Repair or not?

Is there a way to know the outcome of repairing a damaged or low quality item based on the available info of it? I found a damaged AP armor the other day. Decided to repair it, and it came out at 495 or 496 defense, don't remember the exact number now. I cubed it for sockets, and it gave me three. Eventually I traded the armor for

Ohm on non-ladder.

The big things you'll want to look at are the max sockets vs item level, defense, staffmods, and automods. When you use the 'normal quality' recipes on an item, it rerolls defense, staffmods, and automods, AND sets its item level to 1. At ilvl 1, some items are going to have different max sockets. With

Archon Plate, for example, a normal drop has 4 max sockets. A 'repaired'

Archon Plate has max 3 sockets. If you're trying to get an Enigma, Wealth, etc base, then fixing low quality items is awesome. If you want a Fortitude, well, not so much.

https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Sockets

Winterkill wrote: 6 months ago

The big things you'll want to look at are the max sockets vs item level, defense, staffmods, and automods. When you use the 'normal quality' recipes on an item, it rerolls defense, staffmods, and automods, AND sets its item level to 1. At ilvl 1, some items are going to have different max sockets. With

Archon Plate, for example, a normal drop has 4 max sockets. A 'repaired'

Archon Plate has max 3 sockets. If you're trying to get an Enigma, Wealth, etc base, then fixing low quality items is awesome. If you want a Fortitude, well, not so much.

Never though about this trick to get less sockets from Act 5 socket quest (wich gives you the max possible for the item)

Is it possible to make a regular 5/6 socket weapon have a max 4 with this trick (yes i"m think in 4S spears/polearms)?
Or it will end up always with a max 3 socket?

fredkid wrote: 1 month ago

Is it possible to make a regular 5/6 socket weapon have a max 4 with this trick (yes i"m think in 4S spears/polearms)?
Or it will end up always with a max 3 socket?

Not with spears/polearms, no.

Check the link that krathkor provided for max socket details per item and ilvl range. Search the table for the item you're interested in, and look at the left-most column, which indicates the max sockets at ilvl 1-25.

Generally speaking though, very few items have max sockets 4 or greater at ilvl 1-25 - it's basically only staves and axes, not spears/polearms.

Also, you can typically never acquire an elite base in the middle range (ilvl 26-40), because they won't drop from monsters at that level and the cube repair recipe drops them down all the way to 1. Bases that theoretically can have max sockets >4 (the ones you'd be interested in "pushing down" to max = 4) have their max sockets = 4 in that middle range. Except axes and staves, that can have 4+ sockets in the lowest ilvl range.

Is there a way to know that a item was repaired?
(I thinking in someone selling me a unsocket item that will end up with less max sockets than I expect because it was in fact a low quality repaired...)

fredkid wrote: 1 month ago

Is there a way to know that a item was repaired?
(I thinking in someone selling me a unsocket item that will end up with less max sockets than I expect because it was in fact a low quality repaired...)

This is a risk, yes. I'm not sure if there's a way to tell besides staff/auto-mods. If an item has +X to a required level 12 or higher skill then it's guaranteed to be higher than ilvl 1, IIRC. Similarly, you can use the automods on class-specific equipment to determine whether an item is actually ilvl 1. For example, a Paladin shield with ilvl 1 can have at most +10 to all resistances, and Amazon spears/bows with ilvl 1 can only have at most +1 to skill tree.

https://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/i ... aladin.txt
https://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/i ... amazon.txt