item level = rating system?

[Oxhammer]

the item level system that you see on weapons and such....for example my hemet's elekk gun is item level 103...and if you knew how to post a link i'd give you an example ( hint)....and i see the highest level gun (blue) is 115...and the epics numbers can actually be lower than blues but they still do alot more damage.......so I'm thinking every color item has its own system......if anyone knows how this REALLY works its be great to get an explaination.

[moopy]

At a wild guess, I'd say that it represents the number of stat points spent on the item. I think each useful attribute of the item has a cost which is spent by the item designer. With a little work, you could probably work it backwards to deduce the cost of various stats.

Of course, a level 85 item with purely useful stats is probably better than a level 115 cloth item with a load of +agi :)

[swaldman]

At a wild guess, I'd say that it represents the number of stat points spent on the item. I think each useful attribute of the item has a cost which is spent by the item designer. With a little work, you could probably work it backwards to deduce the cost of various stats.


Correct, AIUI.

I believe that the item's level is what is used to determine the vendor price / repair costs / AH deposit etc.

Note that the item level is not the same as the level required to use it. I think that the relationship between these two is what determine's the item's "quality" level. Before the expansion, greens generally had the two well matched, blues had an item level around 10ish lvls above the level requirement, and epics were 20+levels above. (IIRC some naxx epics had item levels of well over 100)

[djiss]

it's due to the fact we were topped at lv 60. but dungeon were more and more difficult and needed more and more powerful item but still were taged as "req lv 60". Item from nefarian was better quality than item from ragnaros, but both was "lev 60" item.

[JoeMuggs]

Each item has an 'item budget' that controls what stats, bonuses, procs etc. can be put on it. The amount of points that the item budget has depends on two things the quality (color) of the item and the level of the item. So for each lvl at each color an item has a certain budget i.e. a lvl 115 blue has more points than a lvl 105 blue, and a lvl 115 epic has more points than a lvl 115 blue.

This is a hot topic now because of how blizzard has chosen to do itemization for TBC. Pre BC the top blues were lvl 63 blues and tier 1 was lvl 66 epic. This created a problem because it meant that t1 was way better than top blues many ppl complained about it because it gave ppl who raided such a huge gear advantage. In TBC they decided to try to 'fix' this, now remember 'lvl 115 blue has more points than a lvl 105 blue, and a lvl 115 epic has more points than a lvl 115 blue.' but it gets more complicated when you look at a lvl 115 blue vs a lvl 100 epic. Blizzard decide to make top blues lvl 115 blues and the epics that drop in heroic and early kara(I think) lvl 95 epics in an effort to close the gap between first lvl of epics and top blues. As a result many of the epics are only slightly better, if at all than blues. Currently a lot of ppl feel they 'over corrected' and that it takes a lot of the excitement out of the game when the epics you get for hard fought clearing of difficult content are slight upgrades if not side grades to the stuff you already had. I think even blizz has acknowledged this b/c iirc they are lowing the socket item budget cost on epics, in effect raising there item budget.

But for now we are really living in ‘The Burning Crusade of Side Grades’ I have most of the level 70 5 man items I could want, my guild recently started running kara and heroics and as I look at the items there are very few clear upgrades and some items not even worth taking. IMO this is not a good thing I still like the challenge of heroics and places like kara but it really takes something away from it when you finally get it and the items that drop are bleh at best.

[swaldman]

So for each lvl at each color an item has a certain budget i.e. a lvl 115 blue has more points than a lvl 105 blue, and a lvl 115 epic has more points than a lvl 115 blue.


I may be wrong, but I thought that a lvl 115 epic would have exactly the same budget as a lvl 115 blue. I thought that the only difference was that the epic would have a much lower level requirement to use.

I may be wrong...

[JoeMuggs]

no many items have no lvl requiments to use (ie quest rewards etc.) but they still have to be balance some how. In general items of higher lvl have higher lvl requirments to use but it is not directly related look up some items on a site that give item lvl and look up somewhat similar items of the same lvl where one is green and one is blue or one is blue and one is purple and you will see that the color effects the 'item budget'.

[frott]

JoeMuggs is right:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Formulas:Item_Values

* ItemValue = [(StatValue[1]*StatMod[1])^1.5 + (StatValue[2]*StatMod[2])^1.5 + ...]^1/1.5

Second, this sum is modified by the slot (or item type):

* ItemSlotValue = ItemValue * SlotMod

The third and final modification takes into account item quality. The end result is a calculated value for item level.

* Green: ilvl = ItemSlotValue * 2.0 + 4.00
* Blue: ilvl = ItemSlotValue * 1.6 + 1.84
* Epic: ilvl = ItemSlotValue * 1.3 + 1.30


SlotMod * SlotValue = 1.0

Slot SlotValue SlotMod
Head, Chest, Legs, 2H weapon 1.00 1.00
Shoulder, Hands, Waist, Feet 0.777 1.29
Trinket 0.70 1.43
Wrist, Neck, Back, Finger, Off-hand/Shield 0.55 1.82
1H weapon 0.42 2.38
Ranged 0.30 3.33
Defense 1.20



This calculated item level usually matches Blizzards item level quite well.

The heart of the formula is to take each modified stat value to the 1.5th power, sum up these terms and draw the 1.5th root from the sum. This process makes single, high values of one stat more expensive than multiple, lower stats. Still it is a fairly simple mathematical model, but not so simple that it is just all the stats added together. It has been suggested that the actual power used may be higher than 1.5 (up to 1.7, see the discussions page).



So as you can see, all items basically have a "stat budget" based on what slot they go in, what iLVL they have (iLVL also dictates equip level), and what rarity they are.

iLevel 100 Rare Cloth Boots:
94 armor
24 stamina
22 spell crit rating
30 damage and healing

iLevel 100 Epic Cloth Boots:
117 armor
33 stamina
28 intellect
35 damage and healing

Clearly not the same budget.

[Xlorep DarkHelm]

Be careful about linking to the Wiki like that, for that Wiki sports gold seller ads, and therefore links to it are not liked here in these parts.

[WatcherZero]

Ive found a good way to See the level of the item without mods is to look at the armor value, unless its an item with more than usual armor then the higher the armor the better the stats. This works too with caster weapons e.g. A mace with 12 sta, 12 int, 280 healing and 4/5 has a dps of 44.4 and one with 18 sta, 18 int, 298 healing and 8/5 has a dps of 44.5. This quite often doesnt work with DPS weapons as they use the item budget to boost the dps of the weapon.