What are Breakpoints?

[Tsukiyomi]

So I see a LOT of talk about Breakpoints. People's first concern on their character builds are "Does it break the FHR Breakpoint, FCR Breakpoint" etc. etc.. What are Breakpoints? How do you find out what they are for each class? How do you determine how to get passed these, or whatever it is you do with them? Any help?

[Don_guillotine]

Originally Posted by Tsukiyomi

So I see a LOT of talk about Breakpoints. People's first concern on their character builds are "Does it break the FHR Breakpoint, FCR Breakpoint" etc. etc.. What are Breakpoints? How do you find out what they are for each class? How do you determine how to get passed these, or whatever it is you do with them? Any help?

Stats such as "Faster Hit Recovery", "Faster Cast Rate" and so forth work in such a way that they make your character's cast, hit recovery and so on animations faster by reducing their frames.

Because Diablo 2 isn't a 3D game but sprite-based, there is only certain "breakpoints" where such stats have any effect. The reason why people talk a lot about them is simply because those stats have no effect whatsoever unless the breakpoints are exceeded, so it is pointless to have non-optimized amounts of such stats because those stats could be something useful instead.

For example, a sorcerer with 5% faster cast rate is casting as fast as somebody with 0, because the first breakpoint is 9%.

Such breakpoints are class-specific, and can be found by Google. Just type "Faster cast rate (or fcr) breakpoints" and there you go.

PS: A more dramatic example, sorceress again is: the two last breakpoints are 105 and 200. So every value less than 200 is just as good as 105. I.e. if you had 199% fcr you'd be casting as fast as somebody with 105%.

[blood-doll]

breakpoints can be found here.

(also from this site's wiki is another explanation of breakpoints.)

[dorgeismydog]

Thats cool, I had the same question and Kinda thought it was related, because im used to seeing FCR. I didnt know that they had to break points in order to actually work an effect though.

[Tsukiyomi]

Ahh. Thank you for the help