Guild Wars 2

Dee Jay.2460:

I agree,

in theory sacrificing stats for more loot sounds like a reasonable trade-off.

But considering the nature of the game, the fact that farming PvE events is virtually no challenge etc. it really doesn’t work out that way.

In effect, Magic Find creates a huge gap between those that farm Orr with MF gear for a while and those who don’t.

We’re already getting to the point where you can’t compete in the market without farming your way through Orr with MF gear. It’s just poor design.

If you find PvE to be no challenge at all (and you’re right most events are easy) then whats the problem of having a MF set? worst it will do is make it a little more challenging for you which is what you want right?

I totally dont agree with your statement saying you have to have MF gear to compete in the market! how is that the case? from day 1 and I do mean day one that trade post has been available everything masterworks level and below has been flooded with 1000s of items selling at 1c more then vendor price. meaning that anything below Rare has ALWAYS been unviable in the trade post. Magic find didnt create that problem magic find fixed in a sense as with it you get stuff you can actually sell on TP for a profit. without MF people will not start magically selling masterworks and uncommon gear for more they’ll still be undercut by the 1000s of people who dont even read before submitting their sell order.

From day 1 selling master works and below to the vendor was the best option and I dont see that changing, their drop rate is common enough without any MF at all that no one is going to buy them for much anyway!

Also having 1 rare to sell instead of 3 is not going to put you in a situation where you cannot compete!

In my opinion all Magic find needs is to have a bigger penalty! you should actually get some risk for using thats all !

Galen Grey.4709:

If you find PvE to be no challenge at all (and you’re right most events are easy) then whats the problem of having a MF set? worst it will do is make it a little more challenging for you which is what you want right?

I agree with you that a way of adding a hard mode to the game would be good. But putting magic find on armor is not the solution, because it has too many unpleasant side effects and doesn’t buff the right things. If they want to do a hard mode, it needs to be a fully thought out feature. Perhaps, something along the lines of this suggestion:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/events/Carrying-The-Burden-Of-Grenth-Hard-Mode/first#post314777

Currently there is a massive oversupply problem in the market and you don’t want to exacerbate that by finding other ways of increasing the supply of armor & weapons – precisely the opposite is needed.

Galen Grey.4709:

I totally dont agree with your statement saying you have to have MF gear to compete in the market! how is that the case? from day 1 and I do mean day one that trade post has been available everything masterworks level and below has been flooded with 1000s of items selling at 1c more then vendor price. meaning that anything below Rare has ALWAYS been unviable in the trade post.

The market flooding problem is not going to be solved by allowing one group of players to get even more drops. In fact it has and does make it worse, as more and more players realise that they need magic find to get a reasonable amount of loot, the total amount of supply in the economy will grow.

Was it really Arenanet’s intention to make all Green/Blue/White items into vendor trash? I doubt it.

Galen Grey.4709:

Magic find didnt create that problem magic find fixed in a sense as with it you get stuff you can actually sell on TP for a profit. without MF people will not start magically selling masterworks and uncommon gear for more they’ll still be undercut by the 1000s of people who dont even read before submitting their sell order.

This is putting the cart before the horse. The way to make things more valuable is to reduce the supply of them, not to increase it.

If you want to give people more gold, the way to do that is to drop more gold, not to drop large amounts of weapons and armour that are useless except for putting on the trading post in order to be converted into gold. That just devalues weapons and armor in the game.

Why does it matter? – because if all items are vendor trash then they can’t be used as reward items for content. Apart from the fact that rewards are fun, with no content rewards people are not doing some of the more fun content – such as champion events and mini-dungeons. That’s a big reason why people are not playing together in Guild Wars 2 – they don’t need to, to get their lootz.

That there is something going wrong here should be obvious immediately you open a chest in the game and find that it is in fact full of vendor trash…. MF is a big contributing factor in that, although not the only reason by any means.

The problem with this poorly designed stat, is not the “farmer”, since he simply uses his MF set anyways, like the WvW player uses his PvP set. Its the players that still have problems or level up and know there is a MF stat. Those players have 2 conflicting goals, DPS/survivability/Utility vs MF/Loot.
Now the question is why do players have a problem to decide/balance those 2 directions? I think the answer is, that all stats/gear is making u as a player more powerful in some sort, more dmg or more HP, more survivability. On the other hand getting better loot does the opposite, it makes u less powerful.
Thats like telling a car fan/modder to exchange his 400 HP engine for a more fuel efficiency one.
It simply don’t resonate well with most players that are used to “pimp” there avatars for more power, while it also generates envy if they don’t use MF.

