Hi SilverNexus and welcome!

The only way I can think of to make it foolproof (play at 2x speed every time) is to actually double the speed of the animation itself (instead of using a <FLOAT>SPEED definition in the skill .DAT).

Unfortunately the only way I know to do this is very tedious.  It involves opening up the animation in XML (convert the .SKELETON with OGRETools) and changing the timing of each keyframe by hand (I've tried using a spreadsheet for this; it does reduce the time but not by much). Then converting it back to .SKELETON. The resulting new animation is what you then use for your skill.

Does anyone else have a method Silver could try?

...double the speed of the animation itself (instead of using a <FLOAT>SPEED definition in the skill .DAT).

Hey SilverNexus! If you want to try out this method, Kva co-created a brand new tool that will automate the keyframe editing check it out!

Hey Silver,

I might be able to find an easier solution to your problem.  It sounds like a Skills quirk.  If you would post the text from your skill's .dat file I'll take a look at it and see why this might be happening.

Okay, I also want to see the bloatfang animation file, the one in your MODELS directory.  I wanna see what sorts of modifications it has on it.

For now, though, I see you've got

    <BOOL>IGNORES_CAST_SPEED:1
which should make it ignore the line

    <FLOAT>SPEED:2
You probably don't need the IGNORES_CAST_SPEED property on this skill, since I doubt Bloatfang gets any cast speed modifiers to speak of.  Try changing that, then post back here with your animation file if the change doesn't work.

Then we'll talk about your skill setup.  But please read this guide first, it has some fairly important information.

heyo silver.
i think i may have found your problem.
    <STRING>ANIMATIONLOOP:Special_Eat
    <BOOL>CONTINUOUSLOOPING:1
the whole looping part should be dropped, i know its the core concept of the whole skill,
but special_eat, is not intended to be a  looping animation, and that probably where your problem comes from.

if you observe looping animations they usually come as a pair, the starting part and the looping part, for an example heres is rapid fires 2 animations
<STRING>ANIMATION:special_rapidshot_rpistol_start
<STRING>ANIMATIONLOOP:special_rapidshot_rpistol_loop special_eat is a standalone animation lasting for 3 seconds.

from the looks of it, you've used the original skill that bloatfang uses as your base code (bloat fang_heal), which is good, but if you look back, you'll see that it was never a looping skill, just one that has a long animation
you could possibly use retimer to extend that animation to last for longer, or break it up into a starting animation and a looping animation, which could be too much work.

When I test the skill (both in-game and in-editor), the skill animation proceeds at speed 2 for the first iteration of the skill, but each subsequent iteration operates at speed 1 (which affects the timing of various effects within the skills that otherwise work properly).

hmm, so i looked back on your post and mine and forgot to give you a piece of crucial information.
your setup of using special eat as the starting and looping animation works, only if you set your cast speed to 1

the thing is the looping part of an animation cannot be changed by cast speed but the starting part can,
so whats happening here is that your starting animation is played at 2 cast speed, then the looping part comes in and is played at 1 cast speed

you could do as phan suggested and make a new animation thats 2x faster, then use your current setup and play it at 1 cast speed