Blue & Yellow items

Let's talk about the magics and rares. We all know vast majority of them are trash not worth picking up.
Knowing sorc and zon quite well, I can see two bis applications for blue items: +3 elemental amulet for sorc and +3 java skiller gloves for Plague diva. Plus maybe some

Valkyrie prebuffing gloves, amulets and circlets, but it's mostly for fun
Other highly thought after blue items, like +6

Javelin or jeweler's armor and shield, barely give any advantage or come with significant tradeoffs despite extreme rarity
Theoretically there is also the sorc 3/3/3/20fcr/2 os orb for fire or lightning builds, but it's prly more rare than

Tyrael's Might and also comes with tradeoffs

Yellow items? Prly even worse. Some

Boots may be good but advantage is unsubstnatial over uniques and rarity is extreme. Maybe just the yellow 2/20 gloves are bis for most zon buids, other than that, nothing

Everything else, most people just don't pick up afaik. I pick up them sometimes out of curiosity, and sometimes there is something fun for leveling, but never bis for lategame, and 99.9% clear trash

Would we want to change it or do we want to keep the meta as is? I would like to have more variety, and would suggest following changes:

1) allow a second suffix or prefix on blue items. like a +2 sk, 3 os, 30 frw

Circlet for a zon. not necessarily better than uniques/runewords, but could close the gap substantially. Also improve chances of a good roll by a factor of .. 10x?
Obviously shoouldn't apply to charms
2) make yellow items much more likely to roll good at high lvls.. by a factor of.. x100? a 6/6 hit of good combinations could be quite good sometimes, it's just the odds that are terrible. diadems,

Boots and gloves will be obviously much more achievable, but also imagine say an ethereal weapon with a ton of ED, min/max dmg/2 os/ias and something else? could be viable too theretically

Let's vote and discuss

get rid of some (lots?) of useless affixes
mechanic prefix always 2 sockets

Larzuk always gives 2 for blue
yellows always get (at least) 2 prefixes and 2 suffixes

krathkor wrote: 8 hours ago

get rid of some (lots?) of useless affixes
mechanic prefix always 2 sockets

Larzuk always gives 2 for blue
yellows always get (at least) 2 prefixes and 2 suffixes

also thought about min prefixes and suffixes, maybe dependent on ilvl. also up to like min 50% of max value roll.. as long as drop rate for something good improves by ~2 orders of magnitude

Theoratically yellow weapons can outshine many runewords, but chances are REALLY slim to find such an item.

Mostly, because almost nobody undergoes the effort to pick the items up and identify them.
Thus it is hard to say, if drop chances are too low or the "picking up and identifying-rate" is too low...

Give me that ethereal

Berserker Axe with these 3 Prefixes:
- 250 Attack Rating/150 Enhanced Damage
- 300 Enhanced Damage
- 0,5 Max Dam. per Lvl and 16,5 Attack Rating per Level
and these 3 Sufixes:
- 40 Improved Attack Speed
- 20 Min. Damage
- 20 Max. Damage
I'll take it to

Larzuk, put in a

Zod and call it a day.

That is why I pick up almost all yellow items, when soloing, with weapons I at least check, if they are ethereal.

Also I am still collecting rare stuff for my "Rare Item Project".
I plan to equip a whole character with Rare Items only and try to make it viable for Hell difficulty.
What do you guys and gals think is the best suited class for such an endeavour?

The game files that define prefixes/suffixes actually has a column that specifies a max ilvl after which the prefix/suffixes is no longer part of the affix pool when an item is generated. This setting is basically unused (afaik all affixes remain available to roll no matter how high the ilvl gets). I guess Blizzard experimented with this feature at some point - or added it for modders to tinker with, perhaps? Either way - it would be quite simple for Blizzard to increase quality of magic and rare items overall by actually setting a max ilvl for mods.

Quote from The Phrozen Keep’s file guide:

MaxLevel - An extremely powerful but badly underused field. This controls the point at which this affix will no longer appear on items. Say we have a Level of 10 and a MaxLevel of 15, then the affix will only appear on items with a iLvl of 10-15, whereas it will never appear on items with iLvls 1-9 and 16-99. This is the easiest way to get those crappy low-level affixes of higher level drops to ensure that those are useful.

MagicPrefix/Suffix.txt:
https://d2mods.info/forum/kb/viewarticle?a=445

I grab every magic

Dagger and book for the extremely rare chance of getting +3 demon skill/ +3

Bind Demon (staffmod?) as bis demon pre-buffing. So far I've found one +2 demon skills / trash staffmod.

You made a perfect example. An item so powerful it can compete with botd and Grief, and it could exist, the problem is in the odds, which need to be improved 100x or maybe even higher

As for your rare character experiment, both fire sorc and lightning zon could shine, provided you find enough sockets and rainbow facets to compensate for the missing runeword and unique effects.. which is easier said than done

wulfen777 wrote: 7 hours ago

Theoratically yellow weapons can outshine many runewords, but chances are REALLY slim to find such an item.

Mostly, because almost nobody undergoes the effort to pick the items up and identify them.
Thus it is hard to say, if drop chances are too low or the "picking up and identifying-rate" is too low...

