Druid WW and WB Attack Speed Changes

PTR Feedback
1

Hi all -

We have seen a bunch of discussion and some confusion regarding some of the changes in PTR for the WW and WB attack speed. The dev team wanted to get a note out regarding the motivations behind this change and some clarification. You can read that below.

Since the Druid was introduced in 2001, the attack speed calculation for Werewolf and Werebear forms has been… quirky. The attack speed contributions of the equipped weapon were used multiple times in the calculation, giving them more than twice the impact compared with other attack speed calculations. This quirky calculation involving the weapon attack speed would also ignore the usual IAS cap.In the PTR, we have changed the attack speed calculation for Werewolf and Werebear forms to match other attack speed calculations. Weapon attack speed will be given the same importance in the calculation as for any other player character’s attack speed. In fact, the Werebear’s attack speed should exactly match the attack speed for an untransformed Druid. The base Werewolf attack speed also matches the untransformed Druid, but is enhanced by the IAS bonuses from the Werewolf skill.

Motivations:
There are a few motivations for this change:

  1. Because of the extraordinary weight weapon attack speed had on transformed attack speeds, high weapon attack speed was overwhelmingly the most important consideration for which weapon to equip. This change should encourage more diversity in weapon selection.
  2. The quirky attack speed calculation was a poor player experience for those not in the know - in particular at lower levels of play without optimized weapons. While this change has reduced attack speed when using weapons with very high IAS, it has increased attack speed for the majority of weapons - especially weapons encountered at lower levels of play.

We would like to encourage PTR players to experiment with different weapon choices for their Werewolf and Werebear forms. It is not our intent to reduce the viability of the transformed Druid. We will be looking at ways to improve the performance of the transformed Druid without sacrificing the benefits obtained from unifying the attack speed calculations.

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