Path of Exile Identifying Valuable Items Guide

Path of Exile Identifying Valuable Items Guide by PeppeJ

This is a post I made to help another guy out that had troubles pricing his items. I tried to make it as straight forward and generic as possible. I decided that it might be worth to share this with more people, especially people new to the game. So here’s the (unedited) post:

I usually go by these guidelines. If something has more than one of the below values, then it’s most likely an interesting item that will sell in most cases for 1+ chaos. As far as the price goes, look up comparable items on poe.trade. Think logically as well, if something has a lot of attack affixes you’ll most likely not want any caster affixes.

This list does not take in to account that some items are craftable and hence have a “hidden” value to them. There’s also always an oddball of an item that doesn’t seem like it should be worth something, but might be worth a ton to the right buyer, I don’t take any of those in to account with this list.

So see this as a GENERAL guideline and as you become more experienced you’ll find specific affix combos that’s worth more than they seem to be. As always, if unsure cross-reference your item on poe.trade. Can’t find it? Try lowering values or remove one of the affixes.

EDIT: How to read: Find your item type, if it has one or more of the mentioned affixes, it’ll most likely be a good item (worth at least 1 chaos orb)!

Body Armour:

• 75+ Life (if armour or evasion base, if no life it’s 90% likely to be vendor trash)
• 575+ Total Energy Shield
• 350+ Total Energy Shield AND 70+ Life (if energy shield base or energy shield hybrid)
• 40+ Strength (if armour base)
• 40+ Intelligence (if energy shield base)
• 80+% Total Resistance

Helmet:

• 65+ Life (if armour or evasion base, if no life it’s 90% likely to be vendor trash)
• 300+ Total Energy Shield
• 200+ Total Energy Shield AND 65+ Life (if energy shield base or energy shield hybrid)
• 300+ Accuracy
• 40+ Intelligence on Armour or Evasion base
• 80+% Total Resistance

Boots:

• 20+ % Movement Speed (Required or they are very hard to sell)
• 65+ Life (if armour or evasion base, if no life it’s 90% likely to be vendor trash)
• 130+ Total Energy Shield
• 90+ Total Energy Shield AND 65+ Life (if energy shield base or energy shield hybrid)
• 70+% Total Resistance
• 40+ Strength
• 40+ Intelligence

Gloves:

• 65+ Life (if armour or evasion base)
• 150+ Total Energy Shield
• 100+ Total Energy Shield AND 65+ Life (if energy shield base or energy shield hybrid)
• 80+% Total Resistance
• 300+ Accuracy
• 10+% Attack speed
• 40+ Dexterity (if Energy Shield or Armour gloves)

Shield:

• 80+ Life (if armor or evasion base)
• 350+ Total Energy Shield
• 280+ Total Energy Shield AND 80+ Life (if energy shield base or energy shield hybrid)
• 100+% Total Resistance
• 35+ Strength (if armour base)
• 35+ Intelligence (if energy shield base)
• 55+% Spell Damage
• 80+% Spell Critical Strike Chance

Sword/Axe/Mace/Bow:

— Physical Damage

• 170+% Physical Damage
• xx-33(50 for 2H/Bow) Physical Damage
• 20+% Attack Speed
• 30+% Critical Strike Chance (if Bow)
• 30+% Critical Strike Multiplier (if Bow)
• +2 to Total Socketed bow gems

— Elemental Damage

• xx to 70+ Fire/Cold or 120+ Lightning Damage to Attacks (if one-handed, needs at least 2)
• xx to 100+ Fire/Cold or 190+ Lightning Damage to Attacks (if two-handed/bow, needs at least 2)
• 20+% Attack Speed

Dagger/Wands/Sceptre:

— Caster Dagger/Wand/Sceptre

• 90%+ Total Elemental Spell Damage
• 130%+ Total Spell Critical strike Chance
• xx to 50+ Fire/Cold or 90+ Lightning Damage to Spells
• 30+% Critical Strike Multiplier

