Mechanics Talk 5: Item Affixes and Where to Find Them
(All Mechanics Talk assume vanilla Diablo II unless otherwise noted.)
Are you ready for
? Because I have a lot of them today.
There's many item affixes, and some of our mods add even more, ever more. Going over all of them isn't necessary especially since a lot of them aren't good, but today I'll be going over how they work, and the cool affixes you can find on magic and rare items.
For starters, whenever an item is generated, it will be generated with an affix level, or alvl. It's an invisible variable that determines what affixes can show up. How the game determines alvl depends on two variables of the item:
-The ilvl/item level, which is typically the level of the monster who dropped it, which in most scenarios is the area's level, but in Normal, monster levels won't necessarily line up with the area's level. Act bosses and a couple other superuniques and monster types do not follow this rule at all, and will have their own level per difficulty.
-The qlvl/quality level, which is a level based on the item type being dropped. This determines two things: if the item can even drop from the monster, and it also influences what affixes can be rolled.
Furthermore, there's also Treasure Class. I'll briefly describe this because this is sanity-blasting trying to truly comprehend this. What monster you killed will influence what can drop. We've already seen a practical application of this with the Countess, but many monsters, superuniques, and bosses will have their own biases to what can and can't drop. It's brought up here because certain monsters are more likely to drop magic items and up than others, like oh, act bosses. This is as far as I go describing Treasure Class though because it's nightmare material. Just remember: certain monsters are better targets for what you want than others.
So let's start with magic items. All affixes are seperated into two groups: prefixes, (X Sword) and suffixes. (Sword of X) Magic items when generated have a 50% chance to have a suffix, a 25% chance to have a prefix, and a 25% chance to have both.
Rare items are like magic items except they will roll anywhere from 3 to 6 affixes. I think I mentioned previously they can roll 2 but I might've been wrong back then. (Might've been because similar affixes will be read on one line. The game does that.) It's 3-6, with you being most likely to get 5, and the distribution of affix types being no less than 1, no more than 3 pre/suffixes. Other than that, they're the same as magics.
All affixes also belong to affix groups, which are there to limit what you can get. If you get an affix from one group, you can't get another affix from that same group. The best example of this is guaranteeing you won't get the same affix twice, so unfortunately if you roll the highest tier of +Life, for example, you aren't getting the second highest tier of +Life as well.
Ilvl and qlvl also determines if the item can even drop as a set or unique item, since they have their level requirements as well. Each unique and set item also has its own qlvl, and if the game decides to make the dropped item green or gold, if ilvl is not the same or higher, it will be downgraded. (Though as a pity prize, it'll have extra durability.) Some endgame uniques have very high ilvls that you'll only see matched by Hell act bosses and beyond.
Each affix has their own affix level, or alvl, attached to it, which is a rough estimate of how well the item's level must be to roll that mod. Most affixes do not have a ceiling to the range, which means, unfortunately in vanilla, your magics and rares can roll affixes you can find in the very beginning of the game even when you're grinding in Hell. Mods fix this, mercifully, but I don't recall off the top of my head which ones do. I want to say all of the LP mods do, but don't hold me to that.
Now then, to finally explain how alvl is calculated.
I found this formula off a forum post on Amazon Basin, and here it is:
If (ilvl>99) then {ilvl=99}
if (qlvl>ilvl) then {ilvl=qlvl} ;** see note below
if (magic_lvl>0) then {alvl=ilvl+magic_lvl}
else
{
if (ilvl<(99-qlvl/2))
then {alvl=ilvl-qlvl/2}
else {alvl=2*ilvl-99}
}
Here's the formula in layman's terms:
-ilvl can't be higher than 99, and if qlvl is greater than ilvl, ilvl becomes the same as qlvl only for calculating alvl.
-Magic_lvl is something explained in a bit.
-If there's no magic_lvl, the formula changes depending on whether ilvl and half of qlvl equals 99 or more.
-If it's less, then half of qlvl is subtracted from ilvl and that becomes your alvl. This means items with higher qlvl will have a worse alvl, and in turn roll worse mods.
-If it's that or more, then only ilvl influences alvl, and this will create a range where qlvl will do nothing and only ilvl matters. This won't be for a while though.
