skill haste is hugely overrated. Assuming optimal breakpoint, a skill haste of 6% means you need to use your S1 or S2 17 times in a fight to get just 1 more use. There isnt any fight where you can use your S2 or S3 so many times, and S1 too really. So there’s actually no gain.

Back to talking about breakpoints, your SP gain comes in different amounts at intervals (from each hit in the combo) instead of a gradual increase. What this means is that unless you have enough skill haste to be able skip one hit from your combo, the skill haste boost doesn’t actually do anything, you still have to do the full c5 combo anyway.

Also, most of the damage and SP from normal attacks comes from the 5th hit in the combo. Meaning that even if you have enough haste to do C5C4S1 instead of C5C5S1, its a dps loss to do so most of the time.

How skill haste usually helps though, is in 2 ways. First is that there’s a breakpoint, that you can use the skill haste efficiently. 9% on elisanne lets her do C5-C5-FS-S1 repeat, instead of C5-C5-C4/5-S1 repeat.

Other way is due to player skill. Sometimes you didn’t position yourself well enough, so you have to dodge an aoe, cancelling your C5 combo. Or people rolling because they’re not sure whats going on, or for no reason at all. If your combo is never finished, its all C1-3 taps, making a C5C5S1 combo turn into a combination of 15-25 C1 equivalent taps (early taps in the combo grants relatively the same low amounts of SP when compared to the final hit). This makes the skill haste take effect, by granting you one more tap.