— Attack Dagger/Wand

• 170+% Physical Damage
• xx-33+ Physical Damage
• 20+% Attack Speed (if Dagger)
• 10+% Attack Speed (if Wand)
• 30+% Critical Strike Chance
• 30+% Critical Strike Multiplier
• xx to 70+ Fire/Cold or 120+ Lightning Damage to Attacks

Staff:

• +1 to Socketed gems AND +2 to Socketed (ele) gems
• xx to 70+ Fire/Cold or 150+ Lightning Damage to Spells
• 160+% Total Elemental Spell Damage

Jewel:

• % Life
• % Energy Shield
• % Cast Speed
• % Critical Strike Multiplier
• 2 or more Attack Speed compatible rolls
• 2 or more compatible Damage rolls

Belt:

• 70+ Life (if armour or evasion base, if no life it’s 90% likely to be vendor trash)
• 35+ Strength
• 280+ Armour
• 45+ Energy Shield
• 70+% Total Resistance
• 30+% Weapon Elemental Damage
• % Reduced Flask Charges Used
• % Increased Flask Charges Gained
• % Flask Effect Duration

Ring:

• 55+ Life
• 50+ Energy Shield (if Moonstone Ring base)
• xx-11+ Physical Damage to Attacks
• 30+% Weapon Elemental Damage
• 40+% Increased Rarity
• 80+% Total Resistance
• 50+% Mana Regeneration
• 250+ Accuracy Rating
• 75+ Total Attributes

Amulet:

• 55+ Life
• xx-11 Physical Damage to Attacks
• 30+% Weapon Elemental Damage
• 40+% Increased Rarity
• 90+% Total Resistance
• 65+% Mana Regeneration
• 250+ Accuracy Rating
• 70+ Total of any Attribute
• 30+% Critical Strike Multiplier
• 30+% Critical Strike Chance
• 30+% Total Elemental Spell Damage
• 15+% Energy Shield

Quiver:

• 75+ Life
• 30+% Weapon Elemental Damage
• 30+% Critical Strike Multiplier
• 30+% Critical Strike Chance
• 70+% Total Resistance

Minor add: If you’re unsure how much a specific affix rolls, use poeaffix.net

How to Price Items by EluminatorTV

I don’t know what you know about mods, but there is one core concept you have to understand, if you want to determine the value of items. Items in PoE can have 6 mods if they are rare. 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes. Also most items have an implicit mod or can gain an implicit mod. In this post we won’t focus to much on implicit mods (the mod that is written on the very top), but on the affixes that affect your weapon. It is important to understand that some mods on weapons are local mods while others are global mods. Attack mods usually are local mods while caster mods generally are global mods. As an example with armours: +96 life is a global mod, because the character itself gains this benefit. +50% evasion is a local mod. So if the armour piece has 100 base evasion, it will then have 150 evasion. You will already see the local mods applied to the item. Lets jump straight into the weapon mods. The website I can recommend you is this one:

http://poeaffix.net/index.html

I use this website whenever I buy items and when I want to price my own items. It shows all the mods that can occur on an item depending of its itemlevel.

So for weapons there are several things that are important to know. First we go over the weapons used for attacks:

• Base items: Weapons have different bases: For example the low level base of wands is the “driftwood wand” and a high level base is the “imbued wand”. The higher level bases are a key foundation of a valueable item. Notice that the base item doesn’t need to be the highest one possilbe, but special ones, with either high dps or high base crit or just high damage benefit different builds and go hand in hand with the mod on the weapon. For wands the imbued wand is a good base. For bows the Harbinger Bow is the top base. And sometimes different bases are good for different builds (One shotting a pack of mobs with one single hit vs. hitting a pack of mobs in a rapid succession of 3 hits and killing them that way).
• Elemental damage weapons: For elemental weapons, because only a few builds use these, only the really good weapons have a decent value. For prefixes you want either double “flat elemental damage” with “weapon elemental damage” OR triple “flat elemental damage”. For suffixes “attack speed” and “critical strike chance” are important. The base item should have a high attack speed or high base crit, because you don’t really care about the physical part.
• Physical damage weapons: The important mods all are prefixes: “Flat physical damage”, “% physical damage” and “hybrid physical/accuracy”. You can master craft “flat physical damage” and “% physical damage”, while the hybrid roll can’t be master crafted. Any high combination of those three mods or even only high “flat physical” and high “% phyiscal damage” on your weapon is key. Then again “attack speed” is the next mod to look for. For high base crit weapons, getting a “crit chance” roll is good as well.
• Chaos damage weapons: Weapons with “flat chaos damage” exist, but are very rare. Only very few people use those weapons. Having high “attack speed” is absolutely key. Also “crticial strike chance” might be nice. You can only find chaos damage weapons at level 83 and above or with divination cards ;D
• Generally for crit weapons having “critical multiplier” is nice to have while some melee weapons benefit from an open suffix, so weapon range can be crafted onto it.

