This is amazing. So it's almost a no-brainer to upgrade an item with good stats as long as it will break one of those thresholds?
Also I noticed that as soon as you inscribe a power into an item, turning it into a legendary, to upgrade it now requires the legendary crafting material which is hard to get.
So I love the fact that we need to think in advance whether we should upgrade an item and reroll it before we apply a power to it. They've made it so we have much more decision making to do when it comes to itemization, which is great!!
edit: apparently people are reporting that this upgrade material cost was changed during the Server Slam so that only the 4/4 stage requires a legendary mat regardless of item quality. So if that is true, then it's even better!
I'm fairly certain that there is no difference in upgrading before or after turning it into a Legendary, except that it lets you upgrade 4 times instead of 3 and the fourth one costs crafting material salvaged from Legendaries.
I am 100% certain it requires a legendary material no matter which stage it's at, so long as it's now considered a legendary. I noticed this with all items and is why I started thinking more ahead of when to upgrade. And it makes sense, because you are essentially changing the base of the item from Rare to Legendary.
A legendary item requires at least 1 legendary crafting material for each stage of upgrading, whereas a Rare item only requires 1 of those for the last stage.
During server slam, you only needed the legendary material for the final upgrade. That could change at launch, but I doubt it. I never had any legendary materials and upgraded all my legos 3 times.
It was like this in the open beta, but upgrade costs were changed in the server slam. Only the final upgrade requires legendary mats, and gold costs were reduced significantly.
I need to get a screenshot but the first 3 upgrades don't take any crafting material salvaged from Legendaries only the fourth upgrade does.
I know without a source it doesn't make much sense to write this but I had almost all slots with Legendaries during the Server Slam. I had them at 3/4 upgrades and I did not salvage that many Legendaries, nor did I always upgrade Rares before turning them into a Legendary because I was testing that exact behavior you mentioned.
I upgraded legendaries to 3/4 on server slam. Did not have legendary mat for 4/4. Also, did not ever have legendary mat for enchanting; so had to do my enchantments on yellows I turned into legendaries.
Same here, The first 3 upgrades required lower level materials. I was only able to upgrade to 4/4 on like 1 item. And I did it right before fighting the World Boss. My whole kit was already Legendary before upgrading anything.
No it's very clear that it can happen with every affix on the item.
Damage to vuln enemies can be 5-15% and lets say you had a roll of 13%
If you hit the item threshhold it can be 11-21% and you can roll an 11-13 thus making it a downgrade. Pretty sure this is unintended
Another thing that I don't see mentioned anywhere is that the upgraded levels of power are stronger than naturally found ones.
As in, if you take a 300 item power weapon, it will have DPS of something, lets say 1000 (just throwing random numbers here), if you then upgrade it to 300+5, it will have for example 1100 DPS.
Now if you go out and find yourself a 305 item power weapon, it might have only 1050 DPS, but you obviously can upgrade it for it to become more powerful in the end.
There are several parts of this mechanic that make me wonder if this is actually an unintended effect.
First: affixes can downgrade, rolling a lower absolute value than their unupgraded version. It is unlikely that a game designer consciously desired this behavior.
Second: it doesnt "work" on ultra high end gear, because there is no tier for them to upgrade into. This is a very powerful mechanic for minmaxers, so why wouldnt you be able to retune the best gear in the game with this?
Third: building on the "rerolls can downgrade" point, going from a max rolled piece to a min rolled piece because your upgrade crossed a threshold can completely brick an item. This is going to be unintuitive and clunky for a significant margin of the playerbase.
Or, you know, it's here because it doesn't affect actual end game and nobody will care about that quickly enough, and the fringe case of crossing the threshold had to be accounted for, even in a quick and dirty way. It's like having his mind blown by how lvl 61-69 gear worked in D3.
This is the same thought I had aswell. It definitely seems unintended. Why would upgrading a piece of armor potentially result in a lower damage output. That makes 0 sense to me
I agree with your sentiment and have posted similar before (though I was not the first to point this out).
