A 20% attack-speed bonus does not promise 20% more attacks than you are firing now. Most bonuses add together first. Your champion’s attack-speed ratio turns that total into extra attacks per second. If you already have a lot of bonus attack speed, another 20 percentage points produces a smaller relative improvement.
Attack speed in LoL is the rate of your basic attacks, measured in attacks per second. A displayed 1.50 means a theoretical attack interval of about 0.67 seconds. It does not mean your bullets travel 50% faster, and it does not guarantee that you will land fifteen attacks during every ten-second fight.
This guide covers ordinary PC Summoner’s Rift. The worked examples below are calculations, not in-game tests.
Read the number as a rhythm
For a normal, uninterrupted attack cycle:
Time between starting attacks = 1 ÷ attacks per second
At 1.00 attack speed, that interval is one second. At 2.00, it is half a second. A target standing farther away can still wait longer for the first projectile to arrive.
The specialist attack-timer reference separates each cycle into the windup before an attack launches and the remaining cooldown before the next attack can start. A ranged projectile can still be traveling during that cooldown.
That distinction matters when you last-hit. An attack may already be on its way even though the minion has not lost health yet. Issuing another attack command does not make that projectile arrive sooner. And if you cannot reach the next target, the number on your stat panel does not create a new attack by itself.
Base, ratio and bonus are three different inputs
Caitlyn has different base attack-speed and attack-speed-ratio values. Artwork: Riot Games.
Base attack speed is your starting rate before bonuses. Attack-speed ratio determines how much extra rate those bonuses provide. Bonus attack speed is the percentage pool from sources such as items, runes, leveling and ordinary ability buffs.
For the standard calculation, before attack-speed caps, attack-speed reductions or special total-rate multipliers:
Total attack speed = base attack speed + attack-speed ratio × bonus attack speed
Write the bonus as a decimal: 50% becomes 0.50. Many champions have equal base and ratio values, making the shortcut "base × (1 + bonus)" work. Do not treat that shortcut as universal.
Caitlyn’s base and ratio differ. On the reviewed patch, she has 0.681 base attack speed, a 0.625 ratio and 4% attack-speed growth. Data Dragon exposes the base and growth; the ratio comes from her normal current Riot character record, mirrored by CommunityDragon. Riot also distinguishes base speed, ratios and growth in its explanation of basic-attack changes.
Holding everything else constant gives these calculated rates. The bonus column includes any growth already earned; it is not an item build.
| Total bonus attack speed | Caitlyn’s attacks per second | Interval between attack starts |
|---|---|---|
| 0% | 0.681 | About 1.468 seconds |
| 50% | 0.9935 | About 1.007 seconds |
| 70% | 1.1185 | About 0.894 seconds |
| 100% | 1.306 | About 0.766 seconds |
Going from 50% to 70% bonus adds 0.625 × 0.20 = 0.125 attacks per second. Relative to the previous 0.9935, that is approximately 12.6% more attack speed, not 20%.
Each 20-point addition still gives her 0.125 more attacks per second. At a higher starting rate, that gain makes up a smaller share of the total. This is the standard additive model; it does not include special multipliers such as a champion’s total-attack-speed effects.
Leveling contributes bonus speed too
A growth figure of 4% is not a flat four percentage points added at every level. Normal champion stat growth uses a curve. For attack speed, the amount earned joins the bonus pool before the ratio applies.
Using Caitlyn’s current 4% growth and the documented growth formula, the contribution from leveling alone is 2.88% at level 2, 30.96% at level 10 and 68% at level 18. These are total bonuses earned by those levels, not bonuses granted by that one level-up.
For readers checking a calculation, let n be the number of levels gained: current level minus one.
Bonus from leveling, in percentage points = growth × n × (0.7025 + 0.0175 × n)
At level 10, that is 4 × 9 × 0.86 = 30.96%. Without runes, items or other effects, the standard calculation gives Caitlyn 0.681 + 0.625 × 0.3096 = 0.8745 attacks per second.
For a shopping decision, start with your current bonus rather than adding up items alone. Otherwise, the speed earned while leveling can disappear from your comparison.
The ordinary cap is 3.0, not the old 2.5
Riot raised the baseline attack-speed cap from 2.5 to 3.0 attacks per second in patch 2025.S1.3. That remains the ordinary cap for the reviewed PC patch. The current specialist timer reference describes its minimum attack interval as 0.333 seconds, whose reciprocal is about 3.003. The practical rule is the current 3.0 cap, not the old 2.5 limit.
The same historical patch page also mentions a cap of 10 in its ARURF section. That is not a second answer for normal Summoner’s Rift. Always check which mode a quoted number belongs to.
Once your ordinary rate reaches the cap, more bonus attack speed cannot keep shortening the normal attack interval. But "above the cap" does not automatically mean every part of an item is wasted. An effect may explicitly raise the limit or use bonus attack speed for something besides attack frequency.
Lethal Tempo does not restore its old cap-breaking effect
Current Lethal Tempo grants stacking attack speed when you attack enemy champions. The effect lasts six seconds and stacks up to six times; at full stacks, it adds adaptive damage on attack that scales with bonus attack speed. Its current Riot rune definition and descriptions describe that modern effect.
Do not choose it expecting the extra attack range or cap increase shown in an old guide. Riot reworked and returned the rune in 14.19, replacing the former design. Its current job is a sustained champion-attack pattern, not a universal license to ignore the cap.
At full stacks, bonus attack speed still feeds Lethal Tempo’s damage even when the ordinary attack rate is capped. Against a lane that can disengage after two shots, however, reaching that full-stack effect is a much bigger obstacle than the cap.
