Non-glitch MF sorc

[zioth]

All the sorc MF builds seem based around glitching, but sometimes I want to just run and MF in wilderness areas and dungeons. My current orb sorc has no problems doing this in nightmare, but hell might be a lot harder, with all the cold immunes. Any advice on doing this in hell mode? Should I pick up another element, or just travel with other people (losing the best items, because the barbs and palidans are closer to the monsters)? Or should I just spend all my time looking for areas where there are no cold immunes?

My current char:
* Level 59.
* 20 Orb, 20 Mastery, 10 Teleport, 2 Static, 5 unused points
* 80 strength (tancred armor), 51 dex (shard), 80 energy, rest life (about 500 hitpoints, modified by items).
* Equipment: 300% MF from 2xnagel, tancred armor+amulet, goldwrap, 3 topaz helm, and MF boots and gloves. Also, 34% ward, and shard. NO +skills items. I'd like to get a gull to go up to 400% MF, but that will make me even weaker.
* Resists: All from 0-10 in hell.

[goomba]

unless you have people on the /f list to mf with, and they are honest enough people to do "round robin drops" I personally would stick with solo mfing.

while I prefer the glitch mf, I can tell you about a symbiotic form of mfing that has proven helpful.

I have a friend that prefers to gold find the council make the game. He runs travincal while I teleport to mephy (after he bo's me) I kill Mephy, then tp him in to kill mephy's council. We have also included in the past yet another friend with high mf combined with andy glitch run andy in these runs in the past.

rinse, lather and repeat.

regarding your specific build. I personally would ditch that ward and got with a 3 socket shield, use shard to get you to the bosses you intend to mf, then switch to gull for final kill.

[zioth]

regarding your specific build. I personally would ditch that ward and got with a 3 socket shield, use shard to get you to the bosses you intend to mf, then switch to gull for final kill.

I've been planning to switch to a 3soc shield, but I haven't found one yet with reasonable block. The gull/shard idea's a good one. Now if only I could find a gull... All the magefists and hellcasts and whatnot I've found in NM don't seem to be good enough for trades.

[fledgeling]

I had a similar sorc and Id recommend boots with 10fhr and shield with 17fhr/block/resists

I think there is a 27fhr breakpoint?

[goomba]

I've been planning to switch to a 3soc shield, but I haven't found one yet with reasonable block. The gull/shard idea's a good one. Now if only I could find a gull... All the magefists and hellcasts and whatnot I've found in NM don't seem to be good enough for trades.

you won't find a 3 socket shield very useful for blocking, but neither really is that low ward - especially if you're not using twitch to help that blocking.

be sure to check the various threads on mfing, and the manner in which drops are calculated. you may find that tossing the tanc armor/ammy and thusly reducing your mf a bit may actually help your drops.

tis a pity that you quested nm already - glitching nm D can definitely prove to be worthwhile if you were so inclined. Heck, I've even glitched norm in the past.

[zioth]

be sure to check the various threads on mfing, and the manner in which drops are calculated. you may find that tossing the tanc armor/ammy and thusly reducing your mf a bit may actually help your drops.
Really? I read somewhere that that was only true in older patches. I do know that when I was wearing tarnhelm, I got almost no uniques, and when I switched to 3soc helm, I got many more. Only a 40% or so increase in MF, but it made a huge difference. Probably just luck.

tis a pity that you quested nm already - glitching nm D can definitely prove to be worthwhile if you were so inclined. Heck, I've even glitched norm in the past.
I feel bad glitching diablo, since it means messing up people's games. I guess I could have done it solo (start a game with another character, wait five minutes, join with my MF char), but that's very tedious. Almost equally tedius would be to wait for cow games to get old.

Besides, I was getting tired of NM drops, and figured it was time to try something new. Ah well.

[goomba]

re: messing up other people's games. if/when I found a shortage of games in that mode, and/or if the folks were reasonable ,instead of spouting off like foulmouthed offspring of drunken trailer trash it wouldn't be unheard of for me to have them rejoin the game, and I too would rejoin to help them in their questing, or cowing, or whatever they were doing.

afterall, a game can't be re-raided. :)

and I'm pretty sure that there's a thread somewhere that indicates in painful detail the calculations on mf%, the cLvl of the character, the mLvl of the monster, and the iLvl of various types of drops.

[Locke07]

Uniques are not what you should be aiming for. Since you're playing classic rares are a more profitable and useful venue.

The reason why glitch mfing is possible is because it allows use to use orb, which in turn allows us to max teleport. With a fully geared orb sorc using the glitch method she is able to effectively kill hell mephisto without the use of the moat trick. Yet she is still able to get great rare drops, probable more than a high MF build due to the large amounts of unique items that would drop.

I hate to be the cookie cutter here, but there is a real reason why so many sorcs are glitchers, because ultimately they are better than the alternative.