Modifier
One of the most fun aspects of Diablo II is the item hunting. There are hundreds of different item modifiers with an incredible array of properties, all of them of different levels, droppable by different monsters, some only on higher difficulty levels, and more. The variety is nearly infinite.
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Magic-Only Modifiers
In earlier versions of Diablo II, the highest level modifiers in most modifier trees were reserved for magical items and could not spawn on rares or crafted items. This meant that sought after modifiers like Cruel, or Grandmaster's, or Chromatic could only be found on magical items, and not on rares or crafteds. (Modifers on Uniques, Sets, and Runewords are individually set by the game designers, and not randomly-generated from the prefix and suffix tables, so anything goes with those item types.)
This magic-only property was changed in v1.10, since uniques, sets, and runewords had become so good (in content-adding patches) that few players found any magical or rare items worth using any longer. As of v1.11 it is possible to find a rare with almost any mods that can occur on a magical item of the same type, and this makes rares potentially very, very useful. Especially thanks to the new Cube Recipes that allow rare items to be upgraded to exceptional or elite.
Item Level
A stat you'll notice listed for every prefix and suffix is the Item Level, or Quality Level, as it's more accurately referred to. This is a number that is used in many game calculations. Monsters must be at least that high in level to drop an item with that affix on it. Your Clvl must be no less than 6 below the Qlvl to get it on an Imbue. The Clvl requirement is 3/4 the highest Qlvl affix on an item. The Qlvl also factors into gambling, modifiers you see on items for sale by NPCs, repair prices, and many other things.
Crafted Items
Crafted items are basically Rares with some preset mods. Since these mods are usually ones that can not be found on magical or rare items, crafted can be used for special purposes. Blood Gloves can spawn with Crushing Blow, for instance, and other crafted items will guarantee some sought-after property, such as life leech on Blood Amulets. Crafted recipes were largely neglected in the v1.10 and v1.11 patches, when numerous new runewords were added, and as a result crafted items are now somewhat underpowered, but you may still find some potential useful recipes. Crafting is relatively cheap to undertake, requiring just a low level rune and a gem, along with a magical item, so it's worth the effort for min/max type players who worry about every last point of damage and resistance.
Charms
Charms are small magical items that provide a continuous passive boost to your character so long as they are in your inventory. There are no Rare Charms, only Magical, so you'll never get one with more than two affixes, and they don't have very many types of bonuses either. The bonuses, values of them, and their Quality Levels and Clvl requirements vary widely between small, large, and grand charms, so there are pages for each of these.
Several unique charms were added in post-release patches, some of which can only be retrieved by completing special, ladder-only quests. See the Charms page for more details.
Runes
Runes are small objects that give no bonus on their own, and can not be equipped. Instead they are like gems and jewels; they grant bonuses to items once they are socketed into those items. There are. 33 runes, and they are useful for their individual bonuses, as well as the potential to make the awesomely-powerful Runewords. Runes do not have affixes, random or otherwise. Every type of rune grants the same bonus each time you find it.
Jewels
Jewels are small objects that have no function until they are socketed, when they add their bonuses to the item you seat them in. Jewels differ from Gems and Runes, the other items that can be stuck into sockets since they are random. Jewels can be magical, rare, or unique, and there are millions of possible Jewels, with all of the prefixes, suffixes, and different ranges of values on them. See the Jewels page, for the complete listing of Jewel Affixes.
Special Modifiers
Special Modifiers are found in Diablo II and the Expansion, but only on special items. Sets and Uniques in Diablo II, and on those as well as Crafted Items in the Expansion. These are modifiers with unusual effects, and are not prefixes or suffixes.
They do not have Clvl requirements or Ilvls, like prefixes and suffixes do, and the character level required to use these items will always be pre-determined on Uniques and Set Items. On Crafted Items the Clvl can be pre-set, but is usually determined by the random mods.
Ignores Target Defense
This property is found on various Unique items and can also be added to a weapon by socketing the Jah rune. The name is somewhat misleading, since it does not mean you will always hit the target. It means that the target's defense is set to zero, so your odds of hitting are greatly increased, but since your character's level is factored against the target's level, the actual to/hit will depend on how that formula plays out. The greatest to/hit possible in Diablo II is 95%, under any circumstances.
Piercing
Numerous unique bows/xbows have 100% Piercing as a property, and you can find +33% piercing on the Unique Razortail Belt as well. Piercing is identical to the Amazon skill Pierce; it gives a projectile a chance to pass through one target and continue on to hit a second for full damage. Bonuses to Piercing stack with the Amazon's Pierce skill.
