Whirlwind Breakpoints

[Tub]

Hi

you may have heard my name before, but probably you haven't. So, I'm Tub, from diablo2.de, responsible for testing the whole assassin attack speeds, mercenary attack speeds (the one's that diabloii.net has stolen) and some other data that can be found in Heri's Weapon Speed Calc. That being said, I hope you trust my values, although this is my first post here and I have this big red "newbie" sign attached to my shirt ;)


A while ago I made some tests about ww-speeds. I didn't use any disassembler, but plain tests.

a short summary of my methods:
- modded weapons with 100 to 101 dmg, no str/dex-bonus, different basespeeds
- lvl 99 barb with lots of AR, high str/dex, 100% manaleech
- modded Wendigos with exactly 10k hitpoints, no defense, lvl 1 (giving 95% cth), no regeneration and no movement

I counted how many times I had to whirl through a wendigo until it died, usually killing 3 wendigos per setup. Due to the 95% cth cap the results were a little off by 1 or 2 ww's sometimes, but altogether it was pretty solid.


My conclusion was:

caps for swords (1h and 2h, same caps!)
-10, 8, 34

caps for 2h-weapons:
-5, 27, 59

There were some more caps above 20, but as they don't exist in normal d2, I didn't take the time to narrow them down.

btw, hammerman's formula seems to be correct, because at -100 the game crashed with a div by 0 error ;)


those caps are almost identical to the values Ruvanal posted, with a few exceptions:

- there was no cap for swords at -20/-19, although there has to be at least one cap between -20 and -40
- there were no caps for 2ht/stf at -18/-17 and +5/+6

What happened here ? If there was a cap between -20 and -19 on swords, the wendigo should have died a couple of ww's earlier. But it didn't. You might argue that 42 instead of 43 ww's per wendigo is faster, but the next cap jumped to 33-34 ww's, then 25, and past the cap at 34 I needed 17 ww's for a kill. 43 to 42 is nothing.
Results for the 2ht/stf caps are similar. There either are no caps, or there are caps that virtually don't matter.


now, second issue:

If dual weilding, it changes wich weapon to use each successful attack. As before, the game checks every 4th frame if it should make an attack, and if the delay has passed you will get an attack.

so you're saying, that both weapons' speeds matter ? My tests said something completely different.

It is widely believed that only the speed of your left hand weapon matters (you sure know all those grandfatherghtsabre-barbs, and those funny dudes holding the lightsabre in their right hand ;)). On the other hand, it's also widely believed amongst barbs that the caps are 10/35 and 30/60, and I still see some of them telling me that 9 fps is max frenzy speed.
I don't know if they have been hit on the head too often or if they're just really dizzy from all the whirling, but I learned to be suspicious about any information from that character class. That's why I initially started my ww speed tests ;)


so.. same methods as before, except I modded some new weapons with just 1 dmg. This way I could measure both weapon speeds seperate.

my tests didn't turn out too well, and I assume that there are some "undocumented features" here. (ever noticed that in some situations using normal attack, you can make a barb attack slower if you exchange one weapon with a faster one?)

but, although most of the data was confusing, i'm pretty sure both weapons always have the same speed (so there is no difference if your left or your right sword does the damage, providing left and right weaponspeeds don't change).

In most cases this speed really was your left hand weapon speed! Any explanation for this ?




great work so far hammerman (as usual), but there are still some questions left..


greetings
Tub