Item Power in Diablo 4

What is Item Power?

Items have tons of affixes and stats, sometimes making it hard for players to understand whether to keep or drop an item. Item Power tries to alleviate this -- presenting 1 number to sum up how good an item is.

Item Power factors

Blizzard hasn't revealed how Item Power is calculated, but we think the following factors are at play:

• Item rarity: Normal, Magic, Rare, Legendary, Unique
• Item affixes: e.g., +x% Vulnerable Damage
• Affix stat rolls: e.g., with a range of [5-10%], the max 10% is rolled

Increasing Item Power via upgrading an item

Each time a player upgrades an item at the Blacksmith, the item's Item Power increases by 5 to reflect the item's better stats. Rare items, which can be upgraded 3 times, can increase their Item Power by 15, while Legendary and Unique (4 upgrade levels) by 20.

What's the Max Item Power?

At the moment, the highest Item Powers reported have been in the 840-850 range. These cases have dropped from Very Rare Monsters and in Helltides, although they could drop other places.

Item Power breakpoints

When upgrading items at the Blacksmith, players should be aware of the following Item Power breakpoints, which, when exceeded, boosts an item's affix ranges and re-rolls their values:

Item Power breakpoint example

Imagine a player has a Legendary Chest Armor with Item Power 710 and they're trying to decide how many times to upgrade it (remember that Legendary items can be upgraded 4 times for a total of 20 additional Item Power).

If the player upgrades the Legendary Chest 2 times, the item would go from 710 to 720 Item Power (2 x 5), slightly underneath the 725 Item Power breakpoint.

However, upgrading 3 times would bring the Chest up to 725, hitting the next breakpoint. This would both increase the ranges for all of the item's affixes (e.g., +[10-17%] All Stats --> +[13-23%] All Stats) and re-roll the values within those ranges.

No effect on Legendary and Unique affixes

The Item Power breakpoints don't change the ranges and values of Legendary and Unique affixes, which could create situations where these affixes become overpowered.

Occasional less powerful affix stat roll

This typically provides a big boost to the item; however, if the item had a high rolled stat pre-upgrade (e.g., 17% All Stats out of a range of [10-17%]), there's a possiblity that it could roll lower than that with the new range from the breakpoint (e.g., 13% out of a range of [13-23%]). The odds are against this, and players can preview the Blacksmith's upgrade effect before committing to altering the item, but should be aware of the risk.