Something must be done about Skill Speed

[pandabearcat]

This isn't a rant about the paper values of skill speed for your theoretical dps.

We already know those values, and while they are low for everyone, those formulas might not be correct, etc etc.

The thing I want everyone to remember is, as long as you are running out of TP, skill speed does 0 for your damage.

You might as well have 400 stat points that don't exist.

Its easy to figure out the reason. TP gain is static (whether you include Invigorate or not).

Whether you do all your dps in 1 second, doing like 10 million dps then petering off, or do your dps over 5 minutes before you drain out, by the time 5 minutes is up you both have done the same dps.

There is an argument about skill speed allows you to get more attacks in per cd.

This is slightly true. However, even for 20 second cooldowns, you have to get to a 2.22 second GCD in order to fit in even one extra attack. That is a pretty huge investment.

As far as I can tell every single TP using class will run out, and some extremely quickly (monks).

This completely negates the value of SS for you.

SS needs to increase resource generation speed. This would actually make it an extremely INTERESTING stat.

Perhaps even remove the effect of SS on actual skill speed. Have it solely increase resource gain. Thus it actually becomes a stat you to stack for certain situations, and removed for others.

SS should do more than absolutely nothing.

Also: the supposed fact that it is a linear reduction in GCD is also extremely troubling, as well as the fact that it does nothing to reduce animation delays.

EDIT: hehe, also remember that because TP efficiency is not constant, and that generally speaking by far the most efficient skills are DoTs, which are unaffected by SS, SS actually actively sabotages your TP efficiency, thus making it not only do nothing, but actually make you do LESS dps than you would normally XD.

Oh wow...hehe.

[neoreturn]

I agree, I know your pain must come from Turn4. If your group got some good Blm, you don't have to use aoe skill which drain TP too quick. the big problem is there is no TP potion in game.

[Zigkid3]

I like it better as a GCD reduction stat I just wish it actually had a reasonable impact, though if it also gave some TP regen in addition then it'd at least become more valuable.

I'd love to have more control over my rotation and be able to use my abilities faster to pump out dps, but as a result you burn through more TP. If they made SS reduce GCD by more than it currently does so it'd actually be useful as well as offer TP regen then it'd be nice.

[Bossmoney]

In SWTOR the alacrity stat served the same purpose. In the beginning, it behaved just like Skill/Spell Speed does now in that all it did was speed up attacks but it just made players run out of mana faster. Eventually in a major patch they changed it so that it also sped up resource regeneration which made it a more useful stat as you wouldn't go mana negative anymore and it still was being useful when not directly attacking non-stop because the regen would still kick in while you're not attacking.

[Allyrion]

When Skill Speed will start actually becoming useful (i.e. later on when you can get larger amounts of it), this will indeed become a problem. It should definitely increase your TP regen to balance itself out.
Crit and determination have no cost for their damage gains while skill speed essentially does.

I don't want it to be purely a regen stat though. I think it would be a great stat if the cost of it was removed by a roughly equivalent regen mechanic. Right now it sucks (because of low numbers) but it will be great in later tiers once balanced.

[pandabearcat]

If you gave me 1000 skill speed right now I wouldn't take it.

Its not the numbers being low that make it poor, its the fact that it cannot actually help your dps if you are running out on long fights.

It needs to be redesigned.

I understand that they need Bards to be useful with their songs, but the TP song is also fairly lackluster, and is a dps loss while singing it.

Shrug. Support has its uses but your stats should not be useless.

[Allyrion]

If you gave me 1000 skill speed right now I wouldn't take it.

Its not the numbers being low that make it poor, its the fact that it cannot actually help your dps if you are running out on long fights.

It needs to be redesigned.

I understand that they need Bards to be useful with their songs, but the TP song is also fairly lackluster, and is a dps loss while singing it.

Shrug. Support has its uses but your stats should not be useless.

That's why I said it just needs to refund as much TP as it made you spend. So I agree with a refund mechanic but only to the extent of removing the cost.
If it did that, it'd be essentially speeding up your damage and adding more attacks over time for no cost.

Right now, with no regen, it's doing the same but you'll run out of TP and it won't matter that you got there faster.
That's why I said TP will be a problem when the numbers get higher and Skill Speed actually useful.

Even if you gave that regen mechanics to Skill Speed right now, people still wouldn't stack it. Why?
Because the gains from it are too low. That will change as items get higher budgets.
When people will WANT to stack it, they still won't cause they'll hit a dead end with TP.

Sorry if I wasn't clear in my first post.
i.e. Don't take away the 'haste' stat, just remove the cost of the gains.

[pandabearcat]

Yes, I agree!

Also, maybe sometime in the near future they will figure out a good cap for it (1 second maybe, or 1.5 seconds), while boosting the actual returns, and turning it into a percentage based system where every 1% haste is exactly 1% CDR, instead of starting at 1% CDR and scaling to like 10000000% CDR.

[EasymodeX]

I'm not seeing it.

The problem is not skill speed. The core issue you're aiming at is the softcapped TP resource pool. This results in a game design issue where encounters are constrained and high-end content will have only 1 design approach: high-intensity / short-duration fights with low AOE components. It makes it very difficult to design encounters with long-duration strategic mechanics.

Skill speed itself only has two issues: (1) its exponential scaling at all, and (2) the fact that SS's value is softcapped by animations. The secondary issue as a result of those is that the raw magnitude of skill speed is slightly weak in light of #1 and #2 above.

However, the SS issues can be lived with: it has a softcap? Don't stack it. Solved. What actually negatively impacts the game as a whole is the TP resource design. In the end, you're using the general sentiment re: SS as an segue to the real issue. Just cut out the middle man.

[Size]

Thanks for this post. It has crystalized in my mind what I have been theorizing for a while now. SS is a bit of a sham. Its getting paid twice as much for double the work. In the end it doesn't really add anything. Unless its a really short encounter.

Considering this. I believe the optimal SS is one that allows you to fit in all your DoTs to the point where your next Demolish comes right after the debuff drops from the mob. Any more and you overwrite and lose dps. I don't know what that magic number is, but its pretty low I think like 440ish.

From that point it would make sense to stack crit and det which give damage boosts for free since they spend the same amount of TP resource.