Lol I feel dumb now

I've been going around posting a bunch of my armors I've saved for a while, and whenever i found a superior one, I calculated the base defense of the item and noticed the first 3 I did were max rolls, but didn't think too much of it because I knew I only kept the best few rolls on items I found. Then it happened again... and I figured it would be a little weird for EVERY sup item I had to have rolled max defense. Turns out, ALL superior items roll with a maxed out base stat. I had spent all that time calculating and marking all my armors for sale at 'max defense' when ALL SUP is max defense... oh well. Learned something new today I guess.

Actually you were right at the beginning. NOT all superior items have max defense, only those with ED have (i.e. those with +max durability only won't).

Arreat Summit wrote:

The Defense of Any Superior Armor spawned with +% Enhanced Defense (ac%) is calculated as follows,

Superior NOT Ethereal: Defense = [(maxac + 1) * (100 + ac%)/100]
Superior AND Ethereal: Defense = [[(maxac + 1) * 3/2] * (100 + ac%)/100]

where 'maxac' denotes the maximum base defense.

Notes
- '[]' denotes rounding down (calculations are done with integers, there are no fractions at any step).
- The above item defense formulae are valid for Any Armor spawned with +% Enhanced Defense and not just Superior with +% Enhanced Defense.

(source)

Huh, cool, thanks. Pretty sure I still wasted time lol, they were all enhanced defense, except one, I think, but that's good to know!

Yeah, the max base defense + 1 is a thing with all armor that has +% Enhanced Defense as Trang Oul mentioned - including magic, rare and unique*. You can see this effect on unidentified items too - for example, if you're looking for a JMoD (Jeweler's Monarch of Deflecting), there's no point in identifying a blue Monarch with 149 defense because it will guaranteed have +% Enhanced Defense.

* For unique items with +% Enhanced Defense, they will have max base defense + 1 when they initially drop, but if you upgrade them via cube, the base defense will be rolled randomly within the defense range of the upgraded base. This can cause a unique item to have less defense after upgrading. For example, if you upgrade a Vampire Gaze to Elite, the result may have less defense than the original item. Vampire Gaze always has 252 defense when it drops, but as Elite, it can range between 200 and 314 defense. This is because Grim Helm and Bone Visage defense ranges overlap.

Benish wrote: 3 years ago

I've been going around posting a bunch of my armors I've saved for a while, and whenever i found a superior one, I calculated the base defense of the item and noticed the first 3 I did were max rolls, but didn't think too much of it because I knew I only kept the best few rolls on items I found. Then it happened again... and I figured it would be a little weird for EVERY sup item I had to have rolled max defense. Turns out, ALL superior items roll with a maxed out base stat. I had spent all that time calculating and marking all my armors for sale at 'max defense' when ALL SUP is max defense... oh well. Learned something new today I guess.

Just to add some clarity:
Your observation is correct. The conclusion is not.

Superior items do not generally have max defense. "Superior" adds a variety of possible extra mods (defense, durability, dmg/ar on weaps, ..). Any armor that receives the superior defense mod (regardless of the % amount) will start with a base defense of the item max + 1. Any armor that only receives the durability mod however will not, their defense is still rolled randomly.

Essentially, it isn't tied to superior at all, it is solely tied to the % enhanced defense mod. That's why the same rule applies to any uniques and whatnot that roll with % enhanced defense as they, too start with max base + 1.

Do note that the above rule is broken when cubing. So if you have an exceptional unique with %ED and cube it to an elite, the new elite version's base defense will actually roll randomly in the elite base range, it won't just be set to max + 1.
(That's why for some items, you can actually end up with lower defense after upgrading it, thanks to overlapping ranges between excep and elite)

i'd like to add that this is true even for items that don't have %ed in their base affixes, but also for sets that get %ed from additional set items

Immortal King's armor for example drops with 601 def because of it's two or three piece set bonus (which gives it %ed)

Schnorki wrote: 3 years ago

(That's why for some items, you can actually end up with lower defense after upgrading it, thanks to overlapping ranges between excep and elite)

This , sadly, gas happened to me. Herald Of Zakarum 200% back in the days. Knew about this behaviour, thought: "how likely is this to happen anyway?"


was a very, very painful day

This game make me feel dumb too sometimes.