Earthquake and attack speed breakpoints

I'd like to start a discussion/information sharing thread on Earthquake. I find it to be an awesome skill that's super strong, but to get the most out of the skill you need to kind of work through some trial and error.

First, some basic numbers to explain why EQ is so strong:

If you can get one quake per attack, Earthquake's damage effectiveness at level 21 is a little over 300%. (1.1 base X 1.75 aftershock = 1.92 aftershock damage, + 1.1 base = 3.02).
By comparison, Static Strike has DE of 210%, and you can look up Ice Crash and Vigilant Strike to see just how that compares.

What happens if you go past the breakpoint and jump to one quake every two attacks? The Damage Effectiveness drops to around 200%, which is still strong. (1.1 + (1.1x1.75x.5)). At one every three attacks the damage effectiveness starts to fall behind other options at 175% or so.

Where are those breakpoints exactly?

I found the breakpoint for earthquake supported by only a 20/20 less duration gem to be around .78 attack time. Maybe a bit faster because I'm at only 17/19 on my gem but you get the point.

That's great for Marohi users, you can spare around 28% increased attack speed before butting against the breakpoint, but it's a bit unreasonable for any other builds since a lot of great damage nodes come with attack speed.

One important thing to note is that the breakpoint isn't a direct mathematical relationship with skill duration. That means a .75 duration does not translate to a (1/.75) attack time breakpoint. While it's true you only need to keep from attacking while the fissure is active, it looks like you cannot place another fissure while the animation to the previous one is still playing to a certain extent. Once I get a 20/20 gem I could figure that out and give exact breakpoints mathematically, but until then the best I can give is (Duration + .05 or so). That's 50ms I think?

Has anybody with the reduced Earthquake duration enchantment found the breakpoints there? The preliminary math suggests it might be too high to reasonably have to worry about with a Marohi, but it might be interesting to see how a much increased attack speed a Disfavour can manage.

Also, bonus for anybody in Standard with lots of resources that want to take 1-to-1 EQ to the logical extreme:

With Disfavour, a level 4 Enhance, and the enchantment, Earthquake's duration goes as low as 0.3seconds, which is likely so low you won't reasonably be able to reach the breakpoint and attack speed then becomes a free damage multiplier.

Im surprised im not seeing more peope use this guy with EQ.

I currently don't need to run one of those (since all I really need is defensive stats more than anything), but I'm keeping it in mind if I ever have the gear space and find myself able to make use of the extra attack speed it allows. Definitely something to keep in mind if you have a reduced duration enchantment and want to run something with an inherently faster attack speed like a Disfavour.

By the way, more information on my current breakpoint level:

17/19 Reduced Duration gives Earthquake a 0.71 duration.

With an attack time of 0.72, I could reach 1:1. With an attack time of 0.71, I was doing 2:1.

I reached this breakpoint with a Marohi and what looks like 39% increased attack speed on tree.

So maybe I was wrong about the earthquake's animation time affecting the breakpoints? When the patch first dropped I gave it a try on one of my Standard characters and had lots of crazy results, including getting two 1:1 attacks in a row then getting a 2:1 attack for some reason.

Im not exactly sure about the math behind it, but i was messing with the tree and managed to get my attack speed to .36 on EQ and the duration to .35, This allows for a shock-wave every swing consistently.

Since im using a kaom's heart, i removed the art of a gladiator node which primarily adds 12% attack speed and unneeded cancellation of movement speed penalty to chest pieces, which kaom's heart doesn't have.

I was able to do this with the following links

EQ-less duration-WED-MPD-Conc effect-added fire all lvl 21 as well as a warped time piece with 12% atkspd and 12% reduction and a 30% reduction enchantment on my helmet,not to mention the helmet its self is a Devoto's devotion with 16% atkspd which is an integral part of getting the attack to go as fast as possible while still efficiently dealing as much damage as possible.


It took quite a bit of doing and messing with regrets but i managed to get it to an optimal point, im sitting at 140k DPS on the initial hit of EQ with .36 attack time, and .35 duration, this could possibly be made much faster with rapid decay added into the mix, but that requires more testing and would cause EQ to lose tooltip dps on the initial hit.

PS. these are stats acquired with an Atziri's Disfavor.