Guide Why Slow Attack Speeds Are Preferred For Mana/life Steal

it's a pain to write all of this every time someone asks so here's a convenient thread you can link anyone you want to educate on this


Let's start with how mana steal and life steal trigger. If you look at them on any item's id list it says x/4s, the same way mana regen would. This is somewhat misleading as it's clear it doesnt activate periodically every four seconds, but rather theyre made to activate approximately once every 4 seconds of constant melee attacks. (melee refers to your basic attack, so archer and mage also have a "melee" attack despite being long-range)

Since the amount of melee attacks you can put out per 4 seconds depends on your attack speed, the devs just simply calculated a % chance for every melee attack to trigger mana/life steal. You can find these percentages on the discord's #class_builds' pins or here (look at the second half for the % chances per melee hit).
Something to note is that these percentages are rolled for every mob hit, so mage's melee attack is the best for stealing effects due to its ranged aoe, while archer's is the worst, being a single-hit attack.

Basically with slower attack speeds you will need to spend less time melee'ing for steals, which is highly valued for spell-focused builds. On top of your normal attacks being more consistent per hit, these % chances carry over to your Quake and Chain Lightning weapon powder specials. (edit: Courage's activation also has a melee hit)
So for comparison, casting Chain Lightning with a super fast weapon and having all 9 chains connect will trigger your stealing effects approximately 0.52 times (9*5.8%). Meanwhile casting the same thing with a super slow weapon will trigger the effects approximately 4.4 times (9*49%)

These are the extremes but this means that in terms of life and mana stealing, a super slow chain/quake is over 8 times more potent than a super fast chain/quake.


so tl;dr: slow attack speeds make life/mana steal trigger more reliably per hit so you wont need to spend as much time melee'ing. they also carry over to powder specials (quake/chain/courage), making them exponentially better for restoring your character.

if i missed something or wrote any incomprehensible shit, please let me know

 

tldr: this is why atlas exists

 

Don't @ me

 

Maybe you could also add that slower attack speeds allow you to cast a spell while recharging, which is what you want to do with mana steal builds.

 

Technically, faster attack speeds activate more consistently, however slower attack speeds require less time meleeing. So, slower is better for Mana steal, but not necessarily better for life steal, excepting quake/chains.

 

Yay free brain cells

I’m looking at you morph users

 

Yep, basically. It also takes a bit more effort since you have to click more and hit more consistently. Basically, with faster speeds, it's a matter of persistence and timing for more reward, whereas with slower speeds it's basically free but you get somewhat less.

 

Very clever!