Guild Wars 2

I have seen a lot of speculation on the forums and on youtube Guild Wars 2 videos that Magic Find may be broken, or at least it doesn’t help much.

I think the confusion with it is in the tool tips giving Magic Find as a percentage and people getting over 100% magic find.

However, most likely it works by increasing your chance to get the item by multiplying the current chance for any item by your equiped magic find . This means that if you have 100 magic find and 10% chance to get a gem when mining a ore: 100% x 10% = 10% improvement for a total of 20%.

Of course, what we do not know is what the real drop rates are on anything. However, it is safe to assume there are loot tables for monsters and that rare and exotic items have the lowest chance of dropping. So, maybe it is .5% or 1% for a yellow… if you have 100% or more of magic find, you are doubling your chance, but still only 1% or 2% total.

It will be hard to test exactly how magic finds works or the normal drop rates without a very large data set. Maybe one day we will get something from a dev that confirms how it works.

I do believe it works though. I spent a lot of time mining and farming in my Magic Find set this weekend. It is easier to see it working when mining, probably because gems have a much larger chance to drop than green, yellow, and orange items do when fighting. I also notice that I have a lot higher chance at 4-5 ore (meaning a second click on a non-rich ore node) when using magic find set than without it. This, even more than the gems I get, is why I think it is at least working, even if we a not sure about the numbers yet.

It most likely works the same way it does in all other games:

If you have a 1/100 chance at finding something, and you equip 100% MF, you now have a 100% increase to your percentage.
1.00+(1.0) = 2
.01 * (2) = .02 chance or 2/100

If you have 50%
1.00 + .5 = 1.5

.01 * (1.5) = .015 or 1.5/100

We don’t have drop rates, so its really had to know specifically.

In D2, we could mine the exact drop rates from the .dat file. Not here.

As far as finding rare gear, it is probably tiered. Roll for item (hit) → Roll for Exotic (miss) → Roll for rare (miss) → Roll for green (miss) → Roll for blue (miss) → give white

It’s more likely that it’s just a lookup table since there’s less computation involved. One-roll vs. multi-roll.

It should also be noted that MF chance might affect chances to find certain grades of rarity differently. It would be nice if someone has more information about this.
Example: 100% MF might double your chance to find blue items, but only slightly (if at all) increase your chances to find greens and yellows. Who knows.

I farmed with 0% MF, 40% MF, 85% MF each scenario same mobs for 30 mins.
0% – 2 blues + 10 white, + 10 grey
40% – many blues (crafting material (325)s and gears) + many whites.
85% – 1 yellow, 2 greens, many blues (crafting materials (400)), 2 whites

So, I though MF is affecting to rarity of the drops

anyway after 30 mins, the grey will start drop only grey, guess anti-farm code.

Warsoul, they had stated somwhere (and of course I cannot remember where atm..) that there was a anti-farm code in place.
I would like to see something official as well about MF and how it works. You are right LeoDeSol about us being able to figure it out with enough data, but who wants the headache of having to sort and compile all of that info. An official response on the subject and how it works would be nice.

Sure, magic find works from a mechanical view, but that doesn’t mean its not a stupid mechanic.

I posted this to a couple other threads and figured I’d drop it in here as well. I see stated above about the multi-roll property, now how would that factor into the scenario with fine crafting materials, or are those taking the place of the supposed fine(blue) drop that you were to get. So essentially if it were multi-roll it would looks something like this.

copied from fr0st
Roll for item (hit) —> Roll for Exotic (miss)-→Roll for Exotic Material(miss) —> Roll for rare (miss)-→Roll for Rare Material(miss) —> Roll for green (miss) —> Roll for blue (miss)-→Roll for fine material(miss) —> give white

I’m thinking it could very likely be that scenario, because even while farming I hardly ever got two blue pieces of gear or two blue crafting materials off of the same mob (chests are unique I suppose). I would also like to see either the drop rates or the EXACT way MF effects your chances of getting items. I guess its not a huge deal since the anti-farm code is pretty brutal.

