Action Speed vs Movement Speed

"

A character's action speed determines the relative rate at which its animations play, thereby affecting the overall speed that their actions are performed. All of the character's actions that have an animated component are affected by their action speed. This includes moving, attacking, casting spells, throwing traps and mines, shouting warcries, summoning totems, and recovering from stuns.

Modifiers to action speed have a multiplicative effect on a character in conjunction with stats that affect the speed of specific actions, such as movement speed, attack speed, cast speed and stun recovery. Action speed does not directly modify such stats though. This distinction is relevant for game mechanics that care about any discrete modifiers to those stats. For example, the brand activation frequency of Arcanist Brand is affected by modifiers to the character's cast speed; whereas it is not affected by modifiers to the character's action speed.