Maces With Very High Attack Speed: My Testing Results. (Patch 0.40)
I know a few folks have already done something like this, but I found their testing to be a little less detailed than I would prefer. (A TLDR can be found at the bottom for those who don't want to read.)
Here's my setup.
Pathfinder (Warrior Ascendancy)
Dance with Death Keystone (+25% Skill Speed)
Other Passive Tree Speed Buffs (+29% Attack/Skill Speed)
Rapid Attacks II (+25% Attack Speed Support Gem)
Before I dive into the results, I just want to say that every skill feels significantly faster with a one-hand weapon. It doesn't matter if it has an attack time modifier or not. The inherent speed boost is felt immediately, even without an extreme setup like this.
Issues start to become obvious when we consider scaling. Some skills only receive minimal benefits. Others have more dramatic effects. I've ranked them below, with brief explanations as to why.
Least Effective Skills
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Rolling Slam: The total attack time modifier is significant and Rapid Attacks only provides a marginal decrease to it.
Leap Slam: Similar to Rolling Slam. Scales poorly.
Stampede: Similar to Rolling Slam. Scales poorly. The skill description doesn't mention anything about an Attack Time modifier, but it's there.
Earthquake: This skill is fully effective with attack speed, but I'm putting it in this category because of it's inherent duration. If you can find a way to dramatically lower this number, you can move it to the top of the list. (See the comment section for more.)
Forge Hammer: Similar to Earthquake, but instead of a duration problem, we now have a cooldown to contend with. Everything else scales nicely.
Super Charged Slam: Attack speed is slightly more effective compared to the first three skills on this list, but it's still underwhelming.
Hammer of the Gods: I didn't even bother testing this. Glory generation makes speed mostly irrelevant.
Effective Skills
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Sunder: The tooltip won't show you a DPS change, but attack speed works reasonably well here. It outperforms Rolling Slam and other similar skills.
Perfect Strike: This scales a little better than Sunder. The only reason I've placed it here is because of the mandatory channel requirement.
Boneshatter: Perfect scaling. However, the most damaging part of the skill is the shockwave, and that is gated behind the Primed for Stun condition. With extreme levels of speed, you could also consider this a mobility skill, but that's niche.
Most Effective Skills
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(Full scaling. No issues or drawbacks.)
Default Attack
Armour Breaker
Volcanic Fissure
Molten Blast
Earthshatter
Not Tested
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All Shield Skills. I personally have no interest in playing with them. They also don't work with my Keystone.
Summary
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Attack Speed is not a wasted stat for maces if you use the right skills. However, things could still be improved. Here's a few ideas I have on making the experience a little better.
- Buff the damage of one-handed maces by about 10-15%. Two-hand options should always be stronger, but the disparity is too extreme right now.
- Allow one-handed maces to use Super Charged Slam.
- Give Molten Blast the "Melee" tag.
- Give Rolling Slam, Leap Slam, Stampede, and Super Charged Slam attack speed scaling on par with Sunder. This still gives you plenty of weight and realism, but it rewards players who choose to specialize.
- Lower the duration of Earthquake and decrease the cooldown of Forge Hammer. These skills should still require investment for maximum effectiveness, but both are a little too heavy on punishing the player right now.
If you made it this far, thank you for reading. I had a lot of fun testing this. Please let me know if you would like any other bits of information while I still have this character!
