Guild Wars 2

i currently have a magic find set, but thinking of replacing it because of the extra stats other sets give. i am doing fine with my current set.

so is it more beneficial with MF or a set with more stats?

hmm some swear by having an MF set and when i am able to survive, i’ll wear my MF set as well.

though, just to add (or take out) some perspective. my wife who has maybe 20%+ MF usually gets more rares than i do per any given run. gets more exotics from chests / rewards and also a precursor as a drop. while i usually am running full MF – armour, trinkets, weapons, runes and food. lol. go figure. ; )))

also, one could argue, if you’re killing a LOT faster without MF gear, you’re technically upping your chances at more loot. which in turn, gives you more chances at better loot. key word is chance.

I have an MF set and a “regular” set with full stats that I like for my build. typically I just use the MF set for when I’m doing something easy and boring like Orr farming or world events with lots of adds for looting since survivability is hardly an issue there. Honestly when I’m in a dungeon I’d rather finish it in a decent amount of time and be able to contribute to my group then die 4 times on a boss so I can possibly get a yellow and some blues.

MF only affects mob drops. They have no influence on chests or any other kind of reward.

That being said, I basically wear mine all the time. I do get more rares/better loot from drops. Never really have any problems, dungeons or otherwise.

Ok I have a question since this topic is already here.

When I am playing, leveling one of my many characters, I get a ton of white items, a few blue items and the occasional green (sorry don’t know the appropriate name for the colors) I even get a yellow item sometimes.

My question is, does the MF work like in the old D2 way, IE: items are rolled for type of item, then rolled for quality using the player’s MF %?

Never mind, I found it on the wiki!

“Everytime you kill a monster you roll on a number of tables, inside these tables are different rarity categories. Magic find increases the chances you will get higher categories. For example if there is a 1 in 10 category, and you have 200% magic find you will have 3/10 chances to get that category. This improves not just the rarity of the items you get but can also improve your chances at getting trophies and rare crafting materials like lodestones.”

I wore MF gear as soon as I was able to get my hands on it. I ran everything with it on for the first month and a half at least. Now, I wear none and get real nice loot, dare I say even better than before? Yep, indeed I do and quite a few guildies/friends have said the same.

So, the impact of MF was not justifiable by us; Of course everyone has different opinions on it.

Nez.5764:

I wore MF gear as soon as I was able to get my hands on it. I ran everything with it on for the first month and a half at least. Now, I wear none and get real nice loot, dare I say even better than before? Yep, indeed I do and quite a few guildies/friends have said the same.

So, the impact of MF was not justifiable by us; Of course everyone has different opinions on it.

thanks for the input, i have gotten only a few exotics while wearing my mf set but they are only level 76. from that said, i have never tried a non-MF set, but i have experienced people in my party getting much better items in farming than i do and they only have about 20% magic find while i have 140%.

There is currently no content in the game that you cannot clear while wearing a full set of Rare MF gear, with the possible exception of High Level Fractals. (But I think Fractals are the exception regardless of what gear you’re wearing) As such, there is nothing wrong with you wearing full MF Gear into any content you feel like doing.

If you’re going to get a set of Fully Stated gear, I would HIGHLY recommend you keep your MF set, either on your person or in the bank. Just so you can switch to it if you ever get the feeling to just go out and mindlessly slaughter karka for a couple hours.

That being said, I really like killing things with big numbers. I love my exotic damage-dealing set of gear. It makes me happy. I rarely wear my MF gear anymore. Since I like to run dungeons, and the primary reward from dungeons are the chests and tokens (Which aren’t effected by MF) It’s just more effort than it’s worth to wear my MF gear.

I have spent time farming old plinx/Lost shore both with and without MF. The difference is noticeable. Large, I would even say. Not in the terms of “I got an exotic!” Nay, that’s not the difference MF is going to make (Exotics/rares are so uncommon that it requires a HUGE sample size to measure any discernible change). The biggest difference are in your Blue:Green ratio. That’s where it’s most noticeable.

In open world farming, yesterday with a guildy, i rea;ized how much MF helps……i to thought MF was a gimmick, but we were farming charged lodestones, and in 5 hours, he had 177% MF and he came out with 5 stones……me with only omnomberry bar, and the rest just my dps gear, came out with none….zip……zero, couple of rares though, 5 to be exact, but not one gave me any ecto’s:(.

the difference between mf gear and other is only like 300 total stat points out of like 3000 (this is because you have a LOT of base stat points). sure, this means you are 90% as effective, but if you get 2x as much loot, it’s a fair trade-off.
that said, I still switch to pvp gear in tough situations

Mystic.5934:

the difference between mf gear and other is only like 300 total stat points out of like 3000 (this is because you have a LOT of base stat points). sure, this means you are 90% as effective, but if you get 2x as much loot, it’s a fair trade-off.
that said, I still switch to pvp gear in tough situations

u dont get 2x as much loot, u get 2x chance of getting better loot.

Velocity.4950:

Mystic.5934:

the difference between mf gear and other is only like 300 total stat points out of like 3000 (this is because you have a LOT of base stat points). sure, this means you are 90% as effective, but if you get 2x as much loot, it’s a fair trade-off.
that said, I still switch to pvp gear in tough situations

u dont get 2x as much loot, u get 2x chance of getting better loot.

This.

You need to take into account the fact that she just got lucky and got rares where she would’ve had masterwork instead. Conversely, if you are getting less rares, it’s just crap luck because your MF is probably giving you greens or blues where you would be getting blues and whites.

