Breakpoints

Breakpoints are the values at which spells, attacks, hit recovery and other animations become a frame faster or slower. It's essential to know the main breakpoints for your character's attack rate, and knowing all the rest is very useful to wisely plan your equipment.

Diablo II Strategy Guide Info:

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• Class: Amazon, Assassin, Barbarian, Druid, Necromancer, Paladin, Sorceress
• Author: Unknown

Why Are there Breakpoints?

Since Diablo II runs with 2D graphics, at 25 frames per second, events can only occur at discrete numbers of frames. As a result of this, improvements to attack rate, casting speed, hit recovery, and blocking rate are measured by the number of frames required to display the motion. If a normal attack with a given weapon takes 10 frames, some amount of faster attack bonus will drop it down to 9 frames, but until that amount is reached, no improvement will occur. Players call the amounts of improvement necessary to cause a change "breakpoints."

Speeds for all of these properties vary greatly between the different characters and items. Many attack skills have their own speeds and breakpoints. Other skills (such as Fanaticism) modify the overall speed of all attacks.

Values must meet or exceed numbers to achieve that breakpoint. If a breakpoint requires 48% Faster Hit Recovery, you will not get it with 46% or 47%. You must get to 48%, and then anything above that will cause no change until you meet or exceed the next breakpoint.

Increased speeds are displayed by dropping frames of animation. This can result in very fast movements looking choppy. For instance, if a character's basic attack with a given weapon requires 12 frames for the full animation (showing the arm swinging, the weapon descending, the hit landing, and then the weapon being lifted back to the ready pose), and your character has that attack down to 5 frames, thanks to a lot of IAS and a boost from Fanaticism, 7 of the 12 frames of animation will not be shown. The game will only display the weapon at the top, halfway down, hitting, halfway back up and at rest. Hence it looks choppy. This display issue can not be avoided in a frame-based, 2D game. 3D games do not have this issue, since movements can be shown at any speed -- the refresh rate of your monitor, 3D card, and the game engine permitting.

• See the calculations category for many more useful pages of stats and figures.

Breakpoint Modifiers

Modifiers that use the "breakpoint system" are:

• Faster Block Rate (FBR)
• Faster Cast Rate (FCR)
• Faster Hit Recovery (FHR)
• Increased Attack Speed (IAS)

Given below are tables for FBR, FCR and FHR. Breakpoints for IAS depend on too many variables (item, skill, character, equipment) to be put in simple tables. There are on-line IAS calculators available.

In DiabloII, animation speeds are measured in "frames," as explained above. One frame is 1/25 of a second.

Increased Blocking Speed

More commonly called "fast block", this modifier helps characters block more frequently.

A character goes into block animation if its opponent succeeds in the hit check and the character succeeds in a blocking check. The character can do nothing else during the blocking animation. Blocking is only possible while engaged in melee combat, or while walking. (Not while running.) See the blocking article for more details.

Improvements to faster blocking are difficult to achieve since the bonuses to it are found almost exclusively on shields.

• In some cases the equipped weapon influences the blocking speed.
• The Assassin's Weapon Block skill is also affected by her Faster Block Rate, and the same values as for shield blocking apply.
• Act 3 mercenaries do not block even though they are capable of using a shield.

Character	Weapon / Skill / Form	Block Frames
		17	16	15	14	13	12	11	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1
Amazon	1H swinging weapon (*)	0	4	6	11	15	23	29	40	56	80	120	200	480
	Other weapons													0	13	32	86	600
Assassin	all													0	13	32	86	600
Barbarian	all											0	9	20	42	86	280
Druid	Human form							0	6	13	20	32	52	86	174	600
	Bear form						0	5	10	16	27	40	65	109	223
	Wolf form									0	7	15	27	48	86	200
Necromancer	all							0	6	13	20	32	52	86	174	600
Paladin	normal													0	13	32	86	600
	with Holy Shield																0	86
Sorceress	all									0	7	15	27	48	86	200
Character	Weapon / Skill / Form	17	16	15	14	13	12	11	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2	1
		Block Frames

(*) 1-handed swinging weapons include 1-handed axes, clubs, 1-handed maces, orbs, scepters, 1-handed swords, 2-handed swords wielded in one hand, throwing axes, and wands.

