it really helped me to get a better understanding with items! thx alot! 
@Xervous, you missed Stalwart on ring affixes. Curious where you’d put it after the nerfs. Personally would put it on yellow
This thread is very useful,
Thanks so much
Thanks for catching that. I agree it’s a potentially useful affix at this point in time but nowhere near a guaranteed winner. Some builds might want it for shoring up their DA but it’s not going to be as highly desired as it was in 1.0.5
Can you add locations to the MI`s? Im not too familiar with all the items where they can be found, so it would be nice to have an estimated location where to farm them. Thanks.
Look up the item you want here to find out which monster drops it: https://www.grimtools.com/db/
Search that monster’s name here: https://www.grimtools.com/monsterdb/
Yeah I am familiar with the database. Just wanted to know if the OP is willing to add the locations, I understand its quite time consuming.
It’s on the list as an eventuality, but since the information is already gathered elsewhere it’s not a high priority.
This is awesome, thank you! Now if the guy who made grim internals can color code the affixes according to your scheme, I’d be in heaven.
I probably would change some select few items to one grade lower or higher, but overall this list appears to me as pretty accurate and therefore useful.
Care to elaborate? Saying there’s stuff that might be out of place but not detailing exactly what doesn’t help.
For what it’s worth, I’d say Fleshwarped Pauldrons should be yellow. Red implies that any FP < any Iron Maiden’s Shoulderguards, which is false. Especially since FP are a very common drop so you’re likely to have pretty decent affixes before you see a single IMS.
To the extent that utility while leveling figures into this guide at all (and my impression is that it does not), that could even make FP green. A Cadence character will use a series of FP almost continuously from level 35ish or whenever FP start to drop.
If the intent of the guide is to color-code based on desirability for a theoretical endgame character choosing among every item in the game, you’re probably fine as is.
someone please sticky this, very useful!
The main aim here is to be a resource for players that are collecting MIs that will be desirable for end game setups. Fleshwarped Pauldrons are never mentioned in builds or trade requests, and come to think of it I haven’t seen many non warborn cadence builds around that opt for Iron Maiden Shoulderguards anymore - so there is a case to be made for shunting the IM shoulderguards down to yellow due to a lack of popularity and the warborn shoulders offering a decent baseline functionality over poorly rolled IM shoulderguards.
A red ranking is not a do not use, I cannot speak in such absolutes when there is such wonderful build variety and possibilities for players to weave twisted monstrosities that actually happen to work. It’s a statement that the base item itself is not desirable/useful outside of some highly unlikely scenario (a player doing a build that is VERY rarely played). The typical player upon seeing such an MI would run through a sort of checklist, “Would this be of possible value to me in a current or future build?” in the current state of things, near nonexistent likelihood. “Would this be of possible value to someone else in their current future build?” in the current state of things, near nonexistant likelihood. “Okay so I have no reason to keep this MI short of praying it or the skill/build it supports gets changed in the future.” For very good rolls I do advise keeping items in the off chance something is buffed (hey they’re a novelty if you can afford the stash space or have infinite storage), but aside from near perfect double rares they’re just clutter.
As for leveling gear I’d like to detail all the options that provide exceptional benefits when leveling to the point that it is worth stopping at times in your leveling to obtain/update said MIs. The ones I have highlighted offer an exceptional bump in damage/clearing potential that more than offsets the time one might invest into obtaining it on a fresh character. Items like haunted shoulderpads and fleshwarped pauldrons DO offer benefits, but not of the magnitude that you’re going to reach the area where they drop and farm it for a few resets until you obtain one, then cruise along at a noticeably faster rate. So if people are aware of other amazing leveling sticks please call them out.
OK, that’s what I thought, this is for endgame characters with all items in the game available. Fair enough. (The next purple shoulders I find will be the first, which is why I pay close attention to Fleshwarped Pauldrons).
Dropping IM Shoulderguards to yellow would certainly fix the mismatch of good Fleshwarped Pauldrons being clearly better than bad IM Shoulderguards.
Your definition of leveling value seems very restrictive to me. There’s nothing in the game I’d consider worth a revisit to an area just to farm while leveling. Not even for Dermapteran Slicers, since they drop so often you’ll easily find two decent ones in the one visit to the hive for the quest. Same for Fleshwarped Pauldrons and Casques, lots of drops, easy to find good ones.
