Walk speed and attack speed

Two different speeds, two different effects: attack speed decides how often your main attack hits, walk speed how fast you cross the map and dodge. Neither shows up in a damage number directly, which is why both are easy to get wrong.

Attack speed tiers

Every weapon has one of seven attack speeds. Items with an "Attack Speed" bonus move the main attack up (or down) by whole tiers:

Main attack damage per second is damage per hit × these hits per second, so +1 tier on a Normal weapon is worth about 22% more main attack DPS. Builds that live on the main attack - and Shaman puppets, which scale with it - value tiers highly.

Why spells ignore attack speed bonuses

Spells use the same numbers as a damage multiplier, but only from the weapon's base attack speed: a Super Slow weapon's spells hit with a 0.51 multiplier on a much larger base damage, a Super Fast weapon's with 4.3 on a small one. Attack Speed bonus tiers from items change the main attack only, never spell damage. A spell build gains nothing from them.

Filtering by attack speed

Under Weapon attack speed you can check the speeds you like to play with; the recommender then only picks weapons with those base speeds. Because some items add or remove tiers, the weapon's base speed and the build's final speed can differ. Check Only builds with the checked speeds to require the final speed, after every item's tiers, to be one of the checked ones.

Walk speed

Walk Speed on items is a percentage, and the build's total is simply the sum of all items (and a few tree nodes). Many strong items carry negative walk speed, so a build that maximises damage alone can easily end up 20-30% slower than normal. Nobody enjoys crossing a raid arena at a crawl, and slower movement also means more hits taken.

The recommender has a walk speed range for that. The default is at least 0% - never slower than a character with no items. The presets: Any, Slow ok (at least -20%), Default (at least 0%), Mobile (at least +20%) and Fast (at least +40%).

How much walk speed is worth

A range is pass or fail, but speed also has a value. The setting "walk speed is worth" turns it into damage terms: by default every +10% walk speed counts like +1% damage, up to +50% walk speed (and -10% costs 1%). With that, a build with 4% less damage but 68% more walk speed can win over the slightly stronger slow one. The damage you see is always the real number; only the comparison between builds uses the speed-adjusted value. Set it to 0 if you want pure damage.

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