This isn’t your standard ‘gear guide’. I’m not going to list off a bunch of legendaries that you should go track down or trade for. The idea behind these guides is that you can do Torment in more generalized gear, and as such I’ll be publishing here will be far less specific than most gear guides. The stat choices are honestly pretty consistent across the builds and classes, so I’ll be covering this in its own article, which will then apply to the builds for each class. Any special accommodations that need to be made will be detailed in the specific class guides, as well as class specific items.

Furthermore, I’m not going to be listing a general stat weights, as it honestly varies across gear pieces. You can get away with not having crit on your bracers or rings, for example, but you most definitely want it on your gloves and amulet, as each can roll 10% crit, verses the 6% possible on bracers/rings.

Glossary

CS – Core Stat

CC – Critical Hit Chance

CHD – Critical Hit Damage

AS – Attack Speed

AR – All Resist

CDR – Cooldown Reduction

LPS – Life per Second

LPH – Life Per Hit

Jewelry – Rings and Amulets

Core Stat Break Down

– Strength == Barbarian, Crusader

– Dexterity == Demon Hunter, Monk

– Intelligence == Witch Doctor, Wizard

Important Stats for surviving Torment.

Priority Helm Stats

– CS // AR // CC // Socket

Secondary Stats

– Vitality // %Life // LPS // LPH

Helmets are a pretty weird slot. I settled on the four listed stats as priorities as they seem to be the most efficient. Core Stat should be on *just about* everything, bar maybe jewelry (we’ll get into that later). All Resist is super important, and quite honestly its better to get it here on the helmet over Vitality or %Life as those stats are supremely easy to get elsewhere. Crit Chance is a fantastic way to boost your dps, not to mention the helmet is one of the few slots that can have it (Helmet, Gloves, Bracers, Jewelry, Shield). Lastly, you want a socket. You almost always want a socket in your helm, as the helm socket has different gem effects than the rest of your armor. Socketing for specific gear is covered a little further down.

Priority Chest Stats

– CS // Vitality // LPS // Sockets (3)

Secondary Stats

– %Life // AR // -%Damage from Elites

The chest slot is one of the more mundane slots, and as such is a little bit easier to get gear for. Aside from the typical Core Stat+Vitality combo you’ll want on plenty of gear, Life Per Second is really good on the chest at this level. The amount of All Resist you can get from the armor itself is actually lower than you could get from socketing 3 diamonds into a chest piece, and the healing you get from the life per second here is actually huge in surviving the lower torments. Lastly, you want to ensure your chest armor has 3 sockets. Having 3 sockets is going to be fairly standard for all the chest pieces you’ll ever want, honestly, regardless of what you put in said sockets.

Priority Shoulder Stats

– CS // Vitality // AR // LPS

Secondary Stats

– CDR // %Life // %Skill Damage

The shoulder slot, like the chest, is a pretty mundane slot when it comes to stat choices. I like to go with a pretty standard Core Stat + Vitality setup, as well as All Resist and Life Per Second on the shoulders. If you feel like you have some wiggle room in regards to healing (and some classes definitely do more than others), you can roll the Life Per Second into a damage bonus for one of your classes skills. Obviously the skill choice is personal preference.

Priority Bracer Stats

– CS // Vit // LPH // CC

Secondary Stats

AR // %Elemental Damage

Bracers are pretty interesting. They’re one of the few places you can pick up %Elemental damage, which is one of the biggest ways to increase your DPS. So why don’t I have it listed as priority? Because its not necessarily useful in every build. If you have all of your skills sharing a single element, then stacking elemental damage is immensely strong. However, if you have a decent variety of elements in your skills, stacking a single element might not be the best idea. I’ll detail what builds will benefit from building %Elemental Damage.

Priority Glove Stats

– CS // CC // CHD // LPH

Secondary Stats

– CDR // AS // LPS

Gloves are one of the more interesting slots, and due to its unique stat pool, is generally tuned towards offense over defense. If you’re lucky, you can actually get what are referred to as ‘trifecta’ gloves, which have Attack Speed, Crit Chance and Crit Damage. In general, these three stats are the fastest way to increase your DPS, thus the name ‘trifecta’. My personal preference favors Life Per Hit over Attack Speed, at least when breaking into torment, as gloves can roll fairly high Life Per Hit compared to some other slots, and Attack Speed is generally the least effective at increasing your DPS relative to the other two stats, which scale off of each other, not to mention there are some builds that actually want slower attacks to balance out resource spending to generation.