In my experience leveling an RE Cabalist, running mountain deeps a few times in elite and ultimate is absolutely worth it to roll a good bonespike. They don’t drop in abundance and damage on them varies wildly.
I agree with your examples though.
Well I was a bit reserved to posting because the value of items is very dependant on class, playstile, gamemode etc. So whatever I say, it is bound to be controversical anyway. The shortest way to read my posting was: Its already good the way it is, no major disagreements. ^^
But since you asked for it, a few things that caught my attention while going over the list:
1. Fabius’ Shoulderguard: Dont know whats too bad about flat OA, ele-res and 3x3 okayish to good skills (Word of Renewal, Grenado, Fighting Spirit). I am using a good rolled version with additional resistances on a grenado/caster-purifier and while there are other contenders, it might actually be BiS. Commandos or tacticians might find use for this as well. Sure its a bit nichey, but shit tier? Definitively upgrade to yellow.
2. Loghorreans Corruption: A bit similar to the Fabius Shoulderguards these are only BiS for the builds that also profit from the skill bonuses. Sure, %OA and phys res are more universal, but no toon will use these unless he finds use for 2 of the skills. (that said its “only” +2 to each skill; also Flames of Ignaffar and Aether Ray are mutually exclusive as both are channeling spells). Downgrade to green.
3. Cronley-Rings: I doubt the value over a Gollus or Living ring on most builds. Only on a few auto-attack-builds or such that want every last bit of ias, these have a chance to be BiS. No base-skill bonuses, no base skill-modifiers, no sustain or defensive stats except a bit of pierce res. Most builds would rather want something else, so I dont think theyre that universally great. Downgrade to green.
4. Ikrix Scales: one of the best medals if youre going for something really tanky and/or a retal-build including soldier-class. The base-stats already support this well, but it also turns Overguard into an on-demand-heal which is really nice. Upgrade to green maybe.
Dermapteran slicers come up as a mention due to the popularity of pierce blademaster. As the surge of players and blademasters seems to be waning it probably doesn’t deserve a mention any longer.
Red is not exclusively shit tier. It is a generalization that a grand majority of builds and players will have no use for the item when reasonable substitutes are available in other items (that is we’re not talking about a perfectly rolled one where it’s the rolls making the item desirable, not the base parts).
Fabius’ Shoulderguards are an example of an item that has a narrow niche that is vastly underrepresented in terms of commonly played builds. Reviewing the options for grenado the shoulder slot has a decent legendary but that’s not saying a ton. The question then falls to how likely it is a pair will be useful. It floats or flies on the potency of the grenado bonus, no thoroughly reviewed build is going to pick it for the renewal or fighting spirit bonuses. Let’s put it in line with the other grenado items at yellow.
Ikrix scale is not used with anything nearing abundance and it is not a dominant choice in its slot.
I’ve been asking around about log’s corruption, players who were seeking it for builds and others who had juggled it for theorycraft/playtesting and I agree. The initial ranking was skewed by lack of information.
As for Cronley rings? I failed to take note of the current caster bias in terms of build popularity (crucible mainly) so the estimated demand wasn’t quite really there.
Its weird to see Stonehide and Thunderstruck rated over Ancient, Bloodletter, Formidable, Palladin. AoM trivialised resistance capping and introduced phyz resist stacking. And the recent changes to blessings inflated stun resistance sources to the point when you can have none on your build and still rock.
Are you saying that it is less likely for an item that rolls with stonehide or thunderstruck to be useful than if it had rolled with one of the other affixes, disregarding the suffix? Specific builds will want specific rolls to fine tune their gearing but this isn’t a guide speaking to every build option ever. We’re here to talk about MIs in general terms of what might be, what tends to be, and what generally isn’t useful. It is up to the player to assess the value of each item they come across, these guidelines are being developed as just that - guidelines. There’s no knowing what a player might want for a build, what they might encounter in terms of trade demands. But we can make an educated guess that items rolled with tons of resistance are more likely to be useful than an item with less resistances.
Crucible is another two part discussion by itself. The first question being “is this guide exclusively for people who play crucible?” to which the answer is a simple no.
The second is more elaborate and goes into builds options and choices, run sustainability and blessing/banner decisions where some excess of OA and DA would incline a build to skip Ulzuin’s pact, or healthy overcaps all around and sufficient mitigation would make Ulo’s blessing a waste of tributes. There’s a bunch of lengthy discussions to the second and many case by case answers that boil down to “this is the current BIS setup that has consistently yielded me the best times with no/low risk of death”