New Legendary Gem:
[Clever Name Goes Here]
Base Effect: Your Critical Hit Damage is increased by [XXX]% of your Attack Speed bonus. Your direct benefit from Attack Speed bonus is reduced by [100-X.X]%
Possible Flavor Text: “Here, hold this and hit me like you mean it” -The infamous last words of [Some Poor Gemcrafter]
Why:
The attack speed stat is basically universally beneficial to the throughput of any build. You get more attacks out per second for more damage and more effect procs. Sure, you might spend resources faster, but at no hit to efficiency and in many cases you would also build those resources back faster. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for attack speed’s impact on a build’s animations and visual aesthetic. I’d love to see a mechanism added to the game that would allow a build to receive (at least some of) the functional benefits of attack speed boosts without sacrificing aesthetic.
As an example, I personally love the visual weight of swinging a Necromancer’s Grim Scythe with Leger’s Disdain and watching it send my foes flying. Even if Grim Scythe builds aren’t the highest performing, I love their style and the feeling of force and power behind each swing - especially since Necromancers themselves have such thin frames, suggesting their strength arises more from dark magics than physical brawn. Adding on a 30% end-game attack speed boost through Paragon points and gear may be a huge boon to my build’s dps, but it utterly dismantles that feeling of power. Instead of an aesthetic of magic-fueled might, my Necromancer now zips around like a caffeinated hamster, speeding through animations in mess of movement and visual effects.
Creating a mechanism for a build to benefit from attack speed bonuses without the associated visual havoc would be a welcome relief and an interesting build option. This could probably be achieved in several ways, but the version I present here is the conversion of Attack Speed to Critical Hit Damage. Ideally, this would provide a damage boost (vs a simple source exchange), and damage scaling similar to something like the legendary gem Bane of the Trapped. As presented, I’d also like to see it potentially retain some attack speed benefits (vs a hard trade like Death’s Bargain or Soul Smasher), since some animations - especially with 2-handed weapons - can feel painfully slow without any boost at all, and some acceleration of the attack animations does still contribute to a sense of growing power. Just, not so much acceleration that it feels like my character’s voice should be pitched upward.
This option would certainly benefit some builds more than others (it would be actively detrimental to my Thorns Crusader), but I think that actually makes it better from a design and theorycrafting standpoint than something that is universally BiS (or universally never BiS). I also get that asking for entirely new items this late in Diablo III’s life is a lot, but I’ve really enjoyed many of the changes with Season 19 and two of the major components of that have been addition of the new Legacy of Dreams gem and a whole Crusader armor set - with more sets for other classes apparently coming in future seasons.
I love Diablo III, but not when certain quirks of high-level play shoot other aspects of the game in the foot. Overly-speedy animations may sound like an odd gripe, but hopefully I’ve made the point that it’s also an opportunity to add an interesting and meaningful choice to the game.