Tempering and Masterworking Guide (Season 4)

This guide was created by Lurkin.

Coming in Season 4 of Diablo 4 are some very big changes to Itemization, which are set to ease item sorting fatigue and remove a lot of the “Damage on Tuesday’s” affixes.

In this Diablo 4 tempering and masterworking guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know to make the most of these new Season 4 mechanics.

If you’re interested in playing new Diablo 4 class, make sure to check our Spiritborn leveling and endgame guides!

How Itemization Worked From Launch to Season 3

The endgame itemization loop consisted mainly of collecting rare (yellow) items and sorting them to see if they had 3 out of 4 affixes you could use. Then you would enchant (re-roll) an affix to try and get the 4th you wanted. Then, you would imprint a single-use aspect you had extracted from a dropped Legendary onto it, turning it into a Legendary (orange). One dungeon would often fill your entire bag of 30+ items and call for a trip to town to sort and sell/salvage.

The game was nothing but a sea of yellow items- almost always junk. Legendaries had no real meaning when they dropped besides being a potential aspect to extract. Legendaries and Uniques could not be traded, so the entire trading market revolved around trying to sell rare items. Sorting these rares without a loot filter was some really “fun” stuff.

New Itemization: Season 4 and Onwards

Rare items now have 2 affixes. Legendaries have 3. Uniques have their set 4.

Every item in the game can be traded besides Uber Uniques. However, if you imprint onto, masterwork, add a socket, or temper an item, it cannot be traded.

Once you are in WT4, Legendaries and uniques will be all that you are looking for. Rares cannot get a third affix, and they DO NOT have increased values to compensate for only having two affixes. Rares will solely be for selling or salvaging for veiled crystals.

All Legendary aspects are now in the codex of power. The codex stores the highest roll you have extracted and can be used infinitely. When you salvage an item, if it has a higher roll than the one in the codex, the codex is automatically upgraded. You can imprint aspects onto any Legendary or rare item for some materials and veiled crystal.

When an item drops in WT3 or WT4, there is a chance that any number of Affixes will be Greater Affixes. This includes Uniques and Uber Uniques.

These affixes have a max value of 1.5x the normal affixes. If 100 intelligence is the normal affix, a greater affix will have a value of 150. Down the line, this affects nothing besides an initial stat bump of 50% over the normal affix base. Think of it as two free 25% Masterwork hits.

Players will regularly call these GA’s for Greater Affixes. You cannot Enchant a greater affix, say Intelligence, into another greater affix like attack speed; they will just enchant to regular attack speed affixes. However, if you find yourself with the option to choose the original intelligence again, it will be greater again.

Tempering (applied at the Blacksmith)

Non-Unique and Non-Uber items can now have 2 tempers imprinted on them. A Legendary must have 2 tempers on it before any Masterworking can be done.

Temper Manuals will drop randomly throughout the world. There is no real way to target them. However, through my PTR experience, only a single Temper manual was ever dropped from the pit. Some special ones may be tied to certain Uber bosses.

Once you acquire a Temper Manual, it has unlimited uses. Temper Manuals are divided into six categories: Weapons, Offensive, Defensive, Utility, Mobility, and Resource.

Certain items can only be assigned certain categories. For example, “Weapons” can only be assigned to Weapons. You must assign two different categories of Temperature to an item, for example, Defensive and Utility on a Pair of Pants. You cannot assign two Defensive Temperature Categories to an item.

An issue can arise on items like amulets, which have more than 2 categories of Temper options to put onto them. Once you have imprinted a Defensive Temper onto a specific amulet, you can’t change your mind and say I want to put an Offensive and a Utility Temper. You can only choose one other category after Defensive. However there are multiple Defensive Temper Manuals, and you are free to change a Defensive Frost Cage Temper into a Defensive Natural Resistance Temper.

The last and most important piece is that although the Temper Manuals are forever, the number of times you can Temper onto an item is not. You only get 5 tries to get it right. That is not 5 tries per Temper. That is 5 tries in total, and some Temper Manuals have upwards of 5 stats that can roll. You will brick God rolled 2 Greater affix Staffs trying to get Ice Spike. Accept it.

You should know: good tempered gear is a backbone of many Diablo 4 builds! 

Masterworking (done at the Occultist)

Previously, items could be upgraded 5 times, each increasing the affix values by 10%. 40 intelligence would upgrade to 60 intelligence. 2 Ranks of Devouring Blaze would go to 3 ranks. 3 Ranks of Chain Lightning would go to 4 ranks.

Now, items can be upgraded 12 times, called Masterworking. This costs Veiled Crystals and Materials acquired from the Pit.

On levels 4, 8, and 12, a random affix or Temper is granted a 25% additive bonus relative to its base at 0/12. If an item has a base intelligence of 100, its value will go up by 25 if the Masterwork 25% bonus hits that affix.

Players will regularly call these MWs or 25% MWs or MW Hits.

With each upgrade on levels 1-3, 5-7, and 9-11, every single affix or Temper is increased by 5% relative to its base at 0/12. If an item has a base intelligence of 100, it will increase by 5.

