I’m Warren from Llama’s community. I’ve written a full fledged IAS calculator for the game that for better or worse is accurate to the current game. I believe I’ve made the correct adjustments (comparing to frame length ingame) to my calculator for Wereform skills that do not include Fury or Feral Rage (they may be correct, but I did not test them). For the sake of this discussion, I will primarily focus on Normal Attack frames in Wereform (mostly Werewolf).
Disclaimer: the breakpoint values I am using for the 2.4 changes are based on a medium sample size for Werewolves and seem to be correct. It is possible, though unlikely, that I am slightly off or completely wrong in some or all Wereform scenarios. I am confident I made the correct changes to my calculator though.
Here is the original formula:
ceiling(256 * FPD1 / floor[floor(256 * FPD2 /
floor[256 * FPD0 / floor([100 + WIAS - WSM] * animationSpeed / 100)])
* limit(acceleration) / 100]) - 1
where FPD0-2 are constants depending on weapon used, skill, and wereform, WIAS is the IAS on your primary weapon, WSM is the weapon speed modifier of the primary weapon, and acceleration is total acceleration of the animation (EIAS, which includes SIAS (skill IAS), WIAS (weapon IAS), and GIAS (non-weapon IAS)). For the acceleration variable, WIAS and GIAS are added together and applied to a diminishing returns formula (so they have equal contribution in that context). The “limit” function applies the minimum and maximum limits to your acceleration, which is 15 on the low side and 175 on the top side.
Here is the new formula (I believe to be correct) which is simply the formula for the majority of attack animations in the game:
ceiling(256 * FPD0 / floor[animationSpeed
* limit(acceleration) / 100]) - 1;
We can see a lot of parallels. If we look closely, we can see that “animationSpeed” in the second formula takes the place of the giant floor repetition in the first formula. We can see in the first formula that we reference WIAS directly. This is where WIAS doing massive contribution comes into play. Using the second formula instead, our calculations are much more simple and WIAS does not have an excessive contribution.
Let’s compare some breakpoints between the two animations. For the purpose of the change, where slower weapons and weapons without WIAS are faster than before and faster weapons or weapons with a lot of WIAS are slower than before, we’ll compare the slower and faster weapons in terms of WSM.
— BEFORE 2.4 ----
For ALL of the following table headers: IAS refers to GIAS and FPA is the length in frames of the animation.
For Werewolf with level 5 Werewolf using a War Hammer (20 WSM 1HS (FPD0=19)) with no other animation increases:
IAS FPA
0 26
4 25
10 24
16 23
24 22
35 21
48 20
65 19
We start at 26 FPA and end at 19 FPA with 0 weapon IAS. Pretty bad.
What about adding 40 weapon IAS?
IAS FPA
0 14
2 13
28 12
With only 40 weapon IAS, we are now at 14 FPA. If this were just gear IAS, we would be at 21 FPA (see previous table). This is a good example of how much WIAS contributed.
What if we used a Phase Blade (-30 WSM 1HS (FPD0=19)) with 0 WIAS?
IAS FPA
0 11
We reach the max attack speed for 0 WIAS at 11 FPA.
What about Phase Blade with 40 WIAS?
IAS FPA
0 9
We gain two frames.
— AFTER 2.4 —
For ALL of the following table headers: IAS refers to GIAS !!!AND!!! WIAS added together and FPA is the length in frames of the animation.
War Hammer with 0 WIAS:
IAS FPA
0 15
3 14
13 13
27 12
48 11
83 10
We start at 15 FPA instead of 26. Significant improvement. Let’s add 40 WIAS:
IAS FPA
0 12
8 11
43 10
If we notice, this table is exactly the same, except 40 IAS has been subtracted from the IAS values. Do note, however, that even though our speeds have greatly increases, no additional IAS can push us past 10 FPA. Let’s move on to Phase Blade.
Phase Blade with 0 WIAS:
IAS FPA
0 10
Here is the concerning part. Phase Blade with level 5 Werewolf and no IAS whatsoever and we are at 10 FPA. You can’t go any faster than this. 9 FPA was possible before 2.4 with only 40 WIAS. Before 2.4, a Phase Blade with 120 IAS and level 20 Werewolf would reach 5 FPA. After 2.4, a Phase Blade and level 5 Werewolf is all you need to hit maximum attack speed. IAS is now completely useless when utilizing a Phase Blade.
