Upgrading gear to rare while leveling

Just started playing again and noticing something odd. Maybe this only pertains to my luck.

Throughout leveling to 40, I have received many items that allow the upgrading of normal items to rare. Mainly, "essence of" items and Orbs of Alchemy. Both drop fairly frequently, all the way back from the start of the game. This makes getting Rares (from normal items) fairly east and convenient.

Going from Magical to Rare, however, seems like its very costly or not something the game wants you to do? The only item I am seeing is Regal Orbs. I just hit level 40 today and in my stash, I still don't even have one. only 3 shards, so far.

Can someone explain maybe why this is? It seems odd that you can just skip a gear quality, almost to the point of writing it off, with the ease of rare upgrades from normal.


Just seems very off balance, unless I am missing the point of why this is. (and I am sure that is the case)

Thank you for your input!

Cheers

P.S. RIP Marvel Heroes.

Hello,

Normal items have no modifiers. Magic items have 1-2. Rare items have more.

When you use an Orb of Alchemy, the Rare item has a random number of stats, the stats on the item will be chosen randomly, and the tier of each stat will be random. When using an Essence, the same is true except for a single guaranteed stat. This is a lot of a randomness.

Orbs of Alteration and Orbs of Augmentation are among the most common, and least valuable, items in the game. They make it relatively inexpensive to keep re-rolling a Magic item until it has rolls you are satisfied with. When upgraded to a rare item using a Regal Orb, the existing stats remain. A Regal Orb will add a single modifier to an item. Most rare items may have up to six modifiers. As you level up your Forsaken Masters, you gain the ability to craft with them. This, along with Exalted Orbs, can be used to selectively add modifiers to items with limited randomness. While typically quite expensive, it's the closest to having guaranteed results you can get.

So to tl;dr it, randomly rolling stats hoping to get lucky is relatively inexpensive, as the results have sufficiently high variance to be unreliable. Slowly and methodically adding modifiers with more control is more expensive because you have better odds of a good outcome.