Valorous Striders - All the gear that's fit to sell

If your Pavlovian responses are tingling, itching for another crafting post, then you're completely right! Today, we'll go over what makes up a good piece of Diablo 3 equipment. 

See how much I sold these for after the jump.

Somebody bought these. Why?

The first part of this series is here.

Now, I completely understand your reactions to that post.

"All you've told me is that crafting is profitable and to buy a recipe, what do I do now?" "I've crafted 500 times and I've gotten nothing, you lied about this." "How do I know what sells and what doesn't?!"

The answers to those questions are all the same. Here's how I answered it last time:

There's really only three ways you can know an item is good:

1. You find it, and look on the AH to price compare. 
2. You need it; in that you have a guy that needs this kind of gear.
3. You craft it. You craft so many pairs of these boots that you eventually see what's worth green and what's worth diddly.

Let's dig into #3.

As long as you keep an open mind and think about which affixes matter to each class and build, it just takes a little bit of time and experience to see what will sell and what doesn't. Think about it; who are you selling to? Other people who play the game. Other people like you. I'm sure you have a level 60 character. What you want in your boots is what they want in their boots. It's not that complicated. Figure it out yourself.

"But I'm lazy"

Get your hammocks in the hammock district

You don't want to figure it out yourself? Fine.

I'm going to eventually tell you in detail what you want to know. The reason for that prior rant on self-determination is this: I'm not a benevolent being sent from Heaven to teach you life lessons. You gotta figure it out yourself. You have to make the connections, take the time to do AH lookups, and do the price comparisons to really know how much your stuff is worth. And this post will be structured in that way. I'm gonna make you do the work.

A boot in my mouth

Before we start, here's a disclaimer: I only craft boots.

I can't exactly tell you what a good pair of pants are. I can only tell you if they look good on you. And yes, they definitely look good on you honey. (I've been trained to say this.)

So learn what you can, and apply the basic concepts I describe to other equipment types. Not that hard. 

What a girl wants

What a girl needs

What do I look for in a piece of armor? (Weapons will be covered in another post)

1. Key affixes

Let's start off with the easy one.

A key affix is any modifier that makes or breaks the item. Critical hit %. Move speed. Sockets. Any item which can have a socket, should have a socket (in order to sell for the best prices). So, for hat/bracers/shield/gloves, you want 4.5%/4.5%/7.5%/7.5% crit, respectively, on a crafted iLvl62 item. A shield/helm/pants/chest armor should have 1/1/2/3 sockets. The more key affixes you have, the more expensive your item will be.

2. Primary Attribute

Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence. And Vitality (to a lesser extent). Between Str, Dex, and Int, which is more important to which piece of gear? A handy guide can be found here. (Thanks to the guy on the forum that showed me this.) The guide shows you what the maximum value that each attribute can roll on a certain armor type.

Shoulders can roll with maximum 300 strength.

Let's go through an example.

Helms roll with high int all the time. But not so much str or dex. Why? Because Blizzard said so. Hats make you smart, intelligent; think wizard hat. It makes sense... sort of.

The diagram above indicates that the max Intelligence the helm can have is 300. I'm not sure how they reached that number, but it's most likely through a combination of a high primary-roll + a high half-roll. 

If you look at the other stats, a helm can only roll 200 dex or 200 strength. This means that a helm is generally more likely to roll high intelligence. Throw in some supply-demand economics, and voila, helms with intelligence rolls are now worthless on the AH. 

No. I'm wrong. I lied. I just wanted to make sure you're paying attention. It doesn't mean that high int rolls are worthless. It just means that you need a very high int roll on a hat to be worth anything. It just means that a roll of 100 int might suck on a hat, but 100 dex might be amazing. 

Here's the TL;DR: The value of a Primary Attribute roll is based on the % of the Maximum value. A 150 dex roll (150/200 = 75% max) is worth much more than a 150 int roll (150/300 = 50% max). Get it? Simple stuff. Use the guide. Give credit to the guy who wrote it.

