who are close to reaching a sentry-breakpoint.
at MINIMUM attack speed should be raised back to 9%. it doesnt make sense that cd and cc caps mainly stayed the same when ias got reduced. i think this was a loot 2.0 gimp...definitely way after the infamous 1.0.3 gimp you mentioned
Patch 1.0.3 was released almost 2 years ago. Nowadays most of the things that were the root of pre-1.0.3 problems, have long been fixed.
We have been left with a gimped Increased Attack Speed stat. If you bother to do the math you will realize that when Cooldown Reduction and Resource Cost Reduction are utilized on the right build, they blow Increased Attack Speed out of the water.
Attack speed has remained prevalent because of its "star power", just like famous past-their-prime fighters can still get a payday and be hyped up like a big deal because of their past glories. IAS has clung to hearts of many players in a way that to this day, they are still proud of their "Trifecta" items.
Mainly thanks to CDR and RCR totally invigorating the game. Now more than ever, people are starting to realize the downfalls of high attack speeds. Some have even asked for attack speed to be buffed to its pre-1.0.3 status.
Fixing Increased Attack Speed is an interesting exercise on design and balance. If you were to buff the numbers on attack speed, you would make it compete withResource Cost Reduction andCooldown Reduction on all builds. You shouldn't need Increased Attack Speed on builds that are heavily cooldown based, nor you should need it on those that provide passive resource regeneration or straight-up cost reductions.
Increasing the numbers on IAS could artificially make attack speed optimal for builds where intuition tells you that attack speed wouldn't help. Moreso, it would continue to shift gearing from an intuitive process into a heavy math excercise. Increasing IAS numbers on items would also make it super OP for some builds like pet-based builds or the furnace.
To summarize:
Attack Speed shouldn't compete with Cooldown Reduction or Resource Cost Reduction, instead it should provide a completely different alternative. Attack Speed doesn't need to rise numerically as much as it needs more skills and item stats that support IAS-based builds.
Attack speed seems to be in a good and manageable place right now. The big issue seems to be making the player base understand that attack speed does have his places. Maybe creating or modifying a few skills and stats here and there could help drive the point home. Things like Crushing Blow, an improved version of bleed%, or just anything else that benefits from having sky-high attack speeds.
What do you think on the subject? Are you still running with heavy attack speed builds or have you started toying around with CDR and RCR builds?
Take for example my barbarian, who runs boulder build. Attack speed has almost zero benefit, because most of his skills aren't affected by attack speed, and the ones that are you are using only ~10-20% of the time.
Now switch classes to a velvet camaral/myken's build as a wizard and use electrocute as a powerhouse. Here, your primary attack benefits fully from attack speed and you don't have to worry much about resources and cooldowns. Here you would take attack speed because it benefits you far more from the other two. The only issue is that builds like this often don't have damage that is competitive with resource spender/cooldown builds (Moreso when these are buffed up with said stats).
AS might also work for a spending build that also generates from attacking only, but with spirit regen stat on monks, that leaves just barbarians, who use other skills most the time.
Also not only AS fell out of favor to other stats because most builds favor them, we have to factor in the diminishing of on hit effects around the board. Stuff like Critical Mass, Vanilla Thrive on Chaos, and Life on hit were really major back then and all benefited from attack speed making them score more hits and increasing their power. With most of these mechanics gone (I don't know anyone who stacks Life on hit, globes/life per kill/class skills regen now from what I see.) the boost that they receive from attack speed became irrelevant, effectively "nerfing" attack speed.
Although if I remember right their rationale behind nerfing AS was because of these bonuses in addition to the damage bonus, so if the bonuses from High AS outside of DPS really don't significantly exist anymore, that might be grounds for buffing it back up.
So, really I would say it depends on the influence of "on hit" effects, if they are much less powerful and widespread now it would be a good idea to buff it back up.
Attack speed, for example, is probably the strongest stat for a Mirrorball wizard who relies on stacking up Ignite on strong enemies, and it can be the strongest stat for 6pc marauder demonhunters who are close to reaching a sentry-breakpoint.