Priority Belt Stats

– CS // Vitality // AR // %Life

Secondary Stats

– %Skill Damage

Belts are pretty vanilla in their stat availability, and as such its a great place to pick up some survivability and healing. Standard Core Stat, Vitality and All Resist go well here, as well as some %Life to further boost your life pool. If you want to pick up some more damage, you can sub out %Life for %Damage on a single skill.

Priority Pants Stats

– CS // Vitality // LPS // Sockets (2)

Secondary Stats

– AR // % Skill Damage

Pants are pretty standard (I feel like I’m repeating myself about certain armor pieces), so as usual you wanna pick up the usual Core Stat+Vitality, alongside some Life Per Second. Pants do have one unique aspect, however, sockets. Get two sockets and put diamonds in them for some more all resist.

Priority Boots Stats

– CS // Vitality // LPS // Movespeed (12%)

Secondary Stats

– %Skill Damage

Boots have a very surprising trait to them. You ready? They make you run faster. Mind blowing, right? Bad humor aside, movement speed is pretty important. It helps you get out of ground effects faster, and generally lends to faster rift clears, which ultimately means more loot in a shorter window of time. When in only rares, your movespeed is going to be capped at 12% from your gear, although it can go as high as 25% from sources outside of skills. Outside of movement speed, pick up the standard Core Stat and Vitality, and yet more Life Per Second.

Priority Amulet Stats

– CS // AS // CC // CHD

Secondary Stats

– CDR // Socket // %Elemental Damage // Damage (min-max)

Ah, Amulets. You’ll come to find amulets the bane of your existence. They have a massive range of possible stats, and the range those stats can roll is also pretty substatial; as such, you’ll find plenty of terrible amulets. For now, the amulets you want to shoot for are trifectas, which unfortunately are pretty rare, although the existence of enchanting helps immeasurably. You want your Core Stat, Attack Speed, Crit Chance and Crit Hit Damage. In certain cases, you’ll want to sub out attack speed for %Elemental Damage, and as with other stats, I’ll note when this is the ideal choice in the specific build guides.

Jewelry Note – The difference between rare and legendary jewelry is pretty significant. The priority stats I list here are not necessarily the ones you’ll shoot for on legendary jewelry, as they can have tons of unique effects (Stone of Jordan, for example). As such, you can be a little more lax in trying to make legendary jewelry work for your build. Patch 2.1 Note – Patch 2.1 brings Legendary Gems, gems that have extremely useful effects, but can only be socketed in jewelry. As such, after you get your hands on some legendary gems, you’ll want to sub out Core Stat from priority stats in favor of sockets on your jewelry.

Priority Ring Stats

– CS // AS // CC // CHD

Secondary Stats

– CDR // Socket // LPH // LPS // Damage (min-max)

Rings are a lot like amulets, in that they have lots of stats available to them. The key difference is that their stat ranges are quite a bit smaller. Like amulets, you want to shoot for trifectas on your rings for maximum damage.

Priority Weapon Stats

– Damage (min-max) // %Damage // CS // Socket

Secondary Stats

– AS // CDR

Ah weapons. These things will make or break your build. In my testing, the ease of clearing torment depending significantly on the strength of the weapon I was able to find/craft. I’ll be honest, this is going to be the toughest part of your setup, you’ll likely find a legendary weapon before you find a high end rare. That said, you don’t need a perfect weapon to clear torment, it just makes it easier. In regards to the stats on weapons, there aren’t many situations where it changes, and it won’t on rares. The key thing with the stats on the weapons is to increase the DPS of said weapon, except in the case of Core Stat (which you want on just about everything). Damage (min-max) is the damage roll on the weapon. On one handers, the absolute max damage roll you can get is 1043-1296, on two handers it is 1252-1556. Ideally, you want to get as close to those two numbers as you can, but as a general rule of thumb, you want to re-roll the damage stat last. Bear in mind, this is a hard and fast rule, if you’re a stickler for numbers, use this tool. It’ll help you figure out what to re-roll in order to get the max DPS. After the damage roll, you want to get a %Damage modifier. Lastly, socket. A socket on a weapon can be make or break for a weapon, due to the existence of Emeralds.

Priority Shield Stats

– CS // Vitality // Block Chance // CC

Secondary Stats

– Socket // %Damage to Elites // %Life // -%Damage from Elites

Shields aren’t going to be used too frequently, but they’re usable by everyone (and near mandatory for Crusaders), and for the sake of completion I’m covering them. The standard Core Stat and Vitality applies here, as well as crit chance, which can roll up to 10% on a shield. This can push you well into the 50% range. Lastly, you’ll want %Block Chance. This only rolls 10%, but it’s an amazing stat. Barbarians and Crusaders both have ways to regain resource by blocking, and furthermore Crusaders have abilities to harm enemies via blocking.

