Quote Originally Posted by LunarRei View Post
According to what I've read, skill speed does improve GCD, which is the primary point behind them, at least for melee. It also reduces internal cooldown of skills.

Conjecture time: the reason GCD is so large is because of skill speed. Casters are stuck with forced GCD's because of cast time and benefit greatly from spell speed increases. In low GD environments, faster attack/skill speed only increases white damage, i.e. auto attacks. Now, they can say that attack speed has a significant benefit for melee as well since it will decrease GCD which has a greater impact.

What remains to be seen is if increased skill speed actually increases the rate that the animation takes place. That would be something special, for as of right now, animations are uninterruptable, even for emergency off GCD skills.
Good to know! I'll definitely be doing some testing myself once I get my armorsmithing up enough to start using materia ^_^

Thanks!