So I show that attack speed has the same dps gains and scaling as base damage for your example, contradicting your premise that it behaves strangely or unfavorably, and you call it stupid and attack the messenger? So, this conversation is going nowhere. GL in your little world.
Let's say you have two choices: Weapon A -100 damage, 1.0 attack speed ->100dps Weapon B-60 damage, 2.0 attack speed -> 120dps
If you chose weapon B you can make a proper build to maximize your Ray of Frost usage. If you have Familiar (Arcanot) and the passive Astral Presence your ap regen goes from 10 to 14 and your total ap goes from 100 to 120. You can also use Storm Armor (Power of the Storm) to reduce the cost of every skill by 3 ap.
Now for Ray of Frost you have two choices:
Snow Blast-increases damage to 280%, but the cost remain 20ap
Cold Blood-reduces ap to 12, but the damage remains 215%
Let's try Cold Blood. With this build your regen is 14 ap every second and you're spending 9ap every cicle, 18ap every second. The result is that you'll lose 4ap every second and you'll be able to cast ray of frost for 30 long seconds without interruption.
How much dps? 215% of 60 is 129, double that (speed) and you're doing 258 dps.
If you chose Snow Blast however you won't be able to sustain your cast. You'll spend 17ap per cicle, 34 per second, only recovering 14. You'll lose 20ap every second, being able to cast during 6 seconds.
Now let's think about weapon A. The weapon hits harder, but it's slower and offers less dps overall. With the exact same build we'll try to cast Snow Blast. We'll spend 17ap every second (1.0 attack speed, remember) and recover 14ap every second, losing only 3ap every second. You can cast that for 40 seconds.
Now let's check the dps. 280% of 100 is 280, this time the speed multiplier is 1x so the final dps is 280.
What does that mean? That means you'll do more damage if you chose a weaker weapon.
In this section, you are trying to make some sort of comparison, but change 3 variables between each example. This makes any result moot, since you don't have a controlled variable. To use controlled variables, only change one thing per example, I'll even make a weapon C that it 50 damage with 2 attack speed, and a couple transition weapons in between (arguably the same item level as weapon A, but with identical listed dps so we aren't comparing apples to oranges): Weapon A -100 damage, 1.0 attack speed ->100dps Weapon B-60 damage, 2.0 attack speed -> 120dps Weapon C -50 damage, 2.0 attack speed ->100dps Weapon D-50 damage, 1.0 attack speed -> 50dps
So at this point, the only conclusion that you can make is that the same 'item level' and stated dps weapons do identical dps, that the 'higher item level' weapon with higher stated dps does higher dps, and that doubling you attack speed doubles your dps. Gee, that's so unintuitive...
Well, just to check, lets try out your fictional Cold blooded (fictional because until the game goes live, the final source for abilities is the blizzard site, which lists it as 0 cost)(idk, maybe this post has old build numbers and didn't get updated)(moot point for sake of argument).
Well look at that at that, same relative results between weapons as with the other ability.
"But wait" you say, "What about the durations!? The slower weapons let you use your ability for longer!" And I say, "So what?". You don't have a model for what you do during filler time, you don't list what ability you would use, etc.
So in conclusion, the same thing Blues stated months ago: Attack speed increases the pace of you combat, increasing resource gains(typically), values certain stats (ex: flat damage buff) more heavily then slow AS builds, and is a dps gain.
TLDR: you don't provide enough modeling to make any sweeping statements about attack speed's 'goodness'.
Weapon A -100 damage, 1.0 attack speed ->100dps
Weapon B-60 damage, 2.0 attack speed -> 120dps
Weapon C -50 damage, 2.0 attack speed ->100dps
Weapon D-50 damage, 1.0 attack speed -> 50dps
Weapon A, Snow blast, full build listed:
100 damage * 280% (for 40 seconds) = 280 DPS
Weapon B, Snow blast, full build listed:
60 *280% *2 (for 6 seconds) = 336 DPS
Weapon C, Snow Blast, full build listed:
50 *280% *2 (for 6 seconds) = 280 DPS
Weapon D, Snow Blast, full build listed:
50 *280% (for 40 seconds) = 140 DPS
So at this point, the only conclusion that you can make is that the same 'item level' and stated dps weapons do identical dps, that the 'higher item level' weapon with higher stated dps does higher dps, and that doubling you attack speed doubles your dps. Gee, that's so unintuitive...
Well, just to check, lets try out your fictional Cold blooded (fictional because until the game goes live, the final source for abilities is the blizzard site, which lists it as 0 cost)(idk, maybe this post has old build numbers and didn't get updated)(moot point for sake of argument).
Weapon A, Cold blooded, full build listed:
100 damage * 215% (For ever) = 215 DPS
Weapon B, Cold blooded, full build listed:
60 *215% *2 (For 30 seconds) = 258 DPS
Weapon C, Cold blooded, full build listed:
50 *215% *2 (For 30 seconds) = 215 DPS
Weapon D, Cold blooded, full build listed:
50 *215% (For ever) = 107.5 DPS
Well look at that at that, same relative results between weapons as with the other ability.
"But wait" you say, "What about the durations!? The slower weapons let you use your ability for longer!" And I say, "So what?". You don't have a model for what you do during filler time, you don't list what ability you would use, etc.
So in conclusion, the same thing Blues stated months ago: Attack speed increases the pace of you combat, increasing resource gains(typically), values certain stats (ex: flat damage buff) more heavily then slow AS builds, and is a dps gain.
TLDR: you don't provide enough modeling to make any sweeping statements about attack speed's 'goodness'.
Not sure even where to start...