Impossible Item Stat Requirements

I have a few pieces of rare gear that seem to have stat requirements so beyond their level requirement that I am not sure they could ever be useful. One is a level 11 set of boots with a physique requirement of 290. Ive played around with the skills and stats and even at level 16 with level 20 in Soldier and most of the points dumped into maxing the veteran bonuses I have just enough(exactly what is required) to wear the item. Several other pieces of a similar level are still out of reach. This leaves very little for combat skills and the main damage skills become severely gimped in order to wear this armor.

I get that there needs to be a tradeoff, and level requirements I would guess are there to prevent lower level heroes from spamming points to get op gear. Either the stat requirement is way too high or the level requirement seems too low or even redundant. The stat requirement is a sufficient barrier, and the level requirement creates the impression that the player should have outgrown the item by level 20 or so. By the time i have the stats to wear the gear Ill surely be getting better more well rounded drops of a higher level. In fact I am sure I would be wearing the nearly full level 22 Guardsman set that fortuitously dropped on my first run with another character before I got anywhere near the stats needed for these level 11 rare items.

So whats the deal, what am I missing? What is the point of these super high stat requirement items? My guess was that if I was a soldier-shaman maybe there would be some boost to Phys that made the item attainable.

Level Requirement of an item is dictated by its affixes (except for Uniques, but I know your example isn’t a unique because their minimum level is 14). Stat requirements of an item is dictated by the level of the item itself, which is a hidden value used to dictate when that item should be dropped/crafted.

What this means is that you could - in theory - see a pair of boots with an item level of 20 but with a level 11 affix on it, meaning the base boots aren’t meant to be equipped until approximately level 20 (give or take three-ish levels) even though you can equip the item as early as level 11.

I see, thank you. Looking at some items on the site i see the “item level” and hero level requirement disparity. I wish that was more transparent because I spent the early part of this hero trying to get these items based on the hero level requirement only to find that it really is feasible…now i know its it because it is a level 20 item. Then the “level requirement” really does seem redundant, especially if it can be so low compared to when you can reasonable wear the item. I say do away with it and let stats be the only requirement. An unnecessary layer of complexity and potential confusion.

Don’t worry about it when leveling. A single 1-10 Aspirant Crucible run every ~5 levels (takes 2-3 minutes) will drop enough greens to keep you geared indefinitely.

And thanks again, this made me look closer. I have seen “affixes” and “suffixes” and knew they had something to do with items but haven’t looked into it. I have probably sold an several armories full of better stuff having tunnel vision and not paying attention to the name based construction of the items. I feel compelled to start over now…