Gloves and gauntlets have the same egos and the same ego multiplier. The only differences are that gauntlets have higher base damage, APR, and physical crit chance, but worse attack speed. The attack speed, of course, only matters when you are actually unarmed.
mbonus_material(x, y) means a random value selected from a normal distribution with a mean of x*level/90 and standard deviation of x/4, but never above x or below 0, multiplied by material level / 5, rounded up, and finally with y added at the end.
In other words, mbonus_material(10, 5) means a value between 5 and 15. So that's how I'll express all the ego numbers.
I will note which egos are arcane powered and antimagic powered. You can avoid getting antimagic powered egos from Ungrol by having a spell talent when you buy the randart; this may affect your decision to read the Tome of Wildfire/Uttercold. Remember that runes and some racials are spells. If you want to be able to freely switch between having spells and not having spells, simply equip/unequip a staff to grant/ungrant yourself the Command Staff spell.
You can avoid getting arcane powered egos from Ungrol by going antimagic. (Don't do this.)
If you have spells while antimagic then you won't get either kind of ego. Rare and randart staves are not always arcane powered, so you can grant yourself Command Staff as an antimagic character if you hold onto one. You probably don't want to block antimagic egos if you are antimagic, though.
cinder, corrosive, naturalist's, storm, polar, sand, psychic's, blighted, umbral, radiant, temporal
Level range: 1-50
Rarity: 9 each (exception: psychic's is 18)
Cost: 5
Armor (sand only): +5-10
Changes damage: +3-11% fire/acid/nature/lightning/cold/physical/mind/blight/darkness/light/temporal
Changes resistances: +5-10% fire/acid/nature/lightning/cold/mind/blight/darkness/light/temporal
Damage (melee): 5-15 fire/acid/nature/lightning/cold/physical/mind/blight/darkness/light/temporal
Damage (ranged, temporal only): 5-15 temporal
Unarmed attack:
Burst on hit (radius 1, sand only): 5-15 physical
Burst on crit (radius 2): 5-15 fire/acid/nature/lightning/ice/physical/mind/blight
On hit: 5-15% chance to reduce damage by 15% (umbral), blind (radiant), gain 10% of a turn (temporal)
Talent on hit (talent level is always the material level):
Cinder/corrosive/naturalist's/storm/polar/sand: Fire/Acid/Poison/Lightning/Ice/Sand Breath, 10% chance
Psychic's: Psychic Lobotomy, 20% chance
Blighted: Soul Rot, 20% chance
Blighted, umbral, radiant, and temporal are arcane powered.
These egos are so similar that they are combined. Good for pretty much any melee character early due to the extra damage. Differences between them you might have missed:
- Polar's unarmed attack has a burst of ice damage on crits (cold damage with 25% chance to freeze). The freeze uses the higher of your spellpower or mindpower to beat saves.
- Umbral, radiant, and temporal don't have burst on crit or a talent on hit, instead they have the numb/blind/energize chance. The loss of the talent on hit makes these pretty bad for unarmed fighting.
- Temporal is the only one with ranged damage in addition to melee damage.
- Sand gives armor instead of physical resistance, and has a burst on hit in addition to the burst on crit, making it particularly appealing as a weapon. For that matter, it's the best ego here even when not being used as a weapon.
Blighted is also great as an early brawler weapon, because Soul Rot has relatively high damage even with bad spellpower, and it has twice the proc chance of the breaths. Psychic's is not because you mostly won't be able to beat relevant enemies' mental saves so the Psychic Lobotomy will do no damage (and the mind damage will be halved too).
of dexterity
Level range: 1-50
Rarity: 6
Cost: 4
Accuracy: +10-25
Changes stats: +2-6 Dex
Unarmed attack:
Accuracy +4-12
Crit chance +4-12%
Accuracy's nice. Unfortunately, these aren't much good for Brawler because they have no procs at all and some extra crit chance doesn't make up for that.
of magic (arcane)
Level range: 1-50
Rarity: 6
Cost: 4
Changes stats: +2-6 Magic
Changes damage: +3-11% arcane
Unarmed attack:
Damage (melee): 4-19 arcane
Burst on crit (radius 2): 5-15 arcane
Nothing much to say about these.
