Attack speed breakpoints FAQ

Hi

There have been a lot of questions regarding attack speed breakpoints. I wrote a guide/faq for the german subforum and after several inquiries I've translated it into english for the "dso-world" facebook group.
You might find it useful:

 

Cool, any guesses of why the DKs are "Special?"

 

I just named them "special" because each dk skill has a different animation frame and can't be assigned to group AF15 or AF20.
I guess it's because DKs have melee attacks (whereas all others are ranged) and therefore quite different animations

 

I would have guessed that it is because the animation frames is different (say 17 or 14... some off number like that) which makes me wonder, how did you calculate those frames for the listed attacks... As a math/computer loving DK, I'd love to reverse engineer that so I could fully develop this table for a DK.

 

Are these breakpoints fixed? Can an attack speed "waffle around" a breakpoint? I ask because I think my green-arrow's speed varies ... though perhaps speed is being affected by how involved/complex a fight is (eg, bigger mob = more animation = stuff slows down). But basically, it seems sometimes my precision shot is faster than the green arrow, whereas at other times, they appear to fire off equally as quick.

 

My experience is it is pretty set. Lag has changed it but lag effects so much ok the game.

 

Noticing the effect of lag big time in Thunder Crest. Very noticeable speed diff between shooting something there and, say, shooting in Gleaming Mountains.

 

Ah shoot. My attack speed is so low it's not even on the charts. Lol. Neither is my favorite spamming skill--Lightning Strike. XD

 

i think might wild swing ( DK ) is 5 AF skill
and lightning strike (SW) is 50 AF skill
might wild swing is more fast than lightning strike, logic BP

 

The Lightning Strike isn't on the chart because you can't use it continuously. Yes, you can make it so you cast a handful quite fast in between themselves, but it's different than sending a few Fireballs flying or Magic Missiles one after another after another, etc.

 

You may not be able to spam it continuously, but it would be really helpful for what I'm working on right now for a friend.

P.S. You can't spam fireball either, but they put that on there.

 

With enough mana, you can. Well, OK... not continuously either. The Lightning Strike is simply a different kind of attack, influenced more by the number of times you can cast it, rather than attack speed. There's also the delay time. While that one Fame talent can help, with Lightning Strike, you'll always have a certain delay time. As for the "regular" attacks (Fireball, Magic Missile, etc.), the only "delay time" is however long it takes for your attack to hit (this can also be improved via another Fame talent, as you know) - so it will not always be the same (i.e. if you're standing toe-to-toe with a target and firing from there, you hit almost instantly).

 

If an upgrade in attack speed doesn't make the next breakpoint (say you're at 1.42; the next breakpoint is 1.58, but you get to only 1.46), doesn't that still increase your damage per second? According to the formula for calculating DPS, it does (pure math). But does that really mean anything in actual gameplay?

 

I think you only do damage when you hit. So if you have, say, 1.43 speed and 500-600 damage, and one offensive gem slot, adding a 5% speed gem does nothing for that attack type since you don't get past a break point but adding a +10 gem does add damage.

Do keep in mind that there are situations where you get % speed buffs and speed penalties, and whatever your base attack speed is affects the result with the buff and/or penalty.

 

Bummer that. As if upping attack speed wasn't hard enough with very limited gem slots.

 

That's the "magic" of breakpoints. This is why, when I was starting out, I thought sapphires were useless, because they didn't exactly add much, so I didn't really hoard them for quite a while... sadly, what I failed to realize was that they do have a very nice impact in high tiers and in greater numbers. This is also why my leg. 1H is in fact pretty much an exo. as it has a 6% speed line that doesn't actually do anything without big sapphires.

 

Yeah, one has to really think things through with this game. At first that bugged me (still does at times), but overall, I've come to appreciate the, uh, challenge.

 

This may be obvious, but anyway...
I was looking for a pattern in the breaks, and if you invert the attacks per second (APS) to seconds per attack (SPA) you get the following for missiles:
SPA APS
1,1000 0,909
1,0333 0,968
0,9667 1,034
0,9000 1,111
0,8333 1,200
0,7667 1,304
0,7000 1,429
0,6333 1,579
0,5667 1,765
0,5000 2,000
0,4333 2,308
0,3667 2,727
0,3000 3,333
0,2333 4,286
0,1667 6,000
0,1000 10,000

You will see, the APS fits fairly well to the "Speed BP's 15AF skills".
The SPA increments are 1/15, which is probably the reason for the 15 frame animation story that goes with the numbers.
However the 15 frame animation story makes little sense to me - although I must admit I'm not a 3D games animation developer.
(with 60 frames per second, a 15 frame animation would take 0,25 second and would increment with 1/60 - doesn't match with any of the above).

The above tables can be made with "Speed BP's 20AF skills" too, however I can't get them to match very well
SPA APS
1,0750 0,930
1,0250 0,976
0,9750 1,026
0,9250 1,081
0,8750 1,143
0,8250 1,212
0,7750 1,290
0,7250 1,379
0,6750 1,481
0,6250 1,600
0,5750 1,739
0,5250 1,905
0,4750 2,105
0,4250 2,353
0,3750 2,667
0,3250 3,077
0,2750 3,636
0,2250 4,444
0,1750 5,714
0,1250 8,000

Increments in SPA is 1/20, which means they have more breakpoints.

Kind regards/Snede@heredur

 

Which is why I wish we had more information about the animation frames. Namely, the method that ULTRAPEINLICH and the folks at the German Forums used to determine the frames.

 

I wonder if the DK skills with 2 part frame time - like 2 frames for recovery, 13 frames to strike, attack speed only affects the strike. Kind of like lightning strike but without cooldown, etc.

It would be nice if someone could how many attacks per unit time these numbers translate into and I could crunch them closer...