Give me that ethereal

Berserker Axe with these 3 Prefixes:
- 250 Attack Rating/150 Enhanced Damage
- 300 Enhanced Damage
- 0,5 Max Dam. per Lvl and 16,5 Attack Rating per Level
and these 3 Sufixes:
- 40 Improved Attack Speed
- 20 Min. Damage
- 20 Max. Damage
I'll take it to

Larzuk, put in a

Zod and call it a day.

That is why I pick up almost all yellow items, when soloing, with weapons I at least check, if they are ethereal.

Also I am still collecting rare stuff for my "Rare Item Project".
I plan to equip a whole character with Rare Items only and try to make it viable for Hell difficulty.
What do you guys and gals think is the best suited class for such an endeavour?

the community seems to be in consensus that rare items are fine with six modifiers and need much better odds of rolling something useful. But what about the blue items, would the suggested 3rd modifier be justified?

ShadowHeart wrote: 5 hours ago

The game files that define prefixes/suffixes actually has a column that specifies a max ilvl after which the prefix/suffixes is no longer part of the affix pool when an item is generated. This setting is basically unused (afaik all affixes remain available to roll no matter how high the ilvl gets). I guess Blizzard experimented with this feature at some point - or added it for modders to tinker with, perhaps? Either way - it would be quite simple for Blizzard to increase quality of magic and rare items overall by actually setting a max ilvl for mods.

Quote from The Phrozen Keep’s file guide:

MaxLevel - An extremely powerful but badly underused field. This controls the point at which this affix will no longer appear on items. Say we have a Level of 10 and a MaxLevel of 15, then the affix will only appear on items with a iLvl of 10-15, whereas it will never appear on items with iLvls 1-9 and 16-99. This is the easiest way to get those crappy low-level affixes of higher level drops to ensure that those are useful.

MagicPrefix/Suffix.txt:
https://d2mods.info/forum/kb/viewarticle?a=445

ganseng wrote: 2 hours ago

the community seems to be in consensus that rare items are fine with six modifiers and need much better odds of rolling something useful. But what about the blue items, would the suggested 3rd modifier be justified?

I don’t know how it’s coded in the game engine, it could be hardcoded to be one prefix + one suffix in old archaic code, might not be so easy to change.. but I’ve no actual clue, I haven’t really looked into modding. Changing quality of magic/rare items would be a fairly simple matter though, like I explained above (the code & feature already exists - it’s just a matter of actually assigning each affix a max ilvl).

ganseng wrote: 3 hours ago

As for your rare character experiment, both fire sorc and lightning zon could shine, provided you find enough sockets and rainbow facets to compensate for the missing runeword and unique effects.. which is easier said than done

When being strict about "Rares only", Rainbow Facets would be a "no no", I fear.
The only thing allowed to be put into open sockets would be rare jewels then...

I was therefore pondering Melee Pala or Barb, or Sorc or Necro.

Yellow items are able to provide many plus-bonuses to Skill level, which is good for casters, while Melee chars like high numbers of enhanced damage, which yellow weapons also can provide. Still not sure which route I will go.
Surely also depends, on what items I will find in the future...

ganseng wrote: 8 hours ago

>Yellow items? Prly even worse. Some

Boots may be good but advantage is unsubstnatial over uniques and rarity is extreme. Maybe just the yellow 2/20 gloves are bis for most zon buids, other than that, nothing

This is a skill issue, through and through. It doesn't take too long to visit the general magic prefix/suffix tables and figure out what all is good. Rare belts,

Boots, and gloves are always worth identifying. Ethereal throwing weapons. Baba hats and dudu pelts. Obviously circlets and

Circlet variants. Even more options become "viable" (lmao) if you're into LLDing.

rare gloves are always good for elemental zons and prly assa. for sorc and physical zons certainly not, for other classes not sure, gut feeling rather not

rare

Boots can be good, but with marginal effect, so not sure about always worth identifying

and belts? can't imagine a use case for sorc or zon, what did you have in mind?

Anesthesia wrote: 1 hour ago

ganseng wrote: 8 hours ago

>Yellow items? Prly even worse. Some

Boots may be good but advantage is unsubstnatial over uniques and rarity is extreme. Maybe just the yellow 2/20 gloves are bis for most zon buids, other than that, nothing

This is a skill issue, through and through. It doesn't take too long to visit the general magic prefix/suffix tables and figure out what all is good. Rare belts,

Boots, and gloves are always worth identifying. Ethereal throwing weapons. Baba hats and dudu pelts. Obviously circlets and

Circlet variants. Even more options become "viable" (lmao) if you're into LLDing.

oops so no anni, torch & sundy? in that case I would advise against sorc or zon

wulfen777 wrote: 1 hour ago

ganseng wrote: 3 hours ago

As for your rare character experiment, both fire sorc and lightning zon could shine, provided you find enough sockets and rainbow facets to compensate for the missing runeword and unique effects.. which is easier said than done

When being strict about "Rares only", Rainbow Facets would be a "no no", I fear.
The only thing allowed to be put into open sockets would be rare jewels then...

I was therefore pondering Melee Pala or Barb, or Sorc or Necro.

Yellow items are able to provide many plus-bonuses to Skill level, which is good for casters, while Melee chars like high numbers of enhanced damage, which yellow weapons also can provide. Still not sure which route I will go.
Surely also depends, on what items I will find in the future...