Attack Speed Buff

The attack speed buff is a (primarily Video Game) Power-Up that removes restrictions on the rate at which you attack.

A common setup is that the player must press a button for every attack, and the attack speed power-up allows you to simply hold down the button for instant More Dakka, Blade Spam, Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs, or some other form of attack. In such cases, the effect of rapid fire could be achieved in its absence by a player with sufficient Button Mashing skills. This is usually a Timed Power-Up and a Sub-Trope of Quad Damage.

In other cases, the powerup may remove or loosen a One Bullet at a Time restriction, speed up the character to gain an Extra Turn for attacking, shorten an attack animation, or just increase the rate of fire because the game said so.

Not to be confused with a "turbo" button on the controller, which simulates Button Mashing.

See also Cooldown Manipulation, which has more to do with single actions on longer timescales. Also compare Lag Cancel, where instead of using a power-up, a player achieves a faster action rate through skill.

---

Examples:

Action

• RemiLore: Lost Girl in the Lands of Lore: The Speed Boost spell increases attack speed and movement speed for a period of time.

Action Adventure

• ANNO: Mutationem: Consuming a Lightning Gum item temporarily increases attack speed for thirty seconds to allow an opportunity to deliver multiple combo-attacks until the item's ability has subsided.
• Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night:
  • Ranking up the [Weapon] Expertise shards improves their effect of increasing attack speed for that weapon.
  • Ranking up the Augment INT shard makes Miriam cast her shards faster.
  • The "Optimizer" shard's Grade effect is "Increases weapon attack speed."
  • The magical Prowess Tome is described as "A book that speeds muscle movement," and it increases standard attack speed.
  • Assassin's Vests are described as:
    Assassin's garb that increases the speed of your attacks.
  • The Rapid Fire Technique allows Miriam to continuously fire when holding down the Attack button. While the initial firing rate is as fast as the standard attack, the longer it's active, the faster and faster Miriam fires. If held long enough, Miriam will begin cranking out bullets like an automatic, but the major drawback is its steep cost of 80 MP per second (in addition to limited ammo if it's equipped).
• Shantae:
  • Shantae: Risky's Revenge: Hair Creme and Super Hair Creme work to make Shantae able to hair whip faster.
  • Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: Hair creams speed up Shantae's hair whip attacks.
    Removes tangles for faster whipping!
  • Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: The Metronome relic:
  Increase the speed of the TRANSFORMATION DANCES!

Action RPGs

• Cyberpunk 2077: The skill Cold Blood grants various buffs for a short time after killing an enemy. At a high enough level, it includes a hefty buff to attack rate and damage, among other things.
• Going Under: Some Skills:
  • Loaded for Bear:
    Guns fire faster and have twice as much ammo.
  • Go-Getter:
    Move and attack faster.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: The Ventus D-Link gains the "Haste" passive at its highest tier, which increases Terra / Aqua's attack speed while the Link is active.
  • Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories: The Card Soldier Enemy Card has the "Attack Haste" effect, which increases your swinging speed. Riku also gets an inherent boost to his combo speed when he enters Dark Mode.
• Diablo IV has this as well - several talents will give an attack speed buff. It's most prominent with the Rogue, who will often gain attack speed from making critical hits.
• Transistor: Ping()'s effect when upgrading most Functions, is "speed up".

Fighting Game

• Phantom Breaker: Users of the Quick style not only can slow their opponents down upon activating their Overdrive, it also speeds up their attacks, allowing them to potentially unleash devastatingly fast combo chains until the effects wears off.

