Diablo – What pieces of armor can carry the increased attack speed attribute?

This is the result of a current bug in the way Diablo III Handles Attack Speed enchants, as of version 1.0.1.9558. Essentially, there are two different enchants that increase attack speed, which work slightly differently.

The first kind, which displays on tooltips as Increases Attack Speed by x, is supposed to only show up on weapons. When this Affix is on a weapon, it increases the attack speed of that weapon, but it does not increase the speed of your other weapon if dual wielding. Most importantly, if this verbiage is found an item other than a weapon, it does nothing at all.

The second kind displays it's tooltip as Attack Speed Increased by x. This affix applies it's modifier globally, and will always work, no matter what item it's on. If this affix is found on a weapon, it will even apply to your other weapon while dual wielding.

This is slated to be fixed in patch 1.0.3.

Attack Speed Bonus affects all of your attacks.

In general, the Damage stat on your character sheet can be trusted. It takes everything into account.

Be careful however, that the gloves have a working attack speed affix. Some don't.

Because of the complicated interaction of these stats, and the way they multiply by weapon damage, it's difficult to say that one is 'better' than the other. It depends mostly on the amount of each you have. If the two come out to a wash, keep in mind that increasing attack speed has the ancillary benefit of improving your mobility in between casts, while increasing your stats has some survivability benefits.