FRW

From Diablo Wiki

FRW = Faster Run/Walk speed, a property boosted by equipment (usually boots) and also by charms. Heavier armor and shields lowers running speed and may also increase stamina drain.

All characters in Diablo II move at the same speed in basic gear, but they differ as they gain bonuses from equipment and skills. Numerous skills increase run/walk speed.

Run/walk speed is always boosted by added FRW gear, and and each amount of increase is discernible, though perhaps not to the naked eye. (See breakpoints for various actions here.)

Unlike attack speed or cast rate, the result of the formula is in YARDS, not FRAMES. All of the frame-based formulas have breakpoints because frames has to be a whole number (i.e. an animation can take 2 frames, or 3 frames, but it can't take 2.37 frames). There is no requirement for *YARDS* to be a whole number (i.e. you can run at 2.37 yards per second), so the formula results in no breakpoints. It's sort of like the Magic Find formula- both suffer from diminishing returns, but neither has any breakpoints. Every percentage of FR/W and Magic Find is an improvement over the percentage before. -- Source

Run/Walk Speed

Armor and Shield Penalty
The table only shows the base runspeed depending on your FRW from items, without any penalties or speed increasing skills active.

If you care about your run speed I assume you are only going to use light armor and shields. If you do use medium or heavy armor or shields, then you will have to subtract 0.2 for each medium piece and 0.4 for each heavy.

Example: A character has 120 FRW from items but is wearing heavy armor (plate mail), and carrying a medium shield (large shield). This gives us: 8.64 - 0,4 - 0,2 = 8,04 yards per second. Since the FRW bonuses have diminishing returns, it takes more FRW bonus to offset the heavy armor/shield penalty as your total FRW increases.

Harmony Vigor Aura
Various character skills boost the run/walk speed. One method available to all characters is the Vigor aura, which can be provided by a Paladin or by the Harmony runeword. Harmony grants level 10 Vigor when equipped, which yields an increase of 1.44 yards per second to run/walk speed.

Returning to the previous heavy armor/medium shield example, that character with Harmony would move at 8.04 + 1.44 = 9.48 yards per second.

Walkspeed?
Your walk speed is 2 yards per second slower then your run speed. (A character with a lot of faster run/walk can walk faster than a slower character can run.)

Exact runspeed?
If you have FRW amount not listed in the table, you can use the formula below. Armor penalty is -5 for medium, and -10 for heavy.

• Runspeed = 6 + SkillFRW + ArmourPenalty + 6 * ItemFRW 25 ItemFRW + 150

Formulae

Speed while walking:

• EffectiveWalkSpeed = BaseWalkSpeed * (1 + Skill_FRW / 100 + [Item_FRW * 150 / (Item_FRW + 150)] / 100 + Armor_Speed / 100)

where

• BaseWalkSpeed is 4 yards/s for all characters
• Skill_FRW is skill based FRW minus slow effects
• Item_FRW is item based FRW
• [] indicates rounding down.
• Armor_Speed is the sum of the speed reduction from armor and shield (a negative number). The reduction is -5 for medium armors/shields and -10 for heavy armor/shields.

Additionally, if EffectiveWalkSpeed < BaseWalkSpeed / 4, EffectiveWalkSpeed = BaseWalkSpeed / 4. Thus, there is a minimum cap of 1 yard/s for EffectiveWalkSpeed.

Speed while running:

• EffectiveRunSpeed = BaseRunSpeed + BaseWalkSpeed * (Skill_FRW / 100 + [Item_FRW * 150 / (Item_FRW + 150)] / 100 + Armor_Speed / 100)

where BaseRunSpeed is 6 yards/s for all characters and other terms as above. Substituting EffectiveWalkSpeed into this formula, we get:

• EffectiveRunSpeed = EffectiveWalkSpeed + BaseRunSpeed - BaseWalkSpeed

By entering the values of BaseRunSpeed and BaseWalkSpeed in the formula, we get:

• EffectiveRunSpeed = EffectiveWalkSpeed + 2 yards/s

Additionally, if EffectiveRunSpeed < BaseWalkSpeed / 4, EffectiveRunSpeed = BaseWalkSpeed / 4. Thus, there is a minimum cap of 1 yard/s for EffectiveRunSpeed.

Speed while charging:

• ChargeSpeed = BaseRunSpeed * (1 + Skill_FRW / 100 + Armor_Speed / 100) * 150%

where the terms are as above. By substituting BaseRunSpeed and multiplying it by 150%, we get:

• ChargeSpeed = 9 yards/s * (1 + Skill_FRW / 100 + Armor_Speed / 100)

There is no lower limit to ChargeSpeed. It can be even negative.

All formulas courtesy of Tommi Gustafsson.

FRW Diminshing Returns Chart

Visual representations of this property and its diminishing returns at higher levels. Chart by Virtuous.

Faster Run/Walk diminishing returns.