Okay, what gives on the chrome color odds?

Let me preface my post my stating that I DID do some homework on rolling certain oolors, but all I found essentially were posts on odds for linking up 6 socket items. So essentially I just went with the basic math, which stated that my odds for getting specific colors on a 4 socket item were pretty small, so I went with that.

I started with a 3 linked socket item that I've been using for a while (footwear) that had all blue, and everything went swimmingly to begin with. It only took two Jeweler's Orbs to get the four sockets I was after, and three Orbs of Fusing to link all four up. Then came the Chrome's and trying to get all four sockets blue - nearly 300 orbs later I hadn't even seen three blue sockets to get me back to where I started! Now I'm out of chrome's, and my character is neutered because the 3 linked blue sockets I started with powered my zombies. I can find something in my stash to at least get them up and running again, but it will be without the support gems, and given that the build/skill tree is based more or less around the minions it really messes things up. I never would have gone near what was only a tweaking situation had I known I was running into some kind of embedded color statistical bias based on either the item, character choice, or something else. I thought I had enough chromes to easily cover the situation statistically. Yet, every second roll of the dice reverted the item back to all red, which tells me quite emphatically that this is no genuinely random scenario.

What gives?

The colors you get are based on the base item you are crafting. Generally it goes like this:

Armour (Str Requirement) - Red
Evasion (Dex Requirement) - Green
Energy Shield (Int Requirement) - Blue
Hybrid pieces are a mixture of the two colors.

For example:

My boots have a high chance to roll red socket because they are armour based.


These Goldwyrm's have what we call 3 "off colors" because of the BBR sockets on evasion based boots.

There is one exception to this rule and that's for items that have no stat requirements
These gloves, although ES based, have a much easier time getting off colors for.


To answer your question about your particular boots, they were probably not ES based which is what you need for your 3 blue colors.


edit: clarified stat requirement.

It depends on item stat requirement. The higher stat requirement the higher chance to roll appropriate color

"

byzrk wrote:

There is one exception to this rule and that's for items that are equippable at level 1 (not 100% that's the criteria, if someone can correct me on this ty)

These gloves, although ES based, have a much easier time getting off colors for.

The official criteria are stat requirements, the higher they are the more biased colors are so rolling off color on high level gear is harder than on low level one. According to devs 'reduced requirements' increase off-color odds. Unfortunately, we have no idea on exact formula but it's supposed to be something like 10% chance for off-color for each individual slot, so yeah, it can be pretty damn low if you need a lot of them.

If you need a lot of off-color slots it's probably cheaper to get a piece of hybrid gear, yeah I agree the whole thing can be incredibly annoying and serves no real purpose gameplay-wise (although it has some logical high ground).

Okay, is there anywhere that actually explains this aspect, or the number crunching behind it, because I couldn't find it. Yeah, you're right, the footwear was armour-based because I like keeping the build as tanky as possible and the rare in particular came with some handy add-ons, which is why I tried modding it rather than go with other footwear that already had four linked slots that would have saved me the other orbs.

It's only annoying from the perspective that it seems that the only way you can learn these things at times is through falling into them and suffering the consequences. I used to work odds and the stats on this under normal variables should have been dead easy to accomplish with all the chrome orbs on hand. It's kind of gutting to think of all the effort that went into accumulating them over the few months I've been playing only to see them go up in smoke like this.

I'm only now reaching a point where I think I can start justifying crafting (as per various posts I've read) and as I'm about to - or was - take on Dominus for the second time I thought it might be handy to give the minions that other blue gem slot for a little extra foot speed. Or perhaps the 40% extra rarity gem thereafter.

Forgot to add that I wish I'd know about the rare I was using being unusual for having three linked blue slots in a piece of armoured footwear, because I wouldn't have monkeyed with it otherwise. It really was very very handy given my overall build.

what's your hat?

I'd suggest getting a +1 minion gems hat for your minions, anyway.

but, yeah -- you just gotta pick this stuff up as you go along, and if you plan on crafting make sure you understand the ins and outs of it or you can be on the outs.

I would always suggest buying thru poe.xyz if you need any kind of off colors, although I'd normally prefer home brewing my stuff.

The forums here are a solid place to start, but probably the best source of raw information is the PoE wiki.

"

timbo1959 wrote:

Okay, is there anywhere that actually explains this aspect, or the number crunching behind it, because I couldn't find it.

Of course you couldn't, it doesn't exist. Even the fact it depends on stat requirement of the item is largely unknown.

If you take 10% chance for off-color to be the approximate value, the chance for 4 blue sockets in STR boots would be something like 1 in 10000, so 300 orbs is virtually nothing. Fortunately, the chance seems to be better than 10% for gear of your level, but is still pretty low, 300 chromes isn't much.

Yeah, chromes are cheap and you get them by a wagonload, still I'd add my vote to the option of getting a nice +minion STR/INT helm, rolling 4 blues on that won't take more than 10 chromes.

Perhaps you'd do well to reconsider your supports if you want all armor gear, my zombies use BBRR, melee physical damage and multistrike or splash are much better than minion damage gem and whatever else blue you might want to socket.

"

raics wrote:

"

timbo1959 wrote:

Okay, is there anywhere that actually explains this aspect, or the number crunching behind it, because I couldn't find it.

Of course you couldn't, it doesn't exist. Even the fact it depends on stat requirement of the item is largely unknown.

From - http://www.pathofexile.com/skills

"The color of sockets on items is strongly biased towards the attributes that the item is aligned with. For example, a Strength/Dexterity sword is very likely to contain red or green sockets and unlikely to have blue sockets. "

So not some huge secret hidden from general knowledge. Exact numbers are not published, as is the case with most mechanics, but to say the mechanic itself is largely unknown is false.