Charms

Say hello to the new rares of LOD; charms and jewels are the new wild cards of Diablo, as any number of them can suddenly turn a mediocre character build into an excellent character build or an already powerful build into an unbelievable powerhouse. Charms grant magical enhancements without needing to be equipped to do so; they simply need to sit in your character's backpack. An important consideration for any character are charms, as they can be used and carted over to other characters with a minimum of fuss. With an additional affix, especially one pushed to the maximum value for that size, a good charm can easily boost a character.

Because charms take up space, the goal is to get as many benefits as you can for the least amount of space, which calls for a charm with both affixes set to maximum values. In this, small charms are the best all-around. Grand and large charms have very specific purposes: grands are best used for +skills and larges are best used for +stats. Block for block, smalls do so much better than either at almost everything; for example, the maximum prismatic resist on a small charm is 5%, but it's 8% on a large and 15% on a grand. For prismatic, there is no contest between large and small: Two prismatic large charms take up four spaces with 16% prismatic and possibly two suffixes, but they get squashed by four smalls, with their 20% prismatic and four possible suffixes, a total wash. Theoretically, smalls break even against a grand, but small charms are easier to arrange and can come suffixes, so three perfect smalls with suffixes end up giving you two more benefits than a perfect grand with an suffix.

For grands, +skill charms are the primary consideration, provided that they have an suffix: while +skills is always a good thing, you do want to have another benefit to make up for the three spaces you're taking up. For the standard bowazon, passive/magic charms are the way to go; bow/crossbow charms can be reserved for bowazon builds dependent on elemental arrows. The second consideration for grand charms is damage; the most minimum damage one can get on a grand is +3 and the most maximum damage is 10, which is a tremendous boost for a bowazon and her massive dexterity. For the bowazon, the most valuable charms tend to be resists (small), MF (small), faster run/walk, dexterity, maximum damage (grand, +10), elemental (small), + skills (grand) and FHR. FHR charms are of particular importance as few of the new ready-made items have FHR.

There are only three unique charms in LOD. You can only carry one of each at a time.

• Annihilus Small Charm: +1 skills, +10-20 all attributes, all resistances 10-20%, +5-10% to experience gained, rlvl-70. This item is only dropped from Über Diablo on the Battle.net Realms. The mob itself was spawned by selling Stones of Jordan to NPCs, which means that since there are less SoJs nowadays, it's actually harder to find one of these than a Hellfire Torch.
• Gheed's Fortune Grand Charm: 80-160% extra gold from monsters, reduces all vendor prices 10-15%, 20-40% better chance of getting magic items, rlvl-62. This is a ladder-only unique. My favorite attribute on this one is the one that reduces all vendor prices, which makes gambling a breeze.
• Hellfire Torch Large Charm: +10-20 all atributes, +3 random character class skills, +8 light radius, 25% chance to cast svl-10 firestorm on striking, all resistances +10-20, level 30 hydra (10 charges), rlvl-75. Only spawns via doing a secret Pandemonium event. Firestorm is Diablo's special Firestorm attack. The random character class skills are not based on the class played. My personal experience teaches me that, holy shit, this thing is evil: it covers more than a quarter of the screen, completely wrecks everything in its path, and thanks to a bowazon's high rate of fire, goes off fairly often. While its advantages are obvious for melee fighters, you'll be pleased to know that the firestorm effectively covers the bowazon's weak spot: melee range. The one problem with this charm is that too many firestorms can crash a multiplayer game, as it's fairly graphics intensive.

More information on charms can be found at the Charms section of the Arreat Summit.

What are some good prefixes for charms?

Small Charms:

Attack Rating & Damage: +10-20 attack rating & +1-3 maximum damage.

Attack Rating: +25-36 attack rating.

Damage: +1 maximum damage.

Damage: +1 minimum damage.

Mana: +13-17 mana.

Resistance: +10-11% elemental resistance.

Resistance: +3-5% prismatic resistance.

Large Charms:

Attack Rating & Damage: +21-48 attack rating & +4-6 maximum damage.

Attack Rating: +52-77 attack rating.

Damage: +2 maximum damage.

Damage: +2 minimum damage.

Mana: +24-34 mana.

Resistance: +13-15% elemental resistance.

Resistance: +3-8% prismatic resistance.

Grand Charms:

Attack Rating & Damage: +49-76 attack rating & +7-10 maximum damage.

Attack Rating: +88-132 attack rating.

Damage: +3 maximum damage.

Damage: +3 minimum damage.

Mana: +40-59 mana.

Resistance: +26-30% elemental resistance.

Resistance: +3-15% prismatic resistance.

Skills: +1 bow and crossbow skills (amazon only).

Skills: +1 passive and magic skills (amazon only).