I personally only use MF when I get the boosters out of a BL chest. But I do think that either more gold needs to be dropped or more loot to be dropped especially on vets and champs. It sucks when you spend all that time for crap or nothing at all. Make it challenging AND rewarding.

People who run MF in a dungeon are a liability if they die when they’re not supposed to due to crummy stats. Its the reason why this game needs an /inspect function so you can instantly tell these sorts of people to take that junk off if you’re running a dungeon.

If the run is going smoothly, who cares, but I haven’t done many pugs to know. Dungeons really aren’t hard with guildies.

Magic find is an anti-fun stat. I want my character to be more powerful but instead I am covered in this terrible non-gameplay stat just so that I’m not wasting my time.

The game has become a pay to win game. I paid 50 pounds for a game that ended up being pay to win, like so many I used to play and abandoned since I am not going to put my life savings into a pay to win game. There is no skill at all involved when you see someone with legendary weapons who put thousands of dollars into gems to get gold and then just buys all the ingredients and makes his legendary. I am sorry, but this game rewards deep pockets not skill. Bye bye crap wars.

Well why don’t we run a poll on the suggestion section of the forum?

Suggestion because we could also post what kind of stat (a new one though) we’d like to see in action.

The only thing I came up with would be cooldown reduced by X% where X is half the magic find we got atm (or even a third ‘coz some traits could cut down some imba skills, lez keep some balance), also keep in mind magic find isn’t part of pvp so pve-wise it shouldn’t be too game-breaking.

What do you guys think?

@Rfreak.6591

I’m thinking more or less like a “Mastery” attribute that increases a profession-specific stat (eg. Burst Damage for Warriors, Virtue Recharge for Guardians, etc). I’d like that more than Magic Find when it comes to gear.

@Ari Kagura.9182

That would be really cool too!

I’m gonna create the topic in suggestion section I think it’d be both cool and constructive.

ThunderStorm.3140:

The game has become a pay to win game. I paid 50 pounds for a game that ended up being pay to win, like so many I used to play and abandoned since I am not going to put my life savings into a pay to win game. There is no skill at all involved when you see someone with legendary weapons who put thousands of dollars into gems to get gold and then just buys all the ingredients and makes his legendary. I am sorry, but this game rewards deep pockets not skill. Bye bye crap wars.

But seriously, do you even know how much money it will cost you to get legendary if you were to do a gem to gold conversion? Assuming what you said is even true, that doesnt explain how they got karma, 100% exploration, dungeon specific gift and the gift of battle. I guess you must really hate it when people have more time to grind than you.

Magic find is not really a bad stat nor is it really a good stat either. It is only perceive as bad if you are trying to competite with another player, but why should you be doing that in the first place? Having MF isn’t going to significantly reduce the amount of time needed to get stat parity which guild wars 2 is all about. If you are ttying to compete against everyone like its WoW then you should consider the possibility that you don’t understand the concept of the game.

I have done my own study that showed the MF (even at >200%) had no effect on the drop rate or quality of items. If it does, the effect is minimal. So don’t stress! It’s hardly worth it…

If you stack dps instead you kill things faster, thus gaining loot more often, thus having higher chance at higher quality loot

If you stack dps instead in a dungeon, you clear it faster, so you can do more dungeons per day, so you get rewarded more.

In the end, I think magic find people aren’t any better off, they just ruin their own fun because they’re weaker.

Veldan.4637:

If you stack dps instead you kill things faster, thus gaining loot more often, thus having higher chance at higher quality loot

If you stack dps instead in a dungeon, you clear it faster, so you can do more dungeons per day, so you get rewarded more.

In the end, I think magic find people aren’t any better off, they just ruin their own fun because they’re weaker.

This is not true because most farming is done during events with a fixed number of spawns and a single players dps has negligible effect on the time the event lasts. Moreover, even if all farming was done solo this would only balance out if you could literally kill as many more enemies in the same span of time as your magic find , so with +200 magic find that would mean you need to kill 3x as many enemies in the same amount of time. That would be pretty unreasonably high even if there were no travel time between mobs, but since there are it is basically never going to be true.

So far the only real place I’d use my not MF gear is in WvW, cause as far as I can tell badges better not be MF related. And also can’t loot when dead.

Dungeons haven’t been an issue. Avoiding red circles seem to be the biggest factor in winning or losing a fight.

I agree. The way i see it, effort should determine wealth, not a stat. I personally wish they would change MF to something else. The name doesn’t even make sense. Should be changed to extra loot find.

MF doesn’t give you more loot. It gives you a chance for better loot.

