I feel like this is either a bug or I have missed something very fundamental about the game.
Level 31 Reaver, 123% base attack speed with no weapon equipped. Equipping any kind of weapon lowers that value, even if it gives attack speed. My werewolf is attacking faster and plays better without a weapon than with one.
An axe with no attack speed affixes nets 118% attack speed. Crossbow with “Alacrity” suffix, 102% attack speed.
I know the base speed of the weapon plays into it, but what else is going on here? Some weapon options push it below 100%.
weapons have different base speeds, so if it’s a mace or axe it’s very easy, 2hands ofc super noticeable with their much lower base speed multiplier of 1.3-1.5 than ex daggers 1.99
because say your base aps is 2 ( i don’t remember our base speed), and you now have a weapon with base aps 1.7, that’s lower than your unarmed/base speed
that weapon effectively reduces your attack speed because it brings you speed scaling down, so you need more attack speed for the same speed
Most noticeable on 2handers where when you stack 10% bonus speed you don’t get 10% because the multipler scaling from weapon turns it into 8% or something
*i don’t remember the formula exact, but it makes sense when you see it
I suppose knowing unarmed attack speed would be relevant. If it’s 2, that’s quite high, and makes leveling a werewolf unarmed a very competitive option.
it doesn’t change your max speed, just how much bonus speed you need to reach it because the weapon acts like a multiplier/base scaler to bonus speed.
ex with this OPs specific weap
but you still do more dmg because the weapon has X base dmg, provided you can reach the same final speed.
you can see that base speed if you slap on a weapon naked/with 0 bonus speed sources as your default base 100% speed then goes to 95 or 90 etc, that’s then your multiplier to speed bonuses, but if your max speed cap is 4 aps/210% speed, it will be the same with/without the weapon, you just need slightly more speed to reach that 4aps with the weapon, not that you can’t get 4aps/210% final speed
Thanks for your time & knowledge. If I’m understanding correctly, all weapons are slower than the unarmed attack. 2h weapons will always give the character a much slower attack than it would have unarmed unless they have large speed bonuses to compensate.
This is a part of the game I simply never noticed (over thousands of hours), mostly because there is no unarmed ranged attack that I’m aware of. I ran into this now because Werewolf makes it possible to perform a melee attack with a ranged weapon. It turns out that it’s slightly worse than being unarmed and a lot worse than wielding two 1h melee weapons.
ye it’s normal/don’t worry about it, as you progress you get so much bonus speed to make up for it.
It’s just the classic archetype thematic rpg thing X weapon is slower than Y class type slower/faster than Z etc.
In the end we usually end up around 200 speed anyway, just not early levels ofc (part of why Kraken is so mandatory for 2handers)
and you’re very welcome ofc/my pleasure