-It is impossible for an item dropped from a monster to have a qlvl greater than ilvl, since ilvl must be equal to qlvl or higher to drop in the first place. There are, however, ways to get an item with greater qlvl than ilvl.
The biggest takeaways from this is that crap item types that drop much later on, will actually roll better affixes...which is not good news for builds based around using gear damage and defense because it'll be a pain in the butt until those builds are past the slump.
Now, there's some extra wrinkles in this formula: qlvl is based entirely on item type, which each of them having their own qlvl. Jewelry have a qlvl of 1, and charms either have 1, 14, or 28 for qlvl depending on whether it's grand size, large size, or small size.
Certain item types, however, do some extra tomfoolery with this formula. Namely, circlets, staves, wands, and orbs. These will have a secret bonus to ilvl (the previously mentioned magic_lvl) and it will result in rolling better affixes, because, instead of using qlvl at all, it will instead set the alvl to ilvl + the magic level bonus. While I'm here it's worth noting that circlet-type items can roll a lot of different high-power affixes, so they tend to be worth at least looking at when they drop.
This is my rough estimation of how affix rolling works. The actual math is far more eldritch and incomprehensible. Looking for info on the web about this is a nightmare. Parsing it is even worse. So, I mainly just clap my hands and go, "Farther in the game you are, the better the mods it'll roll. The worst the item is, the more the game tries to make up for it by rolling better mods" That's a good rule of thumb, especially when you ignore gear damage and defense.
Since it's in the neighborhood, set and unique generation is mostly similar: when that item type drops, it has a chance to be a set or a unique item in addition to being magic or rare. If it does, and it satisfies the other requirements, it'll become that set/unique. The exception to this is jewelry. If you get a amulet, ring, or jewel to drop green or gold, instead, it picks a random valid choice out of the pool of uniques or sets. Like item affixes, there's no ceiling to what can show based on ilvl, and ilvl still needs to meet a certain unique-dependent qlvl, so items like the very elusive Stone of Jordan has to compete with every other unique ring that can show up, which are far more likely to drop than that specific unique. Same goes for set jewelry.
Now for the fun part of this Mechanics Talk: what you can find. This is not an exhaustive list, and it mainly just showcases the affixes you'd love to see on gear, and also on uniques, since some affixes you'll only ever see on sets and uniques. Mods do play with this concept, especially Eastern Sun and Median XL, but everything listed is going off vanilla knowledge. These mods can only be rolled on specific gear types, and I am not gonna go over every single one. Read Arreat Summit or somethin' if you want in-depth knowledge, but with very vital affixes I'll help ya out then.
+X Added Elemental Damage: This is added to any weapon hit you do, and early on, your charms will generally roll this and you'll keep those to get good damage output, if you're going melee or ranged.
+X Added Damage: The physical version of this affix is worth pointing out, because plenty of things look at your weapon's base physical damage, and completely ignores added elemental damage. This mod, because most affixes don't add that much, is generally brushed aside in physical builds, but it can help.
+X% Damage: This is another weapon better mod, except it stacks with added physical damage, multiplying it as well, leading to wumbo physical damage with your stick. There's also an affix that gives a flat bonus to AR and a percentage bonus to weapon damage, and those work just as well. Do note that all forms of added damage act different depending on whether it's on the weapon or on something else. If it's on the stick, it'll multiply the base damage before skills multiply it either, but only apply to that stick when dual-wielding. Otherwise, the affix will be added to all weapons you're using, but be summed with skill-based +X% damage and be less effective. (though still useful) Ditto for +Defense and +X% Defense affixes on armor.
+X Life: Self-explanatory. Is good to find on a rare for, uhh, everybody.
+X Mana: Jewelry, orbs, and Circlets can roll this, and they do help with fueling magic spells, probably better than any other way to fuel magic spells honestly, including mana leech.
(Based on Character Level): You may see affixes that will scale based on your level, but I am pretty sure most of them are very paltry no matter what. Not the worst thing to find on gear if it lines up with what you want it to do, but it won't be the same as rolling the top tier affix that doesn't scale with level. A very cool concept that'll get used in mods to varying success though, so I'm pointing it out here.
+X Element Resist: This is the time I get to point out that oh hi, gear will be your primary way of getting resists, whether it be from affixes like this or having sockets you can put resist gems/runes/jewels into. It's very vital and I won't stop stressing this.
