Guild Wars 2

Been doing as much testing as I could to see how much difference there is.
Saved a lot of mf booster which give 50% and a few bday 100% booster.

This is a very small sample size, so take from it what you wish.
For 20 hours in 2.5 hour increments I would run 357% (300 base 7 ap 20 amulet 30 cookie. For the next 20 hour I would do my best to run the exact same events in the same manner 2.5 hour increments while maintaining the mf +50 booster and bday +100, to maintain 507%
I made certain to be in storage guild so not to have a guild buff nor would I hit a banner to increase mf since I wanted the numbers to be consistent with what I was doing.

Did this over a period of 10 days. On average for the 357% I would consistently get 42-44 rares 1-4 exotics per 2.5 hours.
When running 507%, I found those numbers to be very near the same. With the exception of one day I got 54 rares. But zero exotics.
Keep in mind 12 of these rares each day are the guaranteed from event chest. I remember when mf was around 100-120% I was doing the exact same thing I am doing now, I was avg. 20-25 a day.1

Just my 2 cents, I do believe maxing mf is a good thing. I actually started seeing a difference in drops when base was around 257%, I believe, with a very small increase in drops once it hit 300%

Something else I had noticed, before when I was just piddling around in game fighting whatever just to kill time. I would be nicely surprised when I got a rare drop.
Now I would be more surprised If I didn’t get one.

Hope this helps anyone who is on the fence about mf.

I think when they added the account bound magic find, they lowered the possibility factor of its usage.

It used to be that every 100% increased your looting odds by 1/10… They probably doubled that to give an overall illusion that the more magic find looks helpful but really is just providing you the same rolls pre-update.

I also find on average I’ll find one exotic in the first hour daily and that’ll be it, no matter how much longer I play.

Charak, I think I have to agree. Now I know chance is a big factor which makes it hard to reach a positive conclusion. Just really seemed odd to not notice an increase of at least 5-7% even if somewhat consistent in rares with the bday and mf boosters. Made me pretty suspicious.

MF doesn’t affect chest loot, so running world events says nothing about MF. You should better just masskill normal mobs.

“1-4 exotics per 2.5 hours” – is this just me – or is this just a liddle bit too high for a single player droprate ? If i remember correctly, my droprate would be 1 exotic per 5-8h.

Beldin, I mentioned 12 each day was from chest. The others were from kills. I didn’t want anyone to think I was trying to pad the numbers. So from kills it would have been 30-32
Numu, 1-4 was the number of those 10 days, 5 days only one a day, 1 days got 2
one day got 3 and one day was 4. With 4 being the most I got.
I have no reason nor desire to pad the numbers. Its not real money just numbers to me.

Numu Boltar.6105:

“1-4 exotics per 2.5 hours” – is this just me – or is this just a liddle bit too high for a single player droprate ? If i remember correctly, my droprate would be 1 exotic per 5-8h.

Exotics .. i think my droprate of exotics is more like 1 every 1000 hours at least when i count only what was dropped directly from mobs in the open world.

Most exotics in the last time i got from opening chests when i collect empyrial fragments.

Oddly enough the first and only day I got 4 exotics was the first day I buffed to 507% it was pretty much downhill after that.

Still working on trying to get close to 300% it’s a long road.

danielrjones.8759:

Oddly enough the first and only day I got 4 exotics was the first day I buffed to 507% it was pretty much downhill after that.

I have noticed this pattern for a very long time now, maybe 6 months or so. My current MF is not as high as yours, I am at 189% account based (luck stat). I also WvW a lot, doing organized groups, so I get more of the common loot. Add to that MF food, guild buff, banner, booster, communal fire, b-day boost etc. I attempted to stack as many as I could and most MF I ever had was 357%, though not as scientific as yours, since I got as much as I could whenever and wherever I could.

Here are the things I have noticed with regards to to this pattern:

Seems to reset itself, roughly on weekly basis

Every time I use a significant MF boost I notice a vast increase in rares, which on 2nd day tapers off.

I also notice a vast increase of looting greens vs looting blues or whites, I will go as high as 95% greens vs. blue / white loot when I was “spiking” the MF for the 1st day.

I have not noticed an increase in exotic drops. I have had fractal runs when I got 3-4 exotics per run, running relatively low MF and I have had fractal runs where I got none, runing much higher MF, though the 3-4 exotics runs are very rare.

Also, while in WvW, especially during the huge battles, I get a lot more Heavy Loot Bags, really a lot more with high MF. Most I have ever gotten was 187 loot bags per 1 gaming session whereas usually I get around 40-50, that was on a Friday reset and I do stay a long time for those, roughly from server reset until 1-2 am server time, so its a 8-9 hour session since I don’t have to get up for work on Saturdays

During that session the “Diminishing Returns” can be plainly observed as time goes by the overall loot quality decreases plainly and significantly. I have been doing this for a few months so its very noticable.

