All data and graphs are courtesy of Reddit user DuncanDirkDick and his fantastic post showing the data of his 3500 Belial Kills on his hunt for a 4GA Ophidian Iris. Maybe next Season, Duncan!
Loot Breakdown
The breakdown for his loot across the 3500 kills was quite astounding:
With just 20 items dropping with all greater affixes, that's almost a 1 in 200 chance on a kill. To put that another way, if you could kill Belial twice per minute, that is nearly 2 hours of non-stop Belial farming just to see a single unique with 4 Greater Affixes. Not the Unique you want, just a single unique.
The Mythic Unique Drop Rate was not much better, with 101 Mythics dropping across all the kills, a roughly 1 in 35 chance. With Blacksmith, there's at least some bad luck protection, allowing players to destroy Mythics to craft new ones, but the elephant in the room is that Mythic Uniques themselves can also roll with Greater Affixes.
Given the abysmally low chance for a 4 Greater Affix unique (20 out of the total 31,601 drops), getting a 4 Greater Affix Mythic Unique is something most people will never see.
The Trade Economy
Some people love it, some people hate it, and most people don't engage with it, but it is a part of the game that indicates the value of things. Inherently, as an item's popularity rises, so does its price in the market. Luckily, DuncanDirkDick also tried to sell his hard-earned Greater Affix items and tracked that data as well. The result? Also bleak.
Out of the total 31,601 collected items, only a mere 17 ever sold. Of these, 2 were 2 GA items, 2 were 3 GA items, and 13 were 4 GA items.
This paints a rough picture of the trade economy in Diablo 4. An overwhelming majority of items hold zero value at all, and even the most elusive items, 4 Greater Affix Uniques, only have a 60% sell rate. These numbers are unfathomably low and can indicate that one or more of the following is true:
Items with multiple Greater Affixes are not impactful enough to be sought after
There is an abundance of items that never see usage, causing the market to crowd around a small sub-section of "meta" items
Very few people are looking to buy items from other players
Build variety is not high enough to give value to most Uniques
Most players are not engaging with multiple builds or classes, or quitting the season early instead of trying to perfect their gear
Realistically, the truth lies with some combination of all of the above. Still, the harsh reality is that gear upgrades in Diablo 4 are not engaging enough for players, and the trade economy is not interested in anything other than a few Uniques with 4 Greater Affixes.
