Pretty much what the title says. I've received conflicting information from a few people regarding this, but this is essentially what it boils down to:

A warrior with regular balance and 280 speed weapons has the fastest swing speed available to any warrior. Freak weapons that might somehow have more than 280 speed are never faster, and balance bonuses don't push beyond the 280 limit, only up to it.

True or false?

False. A speed barrier may exist, but that is not it.

Easiest way to check is to find a faeling and time a few swings with a 290 speed weapon for comparison. Anyone care to give data?

From earlier testing, regular balance with a 280 speed weapon is about 2.9 seconds, a 290 is about 2.8. 290 with lightning combatstyle is about 2.6. Credit goes to Ildaudid's testing back in the combatstyle reform thread, with the usual provisos about ping fuzziness.

I used to be at 2 seconds flat with 290 speed hammers as a faeling.

My weapon speed is 305, I believe the cap happens at 300 and you can't go faster than 300.

Are you certain that's how it works?

I was once told that you could never regain balance faster than 2 seconds, regardless of weapon speed and racial balance bonuses. Is this incorrect?

That is probabbly true, but its also true that with a 305 speed weapon, a tae'dae is no faster than with a 300 speed weapon, which is approx 3 seconds, not 2.

Faeling? You sort of went the other way on that one didn't you?

Also, this leads me to believe that the formulas for weapon speed and racial balance must be a fair bit different from the ones in Achaea. Though in retrospect this makes near infinite amounts of sense, I just chalked the higher weapon stats and faster racial balances to Lusternia's generally higher 'power level' compared to Achaea, assuming some constants.

Was changeling for a year...going to be one again, yadda yadda.

Things are probably different now, but with 315 speed rapiers a human swung at 1.9 seconds. Melanchthon did it then I was graciously allowed to use them.

I'm pretty sure I remember Roark saying there was no actual cap on how fast it could go. Maybe things have changed now, though.

There was a bug with the new forging in the beginning; you could temper up speed beyond 280. Having had a klangaxe with 375 speed, I can say for sure that it was very noticable, so if there is a cap, it is nowhere near 300 or below.

I've been testing out monk speed (hey, we use weapons too) and was getting about 2 seconds per swing with the speed modifier from kata as a faeling. Not sure how quick I can get that to go. I'll have to fiddle a bit and see if it can be less than two seconds.

Whoooooaaaa necro. Anyways, the fastest balance isn't faeling, it's Stag aslaran, with the +3lvl balance.

Hmm, both Aslaran and Faeling have +2 racial balance.

She was specifically referring to a bonus from Stag...which could apply to faeling too.

Imagine that with a tuned cudgel!

As a note I think the math is wrong, my nekai have higher speed and I am aslaran (same speed as faeling nor of course) and I hit at 3.4 base, 2.9 with speed mod.

Yeah, I think we figured it out. A situation that'd never happen outside of testing caused it. Namely: The end of a long run of kata.

Kata chains do not speed up recovery time anymore though. Or shouldn't, from what I last heard.

It still will after the 3rd form

Slight derail - so, to get the kata chain speed boost do you need to be within the same kata, or do you lose the speed boost from switching to another form even with the 'smoothly change' or whatever message'?