Is magic find % worth building?

[stepdog]

A few patches ago when I entered the tavern it displayed a magic find buff % message in the chat, which increased when I added to my magic find stat. I noticed then that the buff capped at 50% in chat and it’s gone now, so I don’t know if that was based on my stats or some other buff. I was wondering how the magic find stat affects drop rates and if other players thought it was worth building. I have a gear set that for now puts me at 124 magic find that I’ve been clearing nightmare content with and I just don’t know if it makes a big difference. Thoughts?

[ingosupercute]

I can't tell you if magic find is worth it. It's just so difficult to say on luck based mechanics. In fact magic find is like the oldest trick in the books of F2P online games when they sell you potions for it, but historically I could never tell a difference. A secondary problem when theory crafting over it has always been: Do I find more items due to the increase, but their quality is still low due to the original drop chance for something extraordinary being very low so you barely notice a little extra. Then it would mean magic find actually is a gold increase, since you get more useless stuff to vendor. Or is it really targetted at the upper percentage of gear rolls - an answer only the dev could give.

The magic find you noticed was probably some sort of event last weekend. There was 10% more XP and 50% more magic find. I was playing throughout the entire time but couldn't definitely say jep I found this or that item purely because of the magic find.

I did notice lots of people doing magic find gear stacking for the leveling phase tho. Not sure if they had great experience with it or just gave in to hope, but it's definitely a thing.

[AH-1 Cobra]

It works, but you need a lot of it to really notice a difference. It's easy enough to get around 80-100 MF from gear once you start equipping elite tier uniques and set pieces, I got around 200 on my templar and ranger.

Clearing speed is more important, it's not worth giving up a good chunk of DPS to boost MF. It's a good stat to have if you can get it on gear you'd have used if it had MF on it or not.

[stepdog]

Thanks for the input two posters, this reinforced some of my beliefs about the stat. I kind of decided that it was worth trying to use even if just for a placebo so long as I’m not really tanking my damage, which I am :). So I figure it’s worth it once you get toward hell, if only to farm elites better.

[ingosupercute]

Originally posted by *stepdog:

So I figure it’s worth it once you get toward hell, if only to farm elites better.

I'd assume for hell it's a chicken or egg thing: If the gear has lots of magic find but otherwise disadvantageous stats, you gonna take much longer to clear stuff or need someone to carry you. And if you got the gear you need out of it already, you don't really need to find more.

[stepdog]

Originally posted by ingosupercute:

Originally posted by *stepdog:

So I figure it’s worth it once you get toward hell, if only to farm elites better.

I'd assume for hell it's a chicken or egg thing… if you got the gear you need out of it already, you don't really need to find more.

Exactly, if I can get set gear it will replace a lot of the find% purples. I figure trolling about nightmare act 4 runs until I have enough +talent and %damage roll gear to comfortably solo the first hell missions will be a good measure so the find gear is worth for more chances on sets. I have no problem in a hell pub group so far but I was probably getting carried.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by *stepdog:

Thanks for the input two posters, this reinforced some of my beliefs about the stat. I kind of decided that it was worth trying to use even if just for a placebo so long as I’m not really tanking my damage, which I am :). So I figure it’s worth it once you get toward hell, if only to farm elites better.

Just to reiterate the point I made above about getting MF from gear you'd have used anyway:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3301141350

This Templar has over 200 MF, and it's all from gear I'd have used anyway. Elite tier gear ends up offering you good MF bonuses. Getting at least 80-100 MF from gear as an afterthought is likely to occur with whatever mishmash set and uniques you cobble together on your character in hell mode.

I can't say I notice a clear difference between 80-100 MF and 200. I could do 10 runs of the same dungeon with both 80 and 200 separately, and it's still possible that I find more unique and set pieces using 80 MF vs 200. If the difference cannot show up in a sample size as few as 10 runs, then I'd argue the difference isn't enough to matter. This is why it's my opinion that you should simply settle for whatever MF you get from gear as an afterthought on pieces you'd have used anyway.