Attack Speed

Overview

• Attack speed is the delay between the subsequent auto-attack rounds of a player. This delay may be reduced to a minimum by various status enhancements or abilities. The increase of damage from a damage dealer improving their attack speed are exponential. Thus, reaching the attack delay reduction cap is one of the most important factors in dealing damage.
  • Various forms of delay reduction exist and cap at individual values.
    • Exceeding 43.74% magic haste or 25% equipment haste will have no further delay reduction values.
      • Magic and Equipment haste alone will not allow players to reach the maximum delay reduction. They will require either Martial Arts, Dual Wield, or Job Ability delay. See below for further details.
• Certain delay reduction effects can have negative consequences. For example, Dual Wield and Martial Arts reduce delay, but also reduce the amount of TP gained. Thus, while overcapping effects like magic, equipment, or job ability haste have no negatives. Exceeding the delay reduction cap with delay reduction effects such as these will negatively impact a players DPS.

Method of Application

Equipment Haste: - Caps at 25% (256/1024)

• Various Equipment, Atma, Catastrophe with Apocalypse Lv75~119/II (10%).

Magic Haste: - Caps at 43.75% (448/1024)

• Haste (15%), Haste II (30%), Hastega (15%), Hastega II (30%),
  Refueling (10%), Animating Wail (15%), Mighty Guard (15%), Erratic Flutter (30%)
  Advancing March (~10.55~18.95%), Victory March (~15.92~28.61%), Honor March (~12.30-16.99%)
  Indi-Haste / Geo-Haste, (~2.4~40.9%), Embrava (25.9% haste maximum).

Job Ability Haste: - Caps at 25% (256/1024)

• Hasso (10%), Haste Samba (5~10%), Last Resort (15~25%)
  Catastrophe with Apocalypse iLv119 III (10%), Wyvern (2%~10%)
  

Dual Wield:

• Trait levels, Equipment.
  • Adding more over the cap will reduce your TP gain per hit. See table and explanation below.

Martial Arts:

• Trait levels, Equipment, Hundred Fists.
  • Adding more over the cap will reduce your TP gain per hit. See table and explanation below.

Blitzer's Roll:

• The delay reduction from this job ability reduces TP per hit
  • This delay reduction term is capped at -15%

Notes on Status Effect

Haste increases attack speed and reduces recasting times by a percentage that differs according to its source. The Haste spell, for example, has a value of approximately 15%. Using a 480-delay weapon (8 seconds per round) with the effect of Haste would change the attack speed to 85% of 480, or 408 (6.8 seconds per round). It is only "approximately", though, because some thorough testing of various equipment and spells has revealed that this Haste system is actually calculated on an X/1024 basis.

Example:

• Take the 15% Haste in the previous example.
• Now you want to represent it in binary in the computer program with a fairly short variable length that you can do quick, bitwise operations on, so you use a 10 bit variable.
• If that the programmer assigning values to the equipment is unaware of exactly how the system works, or too lazy to find a closer approximation of the target value, they can just approximate 150/1000 = 15% and make the Haste value of Haste 150/1024 (14.68%) instead of something closer like 153/1024 (14.94%).
• 480 Delay × (1024-150) ÷ 1024 = ~409 or 410 delay instead of the 408 predicted previously.
• Because Haste doesn't give an exact potency message, it's impossible to draw conclusions like this from the spell. However, this hypothesis has been pretty well verified on gear

In general, the values assigned to equipment is lower than the description would indicate. Some exceptions include things like Rune Chopper (94/1024 = 9.2% Haste), which is higher. Overall, the assignment seems to generally follow the example above, with a trend towards lower values than expected. This is why people often claim you need 26% gear Haste to hit the 25% Haste cap.

Caps

Damage per second goes to infinity as Delay goes to 0, so Square has placed several caps on the Haste categories.

• Equipment haste has its own cap of 25% (256/1024).
• Magic haste caps at 43.75% (448/1024).
• Job abilities haste is the third and final category, and it also caps at 25% (256/1024).

In addition to this, there is a general 80% Delay reduction cap that was added to the game as delay-reducing options became more readily available. Before this, it was possible to attain Haste values up to 93.75%, as can be seen in the UNCTGTG's video below:

All types of Delay Reduction fall under this cap, from Sword Strap to Martial Arts to Dual Wield. In order to calculate your current delay reduction (and how close you are to the cap), you need to determine your % delay by multiplying all your Delay reductions together.

Example:

• For 30% Dual Wield, 26% Equipment Haste, 15% Magic Haste from Haste, 10% Job Ability Haste from Haste Samba:
  (1 - 30% Dual Wield)×(1024 - 256 Equipment Haste - 150 Magic Haste - 101 Job Ability Haste)÷1024 = 35.3% Delay remaining, or 64.7% Delay reduction
  

For Martial Arts, which is not a percentage-based decrease, you must use your base delay (480 for H2H) plus weapon delay in the calculations instead of calculating it independent of delay as shown above.

• Minimum H2H delay is 96
  • The 80% Delay reduction cap still applies to your (Base Delay + Weapon Delay).

For example when calculating delay with H2H you take (480 (Base Delay) +xx (+Weapon Delay) -xx(MA Delay Reduction))×(1024 - xx Equipment Haste - xx Magic Haste - xx Job Ability Haste)÷1024 =xx

• The minimum delay possible for a Spharai (Level 99) would be (480 Base Delay + 86 Weapon Delay)*.2 Delay cap = 113.2 minimum possible delay.
• The delay for a Spharai (Level 99) Monk with capped gear and magic haste only, would be (480 Base Delay + 86 Weapon Delay - 200 Martial Arts Delay)×(1024 - 256 Equipment Haste - 448 Magic Haste)=114.3 which is nearly minimum delay. You would only need 1% job ability haste from Haste Samba to cap delay reduction.

• Adding Haste Samba from a Dancer without merits or /Dancer and the haste spell would look like (480 Base Delay + 86 Weapon Delay - 200 Martial Arts Delay)×(1024 - 256 Equipment Haste - 150 Magic Haste - 51 Job Ability Haste)=202.6

Dual Wield Cheatsheet

Below is a table that will show how much gear DW you will need with your current job's DW Tier and how much Haste you are receiving. Values listed are for capped gear haste.

		Magic Haste						with Haste Samba from sub Magic Haste						with Haste Samba from main Magic Haste
		0%	10%	15%	30%	Cap		0%	10%	15%	30%	Cap		0%	10%	15%	30%	Cap
DW Job Tier	T1(10)	64	60	57	46	26		62	57	54	40	14		60	54	50	33	0
	T2(15) sub	59	55	52	41	21		57	52	49	35	9		55	49	45	28	0
	T3(25) sub	49	45	42	31	11		47	42	39	25	0		45	39	35	18	0
	T4(30)	44	40	37	26	6		42	37	34	20	0		40	34	30	13	0
	T5(35)	39	35	32	21	1		37	32	29	15	0		35	29	25	8	0
	T6(40)	34	30	27	16	0		32	27	24	10	0		30	24	20	3	0

Removal of Status

The spell and ability effect can generally be cancelled; songs must be overwritten or expired. The status can be removed by Dispel effects, but Embrava is not dispelable.

References

• Yey! Another Haste topic (Kirschy, BG forums)
• Haste:_In_Depth_by_Kirschy
• Gear Haste Cap (Tyr, BG)
• Delay cap confirmation (kittycatrag, BG)
• H2H Delay cap confirmation (Comeatmebro, FFXIAH)