of strength
Level range: 1-50
Rarity: 6
Cost: 4
Changes stats: +2-6 Strength
Physical power: +5-15
Unarmed attack:
Base damage increased by 3-10
With unarmed attacks you're usually looking for procs rather than extra base damage, and the base damage bonus from this ego is frankly not very much. Extra physical power is great if you have talents that need it to apply statuses, though.
restful
Level range: 1-50
Rarity: 6
Cost: 4
Max stamina: +10-40
Life regen: +1-4
Stamina regen: 0.5-2
Unarmed attack:
Talent on hit: Slumber, 10% chance, talent level [material level]
The numbers on these are low enough that I pretty much ignore them. The Slumber proc is mostly going to fail on relevant enemies since Brawler doesn't have mindpower, but when it does succeed it means they're going to lose at least one turn.
steady
Level range: 1-50
Rarity: 6
Cost: 4
Accuracy: +5-10
Physical save: +5-10
Mental save: +5-10
Disarm immunity: +20-50%
Unarmed attack:
Accuracy +5-10
Talent on hit: Perfect Control, 10% chance, talent level [material level]
Perfect Control is the old version of Quick as Thought. It doesn't give you global speed, just accuracy and crit chance, and it scales on mindpower so it's not going to give you a lot.
of war-making
Greater ego
Level range: 30-50
Rarity: 30
Cost: 20
Critical multiplier: +5-15%
Mental crit chance: +5-20%
Physical crit chance: +5-20%
Spell crit chance: +5-20%
Unarmed attack:
Crit chance +4-14%
Base damage +3-10%
Talent on crit: Cripple, 20% chance, talent level [material level]
A great passive glove ego even after the nerf, for obvious reasons. Extremely good for unarmed attackers, especially Flexible Combat users, because Cripple makes an additional full melee attack with a good damage multiplier, and if you beat the victim's physical save with your Accuracy, it reduces opponent's attack/spell/mind speeds on top of that. The speed reduction scales with Cunning for some reason.
Do note, however, that it is a talent on crit, not on hit.
of the iron hand
Greater ego
Level range: 30-50
Rarity: 30
Cost: 25
Talent masteries: +0.2 Technique / Grappling
Changes stats: +2-5 Con, +2-5 Str, +2-5 Wil
Disarm immunity: +20-50%
Unarmed attack:
Talent on hit: Disarm, 10% chance, talent level [material level]
The passives on this are worse than the passives for some of the non-greater egos, but Disarm on hit is really good, since 1. it makes an extra melee attack, and 2. it disarms.
alchemist's (arcane)
Greater ego
Level range: 30-50
Rarity: 35
Cost: 35
Changes stats: +2-5 Mag, +2-5 Wil
Damage (melee): +3-10 acid, +3-10 fire, +3-10 lightning, +3-10 cold
Unarmed attack:
Damage (melee): +4-29 acid, +4-29 fire, +4-19 ice, +4-29 lightning
That 19 is not a typo. Reasonably nice for melee characters and utterly useless for alchemists.
brawler's
Greater ego
Level range: 30-50
Rarity: 25
Cost: 75
Talent cooldown: Double Strike (-1 turn)
Changes stats: +2-5 Cun, +2-5 Dex, +2-5 Str
Physical save: +5-15
Unarmed attack:
Crit chance +4-14%
Accuracy +2-12
Talent on hit: Set Up, 10% chance, talent level [material level]
Set Up is pretty much the bottom of the barrel for talent procs, so taken alone this ego really isn't great for brawlers. Or in general. However, on a randart combined with egos that have good procs, the Double Strike cooldown reduction can be very good, especially if you get this ego twice for -2 cooldown.
of butchering (antimagic)
Greater ego
Level range: 10-50
Rarity: 30
Cost: 60
Changes resistances: +5-15% blight
Spell save: +8-23
Accuracy: +4-14
Armor penetration: +5-15
Physical power: +4-14
Unarmed attack:
Armor penetration: +5-15
Slows global speed by 10-25%
10-25% chance to corrode armor by 30%
Aside from the theme being an absolute mess, this ego is nice if you need armor penetration and not particularly appealing otherwise.
of the verdant (antimagic)
Greater ego
Level range: 20-50
Rarity: 30
Cost: 60
Talent mastery: +0.2 Wild Gift / Antimagic
Changes resistances: +5-20% blight, +5-20% darkness, +5-20% arcane
Damage affinity: +5-15% nature
Spell save: +8-23
Unarmed attack:
Talent on crit: Call of the Ooze, 20% chance, level 2
Turns out there's one antimagic glove ego that is actually good. You get a bit more damage reduction from Antimagic Shield, and if you have another Antimagic mastery bonus you can save a talent point in Resolve. The affinity is also not completely irrelevant, and I hear people like resistances.