Now lets talk about caster weapons:

• The base item doesn’t matter except for the implicit mod. For daggers high attack speed might be nice, so people can use a fast whirling blades (base attack speed doesn’t matter for leapslam/whirling blades). You probably just want a base item that has the higher implicit mods, because you don’t care about the other stats at all.
• “% Spell damage” and the “hybrid spelldamage/mana” mod are core to many good caster weapons. High rolls on those mods indicate that you migh have a good weapon in front of you.
• “Added elemental damage to spells”: This mod can occur in three different forms , so you can get each element (fire, cold, lightning) on a weapon. It is important to note that a weapon can only have one of these mods. If a weapon already has “adds 31-61 fire damage to spells” then it can’t also have “adds 4 – 49 lightning damage to spells”. Some builds benefit more from this mod than others, but generally having a really high roll of this mod on a weapon adds a lot of value.
• “Cast speed”: Having high “cast speed” on a weapon can also make an item valuable. Some builds benefit more from cast speed than others. For example flameblast users love to have high cast speed, so the pizza is increasing at a high rate.
• “Critical strike chance to spells”: This mod is also pretty valuable especially on daggers. Crit spell casters love this mod on their weapon.
• “% increased elemental damage”: Elemental again means either fire, cold or lightning. In contrast to the flat damage of those elements, you can get all three elements on your weapons. But only conversion casters could benefit from that and in general this is not a mod a lot of people use. Sometimes people like these mods, because they benefit “spells that are not spells”: Something like heralds, searing bond or righteous fire etc. This mod in general isn’t that valuable a lone, but might round out your weapon.

The perfect caster weapon might be a a platium kris with %spell damage, %spelldamage/mana, added lightning/fire damage to spells, cast speed, critical strike chace for spells and attack speed.

General things you might wanna know:

• A weapon is only valuable if no cheap unique exists that is equally good or better. There are many good uniques that get the job done, so some weapon you find might look valuble, but they are infact not.
• Some weapons might seem to be insane, but just to few people play a build that could use these, so the price is low. Either sell them for cheap or do a build with them yourself.
• On bows: +2 level to socketed bow gems with +1 level to socketed gems is really valuable. Explosive arrow and Caustic arrow love these mods. Respecitvely, +2 level to socketed fire gems with +1 level to socketed gems is valuable on staffs (with essences even on bows). Summon raging spirits builds love these weapons. Also some spells benefit a lot more from gem levels than others, so a +2 to level to cold/lightning gem instead of the fire mod might be valuable as well.
• Essence crafting really mixed up the value of weapons. Generally white linked bows have a lot of value, because essences are so powerful. Currently for !casters! the bow might be a better weapon than the staff, because with bows can use a quivers as well and the soulstrike quiver is absolutely top notch for CI builds.
• Sometimes a rare weapon is better if it has an open prefix or suffix than with a decent mod, so one can craft master mods on it. Some mods can only be crafted with masters (weapon range, bloodmagic, etc), so you will find a lot of weapons that look good, but are not usable because they have to many shitty mods, blocking good crafts onto it.

Sorry for the horrific editing, but I was feeling lazy today. If you don’t have any clue if something is valuable or not, just check http://poe.trade/ for similar items. The more items you buy and sell the more you’ll learn.

Have a good evening.