What is a good (non legendary) crafting item to invest in?

Solution 1:

As @yx. mentioned already, gloves are very popular for crafting as good rolls can add CritChance, CritDamage, IAS etc. - if you get all 3 of them, then it can be very profitable. The 6 property Exalted Grand Sovereign Vambraces recipe is extremely expensive, an alternative may be the 5 prop version - now that crafting costs have been reduced for 4/5 prop recipes, you can get double the attempts to get a good item for the same cost. Unfortunately, the 5 prop gloves has also skyrocketed from around 350k to 1m+ since the cost reduction.

Some things to keep in mind when choosing a recipe:

Don't invest in weapons: Very unprofitable to craft these; as they must have a few properties to be worth anything at all. viz., +dmg as well as +%dmg at a minimum, and preferably +CritDmg as well - if not, then it is just vendor food.

Don't go for class specific items: If you follow the previous point, this only applies to wizard hats, demon hunter cloaks etc. The reason is that you need a more specific roll for these, e.g.:

• Wizard hats must have Int on them; a good roll of 200 Str 150 Vit would be awesome for a barbarian but is useless for wizards.
• Demon Hunter cloaks need +Dex, a high Int roll isn't enough

So, what is left? Basically ...

Non-class specific armor is your best bet to get more chances of a useful roll where you can try to recoup costs; while you wait for the amazing combos that earn you millions.

Now, among the various slots which ones to target is affected by awareness of the other choices available for that slot, and the importance of specific affixes. The ones I consider as comparatively worse investments and a reason why, are:

• Head: Helm of Command is considered BIS (best in slot) by many due to the added block chance.
• Shoulders: Seven Sins, another craftable unique, is BIS for this slot
• Boots: Everyone wants these with +Speed; esp. ranged classes. So you need that one stat along with other high rolls to have a very valuable craft.
• Belt: Melee classes consider String of Ears as BIS, meaning 2/5 of your potential clients will not be as interested in good rares for this slot.
• Shield: I believe the i63 Sacred Shield with highest block rate & absorption (and +Block Chance) is preferred here; and as with all i63 items it is not craftable.

Unless you want to be a dedicated crafter (and are very rich already) the 6 property recipes are out of your reach. Gloves are a popular choice so you can consider 5 prop vambraces; unsure of the market for rare chest armor or bracers but they might be a cheaper alternative.

Solution 2:

As you can tell by the price of the recipies in the AH, the most profitable none legendary craftable right now are the gloves (sovereign vambraces). But due to this popularity, a single 6 prop recipe currently runs for a cool 36-40 mill.

Boots are probably second most profitable (you want ones with high stats/res and movement speed).

In general, the most profitable crafting recipe is the helm of command but that's a legendary.

Personally I just sell my crafting materials for gold and use the gold to buy what I want as exquisite essences can sell for 1-2k.

I would shy away from crafting weapons since they are all ilvl62, which means their damage won't be as high as the findable ilvl 63 weapons. But for armor, ilvl 62 can still get you some good mods, which are usually more important than the armor defense value.

Solution 3:

I personally have crafted a lot of items (the recipes for the rare helm, shoulders, shield) a lot of times and most of the time these items were not even sellable due to bad affixes...but you'll end up with something you want sooner or later (seems like it is later for me). I've dumped a lot of gold into crafting an item to replace the one I had, and thinking back I should have just used GAH instead of dumping 500k gold into crafting.

The recipes I used were +4 affixes so you should think about buying +5 or even +6 affixes. The recipe will require more materials of course but in the end it will be all worthwhile since you'll have a lot more chances to get the affixes you really want.