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1 to 1 AP Rating > AS Rating

chadautrychadautry Member, Alpha Two
in General Discussion
The bad things about AS Rating compared to AP Rating
  • Because AP is FlatDamage while AS is a SpeedMultiplier, you need 1k AP Rating before 1 AS Rating gives the same DPS (on using a single ability) as an additional point of AP Rating BEFORE diminishing returns
  • AP Rating does not currently have diminishing returns, AS Rating does
  • AS Rating doesn't improve Bleed, Hemo, Poison, Burn, and many other effects while AP Rating does
  • AS increasing buffs are additive with AS Rating from gear, AS increasing buffs are multiplicative with AP Rating from gear (and Damage buffs are multiplicative with both AS Rating and AP Rating)
    • Effects which happen on hit, or non-AP Rating flat damage additions (which would be multiplicative with AS Rating and additive with AP Rating) are rare, while AS Increasing buffs are fairly common
  • AS Rating does not affect cooldowns. Over a rotation it will 'dilute' the abilities in your rotation. Detailed explanation/example: Assume you have X% attack speed, which is enough to get a single extra basic combo attack hit out, before your larger Archetype abilities come off cooldown. If you instead had X% increased damage it would theoretically be the same DPS on any single ability. But because of cooldowns, the increased damage would actually be more DPS over the rotation; since it would be improving your more powerful cooldown abilities, instead of giving you an extra lesser hit.
The good things about AS Rating compared to AP Rating
  • Faster feels better
  • Faster combo attacks means faster Finishers/Extended Finishers which triggers effects
In practice, a counter argument to the good:
  • Many abilities tend to be .5seconds to 1second. 1 second or less already feels pretty good. In comparison, WoW has 1.5 second global cooldowns. So if you're using abilities with less than a second of use time, it feels like you're spamming insta-cast abilities from WoW
  • If you had 30% increased attack speed from AS Rating, that 1 second ability would be 0.77s and that .5 second ability would be 0.384 seconds. A base ~5.3 second full GS or 1h-Sword combo (calculated by timing combos with a stopwatch, and correcting for character's Attack Speed) would instead take 4.07 seconds. Less than .3 seconds faster!
    • That 30% AS from rating is from in game numbers, and requires ~445 AS Rating to achieve. To be 'optimal' for DPS on a single ability use, you'd need 1,800 AP Rating to balance that out. Anything less and DPS would be improved by shifting AS Rating to AP Rating.

Comments

  • lamina5432lamina5432 Member, Alpha Two
    So talking with chadautry in guild chat about the tick damages such as bleed, poison and burn. According to them these damages do not have stacks and only trigger off of weapon finishers generally for now. So the fact that these are not stackable in my opinion is also in detriment to AS as a stat since multi apply effects is a big upwards scaling for AS.

    Then another question I asked was whether AS affected cool-down of ability's, but no it only effect's the cast time. So while the AS stat will have an effect on the speed you can do your rotation while it's up it doesn't actually effect the time it takes your rotation from coming up. In comparison AP effects the full output every time you cast the ability.

    I do think some of this will be toned down with the TTK changes Intrepid has in the works but I agree AS as a stat doesn't have the same meatiness as AP, because of the reasons pointed.
  • REHOCREHOC Member
    Thank you both for breaking this down in detail. This is really solid feedback and very helpful for players trying to understand the real difference between AP Rating and AS Rating. It’s clear that, at the current state of the game, AP has a much bigger impact on overall DPS, especially because it affects all damage types including bleeds, poisons, burns, and abilities with cooldowns.

    I also appreciate the clarification about AS Rating not affecting cooldowns but only cast time and attack animations. It’s good to see discussions like this because it helps everyone plan their builds better and pushes for possible stat adjustments in future patches.

    Hopefully, with the upcoming TTK changes, some of these issues will get addressed so AS Rating feels more rewarding. Either way, great analysis!

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  • chadautrychadautry Member, Alpha Two
    As a follow up, I'm not saying AS Rating is a negative thing or that it doesn't improve DPS. I'm saying that AP Rating is just massively better.

    The root problem I think is that AS Rating and AP Rating aren't comparable parts of the basic DPS equation, though the naming scheme makes it feel like they are.

    Simplifying things, DPS from using an ability is DamageMultiplier% * FlatDamage / (BaseActivationTime / (1 + IncreasedSpeedMultiplier%))

    Increased speed multiplier of +1% would give the same DPS as increased damage multiplier of +1%

    However, AP Rating does not contribute to DamageMultiplier%! It contributes to FlatDamage (proportionally, no diminishing returns) in the equation while AS Rating contributes to IncreasedSpeedMultiplier (not proportionally, there are diminishing returns).
    DamageMultiplier% and BaseActivationTime come from the ability being used.

    By increasing AP Rating by 1 you are increasing your overall damage by a percent of how much AP Rating you already have. By increasing AS Rating by 1 you are increasing your IncreasedSpeedMultipler by at most 0.1% (less with diminishing returns)
    ^ That is why increasing AP Rating gives more DPS than AS Rating until 1000 AP Rating. (Current AP Rating + 1 / Current AP Rating) is greater than 0.1% until Current AP Rating is 1000

    Side note on AS Rating diminishing returns: Observed 0.1% Attack Speed increase on the character sheet per AS Rating for values 1-20. There are some funky diminishing returns, and could not backwards engineer a formula that made sense. But by 445 AS Rating you are getting less than 0.069% increased attack speed per point of AS Rating.

    The solution IMO is both simple and extreme at the same time. Abilities need to define the FlatDamage and AP Rating needs to contribute to an IncreasedDamageMultipler (like AS Rating does for IncreasedSpeedMultiplier) give them the same diminishing returns formula, and now they both contribute to the DPS equation equally. They would both interact with buffs similarly (stack additively with buffs to their own multiplier, and naturally multiplicatively with buffs to the other multiplier)

    With the base DPS issues taken care of, I think AP Rating increasing Dots and other effects would be balanced well enough against AS Rating giving faster attacks and more frequent combos.

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