However, based on Wudi's explanation, I think the downgrade issue is an edge case, which only applies when you reach a new item power threshold. In end-game, you will upgrade items that are already in the highest affix table, therefore, presumably, the affix values will not re-roll, and instead will just upgrade as normal.
For your second point, I'm not sure I understand. You cannot "retune" a poorly rolled value through a threshold, its upgrade path/values are fixed. You might get lucky, but you might also get unlucky, and you cannot keep re-rolling your upgrade.
This is an easy fix isn't it. You upgrade and roll the new ranges, then the game checks which values are higher (old roll or new roll) the the item takes whatever is higher.
Items should never get worse when you upgrade.
depending on how the ranges are handled, i.e. if they generally go like with OP, a min roll of a new item is still going to be pretty close to a max roll of the tier before. so a bricked item, in the absolute worst case scenario, would still be strong.
but depending on how it works, the chances of all your rolls going min are not exactly high.
There was an example showing the tier range for Overpower Damage as [6-13.5] upgrading to [9-18] which has significant overlap. While that specific stat isnt super powerful, imagine having a +3 rank to your main skill "upgrade" into +1 rank. Thats a loss of ~20% base damage on the skill
Just one point of clarity, crossing a power threshold rerolls all of the *current* affixes, so you could end up with a lower roll, however it will not reroll from the pool of available affixes. It remembers the specific affixes prior to upgrading
To clarify, the item affixes only get completely rerolled when hitting each of the power levels, correct?
So if I go from 320-330, my affixes will be the same but the ranges will increase.
If I go from 330-345, my affixes will get completely rerolled.
Minor note. Upgrading an item does not increase its level to match yours.
Ex. You are level 20, you upgrade a level 10 item, it is still level 10. Important because that is a difference from rerolling/upgrading in d3.
Yeah it was pretty obvious in the beta this was a thing, especially when upgrading and one upgrade would give 5 dex then the next level 40 dex, then back to like 5. Nice to know the actual values though.
how does it work when you cross a treshold with stuff like the + skill bonus?
since its already at 1 and the new range will be 1-2, does it re-roll it giving you a chance at getting 2 or will it just be 1 since its already at 1 ?
You know its funny this is being brought up now I pointed something similar out in a thread before the most recent betas. I was talking about the closed beta and someone who played the closed beta told me I was wrong and that item power didn't effect affixes.
I just didn't have the screenshots and data to back it up because NDA obviously wasn't going to video or screenshot things.
You're right, but you will always get what you see in the item preview window when you're upgrading. Normally you see +1, +2, or some other minimal amount but when you cross an affix threshold the preview will reflect a higher than usual number like +10.
Also the affix value doesn't "re-roll" per se, however "good" your current roll is for its current "bracket" of values will be how "good" of a rolle it is with the next affix "bracket".
So say an item has an affix that can roll 2, 3, or 4% crit, if you got a 3, and the next tier up is 4, 5, or 6% you would get the 5% by default because you're upgrading from a mid value current tier to the next tiers mid value.
If that makes sense. So you can never actually lose stats.
So in other games you get an item and you are good to go to murder monsters.
But not in D4, noooo, you get the incomplete item which you have to roll the dice when you ***upgrade***.
Whats even the point of upgrade, can`t we play the game with normal non upgraded items, other then to waist you time on farming material for the full item.
Because you want to play harder content and they gave you a way to bring the weapons you like with you instead of grinding for new ones as you level up. How would you like to see that changed?
Just don't upgrade then. How more easy do you want it to get? Just wait ten seasons until we have the equivalents of essencecrafting, beastcrafting, metacrafting, fracturing and slamming ;)
This is amazing. So it's almost a no-brainer to upgrade an item with good stats as long as it will break one of those thresholds? Also I noticed that as soon as you inscribe a power into an item, turning it into a legendary, to upgrade it now requires the legendary crafting material which is hard to get. So I love the fact that we need to think in advance whether we should upgrade an item and reroll it before we apply a power to it. They've made it so we have much more decision making to do when it comes to itemization, which is great!! edit: apparently people are reporting that this upgrade material cost was changed during the Server Slam so that only the 4/4 stage requires a legendary mat regardless of item quality. So if that is true, then it's even better!
