Bug w/ superior ethereal def calculations?

I've found two superior ethereal armors so far that seem to have lower defense values than I thought they should have.

I just found an Eth superior Wire Fleece, with 663 def.

My understanding is that superior quality maxes out the def of the item, then Eth adds +50% of that value.

Wire Fleece's base max def is 481. Which is what any superior non- Eth Wire Fleece should have. half of 481 is 240 (rounded down). 480+240 is 720.

Am I misunderstanding how defense is calculated?

amdinga wrote: 4 years ago

I've found two superior ethereal armors so far that seem to have lower defense values than I thought they should have.

I just found an Eth superior Wire Fleece, with 663 def.

My understanding is that superior quality maxes out the def of the item, then Eth adds +50% of that value.

Wire Fleece's base max def is 481. Which is what any superior non- Eth Wire Fleece should have. half of 481 is 240 (rounded down). 480+240 is 720.

Am I misunderstanding how defense is calculated?

There's also the % Enhanced Defense roll that this item does not have, the 0-15% one that increases further.
There's a lot of Eth armor bases below 600 so don't sweat it. Is why the 700-800+ are worth a little more.

No I know, and I have more valuable armor in my stash. I'm just wondering if there is a bug, because my understanding was that any superior Eth Wire Fleece should be 720 as a minimum, then greater if you have enhanced defense on top.

It is my understanding that superior does not affect the def roll, it just has a chance to give increased max durability, or increased %defense. and those stats look right for that. though i admit i am no expert on deep-cut D2 mechanics.

Ohhh, ok. I thought that having 'superior' on an armor automatically pushed the base defense to the max of what a normal quality item could roll.

The general rule is that any non-upgraded armor with a % defense bonus will always have perfect defense + 1 for its base type (rounds down if there's a decimal).

There is no bug. Your understanding is slightly off however.

- ED superior armors will have a base defense of max def + 1. Or in the case of a Wire Fleece 482.
- Dura superior armors (so no superior ED) do NOT get this automatic bonus but perform a normal roll for their def. So in this case 375-481.
- The 50% ethereal bonus is then applied to that base defense in either case. So 723 if +ED or 562-721 with dura only.

One thing to note as well is that the actual ED bonus from a superior item with ED (not the case here but generally good to know) does not get applied to the base defense but gets added to any other ED. So if you say use a 13% ED superior to build a 160%ED runeword you do not get base * 1.13 * 1.6 (=1.808) but you only get base * 1.73.

Thanks for the detailed explanation!