Consider this, if your stats are lower because of MF gear, you won’t do as much damage to mobs. So with MF you’ll actually get less loot due to the way loot tagging works, but have a better chance to get yellows from the loot you do get.

I run a max of 41% magic find nowadays (sigil of superior luck on my shield and peach tart for mf and power). mostly i do dungeons and i dont have any problems with any explorable paths so far. I admit i used to run 150%+ MF but I dont anymore. Here are my reasons why:

1) getting aimed and dying: magic find items only give dmg and no hp. This means that all mobs will pretty much aims you (and kill you pretty quick) unless there is someone on your party who is going pure glass cannon. Nowadays, most good dungeon runners know that survivability > dps, so the chances of you getting aimed with magic find gear is even higher.

2) related to 1, more dying = higher repair bills. With my current magic find I pick up on average 1 rare every dungeon run. With good magic find I might pick up 3 rares every 2 runs. So does the repair bill cost difference for 2 runs = the price of 1 rare on the TP? probably ( i assume between 15-20 silver)

3) People tend to expect to get lots of rares with high MF and it frustrates them when they dont. Have you ever been in a dungeon fight where you died multiple times (because the mobs aimes your sorry kitten low hp), had to respawn constantly and run back, and when you finally finish and get to loot, someone else gets a rare and you dont? I mean come on the other guy doesnt use MF at all, and he doesnt have a massive repair bill and three damaged armor pieces because he didnt die at all… Yeah

hence i no longer use high magic find. Having said that, I dont mind grouping with people who DO use magic find in dungeons, because if < enemies aim me = better for me

I agree with this post, it deserves a ’’Up’’ and at least some looks and consideration from Anet.

@GabrielD: “at least some looks and consideration from Anet.”

Maybe the deafening silence from Arenanet surrounding itemisation (drops, rewards, magic find, crafted items, karma items…) is because they are working on it and don’t want to make promises, before they have a complete understanding of the problems and how to fix them. That’s what I hope anyway. Probably, it wasn’t easy to predict how all these things would interact in a live environment (not well as it turns out ATM).

silvermember.8941:

ThunderStorm.3140:

The game has become a pay to win game. I paid 50 pounds for a game that ended up being pay to win, like so many I used to play and abandoned since I am not going to put my life savings into a pay to win game. There is no skill at all involved when you see someone with legendary weapons who put thousands of dollars into gems to get gold and then just buys all the ingredients and makes his legendary. I am sorry, but this game rewards deep pockets not skill. Bye bye crap wars.

But seriously, do you even know how much money it will cost you to get legendary if you were to do a gem to gold conversion? Assuming what you said is even true, that doesnt explain how they got karma, 100% exploration, dungeon specific gift and the gift of battle. I guess you must really hate it when people have more time to grind than you.

Magic find is not really a bad stat nor is it really a good stat either. It is only perceive as bad if you are trying to competite with another player, but why should you be doing that in the first place? Having MF isn’t going to significantly reduce the amount of time needed to get stat parity which guild wars 2 is all about. If you are ttying to compete against everyone like its WoW then you should consider the possibility that you don’t understand the concept of the game.

I have played up to 12 hours per day since pre launch. No buying gold/gems, no legendaries (check the ingredient list for the gifts required: I got 100% map completion in 3 weeks, and everything else required that costs time done as well. But try getting all those gifts just by farming… good luck).

@Thunderstorm – this thread is about magic find. If you want to moan about the cash shop, please do it somewhere else; and if you’ve played 12 hours a day since pre-launch, I reckon you can hardly complain about value for money and maybe you owe Arenanet a few gem purchases….

ThunderStorm.3140:

silvermember.8941:

ThunderStorm.3140:

The game has become a pay to win game. I paid 50 pounds for a game that ended up being pay to win, like so many I used to play and abandoned since I am not going to put my life savings into a pay to win game. There is no skill at all involved when you see someone with legendary weapons who put thousands of dollars into gems to get gold and then just buys all the ingredients and makes his legendary. I am sorry, but this game rewards deep pockets not skill. Bye bye crap wars.

But seriously, do you even know how much money it will cost you to get legendary if you were to do a gem to gold conversion? Assuming what you said is even true, that doesnt explain how they got karma, 100% exploration, dungeon specific gift and the gift of battle. I guess you must really hate it when people have more time to grind than you.

Magic find is not really a bad stat nor is it really a good stat either. It is only perceive as bad if you are trying to competite with another player, but why should you be doing that in the first place? Having MF isn’t going to significantly reduce the amount of time needed to get stat parity which guild wars 2 is all about. If you are ttying to compete against everyone like its WoW then you should consider the possibility that you don’t understand the concept of the game.

