Diablo 3 Crafting Strategy by (Flux)

There’s been a lot of excitement about the new Archon crafting recipes in v1.07, and many players have crafted themselves item upgrades by now, generally for a lot less than the millions it would have cost to buy a similar upgrade on the Auction House. You can even make items better than anything otherwise available in the game, with some luck on your roll… assuming you know which items to create. Whether you’re enjoying the gambling-like experience of making your own gear, or you don’t care and have already added Demonic Essence to your (long) list of, "Rare drops to ignore," it’s worth knowing which crafting recipes are the best, or give the best odds of an upgrade.

There are a lot of factors to consider when planning your crafting. Some of the biggest include:

• What item slot does your class/character most need to upgrade?
• How do the potential Crafted items compare to the best rares/legendaries?
• What's your budget?
• How do you value DPS vs. EHP?

The last point there deserves some more conversation, since it varies a lot by player and character. In theory, especially for Monks and Barbs (and all classes Hardcore) survival stats, including Vitality, matter. You can largely blow off Vit and Resistance with a Demon Hunter, but those stats are much more important for melee fighters, so when you’re looking at gear for those classes, you should be adding up the total mainstat + vitality when you’re considering the value. Obviously other mods matter, especially offensive ones like Attack Speed (AS), Critical hit chance (CC), Critical hit damage (CD), and so on, but all things being equal (which they never are) an item with +150 mainstat and +130 vit *should* be more valuable than one with 180 mainstat and 50 vitality. (Since it’s 280 vs 230 in total stat bonus, which is basically like adding a free socket to your gear.)

That said, it’s not illogical to value Mainstat more than Vit, for most characters. Your average softcore end game character has something like 2000-2500 mainstat vs. 800-1200 vitality, and that’s perfectly sensible in most Diablo 3 situations. The best defense is a good offense. Killing monsters before they can hurt you is almost always a sound strategy. Just don’t get so hypnotized by the e-peen nature of higher DPS that you overvalue mainstat at the expense of vit or resistance or other survival stats. Upgrading your bracers to let you kill .4% faster is nice, but adding 5k hps and never dying again is even better, even if you’re softcore…