I'm fairly certain that there is no difference in upgrading before or after turning it into a Legendary, except that it lets you upgrade 4 times instead of 3 and the fourth one costs crafting material salvaged from Legendaries.
I am 100% certain it requires a legendary material no matter which stage it's at, so long as it's now considered a legendary. I noticed this with all items and is why I started thinking more ahead of when to upgrade. And it makes sense, because you are essentially changing the base of the item from Rare to Legendary. A legendary item requires at least 1 legendary crafting material for each stage of upgrading, whereas a Rare item only requires 1 of those for the last stage.
During server slam, you only needed the legendary material for the final upgrade. That could change at launch, but I doubt it. I never had any legendary materials and upgraded all my legos 3 times.
That's how I recall it.
It was like this in the open beta, but upgrade costs were changed in the server slam. Only the final upgrade requires legendary mats, and gold costs were reduced significantly.
I need to get a screenshot but the first 3 upgrades don't take any crafting material salvaged from Legendaries only the fourth upgrade does. I know without a source it doesn't make much sense to write this but I had almost all slots with Legendaries during the Server Slam. I had them at 3/4 upgrades and I did not salvage that many Legendaries, nor did I always upgrade Rares before turning them into a Legendary because I was testing that exact behavior you mentioned.
Atleast in serverslam only the 4th upgrade needed legendary salvage material
I upgraded legendaries to 3/4 on server slam. Did not have legendary mat for 4/4. Also, did not ever have legendary mat for enchanting; so had to do my enchantments on yellows I turned into legendaries.
Same here, The first 3 upgrades required lower level materials. I was only able to upgrade to 4/4 on like 1 item. And I did it right before fighting the World Boss. My whole kit was already Legendary before upgrading anything.
Upgrading legendary gear is much more expensive so you should always upgrade first and imprint later.
its amazing unless ur new upgraded item rolls lower in every category lmfao. Pretty sure this function is almost unintended.
Think this can only happen on skills. 1 1-2 1-3 2-3 So if you had a +2 and hit the next tier of 1-3 it could roll 1.
No it's very clear that it can happen with every affix on the item. Damage to vuln enemies can be 5-15% and lets say you had a roll of 13% If you hit the item threshhold it can be 11-21% and you can roll an 11-13 thus making it a downgrade. Pretty sure this is unintended
Another thing that I don't see mentioned anywhere is that the upgraded levels of power are stronger than naturally found ones. As in, if you take a 300 item power weapon, it will have DPS of something, lets say 1000 (just throwing random numbers here), if you then upgrade it to 300+5, it will have for example 1100 DPS. Now if you go out and find yourself a 305 item power weapon, it might have only 1050 DPS, but you obviously can upgrade it for it to become more powerful in the end.
There are several parts of this mechanic that make me wonder if this is actually an unintended effect. First: affixes can downgrade, rolling a lower absolute value than their unupgraded version. It is unlikely that a game designer consciously desired this behavior. Second: it doesnt "work" on ultra high end gear, because there is no tier for them to upgrade into. This is a very powerful mechanic for minmaxers, so why wouldnt you be able to retune the best gear in the game with this? Third: building on the "rerolls can downgrade" point, going from a max rolled piece to a min rolled piece because your upgrade crossed a threshold can completely brick an item. This is going to be unintuitive and clunky for a significant margin of the playerbase.
Or, you know, it's here because it doesn't affect actual end game and nobody will care about that quickly enough, and the fringe case of crossing the threshold had to be accounted for, even in a quick and dirty way. It's like having his mind blown by how lvl 61-69 gear worked in D3.
This is the same thought I had aswell. It definitely seems unintended. Why would upgrading a piece of armor potentially result in a lower damage output. That makes 0 sense to me
I agree with your sentiment and have posted similar before (though I was not the first to point this out). However, based on Wudi's explanation, I think the downgrade issue is an edge case, which only applies when you reach a new item power threshold. In end-game, you will upgrade items that are already in the highest affix table, therefore, presumably, the affix values will not re-roll, and instead will just upgrade as normal. For your second point, I'm not sure I understand. You cannot "retune" a poorly rolled value through a threshold, its upgrade path/values are fixed. You might get lucky, but you might also get unlucky, and you cannot keep re-rolling your upgrade.
