Attack Speed Build (& Comparison to Crit Builds)

Hello, I am Hank. As of this guide I am account level 24. OKAY HOLD ON WAIT DON'T LEAVE. I am an MMORPG main and a numbers guy so at least let me prove my point on why this build isn't just good...it is GREAT (works on Apollo too but I don't like managing his passive).

So not only will I explain this build but I'll also compare its weaknesses and strengths compared to the generic examples of xZeroStrike's and Jakkyr's guides which are probably better than mine.

I won't really explain anything like how to play Artemis or the skills or whatever because honestly what I can do is explain how Vengeful Assault plays into this

Table of Contents:

1.

TL;DR

2. Vengeful Assault: why is this so important

3. Comparison to the other builds: WARNING VERY LONG SECTION

4. Super high potential even past what's on paper

5. Generic Build logic:: Explain why I picked it and how it comes to play

TL;DR
First of all, I AM NOT trying to disregard the other 2 builds. They are obviously more experienced and better (I can't even play ranked yet). I just wanted to compare and show the benefits of each.

The build - mathematically does ALOT of damage is cheap; You want cheaper? Switch out Leather Cowl for Eye Of The Jungle, Want cheaper??? Switch out Asi for Devourer's Guantlet.
DPS difference is very small for the cowl vs jungle item. Asi is +150dps on low protection (less than 70) but -100 dps on high protection (greater than 300).
Flexibility of the build - actually not very so keep in mind it's weaknesses and how changing it up can be
Playstyle - you are Artemis, you auto attack, build crit, shoot fast and stay by teammates so you don't get cc-d a single time and fall apart worse than a paper boat through niagra falls. That being said you are much more reliant on Vengeful Assault
Other builds (in my opinion)- If you expect a short game xZero's build works best. If you expect a game where you think you'll be using Vengeful Assault as a pseudo escape or you expect to be alone alot? go Jakkyr. NONE OF THESE THREE BUILDS ARE BAD.

Leather Cowl - Fantastic starter item. Power, Attack speed, and life steal all in one with a little bonus that fits the situation. Duo lane boxing? Get more life steal. You need to GTFO because you are the only one alive? movement speed

Ninja Tabi - You are an auto Attacker but don't worry come endgame this correlates to more power :D

Asi - with the fall of Atalanta's Bow, Asi has been my fan favorite. In my eyes it is a weaker version of Atalanta's bow and Devourer's Guantlet BUT it combines both of them to make something better. Additionally, with Leather Cowl having lifesteal, this should be more than enough for the rest of the game. I like getting this as the third item because 15 pen in the early game can do wonders. Endgame the boxing potential is insane with a total of 65% life steal when you are in a pinch. The only thing that can really stop you is CC or being a bad player like me.

Alternative Item #2; Devourer's Gauntlet - you want to save money and have more reliable life steal this is your guy. You will do less damage then Asi for majority of scenarios but sometimes not as much. Early game we are talking 10s of less dps (depending on your stacks)
Lategame, it actually depends on the enemy protection.
<170 protection without steriods, Asi wins
<250 protection with steroids, Asi wins
End game, the thresholds are higher. Keep in mind this might not matter to you. Against 70 protection, Asi gets a higher auto attack dps of about 30 (150 with Vengeful Assault, but you have 50 more power which lets you close that gap slightly with ability damage. Here just have a graph, it's easier.
Rage - without a doubt critical is the highest way to boost your damage. No other item but Rage can provide an easy access to that kind of boost. Plus you want to grab this pretty early to grab stacks. This is roughly the stage of the game when kills start racking up. REMEMBER Assists count!


Silverbranch Bow - HAHAHAHAHAHA so at this point you should be nearing about 1.8~2.1 attack speed, depending on what level you are. But this is the pièce de ré·sis·tance. Penetration, power, attack speed, and basically uncapping vengeful assault and other attack speed buffs for you.

Wind Demon - I used to prefer Poison Star way more for getting easy access for Artemis' passive but then wind demon got more crit chance. The passive is great for getting more attack speed and penetration. This is also the awkward stage of the game imo. You are strong but you start receiving diminishing returns on Vengeful Assault. I tend to save it only to finish someone off or as an escape at this point.


Hunter's Cowl - More everything but now you can thank your team for letting you get to this point by giving them attack power

Deathbringer - on paper it is the highest DPS increase after Rage. However due to the cost, I save this for endgame. Also there are going to be some caveats for running this before SilverBranch bow such as all that attack speed goes to waste, why didn't I just go crit build? Okay okay I'm getting there

BONUS:
Leather Cowl& Hunter's Cowl vs Eye Of The Jungle & Protector Of The Jungle

On paper they may seem very different but they are almost effectively the same but more circumstantial.