So if you ever do any other experiments, I was wondering if you could keep track of greens and things such as heavy Loot Bags or Heavy Moldy Bags or Heavy Miner’s Bags etc. as I think those are affected by MF and its DR as well.

danielrjones.8759:

Oddly enough the first and only day I got 4 exotics was the first day I buffed to 507% it was pretty much downhill after that.

Well that’s the thing. Its completely random. And on top of that, I honestly suspect diminishing returns far faster than we think they are supposed to have an effect. For example, I can spend 10 minutes in Orr gathering nodes and killing random mobs in the way and what to you know, barbs, spikes, etc. Every god kitten kittening time. Its especially noticable in for example temple events. I zone in, first couple of mobs killed, everything seem fine… Then you start to notice a distinct drop in loot and increase in white trash. We’re talking 10 mobs, that’s enough. Either my account is cursed or drop reduction hit almost immedietly.

How on earth did you get magic find up that high?…

Tongku, Thank you very much for your input. I do a lot of farming in general all over and have noticed an increase in bags. Not WvW I can’t handle one more thing to occupy more time. I wasn’t sure if it was just me or the luck.

Maybe it would have been better for me to wait a week and run 357% but since I did it all back to back. Now I’m beginning to wonder if that did affect it somehow.

I can say, I really have not noticed a change in the amount of rares Of course some days are better than others. But it does seem to be fairly consistent.

Now I may get hammered every which way on this comment. But I have noticed dye drops increase by at least double. Could be coincidence, but I just found it odd it started happened when I was hitting 320% or more. And was curious if you or anyone else had noticed anything like that.

fadeway I used this information. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Magic_Find

hmmmm the never ending story – over 1 year now and Anet still hasn’t come out stating exactly how it works…..

that aside,

sitting on 100% base + buffs roughly around the 150 area (not much i know) but i have noticed a major change.

1/50 drops i get white
1/25 blue
1/15 green
and heres the crappy part
1/75-100 rare – yellow
1/500 exotic (1700 hours plus and done heaps of farming and i think i counted 10 exotics ever – maybe 15 to be safe)

of course these are just my averages from drops alone – not counting chests.

Mostly seems to be blues and greens. starting to question if its even worth salvaging more items to up the MF or not….

I found that MF does nothing because the probability of an item dropping is soley dependent upon how much it costs in the TP.

And this is coming from a guy who has never gotten anything worth more than 1g.

Zacchary.6183:

I found that MF does nothing because the probability of an item dropping is soley dependent upon how much it costs in the TP.

And this is coming from a guy who has never gotten anything worth more than 1g.

if that was true, then we shouldn’t be getting blues and greens since they are in the 4 – 5s+ areas….

we should be getting more white junk

Zacchary.6183:

I found that MF does nothing because the probability of an item dropping is soley dependent upon how much it costs in the TP.

And this is coming from a guy who has never gotten anything worth more than 1g.

Actually if you reverse that you’d be correct.
How much something is worth on the TP is directly related to the item’s probability of dropping.

danielrjones.8759:

Tongku, Thank you very much for your input. I do a lot of farming in general all over and have noticed an increase in bags. Not WvW I can’t handle one more thing to occupy more time. I wasn’t sure if it was just me or the luck.

Maybe it would have been better for me to wait a week and run 357% but since I did it all back to back. Now I’m beginning to wonder if that did affect it somehow.

I can say, I really have not noticed a change in the amount of rares Of course some days are better than others. But it does seem to be fairly consistent.

Now I may get hammered every which way on this comment. But I have noticed dye drops increase by at least double. Could be coincidence, but I just found it odd it started happened when I was hitting 320% or more. And was curious if you or anyone else had noticed anything like that.

Come to think of it, I do seem to get more unidentified dyes with high MF, that may be because they may be classified as a “rare” and their respective drop rates go up accordingly.

FuriousPop.2789:

Zacchary.6183:

I found that MF does nothing because the probability of an item dropping is soley dependent upon how much it costs in the TP.

And this is coming from a guy who has never gotten anything worth more than 1g.

if that was true, then we shouldn’t be getting blues and greens since they are in the kitten areas….

we should be getting more white junk

That’s probably because the cost is factored into an exponential function. It would barely matter between white and blue/green because there is barely a difference in costs. Then you compare items that are worth 15s+ and you start seeing really noticeable drop rates. And then we get to zerk exos, which tend to be impossible in my world.

I was never running MF-gear. However, since they added account-wide magic find, I’ve got the feeling that the loot indeed gets better the more MF I have. Of course I don’t notice that every percent, but like every 10-20% I think I’m actually getting a bit better loot again (that’s because you obviously wouldn’t be able to notice 1%-changes). Right now, I’m at 93% MF. I’ve never really cared about MF (as I never got MF-gear for example, and I never use MF-food), but I really like it as a kind of additional bonus. It’s nice, and it really seems to help a bit with the overall droprate of better stuff. After all, I almost never got any rare drops before. Now it didn’t only start happening, it also became a bit more frequent over time. I’ve even had a few exotic drops already! And that’s really something that never happened before account-bound MF.