3. Damage reduction

I think it's stupid love how there's no less than 5 different ways to reduce damage. Armor. Resists. Blocking. Dodging. Reduced damage from Elites. Reduced damage from melee/ranged.

I'm going to ignore the last 3 because they are more rare, and dodge is not a rollable affix. Bonus blocking % is important on shields, make sure you have it.

Ok, on to the more important stuff: Armor and resists. Resists come in 3 flavors.

1. All resist. Everyone wants these.
2. Physical/Fire resist. The majority of monsters do this type of damage. Arcane resist comes in at a close third place.
3. Everything else. Monks want these for their One With Everything passive.

Again, I refer you to the guide to see what the max roll is for resists. You should price your stuff accordingly; different resists are worth different amounts. The list above is ordered in importance, so for example: Items with (All + Phys) > (All + Ice) > (All) > (Phys) > (Ice).  

The other key point is that if you have gear that can be worn by a monk... ie, anything with a dex and vit roll, then having a secondary resist + all resist double roll becomes much valuable than just a single resist all roll. For a monk, the best items will have: Dex, Vit, Resist all, Resist X, Armor. Do not price your item against an inferior item that doesn't have Resist X.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying all monks use OWE. But most do, and they dictate the market.

3.5 Armor

Let's talk about armor. For me, this is the mythical "4th search facet". Yes, you can have a 4th search criteria if you simply click on the Armor column and sort by it.

Sorted by armor

Amazing right? Now you can look for 4 criteria at the same time. Of course, the prices are out of order, but at least you can see the items with high armor without digging through 50 pages.

When you have an item that has an armor roll, I want you to price it accordingly. Don't just assume that the armor affix doesn't exist. The same goes for life regeneration. These attributes accumulate into something worthwhile, like this. It's important. So stop ignoring it. You will make more gold, and everyone is happy. I snipe plenty of items from the AH where the seller ignored Armor and Regen. Those two affixes can change the value of an item by 1000%. That's my secret. Tell it to all your friends. Hopefully they still play the game.

Disclaimer: Armor and HP regeneration affixes can't turn a bad item into a good one. It only separates the good players items from the great ones. The key affixes and primary stats still dictate most of the value of the item.

4. Rare affixes.

The voice of reason shoots balls of frozen death at you? Makes sense

Chance to immobilize. Chance to fear. Chance to drop a 5$ note. These are useful affixes. These are valuable. Demon hunter trap builds can use some of these affixes to stunlock a mob. Having fear is also amazing if you are a ranged class.  

Make sure you factor these in when you're selling something. This is doubly important on Shoulders and Belts where there aren't any key affixes. So go ahead and use that guide to see what the maximum % values are, I'm not going to tell you.

5. Magic Find

The more MF the item has, the more it's worth. Simple, right?

No.

Let's roll back the clock 10 years, to the days of ye ol' Diablo 2. Ok hotshots, tell me how much a pair of 40% Chancies were worth. 

Bet you can't say its name 10 times fast

Now tell me how much 39% chancies were worth. 38s? 37s? 30s? How much would a crappy 25% mf roll cost you? 

Rarity (x-axis) vs Cost (y-axis)

The answer to those questions, when plotted, always looks something like the diagram above. Crappy rolls are worth nothing, and good rolls get more and more and more costly. A perfect roll costs a bajillion gold. Now, I'm not saying the price curve for all items is exponential... it's a function based on rarity and affix ranges that are different for each item. But the general shape of the curve is accurate. 

My point here is that you should price your items according to the curve. A perfect 20% mf roll on shoulders should be priced way higher than a 19%. You have a rare roll. Respect it. Don't just look on the AH and pricecut other auctions unless you want a quick sale. Post it at the price you think it deserves. Otherwise, I'll see your mistake and snipe it. And laugh at you.