Absorption
The absorption modifier completely erases some amount of damage, usually of a specific type. The value of absorption modifiers varies greatly due to how damage is inflicted. Lightning is most useful, fire, cold, and physical less so.
Absorbing lightning damage is the most useful since lightning tends to hit in multiple small bolts. Ten points of lightning absorb can completely neuter a Lightning Enchanted boss, if it's emitting dozens of 6-8 damage charges. In contrast, ten points of fire absorb would make hardly any difference against 500 damage meteors.
Absorbs Magic Damage modifiers work against all types of non-physical damage.
Absorbs damage mods are very useful against physical attacks, especially multiple small damage hits, such as from Flayer blow darts or skeleton archers.
Absorbs % damage mods are most useful against fierce melee damage monsters such as cows or minotaurs, who hit for big physical damage.
Demon Heal
| A modifier that is only found in the Expansion, "Demon Heal" is on a lot of Crafted items. It heals your character listed amount of hit points (usually 1-3) for every Demon (as opposed to normal/animal or undead) you kill. This works like the +mana per kill mods, and doesn't appear to work from kills by minions.
Deadly Strike
A % chance of dealing Double Damage. The damage is doubled after all other bonuses, including Str or Dex modifying weapon damage. Will never stack with Asn/Barb/Ama Critical Strike bonuses. It rolls for 2x damage for one, then the other if it fails. So having this increases double damage chances, but never allows 4x damage.
Crushing Blow
D2C: In Diablo II, Crushing Blow was enormously powerful, since it had the listed % chance of reducing a monster's current hit points by 50%. You could hit multiple times with this and kill quickly while doing very low damage. For example hitting for 1 damage on a 100 hps monster, but with Crushing Blow the monster's hps would be 100 > 49 > 24 > 12, in just 3 hits, rather than 97, if you had no Crushing. It only worked on normal monsters, not on bosses or other characters, and didn't work with ranged attacks at all.
Expansion and v1.08+ D2:Crushing Blow works with all attacks and on all targets, but the reduction in hps is much less than it was in D2, and the chunks of hit points removed are further reduced by type of weapon and monster. Crushing blow is most useful against very large monsters, or when your character deals multiple, rapid, low-damage hits. It's most noticeable early in a fight, when the monster has the most hit points so removing some fraction of them is far larger damage than removing that same fraction of just a few hit points.
- Normal monster: 1/4 Melee, 1/8 Ranged Attack.
- Other: 1/10 Melee, 1/20 Ranged Attack.
"Other" includes all types of boss monsters as well as other players and their hirelings. This doesn't sound like much, but if Izual has 100,000 hps, taking off 1/20th with your bow would be worth 5,000 hps.
Open Wounds
A type of physical damage, it has a poison-like effect, causing "uncontrollable bleeding" and steady hit point drain. The damage will stack with poison so both can drain at once. It also stops healing for the duration. In D2X the damage scales up with the level of the character inflicting the Open Wound, by the following formula.
- (Attacker level * 9 + 40)/256 pts of damage per frame over 4 seconds</blockquote>
This breaks down as follows:
- Clvl 10: 12.7 per sec over 4 seconds for a total of 50.8 damage.
- Clvl 30: 30.3 per sec over 4 seconds for a total of 121.0 damage.
- Clvl 50: 47.9 per sec over 4 seconds for a total of 191.4 damage.
- Clvl 70: 65.4 per sec over 4 seconds for a total of 261.7 damage.
- Clvl 90: 83.0 per sec over 4 seconds for a total of 332.0 damage.
There are 25 frames per second in the Diablo II engine. Like poison, Open Wounds doesn't stack, but resets with each new application. It also prevents healing for the duration.
+ Defense vs. Missiles
A modifier found on several Uniques and set items in the Expansion, this one adds a set amount to your Defense against ranged attacks that can be Avoid'ed (Amazon skill) or blocked. Works against things like arrows, quills, spears, and projectile elemental attacks from Abyss Knights. Does not work on damage over time spells like Firewall or Poison clouds.
Increased Blocking Speed
Diablo II pre-v1.08: Found only on Culwen's Point in D2, it has no function.
Much improved in the expansion, and it can now be found on numerous unique and runeword shields. This property helps against becoming block locked, and lets your character block more hits, if multiple strikes come in a short period of time.
Slows Target
This property works like cold, turning the target blue and slowing them, but it deals no cold damage. The same item on the same character will not stack, however multiple items with slow on them will, or the same/multiple items on different characters will. This property is banned in some PVP games, since it is so powerful it completely unbalances some matchups.
