Guild Wars 2

Can some one explane how magic find works? or is it just a waste of materials and items in the game??

i got a full set of mf gear=18% got 5 pirate runes =50% got 1 noble rune is 10%
got the 5 orichalcum jewels with mf =35% using foodbuff=30% usng banner is 10%

thats a total of 153% magic find

the funny thing is ,, now i drop nothing anymore, no more drop rates at all.
please if some one can explain how and what.
ty for reading and i hope there will be some answers.

the “+%” magic find is calculated from your base magic find.
So for example, Lets say without any gear on at all you have a naked magic find of 2%. that’s a 2% chance to find something. (blues, greens, maybe even a rare)
Now you add gear that gives you +100% additional magic find. that is an extra 100% OF your base magic find.
So your 2% becomes 4%.

I think I’m being biased by DR because I’m in low level maps looking for materials… even with 89% MF (food + luck daggers + booster) I get almost nothing save junk and few blue and whites every 10 kills. I’m lv 80 and a Elementalist with 527 hours of play time on her. Its like whenever I go to a non lv 80 map for the second or third time after completing it, even in weeks after the first visit, I get a clear, “kitten you! I hate you! Now suffer with no drops whatsoever!” Its like we don’t get drops anymore period if we are way over the level of the map…

Not sure if it’s true but I read somewhere that if you push over 120% MF you actually get bounced back to ~99% MF. I’ve stuck at 110% personally and usually get 2-3 rares per plinx loop.

I’ve got a 100%+ magic find and im watching people pick up rares with only 30%+ magic find at an almost 3x times faster rate then me. He picked up 3 lodestones in less then 30mins while i’ve been hopping back and forth between areas unsure if DR is hitting me to only get 1 per day if im lucky…

i buy magic find boosters and watch them tic away for nothing with people telling me DR hits after 45min… i dont want to just see my money gambled away and feel like Anet is just hustling me on my attempts to speed up my efforts through legitimate means with a system they’ve kept vague.

Its a stat for farming in a game with the desire to not instill a sense of farming/grind to its players…. that doesnt work, that how i see it in my honest opinion.

From my experience (2 toons to lvl80 and both now with MF armor/jewels/weapons) MF negatively effects drop rates. I figure this is because you are getting more valuable drops. If I take all the MF gear off, my drop rate increases but the quality drops.

With the northern Cursed Shore karma run:
non-MF setup = full inv after every cycle of the run.
MF setup = 3-4 cycles to fill inv.

Just my observation on both my lvl80 toons.

My guess is that magic find works, it’s just that the base value the % is modifying is so small it has a negligible effect.

I don’t know what the base magic find is for any given character. Say it’s 0.01% to find an exotic; 150% of 0.01% isn’t going to be a noticeable change in drop rate. There was someone in another thread a few weeks back who did some fairly spot on empirical testing regarding Magic Find who came to this same conclusion – either Magic Find does not work, or it has such a small effect on your drop rates it’s unnoticeable.

Vigil.3408:

My guess is that magic find works, it’s just that the base value the % is modifying is so small it has a negligible effect.

I don’t know what the base magic find is for any given character. Say it’s 0.01% to find an exotic; 150% of 0.01% isn’t going to be a noticeable change in drop rate. There was someone in another thread a few weeks back who did some fairly spot on empirical testing regarding Magic Find who came to this same conclusion – either Magic Find does not work, or it has such a small effect on your drop rates it’s unnoticeable.

More information here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/confused-about-the-behavior-of-MF/

If you have 140% magic find, you’ll find exotics and rares 1.4x more often, but that doesn’t mean much since it is probability.

thnx all for the reply’s

I checked again and went in the same events now with dps gear and also same amount of time with 50% of mf gear and with all mf gear.

The rare drops came from not using any mf gear!!! tested it 5 times and 5 times with no magic gear but only the food buff for 40% more gold from monsters i dropped allot rare’s.

When i went over the 100% mf i started to drop only white and blue again and after 5 events i got 1 rare and maybe 5 greenie’s.

It seems the rare drop rate is based on dps/amount damage you do in the events and not on the mf at all.
Equiping magic find gear means you will go low on damage output allot.

comming then to the conclusion that magic find is not working at all!!

So dear Arena Net, i hope you are reading this and i hope you will start looking in to this. Magic find should be a nice bonus to use and not a waste of golds but making golds with it.
The amount of time and materials we need to put in the magic find gear/jewels etc etc is very high and now it seems it is not paying of at all.

best regards Luna.9014

Ok, here is some math for my warrior, with and without magic find, 15 event sample for each setup. The events for both setups were in orr at the same waypoints. Observations were made over several sessions.

First of all does MF effect negatively effect drop rate, quick answer yes.
Total drops with 115% Magic Find = 225
Total drops without Magic Find = 365

You get more blues and greens with Magic Find, false.
Blue/Green % drops with 115% Magic Find = 15%/2%
Blue/Green % drops without Magic Find = 18%/7%

What was noticable is the % amount of fines/salvagable/bags did increase with Magic Find, the % amount of junk drops stayed roughly the same at about 35% with 115% Magic Find and 34% without.
Fines/salvagable/bags % drops with 115% Magic Find = 30%
Fines/salvagable/bags % drops without Magic Find = 21%

You have more chance of yellow/exotic drops with MF, no change. The amount of yellow/exotic drops was about 1% for both setups.

The remaining % of drops were whites.
17% with 115% Magic Find
19% without Magic Find

Recommendation: If you want more crafting materials, use Magic Find setup. If you want more coin don’t use Magic Find.

If these numbers do not reflect what Magic Find is ment to do then yes, it is bugged.

Thanks for compiling and sharing that data wildcode, very interesting.

I noticed when I leveled my guardian, I ran it to the pent/shelter DE farm area in the Cursed Shore @ lvl 70. At first it was hard to get any drops due to being way under level and barely able to hit anything, but before too long I was 74 and 75 and getting very good drops, maybe 2-3 rares per event, I’m guessing due to the significant level difference and the fact that my party was doing enough damage to get us all on the loot table. As my toon got higher level, the rares got rarer. My lvl 80 engineer in full MF gear doesn’t seem to get any better drops than my guardian with no MF gear. It almost feels like the MF on gear doesn’t work, but what you get from food and banners does, but I’ve got no data to back that up.

With my warrior I thought I was getting flagged for farming, because I did alot of fine material farming with it. When I got my ranger to Cursed Shore I was in loot heaven until I fully equiped her with MF setup and her drop rates fell instantly. You really notice the negative impact when you are used to doing the “Karma runs” without MF gear and then try them again with MF gear.

Guys I have over 240% magic find does not work for me!

Orange.9701:

Guys I have over 240% magic find does not work for me!

You do realize those posts are over a year old, yes? Quite the thread necro!

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Orange.9701:

Guys I have over 240% magic find does not work for me!

You do realize those posts are over a year old, yes? Quite the thread necro!

I used the time to try it: D

Nice useless necro of a thread that is over 1 year old and irrelevant now.

/slowclap