Endgame builds in Diablo 4 tend to require specific stats to maximize their potential, but a helpful video illustrates a fairly useful cheat sheet to help players determine which items to discard and which items to keep across all classes. While fans have certainly been vocal about the major issues that plague Diablo 4's itemization, one of its bright spots concerns the way affixes are categorized across the different item types. For example, offensive stats are largely restricted to gloves, while chest armor and pants provide the bulk of a character's survivability.
Before consulting the cheat sheet, it is important that Diablo 4 players are aware of their build's stat priority to some degree, but perfect knowledge isn't necessary. Sorcerers in Diablo 4 will likely see boots as a pivotal piece of their equipment, and consequently will look to get as many Defensive Skill ranks on them as possible. However, some item slots such as rings tend to be universal across all Diablo 4 classes, making them the easiest to farm.
The video was posted by Raxxanterax, a prominent Diablo 4 content creator, and it manages to succinctly explain which attributes take priority over the attributes that effectively make an item worthless. The great thing about Raxxanterax's system is that it allows players to accurately judge the value of an item at a first glance, which is an extremely useful skill to have due to the way Diablo 4 chaotically orders its affixes on an item's tooltip.
As seen in the video, the trick uses the sort function in Diablo 4 to group item slots together. The attribute that every Diablo 4 class wants in a helm is Cooldown Reduction, so if a player comes across a helm that doesn't have it, the simplest thing to do is to vendor it and move on. When it comes to Legendary items, unless it's a decently rolled Legendary Aspect in Diablo 4 that the player needs for ther build, it's garbage. The beautiful thing about the sort function is that it also puts the highest item power on the left, meaning that Diablo 4 players can easily sell all the weapons that drop below a certain threshold.
When it comes to Sacred and Ancestral items in Diablo 4, players are encouraged to outright ignore Sacred Rares at endgame, as Ancestral Rares offer the highest possible stat rolls. Furthermore, it is important that players obtain items with the highest or near-highest possible stat rolls, as they don't improve through item upgrades. Though this does not fix the problems that the community has with Diablo 4's endgame, it does make loot farming significantly easier, and the downtime spent browsing through one's inventory significantly less.
Diablo 4 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.