Why are rare items so bad? What should I do with them?

Hi, because I'm new to this game I have some questions about rare items. I found a lot of these rare stuff. But actually I don´t need them, because they are not really good:



Why are rare items not that good? Should I sell these for 1-2 chaos orb? Or can I do something else with rare items in POE?

Thank you

Those are Unique Items.

These are Rare Items:


It's a little bit offensive to say "Why are Unique Items So Bad." Each Unique Item was handcrafted by somebody. Unless you enjoy hurting people's feelings, you should avoid trying to say "Unique Items are So Bad" even if it's very trendy to do so.

In Open Beta, the developers have stated that they do not wish for Unique Items to ever become "best-in-slot for all characters," because that would cause all characters to look the same in the end-game; all characters would be wearing the same items. The developers prefer each perfect set of equipment to look different - if only slightly so.

Some uniques are for world-building. They add a piece of lore or story to the game. A peek into the world's history.

Some uniques are "build-enabling" uniques. These introduce some strange mechanic which invites the player to imagine a build around it. Take, for example, Facebreaker Strapped Mitts: (ignore the gems inside). If you just slap these on a melee character, you will probably quickly realize that your damage when unarmed is very low in comparison to damage with your weapon. But a mathematical mind quickly gets thinking. "over 900% more unarmed damage. What if I started stacking flat damage?" And thus was born the Facebreaker build - stack a lot of flat damage from items like Abyssus Unique helm, get ridiculous amounts of damage scaling from it, and build survivability on the tree.

Some uniques just fill a niche. The Eye of Chayula that you linked is extremely valuable because it can enable Chaos Inoculation characters to become immune to stun without Unwavering Stance. This is very important for Chaos Inoculation characters because Stun Chance is based on damage dealt divided by maximum life (before CI), and Chaos Inoculation characters do not build very much life, meaning that without Unwavering Stance or Eye of Chayula, it is very easy to get stunlocked and die.

Some uniques are "leveling uniques." They have a low level requirement and are powerful for their level. I do not see why you would object to an item that is very strong for leveling up a low-level character. Leveling up low level characters is a necessity that everyone must go through, and which many people enjoy doing over and over again.

In general, the purpose of a unique is to offer bonuses that are not possible from normal, magical, or rare items. They are not meant to be the best items in the game. They are meant to have UNIQUE mechanics, which is that they can do things which other item types cannot. This can be for fun or helping lower-level characters level. Games are about fun (to most people).

There's no other item that I know of which has the "Cannot be chilled" mod, as on Icetomb.
There's no other item that I know of which has "Cannot be stunned", as on Eye of Chayula.
There's no other item that I know of which can even create Desecrated Ground, other than Lightbane Raiment.
There's no item that I know of which gives +1 to both Fire Gems and Cold Gems and has 60% increased Mana Regeneration Rate, although that might be possible on some rares; not sure.
There's no other item that I know of which can grant a Frenzy Charge on Critical Strike.

If you are a player who is mostly concerned about maximizing your eDPS and eHP, then by all means, go ahead and sell those Unique Items to other players who need them for 1 or more chaos. However, every Unique Item was hand-designed so that it would be used by SOMEONE. It is up to you to decide whether a Unique Item's design is meant for you, or for someone else.

EDIT: In a follow-up post I might try to explain the best uses in my opinion for each Unique Item that you linked.

"

adghar wrote:

Those are Unique Items.

These are Rare Items:

Ups! See, I did not even know what items Im talkin about :D

"

adghar wrote:

It's a little bit offensive to say "Why are Unique Items So Bad." Each Unique Item was handcrafted by somebody. Unless you enjoy hurting people's feelings, you should avoid trying to say "Unique Items are So Bad" even if it's very trendy to do so.

Sorry I did not know that.
Thank you for the explanation - I think these items are really looking cool and have some fun stats. I just thought somehow, that these items should be the best stuff for max DPS/HP - but as you said, these items have some other purpose in this game. And that makes totally sense :)

Edit:
Ah now I found also this here: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/55170
Oh boy, Kaoms Heart really looks awesome.