Masterworking percentages don't add up

PC General Discussion
1

My understanding of masterworking is that you are supposed to get bonuses as follows for each affix that can be upgraded

  1. 5%
  2. 5%
  3. 5%
  4. either 25% or nothing

…and so on through rounds 5-8 and then through 9-12

But when I did the math. It does not work out that way. The final numbers I was seeing do not match what I was expecting. So I took a piece of gear and decided to look at it round by round. This gear start off with a GA of +23.6% intelligence.

So even if I am conservative and chop off the extra decimal places at each stage (effectively robbing myself of extra bonus), I would expect to at least get the following progression through the first 4 rounds

  1. 23.6 * 1.05 = 24.7%
  2. 24.7 * 1.05 = 25.9%
  3. 25.9 * 1.05 = 27.1%
  4. 27.1 % (assuming I do not get the 25 bonus roll on this affix)

Instead the progression was 24.4, 25.2, 25.9, 25.9 So the percentages are lower than 5%.

Is the actual percentage really supposed to be 5% Is it affected by something else I am missing here? Or where is my math wrong?

2

I believe the 4th rolls are only the 25% stat. The others don’t get 5%.

1 Like
3

Yes I corrected that. Still the 5% rolls are not 5%.

4

The 5% and 25% are off the base value,. There is no compounding.

6 Likes
5

Alright you forgot one important rule here - the bonus 50% that the greater affix adds does not get multiplied. So you really have to calculate with a base of 15.7% and not 23.6%.

As an example, imagine a stat of 10% as a base. It would go up to 14.5% by masterworking (without any masterworking crits).
With a greater affix that stat would go up to 19.5% (not 21.75%).

2 Likes
6

Masterworking on GA affix is not based on the GA value, is based on the maximum value of the Affix if it is none GA. Each masterworking calculate from the same base value, it stay same no matter how many time you masterwork. That’s the reason your maths is off.

Therefore you don’t need to always hit the affix with GA when you masterwork, unless the GA affix is key stat for your build. It is better if you enchant the affix to near maximum for masterwork, as it will be used as base.

The math is very simple, i.e max life highest value is 1,000. GA on Max life is 1,500. Every time you masterwork, it will multiply 1,000 with the 5% or 25% if it hits. If you masterwork max life 12 times, it just multiply 1,000 12 times then add the 500 from GA max life.

3 Likes
7

Oh, that part I did not realize. That makes sense I had no idea.

I didn’t see a discussion of this anywhere but my Google-Fu is not good. Where did you learn this?

8

Give up, it’s blizzard math, no one understands the numbers.

1 Like
9

Just trial and error really.
This game is fairly new and changes frequently, you often won’t find good results on google.
I find the d4 planner on maxroll useful for testing things like this. Sometimes there are bugs but they get fixed quickly.

10

Why you doing so much math right before Christmas?
Good grief.

11

Because Christmas is a day off work for me, nothing more.

12

5% isnt 5% of the GA number, its 5% of the base number. So with 23.6%, its more accurately about 15.8% as the base and then 5% of that each time. To summarize:

(15.8 × 0.05) x 9 = x. Then after all that, you can add in the GA bonus (15.8 ÷ 2) to whatever ‘x’ is. Does that make more sense?

13

That’s untrue plenty of us understand how they work