I sniped this at 500k. I kid you not. It's actually on the RMAH right now.
 Expect a post on this in the future.

I see mispriced items all the time and make a killing off of them. The difference between 18 and 19 mf is huge. 18 is the maximum mf that can be crafted on most armor pieces (chest/boots/shoulders/etc), whereas 19 and 20% mf can only roll from ilvl63 items. Again, I refer you to the guide from earlier to see the maximum MF amounts. 

6. Gold Find

Here's the one that most players don't already know. Most of the times they don't sell for a ton, but they do sell quickly and it's easy gold.

Price? 3m. It doesn't even have primary attributes.

Almost any item with high Gold Find and Pickup Radius is worth something. A hat that has Gold Find, Pickup Radius, and a Socket (for GF Emeralds) like the one above is going to cost millions. Millions. It doesn't even need a primary attribute.

Why do these items cost so much? Because gold farming in Nightmare Act 3 (and other places) is quite profitable. I even do it myself when I feel like hurting people large mobs of fictional monsters. 500k gold farming per hour is a pretty good deal for players who just got into Inferno and want to gear up.

Telekinesis has got nothing on 40 yard Pickup Radius.

Gold farming is where you take a Demon Hunter (usually) and kill mobs in Nightmare. Why NM? Because it's easy. You gear up with items that increase gold find and pickup radius, so whenever something dies, you get a ton of gold, and your +40 yard pickup radius magically pulls it to your inventory. There are plenty of videos showing you how to do this, and where to do this. The obvious downside to doing these runs is that you can't really find any good items, and it's boring as hell.

6.5 Gold Find - Part 2

There's actually two classes of Gold Find gear.

1. GF items to do NM speed runs with.
2. GF items to do clear Inferno with.

I just explained #1. What's #2? Imagine a Monk that can clear Act 3 with ease. 

Oh wait, those don't exist.

Ok, imagine a Demon Hunter that can clear Act 3 with ease. That's better. Now imagine that he is equipped head-to-toe with his exact same gear, but now each piece has the gold find affix on it. He's farming the same monsters, but now he gets piles of 2k-3k gold in addition to everything else. Awesome.

There are friends of mine who are geared this way and can make an extra 400k an hour from the gold alone. Of course, they get real drops too. They make NM gold runs look like a big joke. So, if you craft an item with gold find on it, and you would expect the item to be usable in Inferno... stick a hefty price on it! Inferno gold find builds are awesome. Price accordingly.

Am I missing anything?

Yeah, of course I am. I purposely left out much about specific sell prices, auctioning methods, and how to make sure your items gets sold and everyone else's don't. I've also got a great deal to say about how do sell things when you can only search on 3 (or 4) criteria. I'll save those for another post.

How the f$%* do I sell these?

There's even more to this post that I purposely left out. +% Life is one. Let me know in the comments if you have any insights. There are plenty of niche items that sell for tons; hats can roll with certain skill bonuses, and there's the +discipline/hatred affix that can drastically change prices. I couldn't tell you how much those are worth; I only craft boots after all, I'm no mind reader. Figure it out yourself, or ask your friends. Or just take a line from advice #1 from above: 

[...] look on the AH to price compare. 

Take a look on the AH and make your best guess. Learn by doing. What's the worst that can happen? With the exception of a few unlucky people, nobody is pointing a gun to a player's head and saying, "farm or die".

When I started crafting, I was selling good boots with additional MF/Armor/Regen affixes like those mods didn't even exist. Crafting felt like a giant waste of time and gold. 

It took me maybe a week to figure out what I was doing wrong; eventually, after tons of AH lookups and theorycrafting with friends, something just clicked and profitability just... happened. It felt good. I want to invoke that same feeling in you, so go learn the rest for yourselves. Or maybe this is just a big excuse so I don't have to give away my real secrets.

Oh right, let's drastically change the topic back to those Valorous Striders. Scroll down to see how much they sold for.