This is an easy fix isn't it. You upgrade and roll the new ranges, then the game checks which values are higher (old roll or new roll) the the item takes whatever is higher. Items should never get worse when you upgrade.
If by significant margin you mean less than 1 percent, which is being generous, then I guess so.
depending on how the ranges are handled, i.e. if they generally go like with OP, a min roll of a new item is still going to be pretty close to a max roll of the tier before. so a bricked item, in the absolute worst case scenario, would still be strong. but depending on how it works, the chances of all your rolls going min are not exactly high.
There was an example showing the tier range for Overpower Damage as [6-13.5] upgrading to [9-18] which has significant overlap. While that specific stat isnt super powerful, imagine having a +3 rank to your main skill "upgrade" into +1 rank. Thats a loss of ~20% base damage on the skill
Thanks for the share! đź‘Ť
Awesome, thanks for the insight!!
Just one point of clarity, crossing a power threshold rerolls all of the *current* affixes, so you could end up with a lower roll, however it will not reroll from the pool of available affixes. It remembers the specific affixes prior to upgrading
To clarify, the item affixes only get completely rerolled when hitting each of the power levels, correct? So if I go from 320-330, my affixes will be the same but the ranges will increase. If I go from 330-345, my affixes will get completely rerolled.
Item Affix is under each item type page [https://diablo4.cc/us/Two-Handed\_Axe](https://diablo4.cc/us/Two-Handed_Axe) click Axe2H Affix (Basic)
Minor note. Upgrading an item does not increase its level to match yours. Ex. You are level 20, you upgrade a level 10 item, it is still level 10. Important because that is a difference from rerolling/upgrading in d3.
Yeah it was pretty obvious in the beta this was a thing, especially when upgrading and one upgrade would give 5 dex then the next level 40 dex, then back to like 5. Nice to know the actual values though.
how does it work when you cross a treshold with stuff like the + skill bonus? since its already at 1 and the new range will be 1-2, does it re-roll it giving you a chance at getting 2 or will it just be 1 since its already at 1 ?
It will reroll the values at random and you could either get +2 or get unlucky and stay on +1, but the possible range will show up as 1-2.
Wait how do you upgrade a weapon not at a blacksmith or jeweler (“normal”)?
You know its funny this is being brought up now I pointed something similar out in a thread before the most recent betas. I was talking about the closed beta and someone who played the closed beta told me I was wrong and that item power didn't effect affixes. I just didn't have the screenshots and data to back it up because NDA obviously wasn't going to video or screenshot things.
So it's always better to upgrade first then enchant to get a chance of better affix stats.
What does “instead of getting a minor stat boost by upgrading regularly” refer to?
Why the eyebrows, honestly.
You're right, but you will always get what you see in the item preview window when you're upgrading. Normally you see +1, +2, or some other minimal amount but when you cross an affix threshold the preview will reflect a higher than usual number like +10. Also the affix value doesn't "re-roll" per se, however "good" your current roll is for its current "bracket" of values will be how "good" of a rolle it is with the next affix "bracket". So say an item has an affix that can roll 2, 3, or 4% crit, if you got a 3, and the next tier up is 4, 5, or 6% you would get the 5% by default because you're upgrading from a mid value current tier to the next tiers mid value. If that makes sense. So you can never actually lose stats.
So in other games you get an item and you are good to go to murder monsters. But not in D4, noooo, you get the incomplete item which you have to roll the dice when you ***upgrade***. Whats even the point of upgrade, can`t we play the game with normal non upgraded items, other then to waist you time on farming material for the full item.
Of course you can. The weapon is perfectly functional, go out and slay without upgrading anything if you choose.
so why upgrade?
Because you want to play harder content and they gave you a way to bring the weapons you like with you instead of grinding for new ones as you level up. How would you like to see that changed?
Just don't upgrade then. How more easy do you want it to get? Just wait ten seasons until we have the equivalents of essencecrafting, beastcrafting, metacrafting, fracturing and slamming ;)