PoE 2 Item Modifier Guide

Today’s Path of Exile 2 item guide will introduce you to the basic mechanics of items, how they work, and the types of modifiers you can find on them.

Knowing these fundamentals is very important if you want to understand the complex crafting system, so this is an important guide for new PoE 2 players to read through. I will be keeping the terminology and explanations as simple as possible to avoid overwhelming you with too much dense information.

Bases

The word “base” is used to describe any equippable item that can be crafted on. Bases are often presumed to be Normal Rarity, but don’t have to be. Most equippable items that your character can wear can be crafted, with the exception of Unique items.

All of the wording that you see on items you find are commonly referred to as “modifiers”, or “mods” for short. Some people may also refer to these as “affixes” or “stats” so you’ll know what those words mean too when you see them. 

Here is an example of an item. The highlighted yellow section displays the modifiers of the item. 

Explicit and Implicit Modifiers

Modifiers are broken down into groups: explicit and implicit modifiers. 

Implicit Modifiers

These are mods that exist on an item, regardless of its rarity, and are always found above the rest of the mods. In the example above, a Topaz Ring will always have Lightning Resistance and this is known as its “implicit”. The implicit mod is intrinsic to that item type and will not be affected by using (most) Currency on the item like a Chaos Orb or Orb of Alchemy. Not all items have implicit modifiers, but many weapons and jewellery items do.

Explicit Modifiers

These are the affixes found below the implicit and these can be changed when crafting. If you find and identify 10 rare Topaz Rings, all of them will have a Lightning Resistance implicit, but each of them will have different explicit modifiers. 

The yellow section marks the implicit modifiers of the item, the red section marks the explicit modifiers on the item. 

For example, if you used an Orb of Alchemy on a Normal item, it would become Rare and gain 4 random explicit modifiers. You could then further alter the explicit modifiers if you used a Chaos Orb on it, which would remove a random explicit mod and then add a new one.

For the sake of brevity, players refer to explicit mods as just “mods” and implicit mods as “implicits”

The Mod Pool

Items have a list of potential explicit modifiers that can appear on them, and this group of modifiers is known as the “mod pool”. Different items will have different mod pools. For example, an Axe will be able to roll certain modifiers that a body armour cannot, such as Physical Damage. On the other hand, a body armour could roll “10% increased Armour”, which an Axe couldn’t.

I don’t want to get into the complexities of the Weight system in this guide, but just so you know, modifiers have a certain chance to appear on an item, meaning some mods are rarer than others. This chance for a mod to appear on an item that you craft or identify is known as the modifier’s “Weight”. 

Prefixes and Suffixes

The mod pool is further broken down into 2 sections: prefixes and suffixes. Certain modifiers will always be prefixes, some will always be suffixes.

This separation of mods can aid in more advanced crafting methods, but mods are  also separated in this way to prevent items from having too many mods of one type, such as Resistance modifiers or damage modifiers. 

For example: 

Resistances are commonly suffixes. If you could have 4 suffixes on a body armour, it could provide an excessive amount of Resistance. Instead, a rare item is limited to having 3 Resistances on it because it can have a maximum of 3 suffixes.

There’s no exact way to inherently know whether a mod is a prefix or a suffix unless you learn it over a period of time. A good way to learn this is by making sure you have Advanced Mods active in your UI. Just go to Options - > UI and tick the “Advanced Mods” checkbox, and then press Alt to bring up the mods.

 (Note: this was written before the release of Path of Exile 2 and this option may have slightly different wording)

Next up, let’s discuss item rarity. 

The rarity of an item affects how many modifiers it can have:

Normal (White)

0 explicit modifiers

Magic (Blue)

Maximum: 2 Explicit Mods (1 Prefix and 1 Suffix)

Rare (Yellow):

Maximum: 6 Explicit Mods (3 Prefixes and 3 Suffixes)

Unique (Orange)

Cannot be altered with crafting Currency and may have even more than 6 modifiers in some cases.

