Opgedronken wrote:More movement speed increases the number of stoppages between whirlwinds and that costs you a lot of damage especially on single targets.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think the actual whirlwind stoppage is based on total character attack speed so maybe you could decrease the stop time with more attack speed?
Increasing movement speed reduces damage per second because you cover the same distance in less time, and therefore are not in attack mode as often. Your first sentence is entirely correct on this, and summarizes it more neatly, too.
The next part needs a brief explanation/summary. Firstly, the game operates at 25 frames per second. Meaning, it processes attacks, movement, calculations, etc. 25 times per second, regardless of your computer hardware or software in the background.
Secondly, using dual-wielding 2 great swords just as an example, you can get these down to the minimum 4 frames per attack with 49% ON WEAPON attack speed (given 1 frame is 40 milliseconds, this means 160 milliseconds PER ATTACK PER WEAPON). With dual-wielding, it alternates between both weapons every 2 frames (attack with weapon 1 at frame '0' (the moment you initiate the whirlwind), weapon 2 at frame 2, weapon 1 at frame 4, weapon 2 at frame 6, and so on....).
as some examples, take the following numbers:
distance: 50 feet
move speed: 0% increase (base move speed)
time to travel: 2 seconds (25 feet per second) or 50 frames
damage per attack: 1000
hits per whirlwind (pretending attack rate is 100% for the sake of 'simplicity'...): 13 per weapon, 26 total
total damage per WW: 26,000
now a second example:
distance: 50 feet
move speed: 40% increase (max MS boots)
time: ~1.43 seconds (35 feet per second) or ~35.71 frames
damage per attack: 1000
hits per WW: 9 per weapon, 18 total
total damage per WW: 18,000
a third example:
distance: 50 feet
move speed: 100% increase (boots + some points in wolf stance)
time: 1 second (50 feet per second) or 25 frames
damage per attack: 1000
hits per WW: 7 with weapon 1, 6 with weapon 2, 13 total
total damage per WW: 13,000
and a final example:
distance: 50 feet
move speed: 200% increase (max wolf stance plus other sources)
time: ~0.67 seconds (75 feet per second) or ~16.67 frames
damage per attack: 1000
hits per WW: 5 with weapon 1, 4 with weapon 2, 9 total
total damage per WW: 9,000
looking at the above examples, a 40% speed increase results in a bit over a 30% loss in damage, a 100% speed increase means 50% damage, and a 200% increase gives just over 1/3 damage (~34.61%, more specifically).
Now, if you have a ton of damage, plus gale force, plus AoE from orange text on a weapon or the fanged helm, during farming runs you will absolutely benefit from investing in move speed if you can maintain the damage output to still one-shot trash mobs.
somewhat as a related note (related in the sense that basically everything boils down to "how fast can I find the sweet lewt?"), I am very much a proponent of MF being an overrated stat, simply because (at least as far as I understand it) MF only affects a single "dice roll" for loot.
that being "is the item either A. normal/superior, or B. magic/rare/set/unique?"
again, as far as I understand it (unless it's changed), if the chance is 75% normal/superior or 25% M/R/S/U (for example, no idea/can't remember the actual numbers), and you get 100% MF, this does NOT result in 50% more uniques. there is a fairly punishing rate of diminishing return for uniques, meaning 200% listed magic find might only result in a ~110% increased chance for a unique over the base rate. So, after all the calculations, if your base chance for a unique was 0.1% (approx. 1 unique per 1000 trash mobs), it is now 0.21% (approx. 1 unique per 476-477 mobs...give or take a couple thousand RNG rolls...).
On the other hand, if I can kill mobs twice as fast, either through more damage, or more move speed if I already one-shot trash mobs, rather than magic find, I'll take the kill speed/move speed. Further to this (and again, as far as I understand it), MF ONLY affects equippable items. it does NOT affect shrines, runes, signets, effigies, relics or even jewels (fairly sure on this, since jewels don't have a normal variant, only magic/rare/unique). Since a lot of my time spent farming would be for runes or shrines just as much as uniques, this would end up being a net loss in loot.....
Just another aspect to consider when planning the mid to late game...