+X to (Class/Class Tab) Skill Levels: One of the best prefixes to find, because it doesn't care about the level 20 cap of skills and most everyone can make use of it. Even if you're not relying entirely on skill level for damage, it'll still contribute, but is important to point out that it depends on the skills. Some skills don't care much about it, while others very much care. Some skills rely on your weapon damage instead and that'll make boosting that more important than boosting the skill's level. Anyway, comes in two flavors: all skills of that class, and all skills of a specific tab if you're that class. There's also just "X to all skills" affixes that can be lumped into here as well. The easiest way to get the affix you want is to use class-exclusive gear, which will roll skill affixes for that class and no others. Amulets and generic gear can supply them as well but can roll the affix of other classes, making them zonk prizes for you. [MXL] Also, Median XL heavily nerfs skill bonuses off gear in most cases, in that the big boosts will only care about base levels. While that's tragic, it does mean you can focus on different affixes in most case.
+X% Better Chance of Getting Magic Items: Yeah this affix gets its own Mechanics Talk.
Add Sockets: Some magic and rares can have an affix that gets them free sockets. However, runewords demand specific socket amounts and normal items, so you'll only be able to socket gems and jewels. On one hand, you can find really good rune and jewels to socket in those. On the other, some of the best things you can use this affix with? Are incredibly rare. Unfortunately, because a quest reward can punch sockets in, and this takes up an affix slot, it's not particularly desirable.
+X to Stat: Largely useless, but +Vit/Eng is basically just free Life/Mana. ...Free Life/Mana that will be ignored by skill-based boosts like Oak Sage but what I'm saying is it's not quite a zonk prize. Sure, +Str/+Dex can help you equip gear, but uhh, there's quite a few fun bugs involving only being able to equip gear because of other gear you have, and then having to do things like collect your corpse or play multiplayer or have charms with this.
+X% Increased Attack/Cast/Hit Recovery/Blocking Speed: So all these mods are being grouped together, because they are all extremely good and vital. They're all suffixes. Attack speed can be found on weapons and gloves; cast speed on amulets, circles, orbs, rings, and rods; hit recovery on armor, belts, and shields; and block on shields. Faster attack and cast speed just acts as an extra additional multiplier to your damage output, only hindered by if you get hit, but that can also be sped up by recovering from hits and blocks faster. Finally, while it says a percentage, it is kind of correct. Every animation has a base framerate in this 25 frames per second game, and to tick that down by 1, because it can't do percentages, you must have enough speed increase to get it down by a whole number. (This is referred to as breakpoints.) Several animations also have a hard cap on how fast it can go as well, so plenty of tools and charts exist to just tell you how much speed you need for what action you're doing.
+X% Faster Walk/Run: Mentioned here because, when you don't have a skill to zip around everywhere, this is what you use. Find it on shoes and circlets.
+X/+X% (Magic) Damage Reduction: So, early on, Magic Damage Reduction was fantastic because it reduced every single type of damage except physical after resistances. I have since been corrected by enough people that, no, unfortunately, it's done before resistance reduction, making it incredibly useless. I can't even redeem this by saying it does affect magic damage, because there's very few sources and I'm pretty sure none of them are so lethal to warrant using this. Maybe mods fix this, I can't tell. Normal Damage Reduction, however, can be useful if you are capable of stacking enough of it, since if you get the hit down to close to 0 Amplify Damage will be harmless, but it does have the issue of only affecting physical, and, offering really small amounts of reduction per affix. Man.
+Attacker Takes Damage of X: Mentioned here because this is the iconic zonk prize to get on an item. It sucks so bad. It gets no bonuses from anything else. There's some skills that also have this effect, but instead multiplies the damage they dealt and give it back to them. Also it only works on melee hits, which is plenty of hits, but not, all of them. Finally, you'll never get a good amount of damage returned, no matter what. It's trash.
Knockback: Mentioned here because you may think it might be good, because you typically have better melee range than every monster, except, it doesn't work on some monsters and it only works one at a time. Also, you'll eventually knock them out of your range and have to move up to hit them, losing damage output. It sucks. Archers can somewhat benefit from it, though.
