Why do people MF in NM?

[Barbalace]

Why do some people MF in nightmare?

Also I heard Andariel has the best % of dropping SoJs in NM, is this true? Even better than Hell Andariel?

[magicrectangle]

Why do some people MF in nightmare?

Because with poor gear you can kill very quickly, and get plenty of decent uniques. The really high level stuff isn't available, but often it is faster to gear up early in ladder running nightmare bosses rather than hell bosses.

Also I heard Andariel has the best % of dropping SoJs in NM, is this true? Even better than Hell Andariel?

That's true.

If you're interested, there is a drop calc here

[Vantek]

Most people who MF in Nightmare, probably do so because they are very poor and cannot kill efficiently/survive in Hell. When you start out from scratch, NM Mephisto is typically the first target you farm. From him, you get the basic gear that allows you to move on to Hell (say for a Blizzard sorceress - Skin of the Vipermagi, Snowclash, Magefist, Occy/Tal's Weapon for questing; Skullder's, Tarnhelm, Goldwrap, Chance Guards, Blade of Ali Baba for MFing; Tal's helm for your merc etc.).

As far as I know, yes, NM Andariel is the best source of SoJs as well as some other pieces of jewelry (Tal's Amulet?). I have heard NM Duriel has equally good drop chances for jewelry, but since he's harder to kill, he is a worse target because of that.

This being said, it is probably not so common that you are looking for just a SoJ and nothing else. Because of that, it is rare that it is actually worth it for you to run NM Andy, because from Hell targets you have a not THAT much worse shot at getting a SoJ, but a much much better shot at getting something valuable other than a SoJ. For an example with about 300% MF, NM Andy has about 1:3000 chance of dropping SoJ, and Hell Andy about 1:5000. But Hell Andy has also about 1:5000 chance of dropping Bul Kathos' ring, while NM Andy can't drop it at all. Not to mention all kinds of other stuff that Hell Andy can drop that NM Andy can't.

EDIT: magicrectangle beat me to it.

[girodiwino]

foes in NM can't drop the high-end gear but if you consider drop/time to kill NM bosses are the best option... an andariel run takes 15 minutes to my 57th necromancer (and my nec is a LOLbuild), 2 minutes if i don't engage every enemy between catacombs 2 and andariel.
hell andariel - and the other 4 main bosses - is a pain in the *** because it (they) take(s) a lot of time to be killed and a 99 level enemy only can drop a very good item, but it doesn't mean that a hell baal drop will be necessarily better than that of a normal rakanishu.
last time hell baal dropped a 4% mana leech ring, sigon's sabot and a rare quhab. it took to me 15 minutes and ~ 10 golems to take him down; nm baal 6 minutes and ~ 2 golems...

[krischan]

Teleporters are better at making act boss runs, all others are better adviced at clearing rewarding areas, like those with an area level of 85. That's why I start with a blizzard sorc. I'm doing a couple of nightmare Meph+Andy runs (maybe 250 or so, each run of both needs about 3-5 minutes), to improve her gear until she's able to reach and kill hell Meph with a belt full of mana potions.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with killing Diablo or Baal if you can do so with little problems after your non-teleporter has cleared the L85 area which he is to be found.

[crawlingdeadman]

for LLD itamz