I have played up to 12 hours per day since pre launch. No buying gold/gems, no legendaries (check the ingredient list for the gifts required: I got 100% map completion in 3 weeks, and everything else required that costs time done as well. But try getting all those gifts just by farming… good luck).

Okay, I’m going to assume the 12 hour thing is an exaggeration since work is 8 hours and school a little less, and you need at least 8 hours of sleep.

Anyway, yeah legendaries are time consuming, but the idea is spend time farming the mats (already over halfway done my orihalcum from map completion, mining, and salvaging) while buying others (I bought most of the ancient wood needed for gift of wood). Since it takes 100g for the icy runestones I’m not even bothering with buying orichalcum since I’ll have the ori before I hit the 100g. Crafting isn’t profitable, and the best you could hope for is flipping exotics on the TP. The gap between meet lowest seller and highest buyer is also depressingly large in many cases, and undercutting of rares happens too often, and I only buy fine ingredients. One can still profit off meeting highest buyer so long as you collect most of the mats first. But if you’re lucky enough to be rolling in large claws, etc, just from farming then you may as well just sell the mats because it’s more profitable than crafting the forge fodder.

Magic Find needs to simply be a bonus stat – not something that competes for important stats on gear.

It can be something you apply to gear, or something slightly similar to D3’s Paragon System, giving veteran/accomplished players an edge, and consequently making it harder for Botters.
Imagine that:

• Every Dungeon Mode you beat (Story + each Explore Path) gives that character a permanent +X% Magic Find.
• Every important accomplishment in sPvP and WvWvW also give you a permanent +X% Magic Find.
• Every Map you complete (including Dungeons) gives you a permanent +X% Magic Find.

Veldan.4637:

If you stack dps instead you kill things faster, thus gaining loot more often, thus having higher chance at higher quality loot

If you stack dps instead in a dungeon, you clear it faster, so you can do more dungeons per day, so you get rewarded more.

In the end, I think magic find people aren’t any better off, they just ruin their own fun because they’re weaker.

Never underestimate the importance of defense, especially in dungeons. They aren’t players (dealing with them requires a different skillset and stats entirely and have free will unlike the AIs), they are bosses with huge HP pools and two-shot attacks. Knight’s gear is the best dungeon gear for DPS because you get toughness in addition to power and precision.

For dungeons power<toughness<precision so go with gear that has power as the highest stat and toughness as the second highest.

Dee Jay.2460:

I agree,

in theory sacrificing stats for more loot sounds like a reasonable trade-off.

But considering the nature of the game, the fact that farming PvE events is virtually no challenge etc. it really doesn’t work out that way.

In effect, Magic Find creates a huge gap between those that farm Orr with MF gear for a while and those who don’t.

We’re already getting to the point where you can’t compete in the market without farming your way through Orr with MF gear. It’s just poor design.

You try being feared or pulled by a spider web while everyone collects loot while you’re running away or downed =( They should be programmed to target warriors first, seriously.

Strill.2591:

Magic find in Dungeons is the prisoner’s dilemma. If you cooperate and use non-MF stats, you clear the dungeon faster. If one person betrays the other and uses MF while the others don’t, he gets extra loot plus fast clear times. If both players betray one another and use MF, they all get long clear times.

Isn’t that Jasper Carrots’ Goldenballs?

It’s funny cuz I just faced this very same dilemma. So I finally farmed enough Arah to buy a new set of berserker armor and then I started to wonder… When should I use it? I won’t use it in cursed shore cuz of the potential drops, I won’t use it in dungeons for the same reason (and using mf gear doesn’t really hurt since dungeons are easy). The only place I might use it is when I travel to lower level zones…. But how often do I go there anyway?

At last the only place I wear my new set of armor is in lions arch. How sad.

MF is a long term deal. Having full MF gear for a dungeon run isn’t going to net you much more than someone that doesn’t gear that way. MF even @ %500 (exploited supposedly) isn’t going to get you 5x’s better drops, it simply doesn’t work that way. If anything, you might get a few pieces with better runes over someone that doesn’t have MF. It takes a good while to see a benefit from MF and it’s best used for general play. I do agree that stat wise, it’s better to run harder content with people spec’d without MF. I’ll run boosters and food (and occasionally a banner/guild boost) for dungeons and not use MF gear.

Have said right from beta that MF is a poor stat and simply should not exist.

I agree with the op and have yet to see see a good argument that MF is indeed needed. Farming with MF increases income for a group of players in an undesirable way, the op already mentioned why this is a bad game mechanic. Grind wasn’t supposed to be one of GW2’s fundamental economic principles, and MF somehow encourages it.