Guild Wars 2

I can’t seem to find an appropiate place to post this so ill just do it here. Can someone explain to me how magic find works, and if its working at all? I have like 60% from gear and i dont see a difference.

With 60% magic find, your chance to find magic items is increased by about 60%. Pretty straightforward.

Perception bias is difficult though, yes.

I heard for example if you have 100% mf. And a drop has 2% Then the drop raises to 4% (62% would be too much lol)

Yeah, I don’t quite think it works like that. If anything and this is giving it probably more then I should it’s X.X% increase. So @60% MF it’s more like a 6% chance to find a rare item, which most likely follows the route of Diablo games. Item drops, then crap is rolled. So basically have a 6% chance to get a magic item each time something drops.

(PS: I am most likely wrong but after doing testing with MF gear vs none, the rate is extremely small, and mostly not worthwhile.)

from my understanding magic find is NOT:
finding more loot

but instead:
finding better quality loot when you do find loot

For example two players farm the same place for the same time
player a has 0% MF and finds 10 pieces of gear. 7 whites 2 blues and a green
player b has 100% MF and finds 10 pieces of gear. 1 white 3 blues 4 greens and 2 yellows

Obviously those numbers are made up. But they serve to show how I believe magic find works.

I think the way magic find works is applying a percentage to a percentage.

So say you have 100% magic find for a nice even number to make an example with.

Baseline(Numbers made up for example):
You have 60% chance to find a white item.
You have 30% chance to find a blue item.
You have 15% chance to find a green item.
You have 5% chance to find a yellow item.
You have 2% chance to find an exotic item.

So adding on your 100% magic find, it would double your chances of finding an item. Basically adding the percent onto itself, because you have 100% of it again. However, if your chance to find an item goes over 100%, I think ANet probably limited the chances to find something. So I imagine that Magic Find would have a sort of ‘soft cap’ at a certain percentage of finding items, based on the tier of item.

So that 60% chance to find a white item would increase to 80%(? Based on if there’s a ‘cap’ to magic find, so you never have 100% chance to find something).
Your blue would increase to 60%(or lower, if there’s a cap)
Your green would increase to 30%.
Your yellow would increase to 10%.
Your exotic would increase to 4%.

And at the same time, I imagine that each mob simply has a chance to drop nothing. And that the ‘drop table’ is figured into a 100% range. So that it would condense down your drop percentage numbers.

So say a mob has 30% chance to drop nothing at all. Increasing your magic find would then change what’s possible to find on the mob, or even reduce the percentage of finding nothing, giving your more loot in the long run.

This is where my math breaks down because I’m terrible at it, but hopefully I can still give you an idea of the idea I’m trying to get across.

So say the mob has 30% chance to drop nothing. It has a 10% chance to drop a grey vendor item. And then a 10% chance to drop a bag(say a “Moldy Bag” for a Risen mob.). That leaves 50% chance to drop something else.

So of that 50%, there’s, say, 20% chance to drop a white, 15% chance to drop a blue, 10% to drop a green, 4% to drop a yellow, and 1% to drop an exotic.

Increasing your magic find could possibly affect a few things. So let’s use 100% magic find again.

Increasing your magic find by 100% would decrease your chance to find nothing by half(100% chance to find something, and 100% less chance to find nothing), so you now have only 15% chance to find nothing on the mob. 5% chance to find a gray(Since grays aren’t very desirable and aren’t ‘magic’). And say a static 10% chance to find a bag, but perhaps that bag has better loot.

So that leaves 70% chance to find something nice on the mob. 40% chance to find a white, 30% chance to find a blue, 20% chance to find a green, 8% chance to find a yellow, and 2% chance to find an exotic. But wait, that’s over 70% chance to find something.

I imagine Magic Find would prioritize the chance to find something better over something lesser. So the extra chance to find something of lesser quality would get pushed off of the ‘drop table’, so to speak. So 2% chance for an exotic, plus 8% chance to find a yellow, is 10% chance. Add 20% for green is 30%, then 30% for blue is 60%. So most of that 40% chance to find a white gets pushed off the table, leaving you only 10% chance to find a white, and much better chances, probability-wise, to find something nice.

This is all just a theory and is probably wrong, but this is the most logical way I can think of it working.

Basically having Magic Find past a certain number would stop decreasing your chances to find nothing(Since I imagine there’s a cap), but would still be beneficial because it’s increasing your chances to find better things. At least if it works the way I think it works.