And about how MF works… well, I always thought it’s like a multiplier of some kind. Like, if the chance for a green item dropping would be at 15%, it would be 30% if you have 100% magic find. If your magic find is 200%, it would be a 45% chance. If the chance for a rare drop is at 1% base, you would have a 2% chance for it with 100% MF. 3% if your MF is 200%.

Edit: The theory about the droprate of items being affected by what they cost on the trading post is just ridiculous. The rates would need to change all the time. Precursors already wouldn’t drop at all anymore, because their price kept going up since release and they already were a very rare drop back then. Also, stuff that can’t be sold on the trading post would either not drop at all, or drop all the time.
Obviously, the price of stuff on the tp depends (among other things) on how often it drops; and not the other way around. Geez; that’s like saying “I’m hungry, thus I don’t eat lunch today”, when I’d obviously be hungry because I didn’t eat lunch.

FuriousPop, I would like to encourage to continue to work on MF, I was in the same boat, for the longest time I ran with 120-150% and thought it was just a number that really didn’t mean anything. So didn’t pursue it. I got really bored one day and thought hmm, I wonder if I can pull off maxing it out and if so how long would it take ect. So started working diligently on it. Once I was running about 252-257% base I really notice a significant increase.

Tongku, about the dye, that is exactly what I had thought, maybe somehow it is figured as a rare. I don’t know…..lol

Mother Kitten! If anything these numbers prove that A/B accounts exist. Because I have NEVER seen drop rates like this from mobs. Granted I have half his MF but still, even with boosters I never see rates like these over the several thousand of hours of play. No less, even with that +200% in South sun, I never saw drops like the OP is talking about.

GG

Beldin.5498:

Numu Boltar.6105:

“1-4 exotics per 2.5 hours” – is this just me – or is this just a liddle bit too high for a single player droprate ? If i remember correctly, my droprate would be 1 exotic per 5-8h.

Exotics .. i think my droprate of exotics is more like 1 every 1000 hours at least when i count only what was dropped directly from mobs in the open world.

Most exotics in the last time i got from opening chests when i collect empyrial fragments.

I am in the same boat. Think I got 2 exos in my first 2k hours. I still don’t get them much. No where remotely close to 1 in 10 hours…maybe 1 in 300 hours or something. No wonder I believe in account marking….lol

As someone who used to have 0 MF before the patch, and now at about 125%, my personal experience is that I HAVE noticed a lot more Rares dropping nowadays. Exotics are still few and far between, but it’s a rare day now when I don’t get at least one Rare just from killing mobs. (Disregard all Rares/Exotics from chests or bags. MF doesn’t help you with those.)

danielrjones.8759:

FuriousPop, I would like to encourage to continue to work on MF, I was in the same boat, for the longest time I ran with 120-150% and thought it was just a number that really didn’t mean anything. So didn’t pursue it. I got really bored one day and thought hmm, I wonder if I can pull off maxing it out and if so how long would it take ect. So started working diligently on it. Once I was running about 252-257% base I really notice a significant increase.

Tongku, about the dye, that is exactly what I had thought, maybe somehow it is figured as a rare. I don’t know…..lol

Since every +1% MF takes slighty more than the previous %, it is becoming more and ‘s more of a pain to salvage everything for these essences of luck. just to save my fingers i have been making the +200 ones every time i get a stack of 250 of the 10’s. I used to run with full MF gear – changing to this acc bound system…i dunno…. i hope it works out better, i guess i gotta stick with it to see better results..

some things I believe that have really help get that many, for the duration of testing I ran in fairly large zergs. 40+ ppl with zerker guard. Which would of course increase the number of foes to be killed. I would focus primarily on events that would produce such mobs, Arah pre, Grenth, Mel, ect. And I was a tagging fool.

exotics per 2.5 hr!?

wow, mine is like 1 per 2.5 weeks

Same as pre-account luck, I get more greens instead of blues, the higher MF I get. Yellow rate’s almost nonexistant. Exotics has always been super rare for me, sometimes getting an account bound or a 1G’er in Fractals, but they are few and far apart, even lowered drop rate since Fractal rewamp IMO. I play a lot every day, 3-10 world bosses, dungeons, fractals, WvW and my average 150% MF feels like -50% pre-luck, mostly since so much loot is capped to boxes and chests nowadays, that always give the same kittenty kitten.

