Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-3157150-20141218110639/@comment-24821572-20141219082749

123777tw wrote: If i remember correcty, prefix can not effect tools "using speed" in v1.2. What it effect is just “brandish speed”. You will find that weapon prefixes do affect mining speed here.

I'll go into some details, but you can find the rest there.

Tools, being melee weapons, have two use times. One is useAnimation, the other is useTime. useAnimation, as you correctly guessed, governs the speed of the swing. However, useTime governs the mining(tool) aspect. You can have a tool that swings slower than its use speed, and vice versa. Now, weapon prefixes affect "speed". Speed affects both the useAnimation and useTime, meaning that you do mine faster when you have a speed boosting prefix.

But, what you are confusing with is "melee speed", like violent, that can be found on accessory prefixes. Melee speed does indeed only affect useAnimation, but not useTime, hence making them useless in digging faster. This also means armors that boost melee speed like shadow armor useless for useTime. Also, one of the core programmers of the game themselves confirmed the data on that thread I linked.

Hope that clears things up.