Collecting thoughts on what I should look for when I start crafting my items.
Weapons[]
The short answer is that I don't think it's worth it. There are so many affixes for weapons, and so many of them that are pretty useless, that it'd take an insane amount of tries to make anything good. Could create amusing results though.
Helms[]
All the helm recipes are essentially not relevant for the late game, with the possible exception of blood helms for their deadly strike mod. The relevance of crafted helms is further hurt by the fact that there are many very strong options for rare, unique, and even set helms, not to mention circlets that can be gambled to have a variety of strong mods.
Helms have a bafflingly tiny number of affixes, and aside from +skills and +life/mana, most of them aren't good. This is shocking to me. I could have sworn I've seen a lot of variation of mods on helms. Worth testing.
- Assassin skills (up to +2)...none of the other classes, except Barbarian (which can do way better with his class specific helms), can get +skills from helms.
- Sockets (up to +2)
- Attack Rating % (1% per level)
- Mana (+0.75 per level)
- Energy (up to +15)
Armor[]
Crafted armor faces off against powerful uniques and runewords, typically requiring a good chunk of resistances, +skills, and stats in order to keep up. Unfortunately, none of the unique mods for any of the crafted armors stand out, though they're still potentially better than many rares. Overall not worth getting.
- Sockets (up to +2)
- Enhanced Defense (up to +200%)
- Defense per level (+3 per character level)
- Resists (individual, up to +30%)
- Mana (up to +40)
- Faster Hit Recovery (up to +24%)
- Life (up to +80)
- Dex (up to +9)
- Str (up to +20)
Shield[]
Shields are almost completely invalidated by Spirit, which is much easier to make and has far better stats.
- Sockets (up to +2)
- Defense (+0.5 per Character Level)
- Resistance (up to +20 to all)
- Damage goes to mana (+12%)
- Paladin Skills (+2 to all or individual trees)
- Increased chance of blocking/faster blocking (10/15 or 20/30 respectively)
- FHR (+17%)
- Life
- Strength
- Mana
Belts[]
Belt affixes aren't very flashy, and unique belts aren't that hard to find. There's a bunch of useful unique belts like goldwrap, string of ears, Verdungo's, arachnid mesh etc., and there are even some good set belts. Crafted belts do have a couple of traits that can stick out, though. Blood belts give OW and FCR, potentially making them useful for fast-attacking melee attackers or spellcasters.
- Defense (+0.5 per Character Level)
- Mana (up to +30)
- FHR (17-24)
- Life (up to +60)
- Strength (up to +30)
Gloves[]
Gloves are some of the only items that can give IAS with standard magical affixes. Many physical fighter builds rely on gloves with +20 IAS--thankfully, crafted gloves grant this. Blood gloves give crushing blow, which automatically make them some of the best gloves for any physical fighter.
- Mana (up to +40)
- Amazon/Assassin skills (up to +2)...none of the other classes can get +skills from gloves.
- IAS (up to +20%)
- MF (up to +25%)
- Life/Mana leech (up to +5% each)
- Half Freeze Duration
- Strength/Dexterity (up to +15 each)
The only gloves I can see that are worth using are blood gloves, caster gloves, and hitpower gloves (for bowzons). Potentially perfect blood gloves for javazons, for example, would be
- +3% Life Steal
- +20 Life
- +10% Crushing Blow
- +2 Spear and Javelin Skills
- +20% IAS
- +25% MF
- +15 Strength or Dex
Which would put it among the best gloves in the game, and certainly for javazons. The closest competition would be Dracul's Grasp or a Lancer's Gloves of Alacrity, but the latter sacrifices a LOT for that extra +1 jav skills, and Dracul's is more of a defensive pair of gloves.
Boots[]
Magic-based characters aren't very spoiled for choice when it comes to good boots. Magic find, resist, and faster run/walk are desirable here. Blood boots give life leech, regen and +hp, while caster boots give mana regen and +mana, making them useful for any character.
Given that rare boots can have up to 6 affixes while crafted boots have up to 4 plus the 3 mods listed earlier, the two have similar potential.
Rings[]
In terms of MF, Nagelring and magical rings both outshine crafted rings. However, crafted rings offer potentially better resistances, and the very best crafted rings outshine unique rings in terms of life (particularly blood rings). Where crafted rings definitively lose is the lack of +all skills, CBF, and absorbs. Among set items, nothing tops Angelics for AR.
Blood rings are, in my opinion, the only crafted rings really worth having in the late game. Others offer mana, which is not a problem if you just offset with pots and leech, or the laughable damage reduction or attacker takes damage mods.
- +AR (up to 120)
- Resistances (all up to +15, or individual up to +30)
- MF (up to +25, but would require a suffix and a prefix)
- Mana (up to +90)
- Life (up to +40)
- FCR (up to +10%)
- Life/Mana leech (up to +9%)
- +Dex/Str/Energy/Vit (varies, about +15-20)
Amulets[]
Amulets are blessed and cursed with a huge variety of mods. They are also up against some of the best unique, rare, and set items in the game. Maras, highlords, and more appear unbeatable at a glance. So how well do crafted amulets do?
- Resistances (all up to +20, or individual up to +40)
- Magic find (up to +10 for prefix, up to +25 in suffix)
- Mana (up to +90)
- Skills (+2 to all or individual)
- FCR (+10%)
- Leech (+9% each)
- Dex (up to +20)
- Energy (up to +20)
- Strength (up to +30)
- Life (up to +60)