Assassin attack speeds have long caused confusion amonst Diablo 2 players. Part of that problem lies in the sheer number of skills most assassin players use on a regular basis. At the end of the first version of this document, it was shown that a martial arts assassin could very realistically have five different attack speeds for the skills she has set on her hot keys. That's five skills she's making use of continually. The first version of this document focused on the idiosyncracies of those attack speeds when the assassin has dual claw class weapons equipped. Indeed, the more confusing parts of this second version will probably be those that deal with dual claw setups. This second version was written for two main reasons. The first reason was to correct various errors in the information reported in the first version. The second was to try and explain these attack speeds in a more consistent manner. One problem that I, as the author, had with the first version was that it seemed as if I had to explain each attack individually. I didn't really have on foundation upon which to explain all of these attacks. So, it ended up with a list of rules for each attack. That just seems inherently wrong. This is a computer program, after all. It has to run on a set of rules. A number of people who read the first version, most notably brianc84, began asking some questions and doing some testing of the things that were discussed in that first version. This lead to what I believe is a far more consistent means of explaining these attack speeds. It was fundemental enough that I realized that explaining the non-dual claw attacks speeds would be easy as we'd already have to lay the foundation for them in order to discuss the dual claw attack speed. Thus, this version has increased in scope. It is my intention to discuss all of the assassins attacks with all of the weapons which can be used for those attacks. Also, I felt we might as well spend a few minutes laying out some things other than just attacks. We'll also cover cast rates, blocking, and hit recovery. It's a rather large undertaking to be sure and I haven't done it alone. Take the time to read the credits, everyone listed there made this possible.
A few warnings are probably in order. First, in order to find a better common denomimator between these attack speeds, we'll be digging deeper into the mechanics of this game than I did in the last version of this. If you are one who doesn't like reading about such things, consider yourself warned! Many felt the last version of this was too technical. This one is more so.
If all you are looking for here is a listing of what amount of Increased Attack Speed you need for a given attack, weapon and level of Burst of Speed,look down the table of contents for the EIAS and BoS/IAS tables and go there. Those tables, while the end result of this document, are not the purpose of it. The purpose is to explain how the values in those tables are arrived at.
Most assassin players use a large number of acronyms when talking about skills. If you are new to assassins or are just unfamiliar with the common acronyms, please open the glossary in a separate tab or window so that you can refer to it while you are reading. With that having been said, here are the contents of this document:
