How to design character attack speed

Based on my observations of games like: lol, warcraft 3 I have noticed that attack speed affects 2 components:
- animation speed
- time between animations

If we consider the scenario when unit has low attack speed lvl the animation speed will not drop below certain level and instead time between attacks will be extended.Of course other approach would be to extend animation time accordingly to the attack speed but it could potentially results in a bad looking animations imho.

On the other hand if character has a high attack speed level, the time between attacks is reduced continuously until it is no longer present, and then if the attack speed value is high enough, the animation speed is increased.

Do you think this kind of approach when working with character attack speed is correctly or did I miss sth?

 

Well, yes there is animation speed and time between animations. I'd actually call them attack speed and cooldown respectively. More precisely, you can divide attack motions like this: [pre-attack motion] - [attack motion (with hit detection) ] - [ post-attack motion ] - [ cooldown ]. You can have parameters that determine each of these phases and it is your responsibility as game designer to balance them. As for your approach, I can not give you a clear answer because it depends on what you are trying to achieve. For me, I would always leave attack motion duration untouched (given the same weapon) and play with the other phases.