Guild Wars 2

according to the wiki: “Magic find is an attribute that increases a player’s chance to receive rare loot from drops.”

Does this mean that magic find only helps with looting the yellow text rare items? Or does it imply that it helps find any uncommon quality loot and greater?

Also, does Magic Find help when gathering/mining?

And lastly, does the Magic Find % add to the % chance ie. .5% chance of looting “item A” + 3% magic find makes it 3.5%
or does it multiply the % chance ie. .5% chance of looting “item A” x 3% magic find = 1.5%

It’s multiplicative, but your math is off. 3% means 0.03. So it would be Chance + Chance*MF%. Or in your example, .5 + .5*0.03 = 0.515%. 100% MF would double the chances of finding rare gear.

As for what they mean by “rare” idk, I assume “rare” just means anything that isn’t white(basic) quality.

My experience has been, that it’s been completely worthless running magic find in dungeons, as I’ll be running say 60% magic find (stats wise per the items), and my guildi will have crit damage gear. He found 3 gold items in a period of 5 dungeons, and I got zero, and also got 1/4th of the green items as well.

Literally the only thing I have noticed it impact, is when I mine ore. With magic find gear, I seem to get gems, and without it, I don’t. That wasn’t the case at the lower levels pre-magic find gear. But post higher levels, it seems the only time I get “bonus” stuff is with magic find. I also get bags of hidden loot, and sometimes other odds and ends while chopping trees, or nabbing some raspberries. I haven’t noticed a single difference otherwise and in fact, to the contrary.

i concur
pretty worthless, better off with real stats to actually help yourself and your team perform at peak, this will/should speed up the kill rate too

Prophet.6954:

My experience has been, that it’s been completely worthless running magic find in dungeons, as I’ll be running say 60% magic find (stats wise per the items), and my guildi will have crit damage gear. He found 3 gold items in a period of 5 dungeons, and I got zero, and also got 1/4th of the green items as well.

Literally the only thing I have noticed it impact, is when I mine ore. With magic find gear, I seem to get gems, and without it, I don’t. That wasn’t the case at the lower levels pre-magic find gear. But post higher levels, it seems the only time I get “bonus” stuff is with magic find. I also get bags of hidden loot, and sometimes other odds and ends while chopping trees, or nabbing some raspberries. I haven’t noticed a single difference otherwise and in fact, to the contrary.

Exactly this.
I have only found it useful in gathering stuff- putting magic find in armour makes no sense. It is extremely useful to me since I am addicted to crafting but I use cooking buffs instead and put more logical things in my armour

The observations in this thread are correct, up to a point. GW2 gives out loot based on contribution. So if you do the most damage to an enemy, you will generally receive the best loot for that enemy, something that is reflected in all of the above posts.

I run a grenade engineer in dungeons. What that means is I have amazing AoE conditions/damage on a low cooldown. Typically, when a target is called, I won’t always get the loot drops from that mob because I have to compete with everyone (thieves, warriors et. al.) who are damaging said target as well, but I will typically get drops from all of the mob’s buddies due to all of my attacks being AoE.

With magic find gear, I tend to get more/better drops than without it because, as I described above, I already get top contribution on many of the mobs.

So I would say, if you are already getting lots of greens in dungeons, then magic find may be worthwhile. However, if you are struggling to perform as well as your teammates, than you should avoid it.

Magic find is awesome during events. Load up on MF gear and do events non-stop. Guildies are constantly posting links to the yellows they’re looting from Fang of Jormag, etc. They have 40%+ MF.

thanks for the feedback gentlemen. i’m 60 atm and been using magic find gear for the past 10 levels and was planning on using such gear up to and including 80.

guess my next question is this then.. if what potato says is true then it would still be worthwhile to use as leveling gear? i do get a good amount of greens and blues with the occasional rare and that was just with 1% magic find per piece of gear (+28 w/ food buff). now that i can get 3% per piece, it SOUNDS good but I’d still like other’s opinions. thanks guys.

Well, at level 68+ yellows can be salvaged for 0-4 ectos which is quite valuable. More mf = more yellows = more cash, in theory. You can also get 6% from magic find jewelery (3% from item+3% from jewel in upgrade slot) or 7% from exotic jewelry (3% + 4%).

Personally, I didn’t level with magic find gear, so I can’t speak to how useful it will be.

You guys are treating magic find in a way it’s not supposed to be treated.

Magic find is immensely useful if you’re farming out in the world at level 80. It’s not a combat stat, so treating it as one isn’t fair. But it will help immensely when gathering the various materials needed for crafting, legendaries, trading on the post, etc. If you’re fighting in a dungeon or in WvW, gear with stats meant for fighting will, of course, be better. Mainly because I think dungeon drops might be dependent on contribution, but I have no idea.

Balkito.8160:

I think dungeon drops might be dependent on contribution, but I have no idea.

So that’s why my elementalist never gets any good drops.

ba-dum-dum-tsch

it is very hard to tell if its useful based on the experience of one player or even a small group of players as the data is so meagre statistically. What can be assumed though is that there is a point where loading up with MF gear must be actually hurting. If you forsake, say, all runes and upgrades for MF, you will kill monsters noticeably slower than someone who uses superior stat upgrades and armors, which will hurt you income overall.

I leveled to 80 without any MF gear. I finally decided to get a full MF set, including armor, weapons, accessories, and food. I have like 140% MF and I’ve been running/farming around Orr with it for a few days.

I must say, I’m highly discouraged by the results. I really haven’t seen any difference in the rarity of items I get. I went in expecting a lot more yellow drops. I think I’ve seen 2 in the last 2 days. Not a single exotic.

I personally feel MF is bugged or something.

Algreg.3629:

it is very hard to tell if its useful based on the experience of one player or even a small group of players as the data is so meagre statistically. What can be assumed though is that there is a point where loading up with MF gear must be actually hurting. If you forsake, say, all runes and upgrades for MF, you will kill monsters noticeably slower than someone who uses superior stat upgrades and armors, which will hurt you income overall.

People need to keep this in mind.

A couple of dungeon runs is not enough to decide whether it’s worth using, especially without being able to track the other potential factors such as number of mobs which you got kill credit for, etc.

Personlly I’ll be using magic find while leveling, I’ve never had any real combat issues so I don;t miss the extra combat stats.

I recently built a set of magic find jewelry on my Mesmer, and switched runs and weapons as ewll. I probably have ~80% MF. I HAVE noticed an increase in higher (rare/exotic) drops, but it’s difficult to give exact numbers on how this works. Seems to be doing something though.