Local Modifiers

Many modifiers can provide boosts to players in the form of Life or Resistances, but they can also affect the base stats on the item itself, further scaling their natural damage or defence, which can make some bases more useful than others. These modifiers “modify” the existing affixes on the item. 

Explicit modifiers that affect the base stats on an item are known as “local” modifiers. When a mod affects a base stat, its colour will change from white to blue.

Let’s look at some examples:

Example 1: Physical Weapon

This is a Quarterstaff with 4 modifiers.

• Blue Section: Base Stats on Item

• Yellow Section: Explicit Modifiers 

The numbers at the top show the base stats on the item. These will appear in white text, but will change to blue when they are being affected by local explicit modifiers on an item.

In this case, the base Physical Damage at the top is being affected by the explicit modifiers that increase Physical Damage (“65% increased Physical Damage” and “Adds 11 to 19 Physical Damage).

For example:

Imagine you have a Staff that naturally does 10-20 Physical Damage. 

If it has a modifier on it that says
“100% increased Physical Damage”

The Physical Damage at the top will now show “20-40 Physical Damage” in blue. 

In this example, the Lightning Damage that shows on top is coming from the explicit modifier. This is shown in yellow to denote the element of Lightning. 

Because this item has no mods that affect the Critical Strike Chance, or Attack Speed, the next two base stats are shown at their base values in white. 

The 11% Increased Stun Duration will also affect how long stuns on enemies last for with attacks made with this weapon.

Let’s look at another example.

Example 2: Base Defences

In this example, the modifier “48% increased Evasion and Energy Shield” is affecting the base Evasion and Energy Shield values on the item. 

I’m pointing this out so that you aren’t confused that this modifier isn’t increasing your TOTAL Evasion and Energy Shield by this amount. If you have 1000 Energy Shield and equip these, your total won’t suddenly become 1480, but will instead be increased by the amount shown on the item (which will then be further increased by any Global increases to Energy Shield you may have, such as from the Passive Tree).

Global Modifiers

Global mods instead increase a character’s overall stats and not the item’s. These cover all modifiers that are not local. Modifiers such as “+10 to Dexterity” or “+50 to Maximum Life” can be considered Global modifiers.

Occasionally you will see this distinction made with modifiers such as “50% increased Global Critical Strike Chance” - this mod would increase your Crit Chance with all attacks and spells, regardless of the source. However, if you found a weapon with “50% increased Critical Strike Chance”, it would affect the base modifier on that item, improving the chance to deal critical strikes with attacks made only with that weapon.

Modifier Tiers

Modifiers have a tiering system, which affects how strong a modifier is.  Think of tiers almost like a “level”: a low tier Life mod might only grant between 10-20 to Life, but a high tier Life mod could grant 80-90 Life. The value of the mod cannot be changed except within its value range. This is important to know because you might find an item with all the right modifiers, but with low mod tiers and it would be wasteful to use an expensive Currency item like a Divine Orb to try to get better rolls above the maximum range of that mod tier.

Item Level

The tier of modifiers that can appear on an item is affected by the Item Level of that item. Items with a higher item level can roll mods with higher mod tiers. Item Level is affected by the area level in which you find that item, meaning that you will find items with higher item level the further you progress in the game. 

Understanding how items function will help to inform your crafting decisions. In Path of Exile 1, this matters hugely because of the Crafting Bench and advanced crafting methods known as Meta Crafting, but the Crafting Bench hasn’t been confirmed to be included in PoE 2. In fact, GGG have stated that it won’t be in the game, but I’d be surprised if it doesn’t return because of how important it was to crafting. 

I tried to keep it as simple as possible in this beginners guide to PoE 2 items, but the item system in this game is incredibly complex. As confusing as it might seem now, itemisation in Path of Exile 2 is absolutely fascinating and rewarding to understand. After the release of PoE 2, I will release more advanced guides to help people wanting to learn more and take the next step (and you bet I’ll be doing some crafting videos too!)

If you’d like to learn more about Currency and how they can be used to craft items, check out our full PoE 2 Currency Guide.