Magic Find Question

[TraderJoes]

As i'm making my litesorc, i realized that, seriously, the speed at which you kill and the survivability in pvm rules all else in terms of MF. And as i switch out gear for faster faster killing.survivability, my mf percent keeps dropping.

So my question is... How low can you go? :undecided: The current setup i'm considering is 250+ a bit more. I was at 296 but i decided i wanted to swap some gear our for others.

This may have been asked like a billion times since the making of D2, but i mean is there a range of mf (preferably a smaller range) that is known to have better chances of dropping high end uniques? Like maybe someone in the vast realm of the D2 world has decided to make a Graph/Representation of where your mf starts to diminish( i.e. finding more magical/rares than uniques)?

Any comments are appreciated =D

[mephiztophelez]

i found a CoA & a shako with 0%MF and a fathom with 7%mf.

so i'd say you don't need much at all.

[brokensvt]

As i'm making my litesorc, i realized that, seriously, the speed at which you kill and the survivability in pvm rules all else in terms of MF.

You're a wise man, most don't realize this until it's too late.

This may have been asked like a billion times since the making of D2, but i mean is there a range of mf (preferably a smaller range) that is known to have better chances of dropping high end uniques?

The higher the MF, the higher % of your drops will be magical/rare/unique. The only way to guarantee a higher percentage CHANCE of "high end uniques" is to kill monsters in high level areas. Do a search for level 85 areas in the statistics forum, you'll see what I mean. Keep in mind that you're only increasing your chance of these drops due to the fact that these monsters can drop those items, that isn't to say that they WILL drop them for you. They can drop everything lower as well, and will far more often than the high items.

[Leohappy]

my lite sorc has 184% mf (enigma+gheed+wt) and i'm getting pretty good drops

personally i think huge mf amounts (500+) are only really viable for bosses like meph, because on regular monsters the difference isn't so noticeable

i think one of the problems is how the game generates rare/unique/set items - sometimes i'm getting a bunch in one run, sometimes i only get crap in the whole run

[sirpoopsalot]

MF has significantly dimishing returns, especially after ~250 (give or take 50 points). After that point, your killspeed is a much, much, much bigger factor over a large amount of time/runs. Only increase your MF if doesn't have a significant impact upon your killspeed.


******
FYI, there's a stand-alone, single-player (aka SP) muling application called ATMA that has a built-in drop calculator. Since I play SP, I copied these #'s from ATMA for you (these numbers are SP, btw - in ATMA you can adjust for your party-size, which does affect drops slightly). The calc is nice because I can use it to determine things like "the odds of Mephisto (Hell) to drop a Unique Harlequin Crest with 347 MF, playing SP... First time I kill Meph it's 1:491, and after that it's 1:743". And no, I didn't make those #'s up - the drop-calc told me.

I'm not intimately familiar with the drop mechanics of D2 (so I can't explain the numbers in detail), but you can see from the table below the trend of diminishing returns of anything other than magic items.


MF Uniques Sets Rares Magics
100 71 83 85 100
150 93 115 120 150
200 111 142 150 200
250 125 166 176 250
300 136 187 200 300
350 145 205 221 350
400 153 222 240 400
450 160 236 257 450

[Chasten]

Yes the mf calculator has diminishing returns but more mf is always better.

My best mf season was when I had 800+ mf by having normal gear then when getting the final kill on andy or meph I would teleport out and switch weapons and armor that are socketed with ptopaz's and Ists. I got lots and lots of stuff.

[AnEvilPeanut]

IMHO, I have decided that anywhere from 250-300 seems to be a good balance of MF and killing speed. You should be able to hit 250 pretty easy as a sorc with just a Shako (74), War Travs (~40), Chance Guards (~35), Goldwrap (30), One Nagel (~25) and then Occy (50). That puts you over 250 already and thats without have to sacrifice killing. If you want to remove something to get more killing ability then charms are easy enough to accumulate to balance that off. Also, if you want to use a MF Armor like Enigma, or Skulders then it becomes quite easy

My hammerdin is actually easier to accumulate since I use Enigma.