ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

Analysis of egos and artifacts (and when to replace your artifacts with a non artifact) and any other wisdeom you may have on choosing which items to go with and which ones to throw away.

Class specific, occasionally race specific, almost always build specific.

There's no simple answers. I have some rules of thumb I use (For example, Cold is a very good-and very common-resist to have. You want some but you'll probably get it anyways. Blight is very good and not nearly as common, keep an eye out for easy Blight resist swaps. Added on hit element bonus damage is worse than base damage in general, but the more hits you expect to deal, the better it is, and some types of on hit element bonus damage inflict status as well.).

But any guide you'd get would be gross oversimplification if it doesn't take into account the class and build. And would probably take pages to write something that would be misleading anyways. And writing a full class/build assessment would be a nightmare.

To boot, many advantages are even somewhat subjective.

Items are hard. This is why I keep trying to suggest rebalances to them, so that it's harder to screw up a lot, rather than trying to write guides for them.

Crippling for melee weapons and ammo, and I try to keep a weapon of purging around to deal with sudden Fearscape unless my mindpower is absurdly low.

For antimagic characters, a torque of psychoport is usually better than any artifact tool. Providing you know how to use it. For some arcane characters too.

Defense trumps offense, because in the end, the house always wins, and you are the house.

+Resists, especially particular resists (as mentioned, cold and blight are important) are great, and underrepresented on artifacts. +Status immunities are crucial unless you're playing for giant saves.

+damage on hit, +damage when hit are great; they tend to be most effective at lower levels. If you're doing 200 damage per attack, +10% damage (a huge amount) is only +20 damage (trivial to find on-hit damage that does +20). This varies with class: Flurry and Frenzy both increase the effectiveness of dmg on hit.

+dmg %s have diminishing returns. +10% damage gives +10% damage when it's the only +%dmg you have; when you're already at +100% damage, +10% just means +5%.