Attack Ignores Target's Defense: This is not as good at it sounds. For starters, it treats target defense as 0 and proceeds as normal with the hit formula, meaning levels still matter. Also, it only works on normal monsters, and not champions uniques bosses and so on. So while it does give a considerable boost to hit, it's not reliable and it does nothing against the worst offenders.
Prevent Monster Healing: Useful later because, upon weapon hit, that monster will no longer regen, which is useful in certain scenarios, but those are few and far inbetween. Doesn't stop reviving either that's a different affix.
Half Freeze Duration: Useful. Applied after cold resist and it chops your chill length in half. Unfortunately getting this twice doesn't give you chill immunity, and for the longest time I and many others thought this. This is what happens when the official strategy guide gives up on setting things straight because it admits it itself cannot grasp the true form of Diablo 2's mechanics.
Indestructible/Self-Repairing: Never have to repair this. Fun fact: Ethereal items can roll Self-Repairing, but not Indestrucible, which is a funny failure of trying to balance. Zod runes also grant these, and so do certain runewords. Fun fact 2: Ranged weapons and gear you are going to give your merc don't care about durability, because in those cases they never wear down. (fun quirk) In those cases, congrats on your zonk prize.
Replenish Quantity: Okay, if you're using a yellow throwing weapon you will need this mod because it'll allow you to effectively throw forever. Otherwise you will run out of throwables far too often.
Skill Charges: This is different from extra skill levels because it is tied to the item itself and has limited uses. Unfortunately those two points make them terrible for most cases. The level of said skill is tied to the ilvl, does not benefit from any skill bonuses whatever, and is really patheticly leveled. I'm not going over every such skill, especially the ones that just provide...uhh...an attack, or a low-grade damage spell. And those are what you will get most of the time. But, there are some good things to find, like most Necromancer curses, Oak Sage, Enchantment, or...Teleport.
You see, Teleport as a charge skill can show up on staves, (along with orbs amulets and circlets) and staves can not only be equipped by anyone, but they're sold in shops. Once you get far enough in the game to have the shops selling items with level 24+ affixes, you can go grind for a teleport staff. I recommend you do this, because Teleport is busted and will allow you to skip across most dead-ends with relative ease. Who cares if it has limited use and it'll cost a bunch of gold to refuel? You, weren't using gold for much anyway, and you can just save it for when you dead-end or it's faster to clip through pits and walls than go around. I've even had mods just delete the skill charge affixes because they're bad the other 90% of the time and Teleport is hella OP.
X% Chance to Cast on Y: Oh, these things. Their effectiveness depends entirely on what they are, what level they are, and how they're triggered. You can either trigger this off hitting something, (on strike) getting hit, (when struck) or just attacking with a weapon at all. (on attack) 9 times out of 10 they're useless because it'll be 5% to cast uhh, Level 3 Charged Bolt, when struck. It'll do pitiful damage and you can't boost it. Sets, uniques, and runewords though do give better levels and are more usable. The chance to cast a damage spell on attack/strike though aren't bad since they will, at least, indrectly scale off attack speed. If they're strong enough you don't even need weapon damage, just maybe a good chance and enough speed. One of the best things to get, though, is 5% Chance to cast a Necro curse on striking. (if you aren't using curses already) Level 1 Amplify Damage on strike is pretty common as well.
Freezes Target: On weapon hit, you freeze them. Only works on normal and minion monsters, the rest are only chilled, and it doesn't say but it's a chance to freeze, that while fairly high, is dependant on your level and theirs and nerfed if it's a ranged hit. It's also random how long it'll last. Nonetheless, it is useful because it'll be very consistent on melee hits.
Now, the following affixes will only show up on uniques and sets. Possibly even runewords:
-X% Target Defense: This is better than ignoring target defense, in that it applies at half effect for super uniques and bosses and full effect for everyone else. It'll eventually cap at setting their Defense to 0 but it'll be useful for weapon builds as you will, eventually, bring down everyone's defense.
X% Piercing Projectiles: Applies to any projectile thrown or shot with a weapon. Since piercing projectiles apply to all non-magic skills shooting a projectile as well, this can be really good for Amazon and other classes using ranged, because on-hit effects, like oh say Immolation Arrow, will apply again for each additional monster hit. It's not easy to get a hold of, though, especially in good quantities, since only one belt and one set bonus gives this affix outside of weapons, but it is possible to get it very high, or even maxed at 100%.