The Call of the Ooze proc gives you an additional melee attack for 139.57% damage as acid, though it will be next to a random visible monster which may not be the one you're attacking (even more reason to always fight one on one). It won't do anything if there's already an ooze out, because your Mitosis level is 0, but the ooze will have like 30 life so it will generally die right away anyway. And do note that it's a talent on crit.
If you actually know Mitosis the proc improves a lot but oozemancers generally do not take Flexible Combat.
scouring (antimagic)
Greater ego
Level range: 20-50
Rarity: 30
Cost: 60
Spell save: +8-23
When hit in melee:
15-35% chance to reduce effective powers by 20%
15-35 manaburn
Unarmed attack:
On hit:
15-35% chance to reduce effective powers by 20%
15-35 manaburn
"Reduce effective powers by 20%" means that their effective, not raw, accuracy, physical power, spellpower, and mindpower are reduced by 20%. In addition to being a bizarre scaling violation, nobody remembered to make it work on steampower.
If you're not using unarmed attacks this ego is a total joke since you need to get hit in melee, probably multiple times, for it to do anything. If you are using unarmed attacks then it has some potential, giving you some protection from statuses (at least cross-tiers) and reducing enemy damage. It will probably take too long to drain something's entire arcane resource pool, though.
stone warden's (arcane)
Greater ego
Level range: 40-50
Rarity: 40
Cost: 90
Changes resistances: +4-12% physical
Changes stats: +5-15 Con
Armor: +5-20
Armor hardiness: +5-15%
Unarmed attack:
Talent on hit: Stone Touch, 5% chance, talent level [material level]
Okay, I take it back. Set Up isn't the bottom of the barrel for glove procs. This is.
It's still a great ego for the armor though, and for the hardiness if you're a light armor character. The physical resistance is also decent.
of the starseeker (arcane)
Greater ego
Level range: 25-50
Rarity: 25
Cost: 90
Active talent: Starfall (level 1, 20 turn cooldown)
Changes resistances: +5-10% light, +5-10% darkness
Changes stats: +1-6 Mag, +1-6 Cun
Infravision radius: +1
Unarmed attack:
Burst on crit (radius 2): +10-50 light, +10-50 darkness
Good for spellcasting classes that want another stun and don't mind it using the charm cooldown. You should probably mind it using the charm cooldown.
Not much good for unarmed attacks either; the more often you're critting, the less exciting flat damage is.
of dispersion (arcane)
Greater ego
Level range: 20-50
Rarity: 35
Cost: 70
Active talent: Disperse Magic (level 3, 20 turn cooldown)
Changes resistances: +3-10% arcane
Changes stats: +3-10 Mag, +3-10 Wil
Damage (melee): +4-19 arcane
Unarmed attack:
Damage (melee): +4-19 arcane
Talent on hit: Manathrust, 10% chance, level 3
Every non-antimagic character should try to find and carry one of these in order to get rid of problematic spell sustains on NPCs. You can also use it to teleport Wraithforming enemies away if they're inside walls, or to get rid of diseases on yourself if you really need to. Disperse Magic doesn't check saves or anything, you're always going to remove 3 sustains or effects. By glove standards, the stat bonuses are pretty fat too.
of regeneration
Greater ego
Level range: 30-50
Rarity: 25
Cost: 25
Life regen: +1.5-6
Psi regen: +0.1-0.4
Stamina regen: +0.3-1.3
Unarmed attack:
Talent on hit: Second Wind, 10% chance, level 1
How the hell is this a greater ego? Stops you from running out of stamina but Brawlers don't generally have stamina problems in the first place. It can be a nice proc to see on a randart that also has other egos that actually do something, but other than that...
of sorrow
Greater ego
Level range: 30-50
Rarity: 30
Cost: 80
Active talent: Ruined Earth (level 3, 20 turn cooldown)
Mental save: -15 to -5
Mindpower: +3-10
Damage (melee): +10-40 mind, +10-40 darkness, +10-25% chance to cause random gloom
Unarmed attack:
Talent on hit: Reproach, 10% chance, talent level [material level]
Ruined Earth is a good talent, but the situations where you want to use it are often situations where you don't want to put your other charms on cooldown. It gets better if you have Spine of the World.
