What is the "Item Budget" for Blacksmith created gear?

Question

Blizzard has stated that the "budget" for item stats goes from 1 to 63 - does anyone know what the stat budget is for Blacksmith-crafted gear? Does upper level blacksmith gear have a budget of 63 in which case you might be able to get Act IV-worthy gear by breaking down Act I gear and recreating it. OR does it have a lower budget, in which case it's probably always worthless? Or does it perhaps vary with recipe and if so is there any way to determine the item budget for a particular recipe?

Answer 1

All "Exalted" crafted rare gear is item level 62, with a difference in the number of affixes i.e. "Exalted" +4 Random Magic Properties, "Exalted Fine" +5, and "Exalted Grand" +6. Most crafted set items and legendaries are item level 61, with some exceptions (Helm of Command = 62).

You can see the list of crafted items and their item level at the Blizzard Game Guide -> Items.

Answer 2

It varies from recipe to recipe. Level 60 legendary recipes will be item level 60+. Level 60 rares from recipes will also have an item level within this range. The items you learn while levelling blacksmithing are lower than this range so without collecting recipes you will not be able to make any worthwhile end game gear using your blacksmith.

I say worthwhile end game gear, because for each of the alts that I have levelled I find that the blacksmithing gear is reasonable, and of the pieces I've made a lot of them had +xp per kill on the gear, which was nice.

Answer 3

This changed in Patch 1.07. For example, the new Archon Armor of Vitality has an item level of 63.

You can now determine the item level of crafted armor by looking it up in the game guide or by looking at the tooltip in the game (requires that the blacksmith knows the plan; select the plan and then hover over the icon for the item that will be built--to the left of the required ingredients).