For the tier 1, 15 power and 15% attack speed is nearly identical to 10 power and 20% attack speed.
For tier 2 AND with silverbranch bow, 60 power and 45% attack speed is exactly the same as 65 power and 35% attack speed.

So here's where you got to choose your preference and situation:
For the tier 1s, if you aren't playing duo lane then there is very little point of Leather Cowl. Now the lifesteal is nice early on but when you get Asi it get's a little redundant. Meanwhile Eye of the Jungle can give you more damage on Jungle monsters, which can definitely help and of course the kinda of meme Jungle Ward(?). The only thing left to compare is 10% lifesteal vs +15hp5, both of these stats probably only matter before Asi come in but on one hand you are getting +15hp per 5 seconds, on the other hand you probably heal for 5~10 hp per arrow depending on what you are hittng and what level are you.

MORE importantly are the Tier 2 versions. So I don't know how the math works but at level 20 and the builds above, somehow you get 5 more power with Hunter's Cowl over Protector of the Jungle. I am going to link the stat comparisons below


So you may be thinking, 5 power vs 35 protection? this should be a no brainer. However let's put some more thought into this.
Hunter's Cowl gives you the ability to escape with Ninja Tabi and all your friends dead, you can run away with 28% movement speed. It also gives you the ability to give everyone 25% attack speed and guess what?IT STACKS WITH SHOGUN AURA
So if you have a team with another hunter, Freya, Ao Kuang, Sol, Bakasura, Osiris, etc. it would be pretty selfish not to run this build. On the otherhand, having 12% protection and power in the jungle where nowadays is quite common in the lategame could be absolutely huge. I'll leave this to your discretion. Oh and naturally outside of Conquest you can't really use anything but Hunter's Cowl.

VENGEFUL F-ING ASSAULT

Considered one of the best self-buffs in the game with huge attack speed buff, movement speed, and duration.

So here's the problem: It gets worse in damage the later you are in the game!

The cap for attack speed is 2.5, any higher and it's all gone. You have a few options to work with this for Artemis:

Manage around it: you purposely build power and crit but keep roughly .8 below the attack cap. However, no matter how you do it you will always be a little above 1.7 Attack speed if you have leather cowl. This doesn't include teammates buffs, Belt of Frenzy, Shogun Aura, or even void buff.

Ignore it and do as well as you can: well that might put you at about 2x attack speed and so you burst damage from Vengeful Assault is well not that impressive. It does let you use it more often as a pseudo escape though

EMBRACE IT: now with silerbranch bow, you venegful assault is a whopping 80 power boost, pair it up with Wind demon and you can chase anyone down.

As you can tell, I've really embraced it and now the next section is going to just show you the comparison

NOTE: need to compare to Jakkyr's latest build. This is not updated yet, See exact items used to calculate dps below. Some maths will likely still need to be edited

The moment you've been waiting for. Here I will compare

xZeroStrike's Example full build (with Ninja Dabi)
Jakkyr's Finish build (with Ninja Dabi)
My build with Ninja Dabi

AND Compare them all with vengeful assault active (Yes it does make a difference!)

I will dub this the "Lategame builds"

But wait there's more?

xZeroStrike's Example full build (elixer of speed)
Jakkyr's Finish build (elixer of speed)
My build in the end (elixer of speed)

AND Compare them all with vengeful assault active (Yes it does make a difference!)

I will dub this the "Lategame builds"

Alright so here are the builds:
LATEGAME:
xZeroStrike
Hunter's Cowl Ninja Tabi Devourer's Gauntlet Dominance Rage Deathbringer

Jakkyr
Ornate Arrow Ninja Tabi Dominance Asi Rage Wind Demon

Me
Hunter's Cowl Ninja Tabi Asi Rage Wind Demon Silverbranch Bow

ENDGAME:
xZeroStrike
Hunter's Cowl Devourer's Gauntlet Dominance Rage Deathbringer Poisoned Star

Jakkyr
Ornate Arrow Dominance Asi Rage Wind Demon Deathbringer

Me
Hunter's Cowl Asi Rage Wind Demon Silverbranch Bow Deathbringer

So the comparison is purely in auto attacks. There are outlying assumptions at the bottom but here's a graph for the more visual learners. (sorry for the colors, google sheets doesn't let me change that)
So this is assuming the following:

Assumes max stacks on all items
Assumes nearby allie for cowl
Assumes Wind Demon Active
Assumes ornate arrow is maxed
Vengeful Assault Active
Ninja Tabi Endgame
Does not account for cc for artemis passive because that will get complex

At the very left is 70 protection which is probably one of the lowest barebones protection at level 20, At the very right is 300 protection.
Of course there is more to matter but let's simply this. So interesting thing to note:
xZero has 20% penetration
Jakkyr has 15 flat and 30% pen
I have 15 flat and 20% pen
Very rarely did penetration matter in terms of which build does more damage

Notice how the difference in dps jumps when Vengeful Assault is active. Jakkyr gets much less damage because his build uses attack speed to compensate for ornate arrow, while xZero is well undercapped in attack speed and my build has silverbranch. Overall the dps is roughly the same without 2 active but then there is a difference from Jakkyr's build and the other two. (I will get to the non-auto attack information AFTERWARDS)

So you'd think this is all the information you need right?