This is a really good ego for melee characters because of the gloom chance. Stun/confuse/slow that use the highest of your accuracy, spellpower, or mindpower to beat saves, so with Perfect Strike you can hit pretty much anything with them. And they stack with non-gloom stun/confuse/slow.
of the juggernaut
Greater ego
Level range: 30-50
Rarity: 20
Cost: 40
Active talent: Juggernaut (level 2-4, 30 turn cooldown)
Changes stats: +1-6 Con
Mental save: +3-10
Physical save: +10-30
Spell save: +3-10
Disarm immunity: +20-50%
Unarmed attack:
Damage (melee): +4-29
Talent on hit: Juggernaut, 10% chance, talent level 1
The unarmed procs will give Brawlers 100% uptime on Juggernaut without inflicting the charm cooldown, and there's not much point in using the charm on Brawlers because the glove proc will just overwrite the charm's higher Juggernaut values. As far as using the charm on not-Brawlers, I generally have things I'd rather use the charm cooldown on (a thorny skin totem or kinetic psionic shield is nearly always better) and you can get non-charm Juggernaut from Daneth's Neckguard too.
spellstreaming (arcane)
Greater ego
Level range: 30-50
Rarity: 40
Cost: 60
Mana regen: +0.1-0.4
Spellpower: +4-16
Spell crit: +3-10%
Unarmed attack:
Damage (melee): +4-19 arcane
Talent on hit: Elemental Bolt, 10% chance, talent level [material level]
Okay, can we talk about how ridiculously low regeneration rates are in this game? Spellpower and crit are good, at least.
You might know Elemental Bolt as the insultingly slow talent that gets thrown around in Scintillating Caves and ends its message with an exclamation point. It randomly does acid/fire/cold/lightning/nature/blight/light/arcane/darkness damage, and its damage is dependent on [talent level] * [Magic], ignoring spellpower. The damage sucks, by the way, even before accounting for the disadvantage of randomized damage type.
heroic
Greater ego
Level range: 30-50
Rarity: 20
Cost: 75
Armor: +3-6
Max life: +40-80
Mental save: +5-15
Unarmed attack:
+2-12 accuracy
+3-10 base damage
Talent on hit: Battle Shout, 10% chance, talent level [material level]
It's max life, not much to say. Brawlers can maintain the Battle Shout continuously so that's nice.
of archery
Greater ego
Level range: 30-50
Rarity: 17
Cost: 35
Active talent: Steady Shot (level 3, 20 turn cooldown)
Accuracy: +5-10
Armor penetration: +5-15
Changes stats: +2-9 Dex, +2-9 Cun
Unarmed attack:
+5-10 armor penetration
+5-10 accuracy
Talent on hit: Perfect Strike, 15% chance, talent level [material level]
It turns out that you can make Steady Shot a bad talent. You just have to put it on the charm cooldown, and make it a 20 turn one.
The Dex and Cun look appealing for Brawlers, until you scroll down and see the unarmed attack section. Brawlers already have Perfect Strike, and this proc will overwrite theirs with one that's potentially at a worse level. I guess it's a good ego for fighting things with armor.
Fixedart gloves and gauntlets
The (Maj'Eyal) label means that the item only appears on the Maj'Eyal continent, not in the Far East or in Embers of Rage.
Arcane powered
Crystle's Astral Bindings
Level range: 8-20
Cost: 340
Rarity: 225
If you use damage spells, this is one of the best pairs of gloves in the game due to the Dust to Dust proc. If you're making unarmed attacks, these have what is probably the weirdest set of melee procs in the game. Mind Blast is the Anorithil talent that confuses things, but if you're making unarmed attacks it is unlikely that you have enough spellpower for it to work on anything relevant. Turn Back the Clock is the old Paradox Mage talent that reduces its victim's stats - again, you probably don't have spellpower so expect this to reduce all stats by 3 or 4. Shadow Simulacrum is the Anorithil talent that makes a friendly clone of an enemy, which would be great if it worked on uniques and bosses, which it doesn't. At least it works on rares.
