How good is attack speed vs flat damage %?

I've been fine tuning a 2H RT Mace build, and have been wondering if it would be worth it venturing up into the Ranger starting zone to get those 4% attack speed nodes. However, I haven't run much tests on attack speed much at all. Is 4% attack speed a notable amount of damage increase, or would an 8 or 10% physical damage node be better?

This is what I'm looking at atm:

im not sure how it is on path of exile...but mostly the Atk speed is better than atk dmg IF you have very high atk dmg. and atk dmg is better than atk speed IF you have very high atk speed already. thats my point of view...probly my post is useless anyway, maybe not.

IMHO, 4% attack speed not worth in investing.

6% at least would be good.

A 2H Mace is already slow but if you roll a attack speed glove then that's definitely a bonus.

Damage wise would be great for 2H Mace since it has already high physical damage, even higher with Heavy Strike & support gems Melee Physical damage so it's definitely damage nodes worthy.

I would go for 12% or 10% melee damage if it's just a point & only if I had extra point.

Please list out the gems you are using if you want others to critique/fix on your build as I have no idea why you need the amount of Dex and Int for as I see alot of wasted point and lack of some essential Keystone.

Rough Endurance charge build with IR, US, 50% elemental damage, 50% armor nodes & same INT/DEX requirement:

and you can get a faster attack support gem for sweep or heavy strike thats 41% increased attack speed on a lvl 17 gem (lvl 57 required) which is better than wasting points for attack speed in passives

On the topic of evaluating attack speed, the act2 bandit quest now in one of the difficulties, cruel I believe, gives you the option to choose either attackspeed or physical damage bonus. For a standard melee GS mara I take it the best option would be to just go for the damage rather then speed?

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Eivon wrote:

On the topic of evaluating attack speed, the act2 bandit quest now in one of the difficulties, cruel I believe, gives you the option to choose either attackspeed or physical damage bonus. For a standard melee GS mara I take it the best option would be to just go for the damage rather then speed?

No, the opposite, you already have a ton of damage %, so attack speed would be better

falt said it depends on the values you get for that quest and you should do math for it...

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Octaus wrote:

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Eivon wrote:

On the topic of evaluating attack speed, the act2 bandit quest now in one of the difficulties, cruel I believe, gives you the option to choose either attackspeed or physical damage bonus. For a standard melee GS mara I take it the best option would be to just go for the damage rather then speed?

No, the opposite, you already have a ton of damage %, so attack speed would be better

Hm, maybe your are right that speed is the way to go( attacking faster with GS will be good for survivability also since I will play hc). But just intuitively I assumed that extra damage would be better.

And at least for my build the only damage percent really will come from the weapon itself. In the passive skill tree I will just have slaughter(+12% with 2handers) and smashing blows( 12% with maces). Also +21% attackspeed with berserking+smashing blows.

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Octaus wrote:

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Eivon wrote:

On the topic of evaluating attack speed, the act2 bandit quest now in one of the difficulties, cruel I believe, gives you the option to choose either attackspeed or physical damage bonus. For a standard melee GS mara I take it the best option would be to just go for the damage rather then speed?

No, the opposite, you already have a ton of damage %, so attack speed would be better

4% attack speed vs 12% Physical Damage, read again.

Physical Damage is not same as Melee Physical Damage, it affect projectiles that converts physical damage to X damage, example are Lightning Strike, Burning Arrow, Ice Shot & etc.

Plus you can't find any 12% Physical damage node anyway in the tree, 12% Melee Physical Damage is debatable from only Marauder starting point.

I was talking about the bandit quest reward, there is no mention of the actual value of physical damage or attack speed given as a reward.