Walk on the Wild Side
modification of enemy's movement speed
Enemy's movement speed is subject to various influences. Prominently is Cold Damage delivered by attacks or spells. Some skills even freeze an (non-player) enemy to the point, quite similar to item property Hit Freezes Target.
Monsters never can be slower than approximately one yd/s, otherwise they're freezed. No-one can freeze (hostile) players.
Some skills won't slow an enemy down, but force him into Hit Recovery. This is described in a separate FAQtoid.
This FAQtoid discusses slowing by Cold Damage, Paladin's Holy Freeze aura, Necromancer's Decrepify and his Clay Golem, also hit slows target as item property will fit in. All this slowing effects are summed up, except Golem and items, which exclude each other, but will work additively to Cold, Curse and Aura.
see also
- Knockback
- Walking and Running
- Hit causes Monster to flee
- Hit Blinds Target
- AI-bending Curses, german
- Hit Recovery
survey of skills
- Amazon, german
- Cold Arrow
causes Cold Damage - Ice Arrow
causes Cold Damage and freezes the enemy - Freezing Arrow
causes Cold Damage, cold splash, and freezes enemies in splash range - Slower Missiles
special condition, causes slowing of enemy's missiles
- Cold Arrow
- Assassin
- Blades of Ice
causes Cold Damage - Blades of Ice (3)
third strike causes Cold Damage, cold splash), and freezes enemies in splash range - Phoenix Strike (3)
third kick causes Cold Damage, cold splash), and freezes enemies in splash range
- Blades of Ice
- Druid
- Arctic Blast
causes Cold Damage - Hurricane
causes Cold Damage, area cold damage in range, and freezes enemies in range
- Arctic Blast
- Necromancer
- Decrepify
slows attacking and movement speed of the cursed - Clay Golem
slows attacking and movement speed of enemy on contact - Skeleton Mage (Ice)
causes Cold Damage
- Decrepify
- Paladin
- Vengeance
causes Cold Damage, too - Holy Freeze
causes Cold Damage without chilling duration, both to attack and area, and slows all enemies in aura range
- Vengeance
- Sorceress
- Ice Bolt
causes Cold Damage - Ice Blast
causes Cold Damage, freezes the enemy - Glacial Spike
causes Cold Damage, area cold damage in range, and freezes enemies in range - Frost Nova
causes Cold Damage and area cold damage - Blizzard
causes Cold Damage and area cold damage - Frozen Orb
causes Cold Damage, area cold damage, and freezes enemies in range - Frozen Armor
causes Cold Damage, freezes an successful (melee) attacker - Shiver Armor
causes Cold Damage, freezes any successful melee attackers - Chilling Armor
causes Cold Damage, shoots a freezing missile onto any attacker (melee and ranged)
- Ice Bolt
- Rogue, Act1
- Cold Arrow
causes Cold Damage
- Cold Arrow
- defensive Town GuardAct2 Nightmare
- Holy Freeze
causes Cold Damage without chilling duration, both to attack and in area, and slows down enemies in aura range
- Holy Freeze
- Icy Iron Wolf, Act3
- Ice Bolt
causes Cold Damage - Glacial Spike
vcauses Cold Damage, area cold damage, and freezes enemies in range - Frozen Armor
causes Cold Damage, freezes an successful (melee) attacker
- Ice Bolt
Cold Damage
Slowing caused by Cold Damage is always 50%
Additional cold damage via equipment works only with attacks, not spells. Exception is Amazon's Lightning Bolt skill, which is an attack, but doesn't carry other elements. Secondary missiles as triggered by Lightning Fury won't carry elements from equipment, either. Exception here is the cold splash done via Freezing Arrow, cold dam,age from equip will be carried into it.
All cold affices from worn equipment plus Charms in inventory will enhance slow effect's duration caused by cold attacks. This also applies to freezing durations of Ice and Freezing Arrows. Bonus cold damage granted by Paladin's Holy Freeze aura has no chill duration assigned, thus won't prolong slowing effect by itself.
Chilling duration is halfed when entering Nightmare difficulty and quartered when entering Hell. Items with cold damage durations assigned are listed at Atair's german d2wissen.
In Patch 1.09 Baranar's Star had no duration assigned. Since 1.10 such items have a randomly assigned duration similar to the amulet Eye of Ettlich in any patch.
Cold Damage granted by skills won't enhance Hit Freezes Target chances or duration. Vice versa HFT chances won't enhance chill from Cold Damage.
Monsters have own modifications of cold effectiveness assigned, chill duration is subject to cold resistance, but also to this separate modifier. So a cold immune monster won't suffer any kind of cold damage, but others also may resist coldslowing or freezing. Especially feared are Souls and some Frenzytaur subspecies in Worldstone Keep.
see also:
Holy Freeze
| sLvl | slow |
|---|---|
| 1 | 30% |
| 4 | 40% |
| 7 | 45% |
| 12 | 50% |
| 20 | 54% |
This aura you may encounter allied with a Paladin or playing one by yourself), an Act2 defensive mercenary hired in Nightmare difficulty, or equipped with a Doom / HelOhmUmLoCham weapon or Ice / AmnShaelJahLo missile weapon, which grants the aura via oskill property. Monsters also know some tricks, so you may meet some unique boss, and you certainly have to defeat Duriel.