Also, the damage conversion is really awkward.
Dakhtun's Gauntlets
Level range: 40-50
Cost: 2000
Rarity: 300
You already know these have the best passives of any gloves/gauntlets in the game. The Greater Weapon Focus proc is also really good. For unarmed damage output they are often beaten by good randart gloves or Fists of the Desert Scorpion, however.
Fist of the Destroyer
Level range: 40-50
Cost: 800
Rarity: 300
These would be great melee gloves for a spellpower-based unarmed class. You might have noticed that such a class does not actually exist. The set bonus isn't worth giving up Black Robe or Black Plat€ (or massive armor in general if you're not a corruptor).
Hands of the World-Shaper
Level range: 40-50
Cost: 800
Rarity: 300
Stone Warden-themed gloves, with damage bonuses and category masteries that Stone Warden doesn't actually benefit much from. The gravity burst is just physical damage with a 10% slow (lol). The gravity pin burst is physical damage that pins for 2 turns, but requires beating physical save with your spellpower.
Worse than Dakhtun's for pretty much anyone, but the earthen missiles proc makes it good for spellpowery flex users that haven't found Dakhtun's.
Stone Gauntlets of Harkor'Zun
Level range: 26-31
Cost: 150
Rarity: 210
These just suck.
Storm Bringer's Gauntlets (Maj'Eyal)
Level range: 25-35
Cost: 1000
Rarity: 250
Great passives for spellcasters, and the procs make them good for early Brawlers (but getting them early usually means bumming them off the Horned Horror). Not much else to say.
₩ill of Ul'Gruth (Ashes)
Level range: 40-50
Cost: 800
Rarity: 290
Excellent passives and an excellent active, but here's the thing. This should be obvious, but making your Obliterating Smash destroy walls is bad. You can work around this when using it actively, but if you are unarmed or have Flexible Combat then every melee attack has a 20% chance of ruining your terrain. The item is one of the two reasons that Arcane Might is sometimes better for Doombringer than Flexible Combat is. (The other reason is $awrd).
The gloves/gauntlets you get from using the Crystal Focus on gloves/gauntlets
These are the same as the weapon you get from using them on a weapon, except they're gloves/gauntlets. Which makes them less bad, but still pretty bad for anything other than a short-term physical/spellpower/arcane damage boost.
Antimagic powered
Spellhunt Remnants
Level range: 1+
Cost: 1000
Rarity: 550
10 silence damage means "10% chance to silence". It doesn't do any actual damage. You have to beat the target's mental save with 70% of your Accuracy to apply it (what), and it can't cause brainlock for some reason.
These are the gloves that unarmed characters swap to for fighting spellcasters, and the gloves that other characters swap to if they need to get rid of spell sustains and haven't found gloves of dispersion. The active only removes 2 magical sustains or effects, which is worse than dispersion's 3, but it inflicts +50% spell disruption and can raise existing spell disruption up to 75%. (The Destroy Magic proc at level 5 can't raise it past 70%, and the disruption ego on weapons can't raise it past 50%).
The passives are uniformly bad compared to other gloves.
Other power sources
Assassin's $urprise (Embers)
Level range: 10-20
Cost: 220
Rarity: 200
The wielded/worn effects on this suck, and melee with it isn't very good either, but instant (seriously WTF) crippling poison is really, really good.
Flamewrought (Maj'Eyal)
Level range: 5-12
Cost: 50
Rarity: 180
Unremarkable. Decent early on Brawler because of the 30% Flamespit proc.
Gloves of the Firm Hand
Level Range: 17-27
Cost: 150
Rarity: 210
The effects of the procs on these might not be immediately obvious. Clinch will start grapples, but the grapple will use your Clinch talent level to determine its damage and damage redirection - which means that if you don't know Clinch yourself, it will just start a grapple that does 1 damage per turn and doesn't have any damage redirection or stamina drain. It still gives you an extra unarmed attack though, which is good.
Speaking of canceling grapples, a Take Down proc will cancel grapples, which is exactly what you don't want if you know Clinch. But again, it makes an extra attack and that's always good.
Maim makes an extra attack, starts a grapple, and inflicts a small damage and global speed penalty on anything already grappled (without breaking the grapple).