A little bit of data:
Hours farming frost trolls in Frostgorge Sound in hopes of Powerful Blood and Potent Blood.
(All data is with 210% MF)
Hour 1: 23 Potent Bloods/7 Powerful/ 21 Large Bones/5 Ancient Bones/10 Blues/6 Greens/2 Rares
Hour 2: 11 Potent Bloods/3 Powerful/ 15 Large Bones/1 Ancient Bones/6 Blues/3 Greens/0 Rares
Hour 3: 8 Potent/1 Powerful/ 9 Large Bones/ 0 Ancient/ 4 Blues/1 Green/0 Rares
(This is where it gets dismal)
Hour 4: 1 Potent/0 Powerful/2 Large Bones/0 Ancient/1 Blue/0 Greens/0 Rares.

Does Magic Find increase your chance to get Badge of Honor?

Warsoul.2647:

I farmed with 0% MF, 40% MF, 85% MF each scenario same mobs for 30 mins.
0% – 2 blues + 10 white, + 10 grey
40% – many blues (crafting material (325)s and gears) + many whites.
85% – 1 yellow, 2 greens, many blues (crafting materials (400)), 2 whites

So, I though MF is affecting to rarity of the drops

anyway after 30 mins, the grey will start drop only grey, guess anti-farm code.

Rofl, so you go full MF and are happy and then after 30 min you get buttkittened by Anet? Awesome.

I had a full travelers set with 5 pirate runes and 1 travelers, since the 6 piece pirate wasn’t worth it and the 1 piece travelers was a an extra 10%, plus the omnomberry 30% food, 10% from guild, opal gems (3% not 4% due to price difference, travelers weapon, 1 with superior lucky. All in all I was at over 200% MF while I did my 2 hour long gathering binge. I decided it wasn’t worth it as a) you have very low survivability when geared like that so you spend a LOT of time repairing and porting back to waypoints and b) I didn’t really notice any change in the amount of items I was getting. I did this for a few days mind you, not just 2 hours. I feel Knights armor with Soldiers runes works far, far better as I don’t spend as much on repairs/revives.

If someone could explain : how come magic find affects drop chance ?
While I’ve got from 40% to 80% Magic Find , there was totally no drop. No rare stuff, no green,blue, just some white.
So for an hour using magic find I got some trophyes and 6-7 white armor\ 2-3 white weapons.
Later, without magic find , I’ve got a lot of white, 7-8 blue, 4-5 green, 2 rares for an hour.
How can magic find affect the drop chance?

Now that I run over 125% magic find with food, gear and bonuses, I get LOTS more magic items. I mainly notice the increase in rares, since the other stuff is just vendor trash. I used to occasionally get a rare from event drops, and now it’s common to get at least 1, sometimes 2 rares from Shelter’s waypoint in Orr. I’ve gotten as many as 4, and its very rare I get none.

I realize it’s hard to really get an answer here because most of our info is anecdotal. And I sympathize with the person who says he dies faster and takes longer to kill things when he solos with this gear. My magic find gear exists for one reason: to AoE farm event waves. I run in, explode every one of my AOE spells on every incoming wave, and clean up with greens/yellows. I even trait specifically for my favorite 3 orr events. It allows me to make an easy 1g/hour just with casual farming (often more).

I’m currently building a 2nd gear set that’s in line with how much damage I want to do. And I’ll be changing my spec soon to fit my goals (WvW). But I’ll miss my farming gear and spec. They work famously for what i’ve designed them to do!

I am currently running MF gear and notice I find more green+ stuff. Is there one place to see how much MF i have or do I have to do the math?

Thanks

Nathallie: Level also likely effects your drop qualities (color). If you’re only getting whites with a lot of magic find on, you’re probably at a particularly low character level. I’ve never seen a Level 15 character get a gold weapon. I’m fairly certain that most people on this thread are implicitly assuming Level 80 + MF%.