Prey Deed - Padding is not just for bras

That's quite a bit of dps. But what's that crappy gem doing in there? See how much I sold this for after the jump.

Update: The second half of this post is now correctly showing up because I just wrote it.

Oh boy, oh boy, a weapon that doesn't suck

Finally, a weapon that someone might actually use. It's got a solid dps, and the socket means that we can add up to 100% bonus critical hit damage. A perfect weapon for anyone who wants to see some big damage numbers pop up, but at the same time be able to shoot really, really fast.

I actually acquired this bow on the gold AH. Someone put it up for a buyout of 9.5m, which at the time was 3m cheaper than it should have been. I figured with about 50m sitting around, I could afford to pick up some more Chipotle™  burrito money. Here's a breakdown of how I like my healthy burrito bowl:

1. Extra black beans, no rice. I eat pintos at home, so I go for the difference.
2. Veggies. Bell peppers and onions to make sure the gf doesn't start eating my bowl (she hates both).
3. Either steak or chicken as my protein. Depends on what I had last time.
4. Hot salsa, and a little bit of mild. It makes the veggies less bland.
5. Lettuce on top.
6. Bonus: Chipotle style Tabasco hot sauce. This is good on everything.

It's by far the best combination for a Chipotle that is both healthy and doesn't make me want to throw it back up. In another post I'll tell you what I think the best burrito combination is. Stay tuned...





Oh right, this blog is about Diablo 3 items. Lets dive right on in then.

Padding

Safe and Effective Way to Enlarge - Your Bust Line Profits!

Disclaimer: This post is about taking advantage of minor AH bugs. These bugs can be fixed at any time. But it's Blizzard we're talking about; it'll be a year minimum.

When an item has a socket, you can load it with a gem before you throw it on the AH. When a buyer searches by affix facets, the affix that the gem provides will allow your item to show up on the search even if the weapon itself did not naturally have this affix. I call this padding.
Let's go through the 4 possibilities.

1. Emerald: This adds critical damage bonus to your weapon. When people search for critical damage bonus (a popular affix), now your item will show up! This is usually how I pad items.
2. Topaz: Uh... I don't know what this does in a weapon let's just skip this.
3. Amethyst: This adds Life on Hit. I will only add an Amethyst if the weapon is already very good, but its LoH value is low. I want to inflate the LoH so people searching can find it. Because the weapon is good, it will convince them to buy mine even when the LoH is low. It gives my weapon a fighting chance.
4. Ruby: Ok. This is where things get ugly. Take a look at the picture below.

That scoundrel! And I'm not referring to that clever bastard from Kingsport

Rubies will make your weapon move up on the AH results list, when sorted by dps.The guy with "Archer's Blast" is selling it with a socketed ruby to purposely move it up the list. I consider this bad padding.  And worse, when you highlight Archer's Blast, it will show the a "false" DPS. Take a look:

Fuck this guy

When I want to sort by DPS, I actually want to sort by DPS. Anyone who does this is borderline cheating in my book. It's false advertising. You shouldn't do it. It confuses the hell out of me; why are you making my life more difficult when you want me to buy your stuff? If I see it, I'm not going to buy your item even if it's well priced. 


How is a Ruby more misleading than an Emerald? Well, an Emerald isn't messing up the display order of search results. An Emerald is generally what you are going to put in the weapon anyway. Nobody puts a ruby in a weapon to use it past level 59. If you put a ruby in a weapon, I hate you. I think what these bad-padders fail to see is that they're just confusing people and making the entire AH experience even worse than it already is. I'm not going to buy from someone who is antagonizing me. Well, unless I visit Dick's Last Resort.

Padding your armor

This guy's armor is padded with the "I'll never get laid" gem

The same concept can be applied to armor. If your chest/pants/shield have sockets, then figure out which class would use it, and throw the corresponding gem in it. The gem will bump up the primary attribute, and make searches more likely to find your item. Likewise, if you have a Magic Find hat with a socket, make sure you put a Topaz in it. And if you have a Gold Find hat with a socket, put an Emerald in it.

Let's use this chest armor as an example. Adding 3 flawless square rubies will add 3 * 34 = 102 strength to this chest, for a total of 102 + 115 = 227 Strength. Not bad. If you don't do this, then most searches will not find your armor: When players search for gear on the AH, they make the assumption that the sockets have gems in them, and look for correspondingly high attribute values. If I wanted to pick up a chest armor, I would go scam someone use a 200+ Strength search criteria, which couldn't find The Ravager if it had no gems in it.

Set a breakpoint

People don't search for Chest Armors with 152 strength or more. They type in round numbers. So strategize accordingly. Let's say the armor up there only had 97 base strength + 3 sockets. If you threw in 3 flawless square rubies, you would get 3 * 34 + 97 = 199 Strength.

Fail.

Players searching with a 200 minimum Strength criteria aren't going to see your armor. So what do you do? Find a couple more flawless square rubies and craft a perfect square. This gives a total of 2 * 34 + 36 + 97 = 201 Strength. Perfect. Now people can find your armor.

You should do this for MF and GF hats as well. If your hat has extremely good affixes, then I would recommend upgrading your Topaz/Emerald a couple of times before throwing it in. You want to show players trying to buy a 19%-base MF hat that your 18%-base MF hat is just as good, if not better. Just be aware that upgrading gems gets costly, so don't fluff your hat if it isn't fancy.

The prime evil

I'm not referring to her him

Why isn't this practice deceptive? Aren't your manipulating the search? Why isn't it cheating?

Well, it is deceptive to some degree, but I argue that it's actually necessary right now. Why?

Because you can only search on 3 criteria. Padding on armor is mandatory because it implicitly adds value to the sockets. When you can only search on 3 criteria, the three you are going to pick are Primary, Vitality, and Resist all. You won't search on sockets. Padding needs to exist because it will reveal how many sockets there are through a corresponding increase in the primary stat. While the 3-criteria restriction is around, padding is a necessary evil.

So really, it's Blizzard's fault. All they had to do was to ignore the gems' attributes when a search is performed. Or increase the number of criteria. They should really get on that.

See how I cleverly avoided the moral dilemma of padding? Scroll down to see how much the bow sold for.

Yum, I bought 2 Chipotle burritos with this