So, using these for hitting things has a few problems: if you are a brawler, Take Down will break your grapples, which you don't want. If you aren't a brawler, the grapples from Firm Hand won't do much for you. Finally, if you use any melee attack that hits things from range (Ice Claw, Obliterating Smash, etc.) and Take Down procs, it'll make you rush at whatever you just hit, which is remarkably annoying.
However, with all that said, because all three of the procs make extra unarmed attacks, they add a lot of damage, so they're still pretty good.
Oh, and Clinch and Take Down will just fail completely if you're wielding a weapon or shield or wearing massive armor (but Maim still works).
Fists of the Desert Scorpion (Maj'Eyal)
Level range: 20-40
Cost: 1000
Rarity: 300
The passives don't look much better than some ordinary gauntlets of sand, but the procs make these outstanding for unarmed melee. Implode subtracts 50% from global speed and can't even be saved against. Quick as Thought is a Mindslayer talent that gives you extra global speed, accuracy, and crit chance, and Perfect Control is the old version of that same talent, and they overwrite each others' accuracy and crit chance bonuses (but Perfect Control doesn't touch the global speed).
Level 3 Poisonous Bite is a full additional melee attack for 573% damage, but that 573% damage is inflicted as pure poison damage, so it's dealt over 6 turns and you have to beat physical save with accuracy to apply it. If you fail to apply it (or the enemy is just poison immune) you'll only get the initial 1/6th of the damage.
Mindhook objectively isn't particularly good, but it is very convenient. One thing nobody knows about Mindhook is that it dazes the victim for 1 turn, ignoring stun immunity, but this requires beating their physical save with your Mindpower.
Hands of ₵reation (Embers)
Cost: 900
No rarity; must be crafted
These are worse than Steam Powered Gauntlets and you're practically guaranteed to get those before you can craft these. They also don't mention that the special ability is actually a lot worse than it sounds, because each turn, the second proc does half damage, the third proc does 1/3 damage, the fourth 1/4 damage, etc. - so if you hit 10 melee attacks, it'll only do about 3x the damage, not 10x the damage. And the damage isn't great in the first place unless you're using shields or staves.
Ruthless Grip
Level range: 30-40
Cost: 400
Rarity: 300
Die at is dumb so you probably want to keep these in your inventory no matter what. Frost Grab is basically Mindhook with more range.
Slash is an extra melee attack with a rather obtuse damage multiplier - it scales on strength and hate, and if either one of those is low, it's going to suck. Even a suck damage multiplier is still an extra melee attack though.
Dominate is another extra melee attack for 100% damage, alongside a resistance penetration bonus, assuming you actually manage to apply it. If you don't have high mindpower, don't expect to apply it against anything relevant.
Sludgegrip (Maj'Eyal)
Level range: 1-10
Cost: 70
Rarity: 190
These make me mad every time I think about them. For some reason they have item nature slow damage conversion, so 40% of your damage, instead of doing damage, gets converted to a slow, so you're slapping a new random ass slow value on your target every turn, which incidentally is hard capped at 60% for no apparent reason. Then 35% of the time, Slime Spit procs and overwrites that slow with its own 30% slow. At least the slime spit does passable damage early, unlike the actual melee hit.
Snow Giant Wraps
Level range: 15-25
Cost: 500
Rarity: 200
Mostly notable for the max life. If you're a brawler they're also notable for doing pretty good damage, thanks to the 25% level 5 call lightning proc. Really good for White Monk.
$team Powered Gauntlets (Embers)
Level range: 40-50
Cost: 700
Rarity: 9
These are basically like non-arcane Dakhtun's Gauntlets that cost real money and don't have any procs - not even the 20 arcane damage. So they're way worse if you're making unarmed attacks, but excellent otherwise. Like the $team Powered Helm and Boots, whoever made these forgot to add a "rarity" field, so they adopt the rarity of BASE_GAUNTLETS, which is 9, which is hilariously low for a fixedart, so you can expect to see these in every Embers/tinkers game.
The set bonus just increases the gauntlets' disarm immunity from 50% to 100%.
Wyrmbreath (Maj'Eyal)
Level range: 12-22
Cost: 50
Rarity: 180
Mainly a resistance swap and a good Brawler weapon, but if you have high enough mindpower to apply the Flameshock then the active can be very useful too.