But then you look at the

ENDGAME

And the results are not what I expected:
You've sold your boots. Picked up the next best item and now you're ready to kick *ss and drink an elixir of speed.

So I said before that Deathbringer is one of the biggest damage boosts you can get and this graph shows it. xZero's build which already had Deathbringer barely moved, while Jakkyr's and mine shot up like crazy. The other thing is because Poisoned Star adds enough attack to the crit build, that attack speed cap is closer and vengeful assault reaches diminshing results sooner. With vengeful assault active, xZero's build does LESS damage than Jakkyr's build without it. And then of course to toot my own horn, sure my build does less damage than xZero's without vengeful assault (~60dps) but by the power of Silverbranch Bow, my damge is between 100 dps against high protection and 200 dps more on low protection.

Ok so damage isn't everything. Here is the other information that is just as relevant.Red being far below in COMPARISON, Orange being ok but still has a difference between the highest, and Gren being noticeable higher. The 3 right columns are with venegeful assault activated. (You can also see how protection really influences you base power)

Lifesteal- So first thing is lifesteal, xZeroStrike's build has more sustainable lifesteal, Jakkyr's build relies much more on that burst lifesteal from asi, and my build is in the middle (Unless you go for that Eye Of The Jungle path.)
Power- why does power matter when Artemis is an Auto Attack god? well because Miss Piggy Calydonian Boar, one of the best ults in the game, gets 100% of your physical power at max level.
Money- Games are getting shorter so I feel it is important to acknowledge how fast it is to get to a certain build. Jakkyr's build relies on Ornate Arrow being maxed out, and of course with its passive and the previous Gilded Arrow can help get there faster. Is it worth 15% more cost than the other 2 builds? That is up to you, because getting to Endgame may be way faster with Ornate Arrow. While it is $3000 more than the other 2 builds, by this point you've had that arrow for awhile so perhaps this is easy (Don't forget you need to buy speed elixir).
Penetration - does not matter, as I've already shown in the plots that include penetration value, there really isn't a point at looking at this anymore. (That being said the builds with Dominance will not get penetration with Artemis' abilities)
MP5 - Did not include this but since xZero and Jakkyr use Dominance, that's an additional 20MP5 and 200 Mana. May save on potions in the long run, but definitely very helpful early game.
Stackling - all these builds need to stack Rage, but only xZeroStrike's build requires Devourer's Gauntlet to stack which is just one more thing to note.
Wind Demon - xZero's build does not require Wind Demon to proc. There is a chance you just don't get lucky or have a minion nearby to gain the passive.
Starter Item - and just to beat a dead horse. Since mine and Xzero's build use Leather Cowl and Hunter's Cowl, you have to play with the team to really get the most use of the builds.

THE SKY IS THE LIMIT

So this build is strong, but it can get even stronger. Let's say you want be a nice teammate and let your jungle and mid take both attack buffs. Well now the void buff can give you 10 power or if enhanced 25 power. Now I know it's not as good (You get roughly 20 power in lategame with this build) but it's helpful.

And of course like I said beforeStacking 2 attack speed auras, where the whole team has +50% attack speed??? That's insane

Belt of Frenzy just got even better with already it's base 10% damage buff but another 15 power to go on top of that.

Fafnir on your team? Coerce just gave you 30 more power.

And then there's the opposite situation.

You got hit by Fostbound Hammer or they stacking Witchblade? Yes it sucks to lose power but you still have a whopping 2.5 attack speed.

And finally, skill ceiling. I suck at this game, probably because I am new is what I tell myself. I try not to miss, but it happens. Being able to ALWAYS be at a 2.5 fire rate can significantly help a player (maybe it'll bring up so bad habits but it shouldn't!).

Oh and I guess there are some bad habits that this build may promote. Again you get to take more shots and maybe miss more. You get more movement speed so maybe you overextend because you know you can get away with it. You feel the adrenaline of knowing you have 1500 dps against a 300 protection God and just see red. That's my fault not yours. Err the other way around.