Faster Cast Rate

Faster casting rate is found on a variety of equipment. This stat is most important for spell-casters, for obvious reasons. All spells are affected by this value, but note that some spells have a 1 second, or longer, delay between uses. For those spells, FCR equipment will lower the frames required for the actual casting animation, but the 1 second delay will still run (for 25 frames) after each cast.

For instance, if your character takes 11 frames to cast a spell that has a 1 second delay, that's 11 + 25 = 36 frames per use. If you you use FCR equipment to cut your casting frames to 7, you'll still have to wait 7 + 25 = 32 frames to cast it again. Saving 4 frames ever time you cast a spell will certainly add up over hundreds of casts, but the difference is less noticeable than it is with spells you can "spam" as quickly as your character can cast them.

• Lightning and Chain Lightning have different breakpoints than the other Sorceress spells.

Character	Skill / Form	Casting Frames
		23	22	21	20	19	18	17	16	15	14	13	12	11	10	9	8	7
Amazon	all					0	7	14	22	32	48	68	99	152
Assassin	all								0	8	16	27	42	65	102	174
Barbarian	all											0	9	20	37	63	105	200
Druid	Human						0	4	10	19	30	46	68	99	163
	Bear form								0	7	15	26	40	63	99	163
	Wolf form								0	6	14	26	40	60	95	157
Necromancer	Human									0	9	18	30	48	75	125
	Vampire	0	6	11	18	24	35	48	65	86	120	180
Paladin	all									0	9	18	30	48	75	125
Sorceress	Lightning / Chain Lightning					0	7	15	23	35	52	78	117	194
	other spells											0	9	20	37	63	105	200
Merc Act 3	all							0	8	15	26	39	58	86	138
Character	Skill / Form	23	22	21	20	19	18	17	16	15	14	13	12	11	10	9	8	7
		Casting Frames

Faster Hit Recovery

The hit recovery counter is triggered by any hits that take off more than 1/12th of your character's maximum hit points. When this happens your character is knocked into a "hit stun" animation, which must be completed before you can take another action. Characters (or mercs or monsters) may be stunned repeatedly, trapping them in "stun lock," a very dangerous situation.

There are also a variety of skills (for players and monsters) that cause the target to be stunned. Other skills and spell effects can cause all hits to stun while they are in effect.

Character	Equipped weapon	Hit Recovery Frames
		17	16	15	14	13	12	11	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2
Amazon	all							0	6	13	20	32	52	86	174	600
Assassin	all									0	7	15	27	48	86	200
Barbarian	all									0	7	15	27	48	86	200
Druid; Human form	1H swinging weapon (*)				0	3	7	13	19	29	42	63	99	174	456
	Other weapons					0	5	10	16	26	39	56	86	152	377
Druid; Bear form	all					0	5	10	16	24	37	54	86	152	360
Druid; Wolf form	all											0	9	20	42	86	280
Necromancer; Human form	all					0	5	10	16	26	39	56	86	152	377
Necromancer; Vampire form	all			0	2	6	10	16	24	34	48	72	117	?	?	?	?
Paladin	Spears and staves					0	3	7	13	20	32	48	75	129	280
	Other weapons									0	7	15	27	48	86	200
Sorceress	all			0	5	9	14	20	30	42	60	86	142	280
Merc Act 1	all							0	6	13	20	32	52	86	174	600
Merc Act 2	all			0	5	9	14	20	30	42	60	86	142	280
Merc Act 3	all	0	5	8	13	18	24	32	46	63	86	133	232	600
Merc Act 5	all									0	7	15	27	48	86	200
Character	Equipped weapon	17	16	15	14	13	12	11	10	9	8	7	6	5	4	3	2
		Hit Recovery Frames

(*) 1-handed swinging weapons include 1-handed axes, clubs, 1-handed maces, orbs, scepters, 1-handed swords, 2-handed swords wielded in one hand, throwing axes, and wands.

Credits

All information has been compiled from various sources, mainly the Diabloii.net Facts & Formulae Archive (FBR, FCR, FHR), Tommi Gustafsson's pages (FBR, FHR, including formulae), The Amazon Basin (accurate Act3 Merc breakpoints) and Technomage-C01's tables (Necromancer Vampire form FCR & FHR, accurate FHR for Paladins wielding spears and staves).