Breakpoints

[Morgul]

I've seen this term come up a lot, along with charts which list weapon breakpoints or whatever. It's all Greek to me. What exactly does this term, and the associated charts, mean? Thanks.

[Shade]

Diablo II runs on a system where there are 25 frames displayed (and calculated) in one second. This means that Faster Cast Rate, Increased Attack Speed and Faster Hit Recovery/Block Rate will only have a noticable effect if they provide enough extra speed to make the animation at least 1 frame faster.

The exact numbers where the animation speed drops by a frame are called breakpoints.

Essentially, there's no point in having more of these bonuses than is required for a breakpoint - it won't have any effect in making you faster.

[ondergetekende]

Diablo is a frame-rate based game. Each second covers 25 frames. Each animation (like casting a spell) takes a number of frames, say 10 frames. If you have like 20% faster cast rate/faster block rate or whatever, the animation will take only 9 frames, so you can perform your next action quicker, but if you have only 0% faster cast/block its useless since you dont reach the next breakpoint. The tables list how much faster cast rate/block etc. rate you need to need a certain frame animation.
Hope this explains it.
PS Note that run/walk is not frame based

EDIT: Crap, Shade beat me :lol:

[808Keahiwai]

http://diablo2.ingame.de/tips/calcs/weaponspeed.php?lang=english

A very easy guide to calculating your weapon speed.