What if item gap was handled differently?

[cheerupemokid10]

Yeah, when they talked about the "budget system" for the Ilvl of items, I don't think the items had to spend all of their allotted budget. Instead, it was just that each item has the opportunity to spend X amount of budget on affixes Y, Z, etc. Thus we get some really awesome rolls that go together, like main stat in the 150-200 range and vit ~80 with @res. Likelihood is slim, which makes it the "godly drop." But most of the time I don't think items are really spending their full budget.

I agree with what most others are seeing and that most of my ilvl 61-63 items are not jaw droppers. I do find things with a nice roll on an affix or two, but it always seems to be missing something that I wish it could have. Like some helm I found last night; I can't remember the Ilvl, but it had 220+ int, ~60 vit, and +10% or so damage to plague of locusts. Really high Int bonus and it even had vitality, but was missing @res and/or a socket to be gear that is inferno worthy. It could be worn with some other high res gear to do A1 probably. It's just definitely being outclassed by w/e is on the AH. Not to mention it's much easier to find on the AH. It might not be cheaper, by any means, but faster/easier if you have the gold/cash.

I still enjoy it though because then I have something to work up towards. I can't afford that gear going for millions of gold in the GAH, so I've got to search for that missing piece with the added crit I'm missing or hope for an awesome deal to pop up for auction. After a certain point, there does get to be a lack of major increases with stats and the improvements get minor. But I'm still far from that.

I played D2 single player self-found for a couple years straight and it took a significant amount of time to gear up my first main, let alone MFing and finding everything else I needed for other chars without trading, dupes, and hacks of Bnet. The item hunt for legendaries might not be the same as it were for uniques, but it's still a decent item hunt looking for rares to upgrade with.

[sifuedition]

The problem is that helm even with two good affixes with solid rolls is still barely usable. That is one of the major flaws with the current system. You have to have 3 rng wins.

1. High enough item level to have the affixes you need.
2. Lucky affix rolls to have the affixes you need.
3. At least the 50% percentile roll quality to have high enough stats to be an upgrade.

Rng is expected. Rng x 3 means very, very rarely changing a piece of gear. Not only that, but it makes the difference between starting inferno gear and "godly" gear a much less exciting upgrade.