MY PROPOSED CHANGES:
Make this the wereform equation:
ceiling(256 * FPD1 / floor[floor(256 * FPD2 /
floor[256 * FPD0 / floor([100 + DR(WIAS + GIAS) - WSM] * animationSpeed / 100)])
* limit(acceleration) / 100]) - 1
What’s different? I replaced “WIAS” on its own with DR(WIAS + GIAS), where DR is the diminishing returns formula used for IAS elsewhere in the calculation.
What does this accomplish?
WIAS and GIAS are now uniform. They have equal contribution. However, the contribution is effectively less than what WIAS use to do, as WIAS was not subject to diminishing returns. For reference, the diminishing returns formula will effectively cap at 120, though realistically you can only obtain 80-85 at most.
What’s different in the practical sense? Well, let’s compare our tables again:
— MY PROPOSED CHANGES —
For ALL of the following table headers: IAS refers to GIAS !!!AND!!! WIAS added together and FPA is the length in frames of the animation.
War Hammer, level 5 Werewolf, no additional IAS:
IAS FPA
0 26
4 25
5 24
8 23
10 22
13 21
16 20
19 19
26 17
34 16
40 15
46 14
60 13
68 12
78 11
105 10
152 9
But Warren, we’re at 26 FPA again! True, this isn’t as good as 2.4 at first look. However, compare this to the BEFORE 2.4 table. 65 GIAS reached the cap of 19 FPA. Look at this table. 65 GIAS+WIAS gets us to 13 FPA. We can see even from this table with a slow weapon that we can go past the 2.4 cap of 10 frames.
War Hammer with 40 WIAS (WIAS being the same as GIAS):
IAS FPA
0 15
6 14
20 13
28 12
38 11
65 10
112 9
394 8
We can see the table here is the previous table with 40 IAS taken off the table. Also, we can see the next IAS breakpoint at 8 frames, though 394 additional IAS is not possible to obtain. Let’s move on Phase Blade.
Phase Blade with 0 IAS:
IAS FPA
0 11
7 10
20 9
70 8
Remember how with the 2.4 changes we were already maxed at 10 FPA. We can see here that we can go down to 8 FPA (looks to be the new max) with 70 total IAS. Compare this to before the 2.4 changes. Before 2.4, we were at cap of 11 FPA. Same here, but now we can go even faster. Not too fast though, let’s make sure 8 FPA is the new cap for sure:
Phase Blade with 120 IAS:
IAS FPA
0 8
Yup. No amount of additional IAS gets us past 8. So we see a 3 maximum frame improvement over BEFORE 2.4 and 2 maximum frame improvement over AFTER 2.4.
How does this compare with meta Werewolf options now?
Shillelagh (Upped Ribcracker) (FPD0=17 – crazy, Druid has slightly better animation speeds with two-handed weapons (not swords) than one-handed weapons) with 50 WIAS and Level 20 Werewolf:
BEFORE 2.4:
IAS FPA
0 9
AFTER 2.4:
IAS FPA
0 9
MY CHANGES:
IAS FPA
0 9
52 8
124 7
We can see here that there was not really much change across the board, 9 FPA was the max before my changes. However, there are new maxes available under my changes.
I think these are good changes. It keeps the goal of the dev team to unify GIAS + WIAS equal contribution, makes slower weapons a bit more viable (starting frames still kind of suck but it’s easier to hit higher breakpoints with any source of IAS now), and may even slightly buff Wereform builds (as they aren’t exactly overpowered on live…).
Warren, if your changes allow for breakpoints not previously obtainable before or after 2.4, will we get some seriously broken Wereform attack speed builds? Possibly. I don’t know if Fury has had any additional changes to this change. If not, I imagine my calculator is correct for it, but like I’ve said, I have not confirmed it at all.
Can we use your calculator and check various differences ourselves? Sure. Do keep the disclaimer in mind though. If you find that I am wrong in any form on the calculator, please do let me know! If it turns out I am dramatically wrong about 2.4 changes or even my changes, I will be sure to edit this post.
https://warren1001.github.io/IAS_Calculator/experimental/
You’ll have to copy and paste the link since we aren’t allowed to post hyperlinks.
for confirmation: fury on my calculator is wrong for 2.4, not sure about feral rage, everything else still seems to be correct.