STATS Explain like I’m five pleaseI see people on here always just casually saying things like “oh no vitality is crap you want Crit chance on those gloves” or “dang, I finally got a primal ancient (insert weapon name) but it doesn’t have the right stats”

[MatthewAiden 0]

I see people on here always just casually saying things like “oh no vitality is crap you want Crit chance on those gloves” or “dang, I finally got a primal ancient (insert weapon name) but it doesn’t have the right stats” Frankly I’m wondering how one determines which stats you want on which item and, furthermore, how everyone seems to know except me. Is there a book filled with this information? Is there secret meetings? Please clue me in, and when you explain it, just go ahead and assume I’m an idiot. Thanks a bunch

 

[RayShimley 5]

I'm definitely not a d3 stats expert, as I pretty much rely on the builds from this site each season.   BUT, since no one has chimed in, I'll just post my somewhat limited understanding. 

Some of it is build dependent i.e., if you are running a build that requires you have a skill like Wrath of the Berserker or Vengeance with 100% uptime then you are likely going to need to roll cooldown reduction on every piece of gear which will allow it in order to meet a minimum threshold to achieve this. It is important to know which items from a given build can have CDR and emphasize rolling it on these.  

In terms of your example, vitality is available on pretty much every slot so it is often swapped for more exclusive affixes like crit dmg and chance.  Another example is you almost never want vitality on a weapon because there there are other more important affixes to roll like +%dmg which can only be on your weapon slot.  Also, I think increasing vitality only adds limited survivability at high GRs where you are emphasizing %dmg reduction and resists over life total for survivability.  This is why people generally skip the vitality paragon all together to load up on their primary stat instead (which also has a survivability trait like Dexterity increasing Dodge% or Strength increasing armor).

In terms of where you go to determine this, far more knowledgable people then me have already compiled that information on each of the Icy Veins class-specific builds page (under the Gear tab) where there is a nice hierarchy for each stat for each item slot.