If you want to mix it up a little, or aren’t concerned with your block rate, there are a variety of stats you can fill in. Sockets are always good for more core stat, %life for substantially more life, or increased damage to elites/reduced damage from elites. Mix and match based on what you need.

Sockets and Gems

I wanted to cover this in its own segment, more to cover what gems do, and where they might be useful in given situations. In regards to the order you should upgrade gems, its typically Weapon > Helm > Armor

Helm

Diamond – Cooldown Reduction

Ruby – %Bonus Experience

Topaz – Magic Find

Emerald – Gold Find

Amethyst – %Life

There are basically two gems useful at max level: Diamonds and Amethysts. If you don’t need more life, run a Diamond. Obviously, the higher level the better. Before you get ideas, by the way, Topazes in your helm are useless. Magic Find is a severely neutered stat in Reaper of Souls, and you only benefit from 10% of it when it comes to finding legendaries, so the 41% Magic Find you get turns into 4.1% more Legendaries. It is a massive waste of a socket, believe me.

Weapon

Diamond – %Damage to Elites

Ruby – +Damage

Topaz – Thorns Damage

Emerald – Crit Hit Damage

Amethyst – Life Per Hit

There is only one real option at max level – Emerald. If you have no crit, Rubies might provide more damage, but realistically you won’t be progressing too far up the difficulty ladder without running crit. Rubies are great for leveling though, so if you’re leveling up a new character, find a socketed weapon and throw a high level ruby in it, you’ll be able to level in higher torment levels rather well.

Armor (Chest, Pants, Shield, Jewelry)

Diamond – All Resist

Ruby – Strength

Topaz – Intelligence

Emerald – Dexterity

Amethyst – Vitality

In armor, gems have the most baseline effect. Amethysts are nice, but by and large you rarely need to actually boost life via sockets. Your go to gems are going to be Diamonds or the gem corresponding to your core stat (Rubies = Barbarian, Crusader, Topaz = Witch Doctor, Wizard, Emeralds = Demon Hunter, Monk). While it may be appealing to stack core stat for days (and it can work), Diamonds are a fantastic way to get a free toughness boost, and when you’re geared in only rares, more toughness is always welcome.

Summary

Note that there are generally more stats available on items than listed, but if they are not listed here, they’re not worth running in regards to these builds, as you usually need more than what rares can give to make it worthwhile (see: Resource Cost Reduction). That isn’t to say they’re bad, but rather that you cannot get a significant amount without set bonuses or legendary effects.

In regards to toughness, unfortunately the toughness stat in game is rather misleading. You’ll generally be told you’re getting massive upgrades when you upgrade your Vitality stat, but unfortunately that isn’t true. While having more life is good in most cases, you want a significant amount of All Resist and Armor too, as %Damage reduction (which you gain via armor and resists) will actually do more for your Effective Hit Points (EHP), which is an estimation of how much damage you can actually take. Simply stacking life is not the best method for survival.

You might have noticed that I’m stacking a ton of Life per Second and Life per Hit on these items. Excessive as it may seem (and it really is), its a fantastic way to survive Torment. Balance Life on Hit and Life per Second where you can (which generally boils down to taking Life per Hit where possible over Life Per Second), because, while Life per Second is fantastic, mobs often will burst you down before you get that much needed second life tick. As such, you want to be able to regain life by smacking them back.

Patch 2.1 Note – When patch 2.1 finally hits the consoles, you’ll note any Life per Hit and Life per Second you have on your gear will be substantially stronger. It was buffed a fair amount in this patch, and as such attaining a solid amount of healing is a lot easier in 2.1. 30-40k healing is honestly enough to get to even Torment 6 in 2.1, so when that time comes, you can roll away extra LPS/LPH into one of the listed Secondary Stats.

I also favored crit and crit damage very heavily here. There are other ways to get decent amounts of damage, but everything but stacking crit/crit damage generally requires specific items. Also, crits are incredibly satisfying, lets be real.

That about sums up the stats article. If you want to dive into creating your own builds and just want advice on how to gear at lower difficulty levels to progress upward, this article should help you immensely. If you want advice on how to build your toons as well as gear them, stay tuned! I’ll have individual guides for each class coming up, each with a variety of builds tailored to different play styles.