Melee Charge Formula

Read First
The source for the information found on this page is player testing and may not be 100% accurate.

Bonus Damage against Infested
It has been confirmed that the effect of elemental mods in weapons whose damage receives a bonus against Infested is calculated before the bonus is applied.

Example:


 * Infested Walkers take 100% Freeze damage
 * Glaive with North Wind (+40% Freeze) equipped
 * Normal Charge damage: 150
 * Charge damage against Infested: 3x <=> 150 * 3 = 450
 * North Wind: Charge damage (before bonus) * modifier = 150 * 0.4 = 60
 * Charge damage (with bonus) + additional Freeze damage = 450 + 60 = 510

Introduction
Recently, I have found that the charge speed and attack speed of the melee weapons in game are not shown as the wiki says. Therefore, I tried to do a test on charge speed and attack speed.

Facts

 * Plasma sword
 * Base firing rate: 1.0
 * Base charge speed: 1.0

My research
Attack speed (swings per second, shown on weapon pages for normal attacks):
 * Without any mods: 95hit / 60sec = 1.583333
 * 30% attack speed mod: 112hit / 60sec = 1.866667
 * 60% attack speed mod: 128 hit / 60sec = 2.1333333

Charge speed (time per swing, shown on weapon pages for charge speed):
 * Without any mods: 60sec / 46hit = 1.304
 * 60% attack speed mod: 60sec / 48hit = 1.25
 * 60% charge speed mod: 60sec / 57hit = 1.053
 * 60% attack speed+charge speed mod: 60sec / 62hit = 0.967

Findings
From the above result, we can see that attack speed actually affects the total charge time of melee charge attack.

Therefore, we can divide total charge time into 2 parts:

Total charge time = charge time (body glows blue) + swing animation (affected by attack speed)

Here is the formula:


 * Total charge time = (Base charge time / 1+ charge speed mod % ) + 1 / (attack speed + attack speed mod in decimal)
 * TPS (Time Per Swing): time it takes to swing once, in seconds
 * e.g. plasma sword: 60sec / 95hit = 0.632 TPS
 * Base charge time = total charge time - base TPS
 * e.g. plasma sword: 1.304-60/95= 0.673
 * I disagree with attack speed + attack speed mod in decimal. Check my section below for what I think. Spin2win (talk) 17:52, April 23, 2013 (UTC)

Example 1
plasma sword using 60% attack speed+charge speed mod:

(0.672/1+0.6)+1/(1.583333+0.6) = 0.878

It looks different from the facts above, but there may be some minor errors

Example 2
plasma sword using 60%charge speed mod only:

(0.672/1+0.6)+1/1.583333 = 1.052

this time is simliar to the facts above

Conclusion
We can find that most of the data about the speed of melee are wrong in wiki, from the above data, we can derive that in fact attack speed mod has similar effects to charge speed mod. However, charge speed mod is always slightly faster than attack speed mod. Hope other contributors can find out the real values of other melee weapons.

More results
Note that average speed is taken.

Gram:

Total charge time: 1.935 (60/31)

base charge time: 1.026 (350/341)

base attack speed: 1.1 (66/60)

Plasma Sword:

Total charge time: 1.304 (60/46)

base charge time: 0.673 (294/437)

base attack speed: 1.583 (95/60)

Dual Heat Swords:

Total charge time: 1.622 (60/37)

base charge time: 1.003 (3600/3589)

base attack speed: 1.617 (97/60)

Dark Sword:

Total charge time: 1.224 (60/49)

base charge time: 0.606 (2880/4753)

base attack speed: 1.617 (97/60)

Fragor:

Total charge time: 2.0 (60/30)

base charge time: 0.87 (est.)

base attack speed: 1.067 (64/60)

Spin's Research
I have a little frame counting program and did a quick test with Scindo. I recorded at 30fps, which is a little slow. I've found that fps changes attack speeds without any apparent limit. I didn't post what fps I did for each test, so the numbers don't tell you much about the weapon, but the relation between the numbers for each individual weapon should be accurate.

Scindo:
 * ~2.1s charge speed
 * ~1.033 attacks per second (0.97 seconds for one attack)
 * 50% Fury = 1.45 attack speed
 * Modded Charge attacks:


 * 50% Charge speed = 1.83s charge attack
 * 50% Attack speed = 1.66 charge attack
 * Both 50% charge speed, 50% attack speed = 1.466
 * Last one fits (2.1 total charge speed) / (1.5 increased speed to everything) = 1.4

A Fragor test that agrees: (more recent, better FPS)
 * ~1.1 attack speed (0.91 seconds/hit)
 * 2s charge speed
 * 50% Fury = 1.6 attack speed (0.625s/h)
 * 50% Fury = 1.67s Charge Speed.
 * 2 CS - 0.91 AS + 0.91AS / 1.5 Fury = 1.7 Charge Speed

Heat Dagger: Can't be completely sure of all the above numbers right now, but here's a pretty good Cronus test: (The more FPS I get, the faster it goes, I'm thinking base is now 2.3ish)
 * Attack Speed = 1.9 attacks in a second (.526 seconds for one attack)
 * Charge speed= 1.16 for one attack
 * Charge with 50% Fury = 1.11
 * Charge with 50% Charge = 0.95

Cronus attack speed: Fury worked fine here as (attack speed) * (1 + fury %). If you get differing results, I'm thinking either it's borked for certain weapons or your FPS caused problems.
 * Base = 2.0 (hits/second)
 * 10% Fury = 2.2 ~ 2.25
 * 20% Fury = 2.4 ~ 2.5
 * 50% Fury = 3.0

I don't like the other equation, I think it's closer to the more obvious:
 * Effective Attack Speed = Attack speed * (1 + Fury as a decimal).  May not always be correct...?
 * Base Charge time = Charge speed - 1 / unmodded attack speed. Charge speed is how long it actually takes you to hit once with a charge attack.
 * Effective Charge Speed = Base charge time / (1 + reflex coil as a decimal) + 1 / (attack speed * (1 + Fury as a decimal)).
 * It's 1/attack speed, because we're using the units hits/second for attack speed, but charge speed is seconds/hit, so we have to make the units line up, and seconds/hit is more common. i.e. 'it takes 0.8 seconds to perform an attack with the weapon.' I only use hits/second, because that's how it's described on the weapon pages, but I really don't like mixed units with nothing defining them (on the weapon pages).

Proper attack speed timings
FPS significantly influences attack speeds. Some tests suggest high fps will make weapons attack faster than intended as well. Therefore, this list is for weapons timed using 60fps. Later we can compare with charge attacks at 60fps.

Weapon: number of hits in one second (average time for one attack)

Heat Dagger: 1.95 hits/second (0.51s)

Cronus: 2.2 hits/second (0.45s)

Scindo: 1 hit/second (1s)

Furax: 2.3 hits/second (0.43s)

Bo: 1.3 hits/second (0.77s)

Fragor: 1 hit/second (1s) -- may be one attack that's slightly faster than the others, could be 1.05 hits/second

Skana: 1.85 hits/second (0.54s)

Gram: 1.25 hits/second (0.8s) -- 1.82 seconds to charge

Glaive: 2.03 hits/second (0.5s)