How does everyone feel about skill speed?

[Gotcha]

From what I found out on my sumn. 100ss increase means 1 more attack every 2min of nonstop attacks. The effect of spell speed on cast time is 2843-(ss)~round to 3 digits and move the decimal. so my ss right now is 441 so. 2843-441=2402 rounded to 240=2.40cast/recast time. So in the end i would give up ss for more damage stat.

[glim]

wtf is a "DOT fallacy" lmao

[Aratak]

You are making skill speed simpler than it is...

Sorry, I'm not a native speaker. What I understand from your post is that you are talking about 2 different effects that undermine the effectiveness of better skillspeed.

Effect one: Human Error) With higher GCD frequency a player loses more time overall, because of missing to push the hotkey for the next GCD abillity exactly on time. I think that point might be valid.
But in my experience even on 2.28 seconds GCD I start spamming the button for the next action before the timeframe closes. I am not sure how the client works in that regard, but I know from other MMO's that there are mechanics that will assure a continous flow of GCD abillities when you hit the button a certain time before GCD timeframe wears off. Meaning when I start spamming the button before the GCD is available I would be fine and don't lose any time.


-1000 chars-

[Aratak]

If that is the case your point would however still be valid in cases the player really starts hitting the buton too late. But I think that happens quite rarely; as DRG I can easily switch between rear and flank while maintaining my attacks.
All in all it is hard to tell if effect one actually happens in practice.

Effect two: Disengaging) The player 'loses' the future additional attack provided by skillspeed whenever he disengages from the mob before he makes said attack. I think that is not true and important to understand. 'Disengaging' happens basically on in two different forms: Purposely (for example when you switch to an add) ore forced (Boss disappears or knocks you back for example). I made a post on the latter case earlier in this thread and reasoning that skillspeed will statisticly don't lose its effectiveness then.

-1000 Chars-

[Aratak]

When you purposely disengage before using your additional attack:

Let's say you have saved up some time due to skillspeed. For example you made 10 attacks with 2.4 sec GCD compared to someone who did 10 attacks with 2.5 sec GCD. So you would be one second ahead. When you then run to an add you will still be 1 second ahead when reaching said add in comparsion, since you would have started running 1 second earlier (or something equivalent when you chose to do one more attack on the boss) than the slower player. When the add is dead you run back to the boss and will still be that one second ahead + 0.1 seconds per attack you made on the add.
I hope with that example it becomes clear that you usually don't 'lose' the progress on building up a future additional attack when you purposely disengage.

You lose the progress only when the boss disappears and there are no other targets to reach within a certain timeframe.
EDIT: As you mentioned, depending on bossmechanics

[EasymodeX]

For every 24 hits a 2.5 GCD makes, a 2.4 GCD will make 25. It will take 60 seconds of uninterrupted fighting to guarantee that extra hit;

It takes 72 seconds at 2.5 GCDs per attack to guarantee 2 crits from 100 crit rating that matches the 1 extra attack from skill speed.

[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.

[pandabearcat]

Realistically neither clipping it nor letting it fall off for 1 second actually affects your dps in any meaningful fashion.

[Supersun]

Realistically neither clipping it nor letting it fall off for 1 second actually affects your dps in any meaningful fashion.

It does if the DoT was due to proc during that 1 second. That's a missed 35 potency.

[pandabearcat]

If you clipped every single BioII by 1 second, you would end up with 1/5th of a GCD saved every 3 minutes. You would lose a GCD every 15 minutes.

If you clipped every single Bio I (why would you, instacast) by 1 second, you would miss .6 of a GCD every 3 minutes. You lose 1 GCD every ~5 minutes.

It really, really does not matter.