What stats on items should I prioritize?

valygar

What should I look for? I saw a video that said Armor Penetration was the main thing. What else should I look for and what priority?
For example I just found a sword knot:

+23 Combined Rating
+278 Power
+216 Critical Strike
-100 Armor Penetration

How good is that for a level 15 barb? It has the -100 AP.

I am a low leveler so I'm not worried about endgame gear but I'd like to know what to look for.

zimxero

at lower levels... Power is everything. Prioritize power and increasing the base damage of your weapon when a better one is available. From Mid-game on.. then prioritize bringing offensive stats and defense to 50,000. End-game will vary by player but will shift again toward power stacking.

wintersmoke

valygar#1547 said:

What should I look for? I saw a video that said Armor Penetration was the main thing. What else should I look for and what priority?
For example I just found a sword knot:

+23 Combined Rating
+278 Power
+216 Critical Strike
-100 Armor Penetration

How good is that for a level 15 barb? It has the -100 AP.

I am a low leveler so I'm not worried about endgame gear but I'd like to know what to look for.

the -100 ArPen is in comparison to the Sword knot that you are wearing at the moment. You should open your Character sheet, and look over your stats to see if loosing 100 ArPen is really a bad thing, or if you can take the hit.

b4t1b4t

I will also state that at a low level you should not worry much about what to go for and what not to go for. As you level thru the game you will switch out gear like a ton of times to the point where it makes no sense to really care about any gear you come across. It is not until you reach max level and doing the new content that the gear will stay with you for a bit.

mentinmindmaker

First thing, I want to reinforce what is said above that you should not worry about stats until you reach 80. It goes so fast and you will swap gear so frequently that optimizing stats is not practical nor needed.

At 80 your stats choices depends a bit on class and intended playstyle/zone targets.
* Endgame tanks need a heavy focus on defenses and hp, and need to bring defensive stats to endgame cap and then go hp.
* Farming tanks will exist in zones with lower caps and need less hp so survive so typically will build for lower cap limits, go for less hp and have more focus on offensive stats and power to get more dps.
* Dps and healers should focus on offensive stats, defense and power - some hp depending on zone targets.

It is important to know what stat caps you are building towards. The general stat cap for endgame(Vallenhas and Infernal Citadel) is 85k. For older content it is 60/68k. Typically using a 85k build in a cap 68k zone is a loss of dps.. those extra stats over cap should be moved to power. How many builds you wish to maintain is up to you

Also one note about healer builds: Healers got a special crit formula so healer crit rate depends on crit being a bit higher than power. This is contrary to dps builds where it is pointless to take crit past cap. However: If you look at Janne's formulas you will see that heal output increases as the sum of power+crit increases, but the balance between those two does not matter much for heal amount (moving points from power to crit means more crit but less base heal, it evens out)

So I would recommend building a healer as a dps with capping crit and no more. That way you get the same heal but have a build that will work for dps too. Builds with extreme crit amounts gain no extra heal but loses dps ability.

sandukutupu

I don't go much for what numbers are on the gear, I get the item for what it does visually for my character. That way, when I die, I look great and leave a good corpse.

XP boosting
If you can find some cheap gear in the AH the Head, Arms, and Boots need "slots" for utility enchantments. Pop in 3 rank 8 Azure Enchantments. Each one give +23% XP for a total of +69% more than you would normally have. Later after you get up there, I suggest popping them out and you can use the slots for Radiant (for gold boosting) or Dark (for companion boosting).

What I fear most new players are neglecting to do, complete campaigns, don't skip directly to the end. I move around a bit but try to focus on campaign completion, as this often leads to armor, gear, and boon points.

Finally above all else, just have fun. This is a game, don't make it a chore.

rafaelda

You dont have to care about your stats at least till Lv 70, keep your gear mostly updated to your level and you will be fine till there, ususally the drops and quest prizes are good enough, if you overleveled a bit blue gear from ah for your level will do the trick, but keep in mind you will change your gear a LOT till lv 80 so not much a point on stats balance till you get there...

I wold say if you have to focus on Power, HP and XP bonus till lv 80... but even getting good enchants may prove to be not possible since you will need to remove and replace and that uses some good gold for good enchants...