First-Person Shooter

• Call of Duty: In the various multiplayer modes for its games, often allows players to equip "Rapid Fire" as an attachment to certain weapons (such as SMGs), giving them a much higher rate-of-fire at the cost of accuracy.
• Control: The Service Weapon has multiple boosts available.
  • Any weapon form can equip the Rate of Fire Boost mod.
  • The Spin form has its own Spin Fire Rate Boost mod.
• Daikatana: The "Attack" stat dictates the firing rate of all of the player's weapons. There are also pickable powerups that set the player's Attack to max level for 30 seconds.
• Doom (2016) has a power-up called Haste that when collected not only increases the Doom Slayer's movement speed, but also the rate at which he fires his guns. This power-up also appears in Doom Eternal, but has been renamed Overdrive.
• DUSK: Fast fire totems will double the fire rate when active. Picking up another one before the previous one expires further doubles the fire rate.
• The End Times: Vermintide and Vermintide II have several buffs that speed up weapon attack animations by a given percentage:
  • Potions of Speed boost the drinker's movement speed and attack rate for a few seconds.
  • The Swift Slaying weapon trait boosts the weapon's attack rate for five seconds when it triggers. In the first game, it has a small chance per attack to activate; in the second, it activates on a Critical Hit.
  • The sequel uses this for the Slayer's Aggressive Play Incentive: his passive ability is a stackable attack speed boost that lasts as long as he keeps hitting enemies in quick succession, and his career skill "Leap" gives a hefty boost for ten seconds.
• Link's Crossbow Training: Shooting a certain green-glowing-enemy makes your bow fire at an extremely fast rate, until a few dozen arrows are used up. Although it may be a downgrade since a missed shot ends any points-granting streak of accurate hits.
• Primal Carnage: The Novaraptor's roar ability, "Frenzy", grants it greatly increased attack strength and speed for its standard 'bite and slash' attack for a few seconds, at the cost of completely draining its stamina, preventing it from being able to run or jump.
• Quake series:
  • The Rune of Hell Magic in the Threewave CTF mod for Quake and the 2021 remaster of the game doubles the fire rate of the weapons.
  • The "Dualfire Damage" powerup from Quake II's Expansion Pack The Reckoning doubles the firing rate of your weapons.
  • The "Scout" rune from Quake III: Team Arena and the Arena CTF modes in Quake Live and Quake IV not only increases the player's movement speed but also double their firing rate.
• SCP: Secret Laboratory: SCP-1853 provides an attack speed and item use buff upon consumption, shortening times for drawing, reloading and entering/exiting ADS for weapons, and allowing items to be equipped and used faster.
• Unreal: The Berserk adrenaline combo in Unreal Tournament 2004 and the Berserk powerup from Unreal Tournament III and Unreal Tournament 4 double the fire rate of your guns.

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena

• Dota 2 has a few sources of attack speed buffs. Aside from items that passively boost the stat, some abilities give a direct, temporary buff. A few examples:
  • The Alchemist's Chemical Rage, rather than directly buffing attack speed, allows him to attack faster by replacing his attack animation with a shorter one for its duration.
  • The Windranger's Focus Fire marks an enemy unit or building, granting her a massive attack speed bonus when attacking that target at the cost of lower damage.
  • The Ogre Magi's Bloodlust buffs an allied unit's movement and attack speed.
• Heroes of the Storm: Attack speed buffs are relatively uncommon compared to other buffs, mostly because of their potential to snowball out of control with auto-attack-based heroes like Valla, Illidan, and Varian. A handful of attack speed buffs still remain, however.
  • Lt. Morales' heroic ability Stim Drone temporarily boosts the attack speed of an ally hero by a massive amount. The buff is big enough that it's reasonable to just cast it on a tank for a little damage boost, but it becomes insane when given to an ally based around auto attacks.
  • Abathur's Adrenal Overload talent gives the target of his Symbiote a small attack speed buff. It's not as crazy as Stim Drone, but the unlimited duration and global range make it a consistently strong buff when paired with the right heroes. Similarly, Auriel's Will of Heaven boosts her own attack speed as well as the attack speed of her Bestow Hope target as long as they remain near her.
  • While Raynor no can longer give his entire team extra attack speed with Inspire, it still boosts his own attack speed as well as the attack speed of any nearby minions and mercenaries. This makes him a powerhouse in the lane since his boosted minions can tear through enemy waves and structures if left unattended.
• League of Legends: Master Yi's ultimate ability "Highlander" gives him a huge increase to movement and attack speed, among other benefits, and its duration is extended whenever he kills a champion.
• Plants Vs Zombies Garden Warfare 2: Most plants and zombies have variants whose primary attacks are attack speed buffs, for example, the Commando Pea for the peashooter and Breakfast Brainz for Super Brainz. Sometimes, this is downplayed because the attack still needs reloading after overheating, or wasting all of your ammo.
  • In Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville, one of the temporary effects of the Peashooter's "Pea Suped" ability is being able to fire peas at a faster rate when holding the primary attack's button
• Quake III: Arena: The Haste powerup doubles any weapon's rate of fire. Yes, even the Gauntlet.

Platform

• Contra: The first game and Super C have the Rapid Fire power-up, which increases the speed of the player's projectiles, allowing for a faster firing rate. Given that Super C's instruction manual says, "Fire! Fire! Fire! And don't stop firing are the only instructions you need," this is totally on-theme.
• Critadel: The weapon synergies obtained by carrying at least 2 Rifles, boost Rifle Fire Rate to at least double the base rate.
• Duke Nukem:
  • Duke Nukem: Extra guns are rare power-ups that will permanently increase Duke's maximum number of simultaneous shots, starting from 1 and going up to 4.
  • Duke Nukem II: The flamethrower weapon always has rapid fire enabled, but a power-up enables it temporarily for other weapons. Unfortunately, this will quickly cause the player to run out of ammunition unless they're using the basic blaster (which has unlimited shots).
• Hocus Pocus: White potions temporarily grant Hocus the ability to shoot continuously. Since there's nothing useful that can be harmed by shooting it, this is quite helpful, although since levels are timed, you often want to carefully plan exactly how to use it for maximum effect.
• Hollow Knight: The Quick Slash charm decreases cooldown between standard attacks, letting the Knight launch more swings per second. Because more individual attacks allow the player to build up their Soul gauge, even spell-focused builds can find room for this one.
• Jazz Jackrabbit: Unlike many games, there is a continuum. The more rapid-fire guns you collect, the faster you shoot while holding down the fire button. You don't lose the ability unless you die.
• Secret Agent: The "thunderbolt" powerup allows the player to fire two bullets at a time, instead of one.