This is all speculation, no one knows for sure.

I did a small test, 1 hour 30 min with 2 different sets of gear. One set has 3% magic find, other set has 109%. Farmed the same areas with both sets. This isn’t very accurate but for magic find to be worth using I’d like to see some real gain.

Since I lose damage and a third of my health using the magic find set I think I’ll vendor it.

3% Magic Find
22s 17c
112 grey items
25 salvage materials
23 white items
7 bags
50 (tier 5) blue materials, 8 (tier 6)
10 blue items
4 green items
2 yellow items
value of items
63 silver 19 copper

106% Magic Find
20s 95c
70 grey items
18 salvage materials
12 white items
10 bags
55 (tier 5) blue materials, 4 (tier 6)
9 blue item
9 green items
1 yellow item
value of items
56 silver 59 copper

Magic Find is garbage, I probably did slightly better with the non MF gear heh. The consumable that buffs MF might be worth using, any gear with MF no thanks.

1hour 30min isn’t a very long test to test these kinds of things with. Only one person, in one area(when apparently ANet has anti-farm scripting built into the game), killing the same things for a short amount of time isn’t going to be showing very much.

Illushia.3721:

1hour 30min isn’t a very long test to test these kinds of things with. Only one person, in one area(when apparently ANet has anti-farm scripting built into the game), killing the same things for a short amount of time isn’t going to be showing very much.

True, but all the same, if I’m seeing zero benefit it’s not worth using. It certainly doesn’t double your drops even 90 minutes would have been enough to see a big gain if that was the case.

Stacking MF on every single piece of gear and crippling your health (MF gear usually gives no vitality) just ruins your character with no noticeable gain.

But you can’t farm in the same areas for very long or the script apparently kicks in. A long test that’s in different areas(But the same areas each time) and better yet on different days, would probably produce better results. And I’d try to pick areas that either don’t have events or only test in those areas when there’s no events going on, because I’m reasonably certain event mobs have higher chances of dropping things.

That’s no problem I play a guardian I kill stuff slowly, and I didn’t do it in one go. Did it 3x 30 min with each set of gear, used a sharpening stone buff to time it. Any anti farming measures certainly didn’t kick in. I’ve tested that before, solo I can’t kill stuff fast enough for it to happen.

I did have the anti farming feature activate once when having a group of people massacring mobs in a spot. Didn’t get any drops for 30min to an hour after that.

It’d probably still be better to do it in different areas, though. Maybe 15min in one, 15in another, and do that for much longer than hour and a half, that way you get a huge sample size. Afaik the farming script kicks in at around 15-20 mins, so you have to keep each session in an area really short.

Well anyone is free to do their own tests, but as far as I’m concerned I’m done with magic find. If it doesn’t work in normal circumstances it’s useless anyway.

I’ve done some reading, and small sample sizes done over a long period of time show that magic find may actually be better than advertised.

Someone did some math on reddit, though it’s up to you if you want to accept it or not.

I’m willing to put in some tests later on tonight. I’d probably farm in a way like I’m vanquishing a zone in GW1 to minimize the chances in triggering the anti-farm code. Meaning I’ll follow a zone-wide circuit instead of farming a small patch of mobs.

My current Magic Find set is at 116% (or 156 with food buff and I almost always have a boon up, though I might use the other food buff for better consistency).

However, I’d imagine there must be some kind of cap on Magic Find, which was my initial thought but I think I’m triggering the anti-farm code too quickly through the circuit of events in Orr. I might try Frostgorge Sound since there’s a variety of mobs like: Svanir, Icebrood Elementals, Griffins, Minotaurs, Trolls, and Grawl; as opposed to Orr which is almost always Risen.

Doing it without the food buff may be better, in the off chance you forget it for a few minutes and skew the results.

I do see your point and do often to forget to reapply my food buff during farming sessions. With that said, I’ll be using an Alarm clock to remind me reapply my buff. I intend to do four runs:

— With Dungeon Gear: no Magic Find
— With Dungeon Gear + Food Buff: 30% Magic Find
— With Magic Find Gear: 116% Magic Find
— With Magic Find Gear + Food Buff: 146% Magic Find

Problem would be interferences from random dynamic events, especially the Claw of Jormag. In that case, I would have to find a way to avoid it to keep with consistancy.

Best thing you could probably do is just stop your timer, or immediately move on to the next area in your ‘rotation’.