Question on crafted upgrade/BIS rankings concerning embellished items and toxified armor patches

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c6ce50c2f5db4dc2ab361704fe3e4e05

Hi,
Looking at the crafted upgrade rankings and those for BIS, I noticed that when looking at both spore colony shoulderguards and any of the toxic boots (toxic thorn footwraps ranking highest for this toon), the ranking appears to be including the 100% bonus for having a secondary item equipped that has a toxified armor patch applied. I say appears, as the tooltip is highlighted for the bonus. Please let me know if it is not actually using the bonus for calculations.

Further, BIS is listing both items, and also appears to be including the bonus for both items.

Due to the nature of equipping these items, this is impossible to achieve (and get the bonus). As you are limited to 2 embellished items, and as the toxified armor patch item counts as one of those (but does nothing other than activate the bonus on either the boots or shoulders), and as you can’t apply said toxified armor patch to either these specific boots or shoulders (only works on life bound items for leather), you either equip them both (without the bonus), or equip either the shoulders or boots and equip a life bound piece that activates the bonus.

Although I know of no mail shoulder items similar to the leather spore colony ones, there are at least two mail boots which also get a 100% bonus if you equip a second flame touched mail item that is crafted with a toxified armor patch (which once again, does nothing but turn on the boots bonus).

As these decay pieces are often ranked as upgrades and possibly BIS, it would be very useful to be able to turn that bonus off and on for the upgrade rankings. Further, the same would apply for BIS (i.e. better to wear both in the case of the leather shoulders and boots without a bonus, or wear just one and a toxic armor patch item to get the bonus). For the mail side, better to wear a different embellished item, or wear a toxic armor patch one to boost the boots if worn.

BIS would then need to calculate which piece is best to craft with a toxified armor patch to enable the bonus.

I realize this is likely not a simple fix, but crafting these items is very mat intensive, so having an idea of what makes the most sense to craft would be beneficial.

Here are the items affected by this that I am aware of:
Leather
Spore Colony Shoulderguards
ToxicThorn Footwraps
Slimy Expulsion Boots

Mail
Acidic Hailstone Treads
Venom-Steeped Stompers

Thanks as always for the assistance!

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In the snapshot you provided, it is ranking those two bonuses as-is, without the bonus from a toxified armor patch. (The tooltip always shows bonus effects in green text, it doesn’t change if it’s active/inactive right now.)

Short version – Best in Slot will always apply that unique restriction as expected, and it will also activate/deactivate the toxified armor patch bonus as expected.

That said… Best in Slot does not do a great job of trying embellishment combinations. We just don’t have the options for it right now. As of now you’d have to get around that by doing a little manual work: lock in a crafted item with the Toxified Armor Patch, and see what the optimizer picks to go with it, and if it is a score improvement. If you have never used the feature to try different item variants, it looks like this:

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Click that icon to the left of the rank for the item, it expands options. Then choose the effect and an apply button appears. Press it, then choose the newly modified item from the list. Note that it might complain at you if you already have two embellishments equipped. Go to e.g. the shoulder slot in this example, and press “blank this slot” at the lower-right of the filter options, then go equip your crafted item again.

Admittedly not the most elegant thing in the world… but at least this lets you play around with combos a bit.

The Upgrade Finder could also use a little thought on this… because you really want to try combinations of crafted/embellished items, not one at a time… but it’s simply not set up for this at the moment. Right now it works best if you already have one of the crafted items equipped and want to see if pairing another one would be a good upgrade.

We’ll add this to a list of improvements to work on… it more or less acts like a mini set bonus.

That said… my general advice regarding crafting in Dragonflight is “too much hassle for not enough reward”… but I’m just jaded after doing 12 years of gear optimization :wink:

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Thanks for that, it is indeed useful (especially knowing the bonus is not being utilized necessarily).

Concur on the upgrade finder as well, because you are limited to the two items (and there are so many possibilities), it would be great at least to see what the increase with and without the bonus might be (which would at least give you a rough idea of what to pursue.

Love and agree with the sage advice about crafting lol…but they are BIS :wink:

Thanks!