Since
the release of Patch 1.0.4, I have played the more of the actually game rather
than the auction house. And I found out some really interesting tips that might
make you farming lives a lot easier.
Part
1: To use Magic Find or Not to Use Magic Find
I have found in my gaming experience that magic find doesn’t help me in getting more legendries. Here are two examples in which magic find didn’t help me to get a legendary. I was trying to level up my barbarian, so I joined an open game. After killing my first monster, I saw something unusual on the ground. Yup, you guessed it, it was a legendary. My barbarian doesn't have any magic find on his gear, so the drop was a bit unusual.
I remember another time when I found a legendary during a butcher run. After having all my stacks for the Nephalem Valor Buff and my character was Paragon level 3 (total magic find ~84%), we reached the warden. I was playing my wizard, so I was keeping my distance from the boss. A monster crawled up on the side of bridge and my shock wave killed it. To my surprise that monster dropped a legendary, not a good one, but still sellable at the auction house (100,000+ gold).
These
events made me believe that the drop rate might be controlled. So I conducted
some research.
I
have found a post on the Diablo 3 forums (https://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/6247736524?page=1
) stating that the drops rates are predetermined once you join a server. I did
some more investigating to see if Blizzard themselves stated anything about
magic find and how it can determine drop rates. This led me to the game guide (http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/game/guide/items/equipment#magic-find ).
Under the magic find section, the guide states that there are different types
of drop such as magical items, 1- affix rare, 2-affix rare, and so on until
legendary. So let’s say that Blizzard does predetermine the drops and your
magic find will only increases the quality of the item. So a certain item for
example a legendary, will only drop if the player gets lucky with a very low
magic find or a player obtains it with a large amount of magic find. So forum
the post, we can conclude that some servers might have legendaries while some
other might not. And Magic find will
help increase the chances of a legendary dropping. But is it worth having bad
dps but a very high magic find gear or an amazing dps but with low magic find.
Let’s
say that you have a 2% chance of getting a legendary from every monster. And
that you stacked up on the Nephalem Valor Buff, so that brings your magic find
up to 75% without any additional magic find. So now your chances of finding a
legendary from every monster you kill is at about 3%.
With
300% magic find and plus 75% from the Nephalem Valor Buff you have 375% magic
find in total. So your total chance of finding a legendary from every monster
you kill is at about 17%.
Putting
this in perspective of every monster you kill, the results may look a bit
different.
Only
with the Nephalem Valor Buff, you have a chance of 3 monsters dropping a
legendary out of 100 monsters.
With
a magic find gear and with the Nephalem Valor Buff, you have a chance of 17
monsters dropping a legendary out of 100 monsters.
In
summary, magic find gear is important in increasing you chances in finding a
legendary. But we have to consider one more variable and that is how fast you
kill monsters with and without magic find gear. If you can one shot enemies and
kill elite mobs without much difficulty than it might be better than just
having on magic find gear that gets you killed by every elite mob.
Stay
tuned to part 2 on how you should build your character to farm legendaries.
