Your primary goal in Diablo 4 is acquiring incredibly powerful gear and equipment. The loot you grab from your adventures account for the majority of your character's overall power, kill speed and survivability. Each gear slot can roll with specific stats with a thematic connection. Weapons increase your damage bonuses, Chest Armors increase your survivability, Boots increase your speed etc. Upgrading your gear is very important for min-maxing your stats. Eventually, you get Legendary Aspects that go even further to cement your build identity. For players who only care about looking super cool, collecting different items allows you to transmog your kit to fit style.
Equipment Stats Overview
Each Gear slot rolls from a certain pools of stats. This is overwhelming at first, but as you collect more equipment, the general themes of each item type starts to come together. In addition to the generic affixes you can find on each slot, they also have unique stats that are important to prioritize.
Armor Pieces (Helm, Chest, Gloves, Pants, Boots) generally grant you defensive and utility stats. These affixes can include +x Max Life, +x to Primary Stats, +x to Skill Ranks, Resistances and Movement Speed. For more details, check out our Defenses for Beginners overview.
Jewelry Pieces (Ring, Amulet) grant you damage, utility and resources. Additionally, they always grant you Resistances so you have a baseline of defense.
Weapon Pieces (1-Handed, 2-Handed, Focus) determine your Damage per Second. This stat directly affects your skill damage as well as the speed you're able to do many of your attacks. These gear pieces also give direct access to damage multipliers, such as Vulnerable Damage, Critical Strike Damage and Damage Over Time. Check out Damage for Beginners for a deeper dive!
You can also Socket and insert Gems into many of your gear-slots for added Stats. See our Jeweler guide for more information!
Item Rarities
The item rarities in order are common, magic, rare, legendary and unique. They generally follow your character's level progression, with common and magic items dropping less often than rare and legendary as you level up. Unique items are incredibly rare, and are said to be some of the Best-in-Slot options that you may never find in a Season.
Common items don't have additional affixes and magic items only have a single affix. Rare items begin with 3 affixes and legendary items can have 4 affixes. Lower rarity items are tradable but legendary and unique items are bound to your account.
An item needs to be rare or legendary rarity to have a Legendary Aspect imprinted onto them. Imprinting a rare item changes its rarity to legendary and binds it to your account. Legendary items you pick up as loot always roll a Legendary Aspect. Unique items are... unique, in that they have special effects that cannot be modified or overwritten.
Item Power & Tiers
Item Power of equipment determines the range of stats that roll on the gear. As your Character level increases, the Item Power on gear you loot or receive from quests increases as well. The affixes on your gear have ranges that increase as Item Power increases.
In addition to rolling higher item power, there are several tiers of items that unlock in higher World Tiers:
- Sacred Items drop in World Tier 3, ranging from 625-730 item power
- Ancestral Items drop in World Tier 4, ranging from 780-925 item power
As you approach level 100 enemies, monsters always drop item power 925 loot, the highest in the game. This means that after a certain point, you no longer have to worry about this attribute and only look at the stats of the item. Higher tiers also unlock more stats and crafting options (Tempering, Masterworking) that cannot be performed on regular items.
Transmog / Wardrobe
As you acquire more and more gear, you may notice that certain weapons and armor pieces having cooler aesthetics than others. For some people, looking cool is more important than getting an upgrade. If you want to keep the awesome look of an epic sword, but also want to upgrade to a better base, just go salvage your old gear!
Salvaging a piece of gear permanently captures its visual appearance for you to use in the Wardrobe to transmog your new gear. Transmogging your gear only changes the look of the gear piece. It does not transfer any of the item's stats or powers. While this may seem unimportant to some, no one likes putting down their cool early-level flaming sword from an epic quest reward, to use a strictly better, but lame looking weapon.
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Summary
- Getting your hands on high Item Power gear is one of the most important activities in Diablo 4. The higher the Item Power, the stronger the stats and benefits you get from equipping gear.
- Each gear slot can roll from certain pools of affixes. Boots can give you Movement Speed, Weapons give you damage modifiers, and Jewelry gives you massive Resistances.
- Upgrading your gear at the Blacksmith and Jeweler increases the Item Power and the stats that you have on those gear pieces.
- Items fall into different rarity categories. Common, magic, rare, legendary and unique. As your character levels up, you're more likely to find items with higher rarity.
- World Tiers 3 and 4 unlock Sacred and Ancestral items with more possible affixes and higher ranges, capping out at 925 item power.
- If you love the look of a particular gear piece, you can salvage it at the Blacksmith and transmog your new gear with the old look!
Credits
Written by MacroBioBoi
Reviewed by wudijo