MapleStory Classic Attack Speed: Weapon Tiers, Booster, and Cast Times - MapleStory Classic

Attack speed in MapleStory Classic World is a weapon stat. Your weapon's speed tier sets the cast time, Booster shifts it 2 tiers faster, and switching attack skills almost never changes it. This is the swings-per-minute half of DPS; the damage formula covers the damage-per-swing half.

Contents

1. What is Attack Speed? 4 Key Terms
2. How Fast is Your Skill
3. What Attack Speed Booster does
4. Magicians: spell cast times
5. What doesn't speed up your attacks
6. MapleStory Classic World vs Pre-BB Era for Attack Speed
7. Where these numbers come from

What is Attack Speed? 4 Key Terms

Every weapon you can actually get sits between tier 3 and tier 8; Booster pushes the fast end down to tier 1. Tier 0 and tiers 9-12 are defined by the game, but nothing we know of reaches them. Here is how the tooltip labels map to tiers:

Here is every weapon class's real range in the game's own equipment data, and the best tier its Booster can reach:

	Weapon class	Base speed tiers	Fastest tier with Booster
	Dagger	3-4 (Faster to Fast)	1 (Fastest)
	Claw	3-5 (Faster to Fast)	1 (Fastest)
	One-handed axe	3-5 (Faster to Fast)	1 (Fastest; see note)
	One-handed sword	4-5 (Fast)	2 (Faster)
	One-handed blunt weapon	4-5 (Fast)	2 (Faster)
	Two-handed sword	5-6 (Fast to Normal)	3 (Faster)
	Bow	5-6 (Fast to Normal)	3 (Faster)
	Two-handed axe	6-7 (Normal to Slow)	4 (Fast)
	Two-handed blunt weapon	6-7 (Normal to Slow)	4 (Fast)
	Crossbow	6-7 (Normal to Slow)	4 (Fast)
	Spear	7-8 (Slow)	5 (Fast)
	Polearm	7-8 (Slow)	5 (Fast)
	Wand	6 (Normal)	6 (engine-forced; no Booster)
	Staff	7 (Slow; label only)	6 (engine-forced; no Booster)

So tier 1 is the current fastest tier for players. With Booster, daggers can reach tier 1 with the level-8 Fruit Knife, and claws from the level-25 Meba; both have player-recorded drops. Our item database also holds one tier-3 axe, the level-15 Scythe, which would make axes the third tier-1 family but nobody has figured out where to get that yet.

How Fast is Your Skill

Cast time depends on the weapon class you are holding and that weapon's speed tier. The skill you press barely matters: Power Strike, Slash Blast, Lucky Seven, Drain, and Fire Arrow all fire at the same rate on the same weapon, and a different animation still ends at the same time. The table shows the common cases and the exceptions:

	Skill	Animation base	Example weapon	Cast time	With Booster
	Basic attack and most attack skills (Power Strike, Slash Blast, Drain, Arrow Blow...)	800ms	Tier-4 sword	720ms	600ms
	Double Stab (Thief)	800ms	Tier-3 dagger	660ms	570ms (measured)
	Lucky Seven (Thief)	800ms	Tier-3 claw	660ms	570ms
	Savage Blow (Bandit)	960ms	Tier-4 dagger	840ms	720ms (measured)
	Fire Arrow and every offensive spell	800ms	Wand or staff	810ms	no Booster
	Heal (Cleric)	600ms	Wand or staff	600ms	no Booster
	Every self-buff: all 9 Boosters, both Hastes, Rage, Hyper Body, Magic Guard, and the rest	600ms	Any class	600ms at Normal speed	-

Every melee weapon alternates two animations on its basic attack: a swing and a stab. Each animation has a base length, and your speed tier scales it; the table below shows the result at every tier. The swing's base is 800ms for every weapon class. One-handed weapons stab on that same 800ms base, so both halves of their attack come out equal. Two-handed weapons (two-handed sword, axe, blunt weapon, spear, and polearm) stab on a 750ms base, about 7% quicker, so their attacks alternate between two speeds. Bows shoot on the 800ms base; crossbows on 820ms, a touch slower.

Tiers 9-12 are left off because nothing reaches them: no Classic weapon has a base speed slower than tier 8, and we haven't found any skill or debuff that slows attack speed.

At tier 4 (the most common Fast tier), a one-handed sword Slash Blast fires every 720ms, or 5,000 casts per hour of nonstop spamming. On a tier-6 Normal two-handed sword the same Slash Blast alternates an 810ms swing and a 750ms stab, averaging about 780ms, or roughly 4,600 per hour. Fewer casts for more damage per cast: the standard one-hand versus two-hand trade.

What Attack Speed Booster does

Every physical class's 2nd job learns a Booster for its weapon family: Sword, Axe, BW, Spear, Polearm, Bow, Crossbow, Claw, and Dagger Booster. Cast it on yourself and your weapon temporarily reads as 2 tiers faster, so a tier-4 Fast sword becomes a tier-2 Faster sword. It only works with the matching weapon family. Sword Booster does nothing on an axe. Fighters and Pages learn two Boosters to cover both their weapon options.

Practical impact at the typical Fast tier-4 weapon: 720ms per cast drops to 600ms. That's 20% more swings per hour. For a class whose 2nd-job AoE caps at 6 mobs per cast, that's the difference between 30,000 and 36,000 mob-hits per hour from speed alone, before any damage upgrade.

Magicians: spell cast times

Spell cast speed does not come from your weapon. The game forces every magician to Normal (tier 6) attack speed no matter what they hold; Slash confirmed the rule on the community Discord (May 2026) from the game's own speed logic. The Slow label on staves is display-only, so a wand and a staff cast at the same speed. What separates magician cast times is the spell itself. Heal and the buffs play a short animation; the offensive spells play the same-length animation physical classes swing with. That gap is built into the skills; no stat or gear changes it.

What doesn't speed up your attacks

• Haste (Thief 2nd job): movement speed only. Run faster, swing the same.
• Skill choice: Power Strike to Slash Blast, Drain to Lucky Seven; the cast time stays the same.
• Pet stickers and outfit items: visual only.
• Speed potions and movement buffs: movement only, same as Haste.
• Higher levels of your main attack skill: more damage per hit, same speed.

For build comparisons, damage per hour is per-cast damage times 3600 divided by your cast time in seconds. That's exactly what the Damage Simulator and the Lv 50 DPS rankings run under the hood.

MapleStory Classic World vs Pre-BB Era for Attack Speed

Mostly the same machine, with re-tuned edges. The basic weapon speeds match the old game: sword, axe, blunt weapon, spear, and polearm cast times reproduce LazyBui's old GMS attack-speed reference exactly, tier for tier. Crossbows have one odd cell; the old reference lists 870ms at Normal where Classic computes 840ms, and the old measurement likely caught a stray 30ms tick.

• Wider tier range. Old GMS ran tiers 2-10. Classic defines 0-12, though nothing reaches the new edges yet.
• Savage Blow is faster now. Classic re-tuned it, so pre-Big Bang Savage Blow timing is wrong here.

Where these numbers come from

The game's own animation timing, checked by in-game measurement for the confirmed rows. A tier-3 dagger firing Double Stab with Booster lands at 570ms, right where the table says. The cast formula, the 30ms server tick it snaps to, and the magician tier-6 rule come from Slash on the community Discord. The per-class speed ranges come from the same equipment data that powers the item database. One quirk if you stopwatch yourself: because of that 30ms tick, a single swing can land a tick off the table. Long sessions average out to these values. Stopwatch something that disagrees? Tell us in the MeowDB Discord.