Coming Soon: MF Blog and Inferno Drop Hotfixes
Posted 28 June 2012 by FluxTwo Blue posts of note from late Wednesday evening. The first is notification from Bashiok that v1.0.3b has been delayed. All is not lost though, since Blizzard is going to hotfix in some of the mission critical changes, such as the Inferno drop increases, early Thursday morning.
In general we tend to not provide release dates or specific timeframes for patches due to the complexity of the updates, and the possibility that we’ll discover an issue that keeps us from releasing it on time. We discovered a few such issues late into the testing of 1.0.3b, which means it won’t hit this week as previously mentioned.
However, we know that a number of changes in 1.0.3b have been highly anticipated, and so we spent the better part of today pulling specific changes that did not run into testing issues out of 1.0.3b, and turning them into hotfixes. These include the Inferno drop increases among a couple others, and will be applied with off-peak rolling restarts tomorrow morning. We’ll also be updating the June hotfix blog with specific changes (including new drop rates) tomorrow morning after we manage to wrangle up a cup of coffee.
The hotfixes page he mentioned is here, and while there’s nothing listed since June 12th, that should change very soon.
Elsewhere, a fan asked about 
Magic Find gear swapping, as players have taken to carrying a full kit of +MF gear, which they switch into just before landing the final blow on an Elite. This is not what Blizzard intended in the game design (bet they wish they’d just left us the weapon switch hotkey now) and they’re going to make some changes to the MF system… but they won’t say what, yet. A developer blog is promised soon™.
Click through for the full blue quote on that one.
Is this a mechanic that Blizzard really intended we all do to maximize loot potential? Does Blizzard really want us running around carrying a second set of MF gear, and swapping our armor mid fight to boost our MF for the killing blow?
If that is the intention, I would like to see a way to load a second gear set that could be swapped by hitting a button rather than popping your bag, and throwing a bunch of right clicks to switch gear. At least make it a little more convenient.
If that was not the intention, is there any talk of changing how this works? I bet you if you lost your NV stacks when you change gear, just like when you swap skills, that’d end the gear swap pretty quickly.
Vaeflare: I wanted to jump in quickly to say that this is one of many topics we’ve been discussing with the developers recently, and that we have a juicy blog post coming up that will delve a bit more into some of the MF swapping solutions we’re considering.
It’s ironic, since D2 had MF on some of the best gear, which made it overpowered and mandatory for success, and there was a weapon switch hotkey which most smart players utilized to add 150% or more MF for final shots on bosses. So in D3 the devs removed the WSH entirely, and didn’t put huge MF bonuses on any items — not even legendary or set items, and those are so rare you never find them anyway. Plus they made Inferno so hard that you couldn’t succeed wearing the sort of MF gear (Wealth, Chance Guards, Goldwrap, etc) that players routinely wore while clearing Hell in in D2… and as a result D3 players just wear their best combat gear 99% of the time, and then stop and switch entire outfits before landing the final hits on Elites, which is (arguably) much more of an exploit than anything we saw with MF in D2.
Keep this sort of unintended consequence in mind whenever anyone implies that it’s easy to fix problems or predict player behavior in video games.
I’ve found 2 legendaries a day for the past 4 days with 5 stacks of Nephalem Valor and a measly 50% MF on equipment (You can get shoulders with 180 strength, 20% magic find, 50 all resistances for like 15k…)
Maybe I’m crazy lucky but I get the feeling that legendaries aren’t as hard to find as people say. Either than or Blizz hotfixed a buff to legendary drop rates without telling us, hehe.
you are crazy lucky. after about 250 hours of play time ive found 2 legendaries and 1 set item.
Well I have 226 hours and most of that wasn’t spent farming Act 1 Inferno quickly and efficiently…
Waypoint to Leoric’s Manor, backtrack to courtyard, guaranteed boss pack
Festering woods, guaranteed 4 boss packs (2 in the crypts 2 in field)
Cemetery, sometimes a boss pack spawns, and 1-2 in each crypt
Weeping Hollow, 3-4 and sometimes 3 more when the Den spawns.
I have 30k dps while dual wielding and no life on hit and under 40k life and under 400 resists and I only die to Lasers and Unburied…takes about 30 minutes per run.
My legendary earlier was a fist weapon and I just got an ivory tower, heh.
plus 6 ilvl63 today.
Very cool farming routine, thanks. Have four (4) toons @ ~clvl 57 right now … but was beatin’ my head against a wall trying to figure out decent Inferno farming strategy.
Seriously appreciate your insight\sharing. Will definitely use this routine when the time comes!
Same, except I only found 2 legendaries and no set items.
Over 200 hours, no legendaries, no set items.
2 set items and 4 legendaries after ~ 170 hours
this is fun needs moar poll.
I was in the same situation, but I just found 3 in the last couple of hours…
250 hours. found a legendary on my first day of D3 and none since.. I have 75% magicfind before NV stacks
I’m up around 100-110 hours played total (2 chars lvl 60, 1 can farm Act 1 easily) and have found only 1 legendary.
“Switching to MF gear before landing the final blow on an elite”
…yeah try to do that on HC.
actually it isnt nearly as risky as you’d think. the only risky mob is a rar with Invulnerable Minions for – the rest of the time you can switch out gear comfortably. because if you kill all minions / all but one champion. you are barely in mortal peril.
except you are one of those glass canon guys ( in d3 a synonym for having terrible gear )
two runs in a row? you guys must be doing something wrong…
http://i.imgur.com/RQH3X.jpg
which part of “random” is unclear?
Legendaries could have 80% dropchance and I could theoretically still get zero legendaries after 200h of playtime.
Highly unlikely, but possible.
It is all about perception.
Dropping 2 legendaries a day puts you in the extremely lucky lot, though, I believe.
It’s the same isseu where people complainabout”i had only few i63 drops and all were crap”. Which part of RNG is unclear to the playerbase? getting an i63 doesn’t imply it will be a good item.
herpaderp…
I like randomness, just not when it’s this boring.
I mean even with all the legendaries, you know how many I’ve found that was anything other 3 Lizard’s Eye at the Blacksmith? 1. I’m more excited to see ilvl63 PANTS drop. PANTS, Blizzard. CMON.
fkin troll infected….go away Lifeless!!!! -_-
Maybe a tad bit of a braggart, but certainly not a troll
No wonder, they handled MF really poorly.
Before release they talked about downplaying its importance, fixing the discrepancy between melee and ranged in regards to MF stacking etc. Instead, they did the exact opposite by putting MF on half of the magic armor you find in act 1 normal (instantly establishing it as an important stat) and, much more importantly, removing the diminishing returns.
What you see is what you get – if you have 300% MF, you have a 300% better chance of finding rares/legendaries, which OBVIOUSLY encourages the kind of boring-ass MF swapping that they’re now looking to fix. If I don’t MF swap, I have to kill twice as many elites to find the same amount of rares. Sigh.
This is silly….
Butcher once dropped me 2 legendaries at the same time, how lucky does that make me?
(to answer that: both were about worthless)