upgrading question

[dem]

other than weapon damage and armor rating, what else goes up when you upgrade items?

thanks :)

edit : to clarify, do the affixes and suffixes change?
example : razortail's pierce , crushing blow on an item or etc.

thanks

[Generator Of Chaos]

depends a lot of the item in question, best advise is to check the stats of the base item, and the stats of the base item it will upgrade to...

[jiansonz]

It takes the properties of the exceptional or elite item type is question, so the STR/DEX/LVL requirements will increase.

Other than defense and damage, you have some other changes:
* Attack speeds can change (e.g. some swords, claws, staves, polearms)
* Most elite shields have better blocking than their exceptional equivalents.
* Paladin Smite damage on shields improves.
* Assassin kick damage on boots improves.
* Dimensional Blades lose their durability property (since Phase Blades don´t have it)
* Max stack size on some throwing weapons is higher for the elites.


No affix/ability will change, sockets (and what´s in them) will remain, staffmods will remain, etherealness will remain.

There is a bug with upgrading armors that have some sort of +%ED modifier. Normally, those would have their defense calculated from the maximum defense value, then add 1. When they get upgraded, the base defense is rerolled. This is bad for some item types, where the exceptional version has very variable defense. Also, any ethereal armor will lose its 50% defense bonus from being ethereal. They still can´t be repaired, and they still have the STR/DEX requirement lowered by 10 compared to a non-ethereal item.

[dem]

thank you for that very informative reply. :)