Affixes will increase in total by 45% relative to their base at 12/12. 100 intelligence will go to 145. Again, with each Masterwork hit, 25 would be added. Having a greater affix has NO EFFECT on these value increases. A Greater Intelligence roll would be 150 vs. 100 for a normal affix. It will still go up by 5 and 25 as described.

Items can have their Masterwork reset infinitely anytime you choose. The costs get progressively higher

Quick tip: you can find locations of all of the Occultists in Diablo 4 by checking with our interactive map.

0/4 Masterwork with Greater Affix Intelligence

4/12 Masterwork – 1st 25% MW hit Attack Speed

8/12 Masterwork – 2nd 25% MW hit Attack Speed

12/12 Masterwork – 3rd 25% MW hit Frozen Orb Projectile Chance Temper

12/12 – All Three 25% MWs hit the Frozen Orb Projectile Chance Temper

Tempering will be what causes you to brick an item, as you only get 5 chances. Previously it was Enchanting as the gold costs grew too high, but enchanting now has a low ceiling on how much gold it can cost.

Sometimes, it is smart to take a less-than-desirable affix so that you don’t brick your item. Treat Tempering like Blackjack, and it can be ok to stay on 13 even if 21 is the end goal, as you don’t want to bust by seeing a Face Card.

Say you are playing a Blizzard Sorcerer with the Glacial Ice Spike aspect, and you want to put the following Temper on a god-rolled triple Greater Affix Staff you managed to land.

The optimal Temper to land is Ice Spike Damage at 304.5%.

The next best Temper is Cold Damage, followed by Vulnerable, Frozen, and Blizzard Damage. Ice spikes do not scale through Blizzard Damage.

If you land a low-rolled Ice Spike Damage Temper, say 245%, or a high roll of Cold Damage, say 159%, it might be best to just accept it.

When you get a god-rolled item, you cannot afford to brick it Tempering and should cash out your chips when you can. There is no guarantee that you will never see it again after you re-roll off Ice Spike damage. You could see minimum rolled undesirable affixes. 240% Ice Spike damage is better than 158% Vulnerable damage. And don’t forget, this could be your first Temper! You need to save Temper chances for your second Temper!

Another example is the Offensive Natural Finesse Temper. Say you play a Barb build that rarely crowd controls and is always close damage. If you get a min rolled Damage to Close or a mid/high roll Damage Temper, you might want to just stay. You could waste all your Tempers seeing damage to crowd-controlled or distant, which are useless to your build.

If you find yourself in a situation where you only have 1 or 2 Temper chances left, with 1 Temper category to still try to imprint, it might be best to try a Temper Manual with a high chance of one of the stats being useful to your build. Even if that Temper Manual isn’t what your guide tells you to use.

A perfect example is a Ring. You are playing a Firewall Sorcerer and want to Temper Fiery Surge to help you get mana back. Invigorating conduit and Frigid Breeze are useless to your specific build.

It would be safer to skip the Fiery Surge Temper, as it only has a 33% chance of hitting. You could opt to take the Temper below, as any 1 of the 3 rolls will have value to you. Sometimes you need to weigh the odds and take something less optimal, so that you don’t bust and have a dead Temper. 12% resource gen is better than a passive you can’t use.

When to Reset the Masterwork? Should I try for 3/3 on the same Affix?

Each Affix and Temper has an equal chance to get the 25% bonus on ranks 4, 8, and 12. The optimal Masterwork for a build could look something like this, with a triple Masterwork on Ranks to Ice Shards, but how realistic is this?

The chances of hitting a specific Masterwork are 1 in 5. The chances of hitting 2 specific Masterworks in a row are 1/25. Three in a row is 1/125. This is beginning to sound expensive and time consuming to try and get. Maybe harder than dropping a specific Uber Unique.

My advice when Masterworking your god rolled endgame piece is to pick 1 Affix you must absolutely hit and reset at 4 until you hit it, as shown with the blue single Masterwork hit on ranks to ice shards. It is extremely cheap material wise to upgrade an item to Masterwork 4/12.

If you are not that picky, then just finish Masterworking it to 12 and live with the results.

If you are picky, upgrade to 8 and see what you get. Keep in mind hitting the same affix twice is a 1/25 chance. If you get a desirable 2nd hit like Crit Chance or Attack speed, I’d just send it. If you get something undesirable like Crowd Control Duration you should consider resetting if you are a Min/Maxer.

Ideally, I will pick 3 affixes I can live with and just try to get any combination of the three after I have hit the first one through MW Rank 4 resets.

Masterworking Skills and Ranks can be very confusing. So here’s a table to help you out. Note a Crit is a 25% Masterwork Hit…

As you can see, there are specific times where a Masterwork 25% hit does absolutely nothing, as is the case on say a Fractured Winterglass Amulet with 1 out of 2 Ranks to conj mastery. Straight in the garbage. It requires 3 MW hits to get 2 ranks in the end. Basically, your ranks and passives need to be the maximum roll within their range, or you will get the short end of the stick. Just look at how master working affects 2 vs 3 starting ranks of a skill/passive. Items like amulets with 2 ranks to a passive must hit a MW on the passive to see any increase at full 12/12 Masterwork.