How Item Affixes Work: Base Stats

I was inspired to make this post (or what will likely become a series of posts) after reading a Reddit post titled "The best barb armor you will ever see" featuring the armor on the right.

This is a very nice chestpiece, but is it the best we will ever see?  I will explain why it is not (in fact, not by a long shot), but first we we need to delve into affixes, the item modifiers that form the backbone of the D3 item system.  Data miners have found over 2500 affixes and for the sake of brevity we'll focus on the ones dealing with base stats in this post.

What is an affix in the context of Diablo 3?

 

1) Every affix has an in game name that you can see on magic (blue) items.
2) Every affix is either a prefix or a suffix.
3) Every affix modifies at least 1 character stat.
4) Every affix has a range.
5) Every affix has a level requirement.

Affixes are only observable on magic items (as opposed to rares).  The syntax for magic item names is pretty straightforward:

<prefix> <item name> of <suffix>

With that baseline out of the way, let's dive into the affixes that modify your base character stats: Int, Dex, Vit and Str.

There are 10 base affixes that give bonuses to the primary stats: 4 for the stat alone and 6 combination prefixes (+Dex/Str, +Vit/Int, etc).  Additionally, every affix that modifies a base stat has a primary and secondary range (we'll go into depth on that later).

For now check out the following chart demonstrating all of the affix varieties that boost Dex:

Name:	Level Requirement:	Primary Range:	Secondary Range:
of the Hawk	None	+1-8 Dexterity	+1-5 Dexterity
of the Hawk	8	+9-17 Dexterity	+6-11 Dexterity
of the Hawk	11	+18-26 Dexterity	+12-17 Dexterity
of the Hawk	14	+27-35 Dexterity	+18-23 Dexterity
of the Hawk	17	+36-44 Dexterity	+24-29 Dexterity
of the Hawk	20	+45-53 Dexterity	+30-35 Dexterity
of Cruelty	23	+54-62 Dexterity	+36-41 Dexterity
of Cruelty	26	+63-71 Dexterity	+42-47 Dexterity
of Cruelty	33	+72-81 Dexterity	+48-53 Dexterity
of Cruelty	39	+82-91 Dexterity	+54-59 Dexterity
of Cruelty	45	+92-101 Dexterity	+60-65 Dexterity
of Pain	52	+102-111 Dexterity	+66-71 Dexterity
of Pain	58	+112-129 Dexterity	+72-77 Dexterity
of Pain	60	+130-149 Dexterity	+78-83 Dexterity
of Pain	60	+150-169 Dexterity	+84-89 Dexterity
of Pain	60	+170-200 Dexterity	+90-100 Dexterity

Checking a data mined affix list will show the each stat has a similar affix scheme.  For example, the affix names "Of Far Sight", "of Glory" and "of Assault" offer the highest bonus for Int, Vit, and Str respectively.  All of the stats have an identical primary and secondary range breakdown as well.  Now let's check out one of the dual base stat affixes, in this case, the Dex + Vit prefix:

Name:	Level Requirement:	Primary Range:	Secondary Range:
Feral	21	+12-55 Dex, +12-55 Vit	+8-37 Dex, +8-37 Vit
Feral	26	+15-70 Dex, +15-70 Vit	+10-47 Dex, +10-47 Vit
Feral	32	+18-78 Dex, +18-78 Vit	+12-52 Dex, +12-52 Vit
Feral	37	+21-82 Dex, +21-82 Vit	+14-55 Dex, +14-55 Vit
Wild	42	+24-93 Dex, +24-93 Vit	+16-62 Dex, +16-62 Vit
Wild	47	+27-100 Dex, +27-100 Vit	+18-67 Dex, +18-67 Vit
Wild	53	+30-108 Dex, +30-108 Vit	+20-72 Dex, +20-72 Vit
Wild	57	+33-112 Dex, +33-112 Vit	+22-75 Dex, +22-75 Vit
Potent	59	+36-120 Dex, +36-120 Vit	+24-80 Dex, +24-80 Vit
Potent	60	+39-124 Dex, +39-124 Vit	+26-83 Dex, +26-83 Vit
Potent	60	+42-133 Dex, +42-133 Vit	+28-89 Dex, +28-89 Vit
Valiant	60	+45-150 Dex, +45-150 Vit	+30-100 Dex, +30-100 Vit

The dual base stat prefixes for each of the other 5 combinations have identical level requirements and stat bonuses across the board, differing on naming and stat modified.

Before we come full circle and explain why the aforementioned barb armor is not the best we'll ever see, I need to address how Diablo 3 handles Primary and Secondary stat ranges.

What are Primary and Secondary Ranges? 

 

The primary stat ranges are the most desirable; they have higher roll possibilities and are clearly what you want showing up on your blues and yellows.  However, Blizzard decided to restrict which item slots are allowed primary range affixes.  Weapons and Amulets are capable of rolling primary ranges on all of the base stats.  Every other slot is forced to roll a secondary range affix with a few exceptions:

Primary Dexterity Armor: Boots, Gloves

Primary Intelligence Armor: Helm, Gloves

Primary Strength Armor: Belt, Shoulders

Primary Vitality Armor: Chest, Pants

Now that we've learned everything there is to know about base stat affixes, how can we know that we will eventually see better barbarian armor?  Well, let's look at the primary stats on that chest:  +179 Str, +149 Vit.

We can tell by process of elimination that these two bonuses required three affixes to appear:  a Str suffix, a Vit suffix, and a Str + Vit prefix.  A chest piece cannot roll a Str affix over 100 and would require an additional affix to reach 179 (a combo prefix and the Str affix).  Because a combo prefix cannot roll a stat higher than 100, reaching 149 Vit would also require an additional Vit-only suffix (for 3 total).

Using what we know, we can theorize what an actual perfect roll would be:

Str suffix (secondary range on chest armor): +100

Vit suffix (primary range on chest armor): +200

Str/Vit prefix (secondary range on chest armor): +100 each

This sums up to +200 Str, +300 Vit.  So this incredible barbarian chest armor falls short of a perfect Vit roll by half and falls 10% of a perfect Str roll.  Furthermore, once Radiant Star gems (+58 stat) become prevalent, dropping the Strength affix for the Socketed affix could make for an even better armor (3 possible slots for +174 stat).

So while it is indeed an incredible item, I fully expect that we will be seeing far better in the future.