How does everyone feel about skill speed?

[EasymodeX]

Not considering procs, you would get 3.5% more DPS by melding crit.

You would get [baseline crit %] less than 3.5% more relative DPS by melding crit.

Assuming you have a GCD of 2.4, you would get 4.175% more damage on your GCD abillities by melding speed.

You would get [AA+OGCD contribution%] less than 4.175% more relative damage from GCD abilities by melding speed. Sidenote: which you mention later.

Speed has larger effects (usually more than 20%, which is alot) than crit but don't work on AA and dots. Speed leads to more TP consumption.

DOT fallacy: skill speed improves DOT uptime. The actual damage delta (due to server DOT timing) is variable and more of a simulation exercise than anything. For a modeling exercise, DOT damage is increased directly with increased uptime.

Edit: Clarification: the fact that SS does not increase tick rate would be more impacting at higher values of skill speed -- e.g. after the SS stops improving uptime. However, for practical values of SS, it improves uptime.

The mentioned 4.~% for speed are in practice also diminished, due to animationlocks when using offGCD abillities between GCD abillities.

As a practical matter, animation locks only exist for DRGs where the jump animations exceed the slack time between GCD animations.

Edit: Or fringe circumstances where you intentionally try to throw a second OGCD between GCDs, but this is a utility topic (Bard silence), not a DPS output topic.


Edit2:

The only major takeaway is that skill speed does have accelerating returns at high values, countered by the accelerated TP drain. Generally speaking I'd expect to hit some pretty hard TP walls before a player sees any notable DPS accelerated returns.

[Aratak]

Thx EasymodeX for your annotations.

I see what you mean with the relative DPS increase with crit being dependent on the critchance you already had before increasing the chance.
Didn't thought about that.
The relative DPS increase would be in my example 0.5*7%* 1/(1+prevCritChance) -> rel. DPS increase for melding crit ~3.04% at 15% baseline critchance

To evaluate the 4.~% in terms of relative DPS increase. I could calculate a factor with the knowledge of my AA DPS and my GCD abillities DPS at 100 potency multiplied by an guessed value based on my average potency on GCD abillities I use while fighting. That guessed value would be dependent on the used rotation and the conditions of the fight (interrutions etc.).
So as DRG I would guess values between 1.84 and 2.6~ for example, assuming I perform better than spamming Heavy Thrust and worse than the 27-actions rotation (without offGCD's) while fighting.

-1000 chars-

[Aratak]

Example (assuming AA DPS = GCD DPS at 100 potency):
-> 4.~% * 2.4 / (2.4 +1) -> roughly 2.8~% to 3% rel. DPS increase for melding speed

Didn't understand exactly what you meant with the effects of speed on DOT's.
(Is it that you can "miss" a tick depending on the length of timegap between reapliing the DOT?)
Not considering that effect, I would agree that speed and crit are roughly on par in that example.

I would also like to hear your opinion on speed allowing better rotations; seems you know what you
are talking about.
For DRG specifically I think you could get an additional action in the timeframe of an Heavy Thrust
buff at about 585 base skillspeed and using speedfood.
That amount of skillspeed is very much possible to get with endgame gear when you are dedicated.

[Supersun]

DOT fallacy: skill speed improves DOT uptime. The actual damage delta (due to server DOT timing) is variable and more of a simulation exercise than anything. For a modeling exercise, DOT damage is increased directly with increased uptime.

Edit: Clarification: the fact that SS does not increase tick rate would be more impacting at higher values of skill speed -- e.g. after the SS stops improving uptime. However, for practical values of SS, it improves uptime.

Depends on the DoT.

Bio II for example has a 30 second duration. The default 2.5 GDC divides cleanly into it and each additional GDC reduction up until 2.4 either forces you to sacrifice Bio II uptime or clip your Bio II early.