There’s good days and bad days.
I can go into a farm run one day and walk out with 7-10 rares and a few exotics, and the other day, with more MF (guild banners) I will walk out with 2 million porous bones and wasted time…. Cest la vie…

also, for whoever reads this, i am just up for map completion, farming is not my thing, but i do kill mobs on the way.

should i use MF or no MF for map completing?
edit: dungeons as well

I’m 99.99% sure mf makes no impression on items you get from map completion (I’ve read time and again it also makes no difference on chests)
yes, you get 2x as much of better loot. I was referring to how much loot you get that’s actually worth your time.
I just made a post elsewhere regarding mf and it’s usefulness. I’ll copy/paste it here:

well, here’s the comparison between my mf and pvp gear. you’ll notice my mf isn’t complete yet, and I do leave a tad of mf on my pvp. sometimes it’s too much sacrifice for that last 5%, and too easy to throw in 10% because the rest of it is nice. This is not including omnomnberry bar or any banner boosts, but does include maxed sigil of luck on mf gear.

_ ___________mf___________pvp________pvp-mf_________(pvp/mf-1)*100%
Power_______1909_________2097________188____________9.85
Weapon_dmg_1,080________1,080________0______________0
Cond_dmg____75__________135_________60_____________80
Precision_____1,742________1,822_________80____________4.59
Toughness____1,133________1,404________271____________23.9
Vitality_______1,127_______1,119_________-8_____________-0.7
Attack_______2,989________3,177________188____________6.29
Critical_%_____43_________47___________4______________9.3
Critical_dmg___33_________78___________45_____________24.59
Average_Attack_4,055______5,088_________1,033___________25.47
Armor________2,197______2,468_________271____________12.3
Defense_______1,064______1,064__________0_____________0
Health________17,192_____17,112_________-80___________-0.47
Healing________25________85___________60____________240
mf___________132________17___________-115__________-49.57
_____________luck sigil____fire sigil
_____________mf runes____divinity rune
for the Average attack I used this formula: (1-Crit%/100) * Attack + (Crit%/100) * Attack * (1.5 + Crit dmg)

Conclusions I see: mf gear provides 98.2% more “items” (better, maybe? iuno, the mechanics are besides the point), while requiring 25.47% more attacks to kill something, and can take only 80.69% as many hits.
As you can tell, my mf is pure glass cannon, while my pvp focuses on adding toughness and more dmg.
From these numbers, I would expect mf to find 232 “items” from killing 100 grubs in the same time as my pvp would find 147 “items” from killing 126 grubs.
sigil of fire would also make an impact, but it depends on mob density, and I have no idea how much damage it deals. I doubt it makes up that difference, though.

So, as far as taking a hit on how well I kill things and a leach on a group: mf absolutely impacts your usefulness. Is it worth it? yes.
Final advice: pvp gear when others depend on you, mf gear in your own time. mix it up if you can’t afford both.

Mystic.5934:

I’m 99.99% sure mf makes no impression on items you get from map completion (I’ve read time and again it also makes no difference on chests)
yes, you get 2x as much of better loot. I was referring to how much loot you get that’s actually worth your time.
I just made a post elsewhere regarding mf and it’s usefulness. I’ll copy/paste it here:

well, here’s the comparison between my mf and pvp gear. you’ll notice my mf isn’t complete yet, and I do leave a tad of mf on my pvp. sometimes it’s too much sacrifice for that last 5%, and too easy to throw in 10% because the rest of it is nice. This is not including omnomnberry bar or any banner boosts, but does include maxed sigil of luck on mf gear.

_ ___________mf___________pvp________pvp-mf_________(pvp/mf-1)*100%
Power_______1909_________2097________188____________9.85
Weapon_dmg_1,080________1,080________0______________0
Cond_dmg____75__________135_________60_____________80
Precision_____1,742________1,822_________80____________4.59
Toughness____1,133________1,404________271____________23.9
Vitality_______1,127_______1,119_________-8_____________-0.7
Attack_______2,989________3,177________188____________6.29
Critical_%_____43_________47___________4______________9.3
Critical_dmg___33_________78___________45_____________24.59
Average_Attack_4,055______5,088_________1,033___________25.47
Armor________2,197______2,468_________271____________12.3
Defense_______1,064______1,064__________0_____________0
Health________17,192_____17,112_________-80___________-0.47
Healing________25________85___________60____________240
mf___________132________17___________-115__________-49.57
_____________luck sigil____fire sigil
_____________mf runes____divinity rune
for the Average attack I used this formula: (1-Crit%/100) * Attack + (Crit%/100) * Attack * (1.5 + Crit dmg)

Conclusions I see: mf gear provides 98.2% more “items” (better, maybe? iuno, the mechanics are besides the point), while requiring 25.47% more attacks to kill something, and can take only 80.69% as many hits.
As you can tell, my mf is pure glass cannon, while my pvp focuses on adding toughness and more dmg.
From these numbers, I would expect mf to find 232 “items” from killing 100 grubs in the same time as my pvp would find 147 “items” from killing 126 grubs.
sigil of fire would also make an impact, but it depends on mob density, and I have no idea how much damage it deals. I doubt it makes up that difference, though.

So, as far as taking a hit on how well I kill things and a leach on a group: mf absolutely impacts your usefulness. Is it worth it? yes.
Final advice: pvp gear when others depend on you, mf gear in your own time. mix it up if you can’t afford both.

wow this is great information, im glad u answered my questions about mf gear. thanks!

np! I’ve been wondering the same thing for a while, so I’m glad I answered it myself
One last thing:
As you add more mf, it has diminishing returns. I’m not talking about hidden game mechanics (I don’t know about that), I’m talking about math statistics. Basically, you have to remember that you have a base 100% mf (at +0% mf, you find 100% of the items you find)
if you add 50% mf, that adds half again as much items as you found before that (100 to 150)
if you add another 50% mf, that only adds 1/3 as much items as you found before that (150 to 200)
So the first few additions to mf you add make a bigger difference than the last few.