+X/+X% Elemental Absorb: Flat elemental absorb works like damage reduction, but will also heal you for the amount reduced. Just like damage reduction, its effectiveness depends entirely on whether you're playing in the past or the future. It's actually not bad though, especially the percentage-based absorb, since it's effectively applied at double the rate. I wouldn't expect it to actually heal you though. It probably never will.
X% Deadly Strike: Or, chance to do a critical hit.
It doesn't just deal double your physical damage, it deals double your MAXIMUM physical weapon damage. This is a very sought after affix if you use a weapon for damage, but regrettably it won't stack with other ways to do the same thing, like Assassin's Critical Strike and the Weapon Mastery passives of Barbarian, for example. Once one of those succeed, the rest of the rolls are ignored. You can't do a double crit.
X% Crushing Blow:
This is the best affix you'll ever use for melee or ranged. On weapon hit, the target loses a percentage of their current life. By default, with melee, this is 25%. And let me remind you, you can swing reaaaaaally fast in this game. There are some "attempts" to balance this affix: that life loss is cut in half if it's a ranged hit, cut in half again if it's against a superunique or a boss. 1/16th per successful Crushing Blow though is still, uhh, yes much life lost, and
nothing's immune to it. This is a boss killer and a crowd clearer. If you're melee, it's your best friend. Even the most terrifying bosses will eventually be brought low if you're allowed to hit them enough times. All the balancing Blizzard did to remove ways to dunk bosses and this one still exists. In case you don't follow, I love this affix, and I love using this whenever I can. Monster life scaling due to multiple players does not translate to Crushing Blow at all and it'll remove 1/4 of 1x that monster life, instead of what their actual max life is, but it's still very good and, that wrinkle doesn't stop me when I do most of my gameplay by myself without using /players 8. But, uhh, keep that in mind.
Open Wounds: On weapon hit, causes life degen for a period of time. It's based on your level, but it's really only useful to counteract monster regen because, like poison, it doesn't stack, and it doesn't deal a terrible lot of damage. Better than Prevent Monster Heal though.
Slain Monsters Rest in Peace: Never deal with shamans again! By the way, if you're with people who want those corpses, (or you want those corpses yourself) they will HATE you for utilizing this affix. Handle with care.
Slows Target:
This is the other busted affix to find on shiny things. It will slow their move, attack, AND cast speed by the listed percentage on weapon hit. It's capped at 75-90% slow, (depends on the speed type) each individual hit can only afflict 50% slow at a time, and there's some hard caps to how slow monsters can go. Other than that,
nothing's immune, or even resistant to it. It also stacks with chill. All affixes sum together, and you can find this on plenty of things. No one is safe, not even Diablo.
+X to Skill:
Referred to as oskills, these items do not care who you are or what you are. You have this many levels in that skill now. Works best if you aren't the class that has that skill, otherwise, such boosts are capped at +3. You can only find them on uniques, sets, and runewords for good reason. Several mods do not care and want you to have fun. Regardless, oskills work in funny ways: all skill bonuses stack with them. If it's an aura, it is applied automatically and for free...in exchange for not benefiting from other skill bonuses. Non-auras get every skill boost except those that say (class only) when you're not that class. It is extremely powerful and allows you to do some real goofball stuff with your build. It's also delightfully buggy because they seriously underestimated how many interactions there would be by shoehorning this in! That's why I can say with confidence I have not scratched the surface of interactions with this thing. It's an extremely hard affix to grasp and understand how it works. Just get your +1 to Teleport off Enigma and stop thinking about it.
These mods specifically put in ways to just give you high levelled oskills as well. It's worth noting because that can lead to some extra bonus fun. I've already had rings that just gave me a free level roughly 15 Oak Sage. Oak Sage is a good skill.
Phew. That's enough affixes. This is more of a cookbook on what affixes to hunt for while building than anything, and I figure I needed to pen this down as a list since we have been making use of a lot of different toys found on our gear. Because charms and jewels are different and there's still the matter of runes that all will be covered in a different Mechanics Talk.
As for, how to get more drops and better drops, that's a topic for another different Mechanics Talk, so hang tight.
Did I mention item generation is the Final Destination of trying to understand Diablo II?
When we swap to a character, we'll use their icon.
If we have something quick to say about a mod though, its banner will be used.
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