Question The relationship between the attacking animation and attack speed

Hello. I'm new here, and I gotta say, I'm loving it here, it's a great community. This is my first time posting here so please be patient with me.

So, the problem is that I have an RPG-like game with units that have attack speed stat, how can I make the attacking sync exactly as the attack animation while being accurate to the attack speed? These are the things that I'm thinking of:

• I could use animation events and adjust the animation speed based on the attack speed, but this introduces a problem if the animations have different frames/framerates. X and Y units could have 1.0 attack speed, but X unit attack once per second while Y unit attacks once per 0.7 seconds.
  
• I could use animation events and adjusting the animation speed, BUT only use animations that have the same frame count/rate, but this feels wrong and tiring.
• I could use two animations at the same time, the wind-up animation and the attack animation, and immediately play the attack animation once the unit is ready to attack while adjusting the speed of the wind-up animation. This could be the best solution, but it is the most complex.

Any thoughts?