Role-Playing Game

• Borderlands:
  • Borderlands: Guns with a "Swift" prefix have an increased fire rate.
  • Borderlands 2:
    • The Mechromancer's Discord self-buff increases Fire Rate by 25% at level 1.
    • Axton's skill "Metal Storm" increases his guns' firing rate and decreases recoil for a short time whenever he kills an enemy. The magnitude of the boost rises with his score in the skill.
  • Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!:
    • Baronesses' Blue Blood Class Mods can give a percentage increase to Fire Rate.
    • Oz Kits can give Fire Rate boosts to either specific weapon types, for Dualities, or in general.
  • Borderlands 3:
    • Homecoming Red Card shields can give an increased fire rate for all weapons when depleted.
    • Class Mods can give fire rate improvements for weapons of a specific manufacturer.
    • The Decaying Star Helix guns may have an increased fire rate.
• Divinity: Original Sin II: Green Tea is a rare Power-Up Food that briefly reduces the Action Point cost of all skills by 2, to a minimum of 1. This effectively doubles or triples the drinker's attack rate per turn, though non-basic attacks are still subject to their own Cooldowns.
• Dragon Age
  • Dragon Age: Origins: Haste is a sustained spell in the Creation school. The mage can permanently set aside a portion of their mana to increase the attack speed of the party's melee combatants. The attack speed boost does not affect mages, and there is an unfortunate bug that prevents it from affecting archers. Dual-wielding fighters can apply the same effect to themselves with the Momentum sustained ability. The two do not stack due to a bug; attempting to do so causes an overflow error that makes the Momentum user slower.
  • Dragon Age II: Haste returns but is reworked into an active skill with a duration of twenty seconds when upgraded and affects all classes this time. All rogues can also learn the Speed passive that, when fully upgraded, increases the user's attack speed by up to fifteen percent and comes with a ten percent reduction in all power cooldowns when active. This time Haste and Speed do stack correctly.
  • Dragon Age: Inquisition: Haste returns but is reworked into a Bullet Time ability. Instead, the Battle of the Bands spell directly increases attack speed in its AOE. Battle of the Bands can only be activated in Single Player Mode as a random effect of the Encore staff.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The Elemental Fury and Battle Fury Shouts increase the attack speed of the user and their allies respectively.
• Epic Battle Fantasy 5: The Haste buff gives an Extra Turn that players can attack with (or use in other ways).
• Most of the player's stats (eg health, defence, critical hit rate) in Eternium will eventually cap out. One of the few exceptions is attack speed, which can be increased indefinitely with enough hours of Level Grinding.
• Fable: The spell Berserk makes all the Hero's attacks faster-acting, harder-hitting, and unblockable for a short time, in addition to other perks.
• Fate: Every time you level up, you can distribute the points to your skillset, one of them being the rate at which you fire an arrow.
• Fallout 4: The Rapid legendary effect increases weapon firing rate by 25% and reload rate by 15%.
• Final Fantasy: In the first three games, the Haste spell causes you to hit more times in an attack — if you normally hit three times, you'll hit six times, basically doing double damage. It only affects physical attacks, not magic. It was only changed to allow you to choose commands more often from the fourth game onwards with the introduction of the Active Time Battle gauge.
• Hades: The Forced Overtime condition turns this against the player by increasing the movement and attack speed of enemies.
  All foes have bonus move speed and attack speed, +20% per rank.
• Haven (2020): Speed capsules, one of the consumables that can be crafted from rust, allow combat commands to be charged at a much faster rate than usual.
• The Rapid-fire and Flurry feats in Knights of the Old Republic are for blasters and melee/lightsabers respectively, and can be combined with Force speed to increase the number of hits per turn. Dual wielding also adds another hit. Until the feats are mastered, though, it's an increase at the cost of accuracy.
• Mass Effect
  • Mass Effect: Marksman increases a pistol's rate of fire for the duration, up to an additional two rounds per second at max level. This is infamous among players for making the lowly pistol the game's strongest weapon. The Legendary Edition nerfed this to a simple damage boost.
  • Mass Effect 3: Marksman is reworked as Ashley William's Signature Move, which Shepard can take as a bonus power. It increases the user's accuracy and firing rate regardless of the equipped weapon, acting as an NPC-friendly alternative to Shepard's Adrenaline Rush power.
  • Mass Effect: Andromeda: Marksman is renamed Turbocharge and is given a direct damage bonus while reducing the rate of fire bonus. Vetra Nyx can upgrade her Power Armor skill to automatically end the cooldown on Turbocharge when Power Armor is used.

