loot-mechanics · October 3, 2026
How Item Grades Work: Reading S–D on Your Loot
What makes an item S-tier vs D-tier in Season 15? Learn what each grade means — then scan your drop at statverdict.com.
Every piece of loot in Diablo IV drops with a story: a rarity, an Item Power, a pile of affixes, and — in Season 15 — maybe a Greater Affix or two that completely changes how you should treat it. The problem is that the game doesn't tell you whether to keep it, craft it, or feed it to the salvage queue. That's where a letter grade comes in. Here's how the S–D scale actually works, and why the same item can be a treasure for one build and vendor fodder for another.
The S–D Scale: What Each Grade Means
A grade is a shortcut for a keep-or-salvage decision. You don't need to read every line twice if the verdict is clear. Here's how to read the letters:
- S — A best-in-slot or near-perfect roll for your build. Keep it, equip it, and build around it.
- A — Strong. Equip it now; it'll carry you a long way before you replace it.
- B — Usable. A solid stopgap or a Horadric Cube candidate if the right affixes are present.
- C — Marginal. Only worth keeping if you're short on options in that slot.
- D — Weak. Salvage it for materials unless there's a specific reason not to.
There is no F. Stat Verdict grades from S to D, and D already means salvage. An item it cannot read clearly gets no grade at all, rather than a low one.
The trap is treating the grade as a property of the item alone. It isn't. A grade only means something relative to what you're playing and what you're trying to do — more on that below.
Greater Affixes: Why Magic and Rare Items Can Be Keepers
Here's a mistake that costs players real upgrades: salvaging a Magic or Rare item on sight because it isn't a Legendary. In Season 15, a Magic or Rare item that carries a Greater Affix is a crafting candidate — never salvage it.
Why? Because the Horadric Cube's Affix Value Reroll rerolls all of an item's base affixes while protecting its Greater Affixes, along with any Enchanted affixes, Tempers, and Transfigurations. That means an item with strong Greater Affixes and a lousy base roll is recoverable, not dead. The GA stays locked in; you reroll the junk around it.
This directly changes grading. An item that would have been a salvage call in a previous season — great GAs, terrible base — now rates far higher, because the floor on "keep" has moved. A Rare with two Greater Affixes aimed at your build can be worth more than a mediocre Legendary.
Before you salvage any Magic or Rare drop, check whether it carries a Greater Affix worth protecting in the Cube.Item Power Thresholds and the Two Guaranteed Unique Affixes
Item Power sets the ceiling on what an item's affixes can roll. The caps for Season 15 are a 850 IP cap on Normal/Non-Ancestral gear and a 900 IP cap on Ancestral gear. Mythic Uniques are always Ancestral at 900 IP with every affix max-rolled. (Note: no Item Power change shipped in patch 3.2.1 or in the live patch 3.2.2, so these carry forward from the prior season — treat them as current, but if you ever see a different number on your own tooltip, trust the tooltip.)
Item Power matters most for one specific decision: the Upgrade Direct Item to Mythic recipe. Any Unique at 850+ IP can be crafted into a Mythic Unique via the Horadric Cube, and the output always lands in the same gear slot. That's a hard threshold — below it, the recipe won't fire.
On the Unique side, two facts changed how these grade. First, all Uniques now drop with exactly 2 guaranteed affixes, so you always know two of the roll before you even look. Second, all Uniques now drop at level 1 in any difficulty — a Unique on a low-level character is no longer anomalous, so don't dismiss it as a mis-drop.
Two more Season 15 wrinkles are worth knowing. Since patch 3.2.1, Unique and Unique Charm powers can now be rerolled in the Horadric Cube, which widens crafting candidacy well beyond Magic and Rare items. And Enchanting now works on Uniques and Mythic Uniques — on a Mythic, any added affix is max-rolled. A Unique with a weak base roll is no longer stuck being weak.
Build-Specific Grading: Same Item, Different Grade
This is the part that trips up loot filters and spreadsheets. A grade is only meaningful against a build. The same drop can be S-tier for one character and D-tier for another.
The clearest example is resource affixes. Each resource prints its own name on the tooltip — "+12 Maximum Fury," "+2 Essence every 10 Kills" — and that name tells you which class it serves. A Fury roll is for Barbarians. Essence is Necromancer. Spirit is the Druid's resource — and this is the trap: a Spiritborn spends Vigor, not Spirit, so "+X Maximum Spirit" scanned for a Spiritborn is a dead affix doing nothing. Same line, opposite value depending on who's wearing it.
Class availability also swings grades. In Season 15, Paladins can no longer use Damage Over Time affixes at all — a DoT line on a Paladin's item is pure dead weight (and tells you the item predates patch 3.2.1). Some Uniques are now locked out of certain classes too: the Banished Lord's Talisman is no longer usable by Paladin, Spiritborn, or Warlock, and X'Fal's Corroded Signet can no longer be equipped by Paladins.
Then there's raw stat weighting. Core stat scalars moved unevenly in 3.2.1: Druid, Necromancer, Paladin, and Sorcerer all saw their core-stat value rise (1.25 → 1.625), while Barbarian's Strength scalar dropped (1.1 → 0.8). So a "+Core Stat" roll is worth more on a Sorcerer than it was last season, and less on a Barbarian — the only class that went down. A blanket "core stat is great" rule would be wrong for exactly the class most likely to be scanned.
Two Slot Traps and a Resistance Rethink
Two of this season's nine Legacy Uniques will fool you if you grade by name. Nemesis Bracers occupy the Gloves slot — Diablo IV has no bracers slot. And Squirt's Blouse is a Chest piece, even though the name players know is an amulet. Grade by the slot on the tooltip, not the name you remember.
One more reversal worth building into your instincts: a Single Resistance affix is now roughly seven times the value of an All Resistance affix — on equipment, Charms, and Tempering alike. All Resistance used to be strictly better because it covered everything. At 7×, it's a genuine trade-off, so don't automatically rate an All Resistance roll above a single-element one.
The Bottom Line
A grade is a decision, not a label. S means build around it; D means salvage. But the letter only lands if it's measured against your class, your resource, your build, and this season's rules — the protected Greater Affixes, the 850 IP Mythic threshold, the uneven core-stat scalars, and the resistance rethink. A Rare with Greater Affixes beats a mediocre Legendary. A +Spirit roll is golden for a Druid and worthless for a Spiritborn. Read the grade, but understand what's behind it, and you'll stop salvaging keepers and stop hoarding junk.