another upping question When I up an item, say Arreat's Face, does the def get re-rolled or does it stay proportional? If it had perfect def for exceptional, would it have perfect def for elite?
quite a bit is upped - usually you can find another specimen to upgrade if one goes wrong. sometimes the def increase doesn't seem much considering the rise in stat requirements but people still do it
No, it depends on the base def of the upp'ed item. For arreat's face, it is a big risk of losing defense with no gain. For something like HoZ, the worst case is no change in defense, but you get higher smite damage. For something like Gore Rider, the defense is always higher after being upp'ed and you get higher kick damage as well. For something like Skin of the Vipermagi, you gain nothing but more defense from upp'ing the item, but the defense difference is huge. In general, you should also consider whether you can meet the str/dex requirement of the upp'ed version.
There are some benefits other than increased defense on some item types: * Belts (the 4 lowliest normal item types get more space for potions) * Boots (kick damage) * Shields (blocking (in many cases), more Smite damage).
Thanks for the replies. The items are all for a mf barb. What I'm considering upping is: arreat's, skulders and gores. My only gain will be def. Requirements are not an issue, since I always planned on getting 2 big 2 handed swords on switch. After reading the replies I'm considering only upping skulders. The gain on gores will be relatively small. What do you think?
In Things you SHOULD know about Diablo 2 you will find your answer in bullet 14 (http://www.battle.net/forums/thread.aspx?fn=d2-gameplay&t=163465&p=1&#post163465): Upgrading items does not guarantee higher stats. All it does is take a normal base item to exceptional status, or an exceptional item to elite status. The end stats depend on the stats of the upgraded base item. Vampire Gaze is probably the most famous example. Grim helms have a defense range of 60-125. All Vampire Gaze Grim Helms have a defense of 252. This is due to the fact that when armors spawn with the enhanced defense mod, the defense is invariably set at max +1. When we are dealing with a Vampire Gaze, the base item's defense of 126 recieves a 100% bonus = 252 defense. However, when the item is upgraded, the base defense is rerolled. The defense range of Bone Visages is 100-157. Which means that a Vampire Gaze with a base item defense of 126 has a very good chance of being turned into a Bone Visage with a lower defense. In case of the worst roll imaginable, your 252 defense Vampire Gaze would go down to 200. Not good. This page shows how upgrading will affect the various unique items. http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~deykea/d2armours.html
Upp'ing skullder sounds good, even better if it's an eth one. OT: I don't see why you want to use Gore instead of WarTraveler on a MF char.