Shoot 'Em Up

• The Binding of Isaac: There are plenty of items that buff your tears (fire rate), but all of them pale in comparison to Soy Milk. At the cost of 80% of your damage, Soy Milk will multiply your tears by 5.5. Repentance buffed it in a major way by massively increasing the hard Tears cap and giving it synergies like autofire on most charge-based items.
• Armor Games' Final Defense: You can buy Rapid Fire Upgrades that make your turret weapon fire faster. It never reaches "machine gun" speed, though.
• HoloCure: As with Cooldown in Vampire Survivors, below, the Haste stat governs the speed of attacks. Due to the way it scales, haste is considered more valuable than flat attack buffs and is thus harder to come by. Haste ups appear infrequently in pools compared to other stat-ups, items that increase Haste are rare and come with severe downsides, and characters that have built-in Haste buffs usually compensate by having poor native Attack boosts, or none at all. Ouro Kronii, the character with the highest Haste ceiling in the game, compensates for that power by tying it to a Full Health Bonus.
• Major Stryker: Collecting an "R" gives a brief period where the player can hold the key to fire continuously.
• Operation Wolf. One power-up gives the player's machine gun an increased rate of fire for ten seconds.
• Vampire Survivors: The Cooldown Power-Up makes weapons auto-attack faster with each rank.
• Warframe:
  • Valkyr's Warcry grants a buff that increases melee attack speed for herself and nearby allies.
  • One of Wisp's Reservoirs grants the Haste mote, which increases movement speed, melee attack speed, and firing rate.

Strategy

• StarCraft has stim packs for Terran Space Marines, which briefly boost their firing rate, at the cost of some of their health. This became more potent in the Brood War expansion when Field Medics made it possible to heal the damage. On the Zerg side, zerglings can get a permanent upgrade to their own attack speed.
• Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos:
  • The Ghoul Frenzy upgrade increases the attack speed of Ghouls, which stacks with Death Knights' Unholy Aura that increases attack speed for all nearby allies.
  • The initial version of Unholy Frenzy gave a single unit increased attack speed in exchange for negative health regeneration (something mostly countered by the Death Knight having a strong regeneration aura and single-target healing spell). It was later greatly modified to instead sacrifice a friendly unit and give the damaging-speeding buff to all nearby units, allied and enemy.
  • The Horde faction has three attack-speed-increasing abilities, although weaker versions are used by neutral hostile enemies.
    • The Bloodlust spell increases the target's attack and movement speed, along with increasing their size (although this has no game effect).
    • The Berserk ability increases attack speed but also damage taken, and is only used by Troll Berserkers (a Glass Cannon ranged unit).
    • The Tauren Chieftain's Endurance Aura passively increases nearby units' movement and attack speed.

Tower Defense

• Bloons Tower Defense: Several tower abilities will temporarily increase their attack speed. Turbo Charge allows the Boomerang Monkey to attack 7x faster for 10 seconds, and Rapid Shots increases Quincy's attack speed, with the increase in speed and duration scaling with their level.
• Cursed Treasure: The Frenzy spell causes all towers to fire continuously until it wears off.

Wide-Open Sandbox

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild: Quick shot is a special effect that bows can be spawned with, which allows shots to be fired more quickly and with a shorter waiting time between each.
• Minecraft: The Quick Charge enchantment reduces the amount of time necessary to load a crossbow, allowing it to be loaded and fired more often in a given span of time. The maximum level of the enchantment gives it a quicker draw than a bow.

Non-Video Game examples

• Dungeons & Dragons: The spell "Haste" grants its target extra attacks per turn, in addition to other speed-related buffs such as faster travel. This is typically Power at a Price, though; early editions prematurely aged the recipient, while later editions tend to make them skip a turn due to lethargy when it wears off.
• Shadowrun: Certain types of cyberware, such as Wired Reflexes, as well as some spells and adept abilities, allow the recipient to take extra passes (actions) each round. This means that a chromed-up Street Samurai with tier 3 Wired Reflexes can attack four times in the amount of time it would take an unaugmented character to attack once with the same weapon.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: Depending on the edition, the vampiric Super-Speed power of Celerity broadly grants 1-5 extra actions per turn for attacking, moving, and other physical acts. Due to its Game-Breaker potential, later editions made it costlier to activate and limited the type of actions it enables.

---