The aura grants its owner's attacks additional cold damage, and pulses area cold damage every two seconds. This pulse (but not the assigned cold damage) also slows enemies in range. The difference is important, since slowing from Holy Freeze also affects enemies resistant or immune to cold. Only Act Bosses and their various clones are no subject to HF slow.
Aura radius will start at four yards with sLvl1 and increases by 0.6 yards with each further level. Slowing effect's increasement is nonlinear, see table for reference.
Decrepify
| weapon | chance |
|---|---|
| Fetid Sprinkler | 5% |
| Lawbringer | 20% |
| AmnLemKo | |
| Wrath | 30% |
| PulLumBerMal | |
| Reaper's Toll | 33% |
Walk and run speed, attack speed, delivered physical damage, and resistance to physical damage of the cursed are decreased to 50%. Curse radius is four yards.
Some weapons may trigger the curse.
see also:
- Decrepify german skill description
Clay Golem
| sLvl | slow |
|---|---|
| 1 | 11% |
| 2 | 20% |
| 4 | 33% |
| 6 | 41% |
| 9 | 49% |
| 13 | 56% |
| 16 | 60% |
| 20 | 63% |
This Golem slows down every enemy on contact, that is when he hits or gets hit by an enemy. Percentage of slowing is dependent on Golem's skill level. The armor runeword Stone / ShaelUmPulLum grants the ability to summon a sLvl16 Clay Golem as oskill, so any class may use it.
see also:
- Clay Golem german skill description
(Hit) Slows Target by x%
Same kind of slowing effect the Golem uses is also granted by some items, provided we still talk about attacks here, not spells. As you may have guessed the items are listed at Atair's german d2wissen. Similar to most trigger events Amazon's Multiple Shot will only carry slowing effect on middle two arrows of a spread.
Resistance or immunity to cold don't affect this kind of slowing, same for reduced cold effectiveness. Once triggered this effect may last about 30 seconds (this value is experimental status). If the slowed enemy successful lands a hit, his slowing will be reset.
Only one of each effects can be active, either slowing caused by Clay Golem or caused by item-supported attacks. Slow duration is set anew with each hit. If a player character (or combat hireling) wears more than one item granting slowing, the percentages add. Upper limit is 90% of slowing against common monsters and 50% against Champions and Bosses, also against hostile players and hirelings.
Furthermore a monster can't be slower than 25% of its regular walking speed, which varies by species.
The limit of this kind of sowing versus hostile players and hirelings is 50%.
As said before, slowing granted by items and slowing from Clay Golem are the same effect. You may also imagine an Iron Golem made out of an item which grants slowing - this one will only slow when he lands a successful hit, unlike the Clay Golem.
Only the last applied effect will work here. Same goes for a character accompigned by a combat hireling, both equipped with slowing gear. Due to a buggy behaviour described below this may cause some unexpected results ingame.
summary
Different slowing effects (Cold, Aura, Curse, Golem/Item) will stack. Speaking of movement there is something like 'global slowing', which is substracted from enemy's movement speed.
Remember aforesaid normal monster's inability to move slower than 25% of its walking velocity. This does not mean there's a limit of 75% of total slowing, which you may read sometimes. Lots of monsters are able to run, and if so, more than 75% slowing granted by items or addition of slowing sources steps in.
The only value limiting total slowing is the inability of slowing something down to less than one yd/s movement speed.
see also:
- slow items stacking check, in Phrozen Keep
- %slow stack cap, in Phrozen Keep
Lots of people might not know this, but all kinds of slowing also affect attacking speed, it's not just Decrepify here. Similar to movement normal monsters can't attack slower than 15% of their regular attack speed. Boni granted via boss' attribut 'extra fast' or foeish Fanaticism aura exist, so it is incorrect to say there's a limit of 85% on slowing attack speed.
Amazon's Evasive skills, which all need eight frames duration, will also decrease velocity when Zon is slowed. It seems they gain acceleration via friendly skill boni to Walk and Run speed, but not via item boni or other parameters. Other testings than mine indicate they're subject to attack speed.
Versus hostile players and hirelings total slowing is limited to 90%.
Formula stuff
Veffwalk = Vbasewalk * (100 + FRWskill + FRWeff - Armorspeed - ∑Slow) / 100 FRWeff = [FRWitem * 150 / (FRWitem + 150)] ∑Slow = slowcold + slowHF + slowDec + slowitem
Veffwalk: effective walking speed Vbasewalk: base walking speed FRWskill: skill boni to walk/run speed FRWeff: effective Faster Run/Walk via items * Armorspeed: armor penalty * FRWitem: item boni to walk/run speed * ∑Slow: total slowing slowcold: slowing via Cold slowHF: slowing via Holy Freeze slowDec: slowing via Decrepify slowitem: slowing via Golem or items * applies to all units able to wear armor
see also:
Bugs
If an enemy suffers slowing and gets another slowing hit with a different percentage, serverside attack speed is adjusted to fit new speed, but not client-side animation. So if new percentage is lower than already applied one, enemy's attack speed becomes faster than before. Graphically a just begun animation is interrupted, since server-side it doesn't need that much time to start a new one. So it looks like the enemy doesn't do anything, but the feeling is different ...
If the other way round new slowing percentage is higher than before, graphically the animations stay the same duration, but pauses' duration between animations are prolonged, since the server-side needs more time to finish it.
It seems that Movement speed is no subject to that oddity.
During 1.09 slowed movement speed was correctly calculated server-side, but displayed with maximum possible percentage client-side. This caused desynch a lot, recognizable due to suddenly teleporting enemies.
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