Numu Boltar.6105:

“1-4 exotics per 2.5 hours” – is this just me – or is this just a liddle bit too high for a single player droprate ? If i remember correctly, my droprate would be 1 exotic per 5-8h.

uh… where / what do you guys kill to find exotics?…

For me it’s Fractals, but I have to have a “good day”, when I get a lucky streak of 2 – 3 Exotics in the same run. Otherwise it’s just the standard blues/greens and maybe the occasional Rare.

Numu Boltar.6105:

“1-4 exotics per 2.5 hours” – is this just me – or is this just a liddle bit too high for a single player droprate ? If i remember correctly, my droprate would be 1 exotic per 5-8h.

My drop rate would be 0-1 every few months. And when I do get one, it is Truth or Exterminator (WvW)

just a little update. wanted to see if running at 320% would make much difference. I had to stop early so only did events for 1 hr 45 min or little less. Wasn’t able to get all them in. zero exotics, 34 rares So it seems 300%+ is fairly consistent in amounts.

Wish everyone the best and hope for a great update from Anet.

When doing the numbers, you should leave out drops from chests completely. Since MF doesn’t affect chest drops.

Mad Queen, I did in an earlier comment. I said I did 12 events so the numbers would actually be 32-34
You are correct, I failed to do so in the last update though. I did 8 events last night so it would be 26 rares from drops for that time.

I wasn’t able to get arah or mel last night and those are 2 of the better ones for drops from foes.

You may also want to do it as your baseline un-buffed 300%.

Is it possible that there are also some hidden diminishing returns mechanics at work? I have no idea how the drop system works exactly. But often I find myself having loot-spikes in areas that I haven’t been to in a while. This could of course be a coincidence, I just don’t know.

If there are additional mechanics at work, that could explain why sometimes MF doesn’t seem to do anything at all.

Mad Queen, I know people have different opinions, this is just mine. Do I believe there are hidden diminishing returns? Farming is one of my things. And I certainly believe that.
There is a group of nightmare in maelstrom, I would farm them for maybe half an hour to hour if nothing was going on. The first few days I was getting 2-3 rares every 15-20 min. Now I’m lucky if I get one every 30 min farming them. Could be coincidence. I just hate when things are random and I just don’t know.

That is the impression I got as well. And it seems to affect overall drops in that entire zone. Once you’ve been killing things in the same explorable for too long, drops seem to get worse. But that kind of makes it difficult to properly test the effectiveness of MF.

danielrjones.8759:

Mad Queen, I did in an earlier comment. I said I did 12 events so the numbers would actually be 32-34
You are correct, I failed to do so in the last update though. I did 8 events last night so it would be 26 rares from drops for that time.

I wasn’t able to get arah or mel last night and those are 2 of the better ones for drops from foes.

From the information given, it seems you’re only removing the bonus rares we get from the set of daily bosses. When you should also note and remove what you get from the event’s chest.

Penny, the rares I get from the daily chest I have deducted. Those are given and are expected. Now I have counted the rares I get when a boss is killed. If keeping track of how many I’ve been getting while deducting those from the boss kill would be helpful I will gladly do that. Only reason I counted them, was it was drops from a kill not from chest, or daily.
I believe you are correct though. I need to keep track of any I am getting from the actual event chest and subtract those. I have failed to do that.
The only problem I would have doing that is taking the time write it down while the zerg is mapping to another zone and an I end up in overflow. Happens often if I’m not on my toes. I will do my best, I think subtracting those would definitely give a better number. Something I had not considered. Thank you for that suggestion. I like that suggestion and will apply it for 10 days to the best of my ability. Using the same method of running as before.

What I have noticed. In the past when I would kill a boss. It was mostly blues and greens. Once I started hitting around 300+ I notice the amount of rares from the boss kill jumped considerably.

Mhmm from drops… I think less than 10 exotics overall ever dropped from a mob. A lot more through chests though. Rares I’d go with ~100 (estimated) from mobs.

Numu Boltar.6105:

“1-4 exotics per 2.5 hours” – is this just me – or is this just a liddle bit too high for a single player droprate ? If i remember correctly, my droprate would be 1 exotic per 5-8h.

Even that is a really high droprate. I played for about 2,000 hours and almost right at the 2,000 hour mark I got my first exotic ever…. and it was a piece of garbage. This was about 7 or 8 months ago though, so it may have changed.

I would like to say the exotics where nice. Sadly only one had a value of 3g on tp, the rest was filler fodder in mystic forge for old soulbound exotics no longer used.

Didn’t get an exotic in over a week and my MF is at 160%

In addition to the account MF, every hour that a player is actively killing they should get an internal cumulative boost to their MF. Once an exotic or higher drops it should reset that internal counter. This way you don’t have players who get completely screwed by the RNG. So long as they are playing they will see an exotic in a somewhat reasonable time frame.

I have almost 2k hours and have never seen an ascended or precursor. I am probably around 40-50 hours on average per exotic drop with a 135 account bonus MF.