Any plans to change the weapon attack speed Meta?

Basically, the issue is this: attack speed stacks very well with flat damage per hit bonuses which can come from other parts of gear/auras.

Which is why every bow user uses a thicket or grove bow.

And there is currently very little if any incentive to attacking slower.

This isn't exactly a problem, but I was wondering if GGG was planning on making a slower attacking style more attractive?

Maybe greatly increasing the physical damage of slower bows? Introducing crossbows?

This could also be done with skills. ie a skill that rewards attacking at specific intervals instead of just as fast as you can or a skill that has an enormous mana cost that is meant to be shot infrequently.

This isn't just a "bow" problem, every weapon can stack elemental with attack speed to become easy mode. It's a problem that originated with the devs flattening the damage of the base weapons (which was basically nerfing the snot out of physical damage, especially as weapon level increases) and raising elemental damage mods. This makes weapons last longer, but only because elemental mods are what drive weapons now. This also renders most unique weapons useless, as they almost all rely on physical damage mods.

It would be best for the devs to find a way for elemental mods to scale with the weapon's physical damage (i.e. 20% of base physical damage dealt as fire, instead of a flat fire damage). If elemental damage scales with weapon base damage, a short bow (level 5, 1.55 attack speed) with identical elemental mods to a Death bow gets killed by the Death Bow (level 32, 1.1 attack speed), instead of now, where the Short Bow would destroy the Death Bow, as long as the mods were slightly significant.

There's a reason the only sought after end-game weapons are Thicket Bows, Ambushers, Siege Axes, Corsair Swords, and Fancy Foils. There's no reason to use a slower weapon that has 1-2 raw DPS more when 90% of your damage comes from flat increases on gear, skills, and auras.

I was amazed when I started playing this game and found out that damage mods added a flat number. Who wouldn't use the fastest weapon possible in that case? (People who haven't looked at it, that's who)

It arbitrarily makes a larger percentage of drops useless. Oh, you got an amazing weapon drop with huge damage mods and attack speed increase? Oh its a 1.0 attack speed weapon, vendor trash.

Balancing phys and elem damage wont fix the issue that every bow between 1.55 (best flat elem, knockback, kiting) and 1.10 (best status, stun) is essentially pointless and wont be desired for endgame builds.

The problem is that theres nothing aside from slight damage and speed numbers to differentiate the tier 3 bows (same with almost all tier 3 weapons, for that matter). They also have an incomprehensible level curve (56-68) even though theres nothing actually superior about, say, the 62 bow compared to the 65 bow.

My recommendation is that the tier 3 weapons required level be flattened to 60, and that every tier 3 weapon, in addition to its slightly varied damage/speed, have a unique (and variable, if possible) implicit mod that makes each specific weapon more interesting to various sub-builds without being outright better overall. The same could be done with armors (and in a few cases, already has been).

I always felt that GGG went too far with the physical damage normalization. I think I had the most fun back in patch 9.8. AoF definitely needed reigning in back then but I felt everything else was fine. There was a good mix of Phys and ele damage used on desirable weapons. Now Physical damage on weapons barely gets a glance.

There is more to this I wanted to speak my mind on but I just can't seem to get it together tonight. Oh well.

It's simply a normalization issue. Flat bonuses to damage will always favor higher attack speeds, period.

Either elemental damage mods on gear need to be normalized to attack speed or slower weapons need to be made more attractive in alternate ways.

Anyone want to think about ways to encourage attacking slower?

Even if physical damage was more effective, you would still want the fastest bow. Whether it deals physical or elemental damage isn't really the issue.

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laian wrote:

Anyone want to think about ways to encourage attacking slower?

Even if physical damage was more effective, you would still want the fastest bow. Whether it deals physical or elemental damage isn't really the issue.

The slow, hard hitting bows inflict stronger and more reliable status ailments, are superior in stunlock builds and have lower overall mana costs.

As mentioned in my previous post, though, that doesnt help those bows (and this goes for all weapons) inbetween fastest and slowest, hence the implicit mod suggestion.

They need to add more increased attack speed nodes somewhere near the bottom right of the dexterity side and also reward people who specialize in physical damage nodes by attaching them in it and by more than just 2%.

As it is now physical damage scales poorly, attacks slowly, and has no advantages nearly.

You can just take these very long paths where you mainly get dexterity increase nodes because 60% increase to the large numbers you get from elemental damage is more dps than taking 120% physical damage worth of nodes.

If they're going to hit for less, hit slower, and not have advantages than just tell people elemental based damage is what you need in PoE.

If you try and use anything similar to physical damage Amazon build then you're just a gimp.

If they make split arrow hit multiple times close range than it'll be a slight step closer to make physical damage rangers not so bad compared to elemental ones.

Go elemental or go home is how PoE is currently because physical can't attack fast or hit hard.

another point i want to add, not only elemental damage like all of you described above scales better. It's also way to easy to obtain these mods compared to physical damage mods and since they flatten the physical damage you need the highest mods to be even effective.
a second point that makes elemental damage so effective is that you can obtain these mods on nearly every part of your gear and with passive points that can raise them over 200% its just plain crazy damage wise.