There are genuine exceptions. Hail of Blades explicitly allows temporary attacks above the attack-speed limit. Jinx’s Get Excited! does too while she is excited. Those permissions appear in their current extended Riot tooltips. They are conditional effects, not a permanent rule for every attack-speed build.
Jhin is a different problem altogether
Jhin’s Whisper uses a fixed firing pattern with four shots before reloading. Artwork: Riot Games.
Jhin’s Whisper does not turn an attack-speed purchase into proportionally faster ordinary shots. His passive controls the firing rate, and he still has four rounds before a reload. Bonus attack speed instead contributes to his passive’s attack-damage scaling and the movement speed from his critical strikes.
That is a reason to read the conversion, not a reason to declare attack speed useless on him. Nor should you take the fixed-rate wording to mean that his level-one attack rate is frozen for the entire match; his passive has its own level scaling.
For Jhin, compare the resulting AD and critical-strike movement bonus against the other purchase. Waiting for the stat-panel attack rate to jump will give you the wrong answer.
Windup is not projectile speed
Riot’s 13.22 attack changes treated windups, missile speeds and attack-speed scaling as separate adjustments. Those are different parts of an attack.
A normal ranged attack first has a windup, when the champion commits to firing. Once that finishes, the projectile launches. Its travel to the target is separate from the remainder of the attack timer. More attack speed normally shortens the cycle and windup, but it is not a generic projectile-speed stat. Champion-specific windup modifiers and special attacks can change the details.
For Caitlyn, the current normal record defines her basic-attack missile with fixed-speed movement separately from her attack-speed ratio. Buying a Dagger changes the attack-speed bonus. It does not rewrite that missile’s speed.
With Point & Click controls, a movement order during an ordinary, cancelable windup can cancel the attack before it fires. Moving after launch can use the remaining attack cooldown to reposition. You have not accelerated the next attack by canceling the recovery animation; you have moved during time when it could not yet start. The basic-attack behavior reference documents these interruption conditions.
This is why faster clicking can produce fewer hits. Repeatedly canceling the windup does not count as attacking quickly. Conversely, standing still until every visible motion finishes can waste time you could use to retreat.
For the input side, use the separate Attack Move Click guide. The command helps issue attacks; it does not grant attack speed. If an important enemy spell is about to hit you, abandoning the next attack to move can still be the correct decision.
Should the next purchase be attack speed or damage?
Dagger. Icon: Riot Games.
A Dagger currently costs 250 gold for 10% attack speed. A Long Sword costs 350 gold for 10 attack damage, according to Riot’s current item data. They are different-price components, not interchangeable full builds.
Suppose a standard attacker has 100 AD, 1.00 attack speed and a 0.625 attack-speed ratio. Ignore critical strikes, on-hit effects, armor and special champion modifiers. Hold the enemy in range and keep attacking. In this simplified model, damage per second (DPS) equals damage per attack multiplied by attacks per second.
- The Dagger adds 0.625 × 0.10 = 0.0625 attacks per second. The simplified damage rate rises from 100 to 106.25 damage per second.
- The Long Sword adds 10 damage to each ordinary attack. At the unchanged rate of one attack per second, the simplified damage rate becomes 110 damage per second.
Long Sword adds more raw damage per second in this example, at a higher price. A different starting AD, existing attack rate or on-hit effect can change the result. Also check what each component builds into. A small raw-DPS lead need not outweigh finishing the item your champion needs. And if you have only 250 gold, Long Sword is not an available purchase on that recall.
Long Sword. Icon: Riot Games.
AD also helps eligible abilities that scale with it, whereas attack speed can produce more applications of an on-hit effect when you can keep attacking. A partial critical-strike chance can improve the average damage of eligible attacks without guaranteeing a crit on the next ordinary shot. An item containing more than one of these stats needs a whole-item comparison.
Ability haste is another separate purchase. It normally shortens ability cooldowns, not the ordinary basic-attack timer described in the attack-timer rules. Individual spells can use different scaling: Jinx’s current Zap! description says its cast time decreases with attack speed. That makes her faster at firing that spell; it does not turn every spell cooldown into an attack-speed calculation. If you cannot approach until an escape spell returns, a shorter spell cooldown can create an opening that extra attack speed cannot.
Price the attack you can actually take
Suppose you are farming against a lane that can punish a second step forward. You get one ordinary attack on a minion and must retreat. Extra AD can change whether that one hit secures the last-hit; extra attack speed does not increase that hit’s base damage. It may still help you release the shot earlier or fit a later attack into the opening.
Now suppose your front line holds an opponent in range long enough for repeated attacks. Shorter intervals and repeatable on-hit effects have more room to matter. That is a different purchase problem from stepping up for one shot and immediately leaving.
You still need to survive the response. An extra attack has little value if taking it leaves you trapped in range for the rest of the fight. Buy for the attacks you can take while leaving room to move.
Check yourself: does a 20% bonus mean 20% more DPS?
Caitlyn has 50% total bonus attack speed and gains another 20 percentage points. Assume only her ordinary attack rate changes, all hits deal the same damage, and she can keep attacking. Does that purchase increase her sustained basic-attack DPS by 20%?
Show answer
No. Her calculated rate rises from 0.9935 to 1.1185 attacks per second, an increase of about 12.6%. Under these deliberately simplified conditions, her basic-attack damage rate rises by the same proportion. Headshots, critical strikes, other effects and target access were excluded.
On your next recall, identify the first target you expect to attack and how long you can stay in range. Then compare the component with the stat you actually need and the item you are trying to finish.