Movement Speed Rework Suggestion

Movement speed is a huge deal in POE2, much moreso than POE1. I personally think it's poor design for an entire equipment slot to be dependent on a single stat, where if an item does not roll highly on it it's pretty much worthless. Mob attack timings are balanced around a certain move speed, boss mechanics as well, traps in sanctum, it goes on. If you have good move speed boots it's night and day.

You know the gripe, it's been said 1000x. I've heard a lot of people suggesting move speed be simply changed to an implicit for boots, but I think I have a better idea.


I suggest reworking move speed to factor in player attributes and armor values instead.

In a nutshell, dexterity, strength, and armor would factor into movement speed in the following way:

Every 10 points of dexterity gains 1% move speed, up to 25%.

Every 10 points of strength removes 1% move speed penalty from armor.

Every 200 points of armor reduces movement speed by 1%, down to -25%.

Boots can roll minor implicit modifiers to movement speed, in the range of 0-15%, rather than current prefixes.

Goes without saying that the numbers are placeholders etc., but this ends with breakpoints at:
250 dex for +25% movespeed
250 str for characters with 5000+ armor to not receive movement speed penalties.
Max move speed bonus from attribute and items of +40% for 250+ dex character with +15% boots.

The goal with this is to give inherent value to taking dexterity beyond accuracy and equipment/gem requirements, increase the amount of viable leg armors available to all players, and to give an organic progression to character mobility as you level.

Dexterity in its current implementation is a dead stat for casters, but this would give you the ability to spec into some in lieu of purely stacking int, curtailing some of the current power of pure int archmage builds. Casters would need to invest some points away from pure int if they want to zoom around at current levels. They would feel more mage-like if completely neglecting other stats.

This would also make dex-heavy characters feel swifter in general than str or int heavy characters.

Going pure strength would require considering the lack of +movespeed from dex. There could be nodes added that reduce the movement speed penalty, invert it, etc.

A character's mobility in general would feel like part of that character's growth in an organic way.

Higher implicit movespeed boots would still be valuable, but not mandatory. A good upgrade, but not necessary.

Overall, I think it would increase attribute spread over most characters.

I of course know that armor+life is in a horrible spot at the moment and really don't want to push it further into the abyss, but I'm hoping that it gets reworked and buffed at some point soon. This is just spitballing on a minor design gripe anyway. It adds a layer of complexity to stats, but I mean *gestures in general at POE* we're here for some complexity, right?

As for speedrunning imbalances between builds, you simply look for dex on items continuously as you go instead of just finding a blue pair of +30% boots and being done with it.

Anyway, thoughts?

Movement speed on boots should be an implicit, like up to 25% and there could be an affix to push it even further if you want.

Movement speed is tier 0 defense layer and even the best boots in poe2 without ms are worth nothing.

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duoh#2605 wrote:

Movement speed is tier 0 defense layer and even the best boots in poe2 without ms are worth nothing.

Offscreening is tier 0.

the problem with what you're suggesting is that not everyone builds dex.

Movement speed is considered essential for almost every build. Making armor builds tax movement speed effectively bricks armor for all armor builds other than at endgame. Making it tied to dex kind of bricks all non dex builds.

the implicit on boots avoids all this.

You can't attach movement speed to stats it radically breaks the game as it currently exists, this will simply not happen. If you look for a positive argument, having +5% increments is exciting when it comes to the campaign and it isn't bad design.

The issue with boots is endgame itemization, because it is a complete non-negotiable for the item to have less than your desired MS. I wouldn't mind 1% increments for the 25-35 MS range personally, and I also think this isn't anywhere close to being important enough to address anytime soon.