Path of Exile Gems PoE Builds, PoE Currency guide and other guides
Price check please – this is one of the most common phrases heard in Path of Exile chat. There is reason behind that. With its unique currency system, pricing items might be extremely confusing for new players who have little to no experience with Path of Exile trading. Here in this guide, I will try to explain the secrets behind pricing items in the game.
How do I know, whether item is good or not?
One of the most complicated parts is to remember and understand what is good on item. Oftentimes people throw absolutely useless items in chat asking whether they’re good or not without even thinking about it a little bit. It is not that easy, you have to look at the item closely to price it well. Also, to price items a little better, it is good idea to familiarize yourself with meta, what builds are currently the most popular, what items they use and so on. It helps to understand what kind of items and mod combinations on the items people are looking for the most.
Base item
Base item is important in item pricing – it can make or break item. Here is an example – at the moment, crit Tornado Shot builds are popular, and the most important item in the build is bow. People who play this build, look for highest crit chance possible on the bow and the vast majority choose Harbinger Bow base because of its implicit crit chance mod. If you have Harbinger bow and Thicket bow with same mods, Harbinger will sell for more currency because of builds popularity and different purpose of the base item. Harbinger bows have high crit, Thicket bows have high attack speed, therefore Thicket bow will have little use to physical damage crit build – high attack speed weapons are used for elemental damage builds to take advantage of flat elemental damage applied as quickly as possible.
Affix tiers and combinations on the items
These two, are the major factors that determine price of any rare item. As I have mentioned in my other posts, rare item can have six affixes – 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes. Affixes have tiers, for example, here is the list of increased physical damage tiers and their respective names:
Heavy 20%–49%
Serrated 50%–69%
Wicked 70%–89%
Vicious 90%–109%
Bloodthirsty 110%–129%
Cruel 130%–149%
Tyrannical 150%–169%
These affixes can only appear on rare weapons (not counting unique items). As you can see, increased physical damage have 7 tiers. Tiers are abbreviated with capital T in the game – for example, cruel mod is tier 2 physical damage or T2, Tyrannical is tier 1 or T1. Right base item with single Tyrannical mod is worth 1-5 Exalted Orbs. Yes, you did read that right – blue item with only one mod. The Tyrannical affix is very rare and its spawn rate on item is only 0.084%, that is what makes items with it so expensive.
I hope you can see where I am going with this. To evaluate item, you just have to look at the tiers and combinations of the affixes. Tiers can ruin the item if the affixes are wrong ones. Item with 6T1 mods can be much worse that item with 4T1 mods an 2 open affixes if some of the mods are in bad combination.
Good combination of affixes
There are several popular combinations of affixes, that are always needed on items and I will tell you a little about them.
Armor based pieces
Look for life, 2 or 3 resistances + % increased armor/flat armor. If the combination is like this, price depends on the tiers of affixes – if resistances and life and at least 1 armor mod is T1 or T2 you have extremely good item to sell.
Energy shield based pieces
Look for % energy shield + flat energy shield and 2/3 resistances. Life is optional on the chests based purely on ES, as most of people use them for CI (Chaos Inoculation) builds that do not look for life on gear at all. If the Energy shield on the item is at least 400 – 500, you can already get some currency for it, and if in combination with T3-T1 resistances, item can be worth much more.
Evasion based pieces
Look for same things that on armor based chest pieces only with evasion instead of armor.
Jewelry
Rings have many nice bases, which each serve its own purpose. I, however, consider few ring bases to be pretty bad. These include Moonstone rings, Iron rings, Paua Rings and Unset rings. Some may argue that they are useful, but this is my own opinion based on experience.
Rings with resistance (sapphire, topaz, ruby, all two stone rings and prismatic rings) will always sell for something if they have decent (60 and more) life and at least 100% total elemental resistance. If the resistances are T1 and there are open affixes, rings like that can go for quite a few exalted orbs.
You will be able to sell rings that do not have life affix but have energy shield affix instead. Those are used by certain builds that do not utilize HP.
Rings with high mana, at least 50% mana regeneration, energy shield + resist or two will sell good for Eldritch Battery builds that convert energy shield to mana and use Arctic Armor.
Attack speed is really good on rings, so if you manage to find ring with decent/high life, resistances and attack speed, you can be sure that it will sell for good amount of currency.
Talking about amulets, many people choose base for the attributes – strength, intelligence and dexterity. Where rings are widely used to cap out resists, amulets are often picked for damage.
Really good combination for casters is spell damage + fire/lightning/cold damage + increased cast speed. These amulets sell really well if spell/element damage mods are high tier. If life is in combination with these affixes, expect even more profit.
For crit builds, very good amulets are with global critical strike chance + global critical strike multiplier + added physical damage. Look for amulets that have at least 30% for both critical strike mods in order to sell them for decent amount of currency.
Also, amulets for Eldritch Battery builds can be sold quite nicely. The combination is same as for rings – high mana regeneration + maximum mana + life and resist or two.
Weapons
Evaluating weapons are mostly easy – you can calculate dps yourself or take look at the mods and their tiers.
4 main damage mods for weapons (axes, maces, swords, bows) are – Increased physical damage, increased attack speed, added local physical damage, and hybrid mod increased physical damage + accuracy rating. If item has all 4 of these mods with T1, consider yourself rich, as most of the time you will not be so lucky. In the weapons, look for combination that involves at least 3 of aforementioned mods with as high rolls as possible.
Wands have several good combinations – people play spell damage based wands and physical damage wands. Physical damage wands should ideally have 3 of previously mentioned mods and increased critical chance. Good wand base for physical builds is Imbued Wand.
Spell damage based wands have spell damage mod and hybrid spell damage mod, same as physical damage based weapons but instead of accuracy, wands have additional mana. Absolute maximum spell damage on Imbued Wand base is 118%, the closer you are to that value, the more expensive your wand is. If high spell damage is in combination with increased cast speed, you can get yourself some great amount of currency.
Daggers for cast on crit builds. Builds that utilize cast on crit are still quite popular and they require specific gear – one of which is their weapon. People that play cast on crit look for combination of attack speed, increased critical chance and spell damage on their weapon – obviously, the higher, the better.
Very many people do not realize, that staffs can be very expensive with just 2 mods together that some might not even consider useful.
Staffs that have +1 to level of gems in this item in combination with +2 to fire gems in this item are super rare on their own, if coupled with increased casting speed, you can swim in exalted orbs.
My advice to you is to play the game – more experience, easier to evaluate items. You can also check out my earlier article about trading and evaluating items using poe.trade website.
Please share if you found it helpful! 🙂
