What Does Speeding Up an Attack Speed Animation Do?
Title. They say that it doesn't change actual attack speed, their animation just finishes faster. Is this then just for visuals?
9 Comments
Think of it like this. Lets say you have an AS of 1.0. That's one attack per second. However, that can come in a variety of attack frames. Some frames have a pre-fire of 0.5 and a post-fire of 0.5. That means you have to commit to the attack for 0.5 seconds before it fires, then you have 0.5 seconds before it'll even start to line up an attack. If you decrease the pre-fire time, then you have to wait less for the attack to go off, which makes for easier harassment as you can harass and then run through your post-fire time, which doesn't stop you from moving, activating abilities, etc. BUT, even if you have a warm-up of 0.2 seconds and a wind-down of 0.8 seconds, you'll still only make one attack per second, which means you still have an AS of 1.0.
It's mostly relevant in kiting and harassment. The shorter your initial attack frames, the easier time you have with both.
Guys upvote this thread please. It's a good question with good answers
Attack speed is how frequently the auto attack happens, auto attack animation defines how long the auto attack actually takes.
Lower animation time means the time between your character starting the motion and the projectile flying is shorter. This doesn't increase auto attack speed because the projectile will still come out at the same rate. Good question.
Makes attack moving easier Makes autoattacks smoother Makes the actual damage of the autoattack come faster
The animations are honestly a lot easier to tell on Melees but a lot more important on Ranged
Example of a really shitty animation: 
Example of a really smooth animation: 
A faster Animation meens you have to spend less time for attacking and therefor have more time to move between attacks(provided you cancle the backswing) It also means less time between the attack order and the resolving attack, so easier lasthits and faster responses if one gets in harras range
I gave up reading at third sentence.
Um.