Crafted Items vs. Unique Items

[Shimlock]

Arreat Summit suggests that crafted items have the capacity to be even more powerful than unique items. As a result, I'm not sure whether I should spend my time on getting the right ingredients for a crafted item, vs. using those ingredients in a socketed item and waiting for a unique item.

Does anyone have any experience in comparing high level crafted items vs. unique items?

Thx.

[Neksja]

caster amulets (for 20fcr/2 skills ones), blood amulets (10frw/10ll/2 skills), blood gloves (2 skill tree/20ias/10cb) and blood rings (10all res/20str/10ll). Those are my choices for outstanding uniques. Although, some Runewords are hard to beat...

[Alc]

A lot of powerful and useful uniques are very cheap/common. Wizardspike is a good example - fantastic weapon, useful for a variety of builds, costs pgems on any realm.

Good crafted items do not come cheaply, or commonly.

[DjSlayer]

A lot of powerful and useful uniques are very cheap/common. Wizardspike is a good example - fantastic weapon, useful for a variety of builds, costs pgems on any realm.

Good crafted items do not come cheaply, or commonly.

It's a nice caster weapon, but sucks when you shall use it melee, in fact there are few weapons that could help a melee through hell so it's either a rune word or a crafted blood axe they use as an solution, and a 510% ED, 2 socket, 40% ias BA would help a great deal, add a blood helm and gloves you'll have deadly strike and crushing blow witch would help much playing untwinked.

To OP: if you should compare something like a caster belt with arachnid mesh you'd have to look at the rest of your equipment too, some strive for getting their character reaching different breakpoints like FHR and FCR. Lets look at arachnid mesh and later compare it with a nice caster belt,
it's got
+1 to skills, very important to a caster
20% FCR, very important to a caster
Defense, too low to be of any importance.
Increases Maximum Mana 5%, nice but not affected by battle orders.
Venom charges (eh??)

Now a caster belt
5-10% FCR not as much as Aracnid, but if you can get other sources for the last FCR bp (to have some value it has to have 10% FCR)
10-20 mana, also not as much as Arachnid but better than nothing (max on caster belts would be 20 if you rolled serpents prefix in the craft)
regen mana 4-10%, something arachnid does not have and might be helpful in some situations
Now to what in my opinion a good caster belt should have (in addition to the stuff above):
24% Faster Hit recovery, this can be the difference between life or death in some situations, its justto reach that break point.
+50-60 life, massive amount of life
Bonus:
up to 30% to a single resist (light resist against those souls)
up to 200% enhanced defense (less chance to get hit, only good on a vampirefang belt)
up to 30 strength (bring on that high strength req equip)
Replenish life up to +10

(remember that a crafted item can only get 4 affixes in addition to those 3 modifiers they always get)

- D.J.

[SmittySixTen]

Don't forget Knockback gloves.

[mephiztophelez]

crafting, to my mind, is a way of useing up pgems, low runes and junk jewels.

sure, you MIGHT get something super-omfgodly, but chances are higher you'll craft your way through a few mules worth of supplies and still not have anything "worthwhile" to show for it.

i use crafted caster ammy's on my 200 fcr fire sorc (either a 20fcr/minor res or a +1fire/19fcr/minor res one, depending if i'm chasing 142fhr at the time or not) and on my ww/trap'sin (with circlet/arach/trangs gloves, i only need 5% fcr on my ammy, so any +'sin crafted ammy will hit the BP. i also have a +1'sin/15fcr/res ammy i use with an FCR ring when i need to ditch the Arach for more %DR).

one day, i might have a crack at Blood Hats too. 10%DS/2sox/visionary/+2barb/+20dex would make a useful hat for a BvB methinks.

[helvete]

Crafting uses low end runes, jewels with little or no use and the pgems, which are probably the hardest part to get (at least in single player). Pgems DO pile up, however, and rather quickly. I always collect every flawless gem, every rune Tal and above, and every jewel. I never seem to have enough, because I'm more or less addicted to crafting. Sure, 99% of the results are useless, of low use, or decent, but once in a while, I get something that's so good that it's worth building an entire character around. One example which comes to mind is a 2pala 20fcr 14dex amu. The other mods could have been better, but this amulet allows for a max block 125%fcr hammerdin with ALL stat points in vita (using other great crafts providing str while I wait forever for Jah and Ber....).

one day, i might have a crack at Blood Hats too. 10%DS/2sox/visionary/+2barb/+20dex would make a useful hat for a BvB methinks.

IIRC +2 barb cannot spawn on Helmets or their excep/elite versions. I'm not sure about dex either, but +combat skills is possible IIRC.

[DjSlayer]

IIRC +2 barb cannot spawn on Helmets or their excep/elite versions. I'm not sure about dex either, but +combat skills is possible IIRC.

You can't get dexterity on helmets either.

- D.J.