Why is magic find so lackluster?

[Legendary Defender.5631]

I constantly have 363% magic find from guild buffs and other buffs but I don't get any better drop then when I had 100% magic find. As matter as fact I got more rare and exotic drops at around 130-150% magic find then I do now. Now I rarely get rare drops maybe an exotic drop a month and very very rarely an ascended. I feel as if anet messed up in their math maybe or magic find was just a gimmick to get more money from players.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I am not the only player that has noticed this. Maybe if some of them can come in here and comment about their experiences.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

First things first, magic find is not a garuntee.

 

Second, unless you are recording every single bit of loot that drops from kills, Silverwastes chests, or Unidentified Gear, it's a bold claim to really say that you were getting better drops at lower magic find.

 

Thirdly, how is magic find "a gimmick to get more money from players" when the only ways of building it are earned from just playing the game? You can't buy Luck on the gem store.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

_Now I rarely get rare drops maybe an exotic drop a month and very very rarely an ascended._

 

I wish I had your drops. I can’t remember when I last got an ascended, maybe a year or two ago, and my last exotic was months ago. I don’t have 100% magic find though

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

...What are you even talking about?

[Legendary Defender.5631]

> @"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

> _Now I rarely get rare drops maybe an exotic drop a month and very very rarely an ascended._

>

> I wish I had your drops. I can’t remember when I last got an ascended, maybe a year or two ago, and my last exotic was months ago. I don’t have 100% magic find though

 

the ascended come from wvw and fractals. i dont think you can get them from regular pve unless its in like a boss chest

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

> @"Legendary Defender.5631" said:

> > @"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

> > _Now I rarely get rare drops maybe an exotic drop a month and very very rarely an ascended._

> >

> > I wish I had your drops. I can’t remember when I last got an ascended, maybe a year or two ago, and my last exotic was months ago. I don’t have 100% magic find though

>

> the ascended come from wvw and fractals. i dont think you can get them from regular pve unless its in like a boss chest

 

Yah, I got my ascended from loot boxes in sPvP reward tracks a long time ago. Still dont get many exotics though.

 

Edit: iirc those loot boxes are affected by magic find

[Legendary Defender.5631]

> @"ReaverKane.7598" said:

 

>

> Actually, there have been a number of players that actually recorded their drops with increased MF and have found a difference.

> That difference will start to show at 200%-300% luck, it's not big, but you'll see 1-2 rares in every box, more exotics, etc.

>

> >A Q&A session with Isiah Cartwright revealed the way Magic Find works: "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."

 

Lol you mean trophies like spikes claws etc which are worthless. Yes, anet give me more junk.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

"Trophies" refer to lodestones, Giant Eyes, blood, dust, etc.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

Personally I think it’s pretty obvious why magic find is not especially effective. It’s the loot system in the game where everyone gets loot if you tag a mob. If magic find gave great loot, with so many having magic find above 200%, then exotics would drop to even lower than what they are currently worth and rares and ectoplasm would drop down in price even more. At best high magic find can only give a small boost as a large boost would crash prices and make your drops of even less value.

[GDchiaScrub.3241]

Need actual data to determine effectiveness. Not "I feels" this or that.

 

Sorry.

[charrboiledeggs.8164]

> @"GDchiaScrub.3241" said:

> Need actual data to determine effectiveness. Not "I feels" this or that.

>

> Sorry.

 

yeah OP lets get a team of scientists and mathematicians in here so we can do a year long study on the drop rates and effectiveness of magic find in gw2 just to appease everyone that only want to argue.

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

> @"charrboiledeggs.8164" said:

> > @"GDchiaScrub.3241" said:

> > Need actual data to determine effectiveness. Not "I feels" this or that.

> >

> > Sorry.

>

> yeah OP lets get a team of scientists and mathematicians in here so we can do a year long study on the drop rates and effectiveness of magic find in gw2 just to appease everyone that only want to argue.

 

That doesn't need to happen. A player merely needs to record all of their drops and magic find. Several players have already done so and found magic find does improve your drops.

[Khisanth.2948]

MF needs a large number of data points to be noticeable. If you want the effect of MF to be noticeable with smaller data sets the baseline drop rate would have to be heavily nerfed but then you end up with a situation where MF becomes mandatory.

 

> @"charrboiledeggs.8164" said:

> > @"GDchiaScrub.3241" said:

> > Need actual data to determine effectiveness. Not "I feels" this or that.

> >

> > Sorry.

>

> yeah OP lets get a team of scientists and mathematicians in here so we can do a year long study on the drop rates and effectiveness of magic find in gw2 just to appease everyone that only want to argue.

 

People have already done that that unid gear and the red envelop's(envelops seem to have a cap beyond which it stops providing any benefit but it was something like 750% which most people won't be running around with).

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

There's a lot of data available now about the impact of Magic Find on loot. It won't be noticeable unless you carefully track all your loot. When you do, even just +100% makes a measurable difference over several hundred foe kills or pieces of unidentified gear or LNY envelopes. There are, however, far too many types of drops to notice even +700% MF over a small amount of loot. There's also a fair bit of research from before MF became account bound (people killing 100s of foes with no MF and then 100s in the same area with max (for the time) MF); the results are equally compelling.

 

To be fair, just because MF has a measurable impact on loot doesn't mean that having lots of MF feels better. That's a function of a number of factors that have little to do with MF itself:

* Humans are horrible at keeping track of data. We tend to discount lucky streaks as due to us, streaks of average results as "boring", and put too much emphasis on bad luck anecdotes.

* We have trouble distinguishing between "average" and "typical" results.

* MF can't be too strong or it becomes the default requirement to get loot, which then undermines the market (and emotional) value of getting any loot.

* The drop rates for very valuable things is tiny. Even if MF has a big impact on the rate of ascended dropping (outside of fractal T1-4 reward chests), hardly any of us see enough loot to notice.

 

I can't address the "feeling" that the OP has that MF isn't strong enough. But the data plainly shows that it matters. A lot.

 

##### Further Reading

* [Testifye's Research](https://sites.google.com/view/gw2-tipm/research/unidentified-gear)

* [Wanze's Data](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/5547/research-different-salvage-kits-for-unidentified-gear-and-magic-find-for-iding)

* [My Summary of Then-Current Data](https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/20157/value-of-unidentified-gear-in-the-post-istan-markets)

[Zeivu.3615]

I get rares on a regular basis with 185%. They aren't worth using, but work nicely for salvaging and collecting ecto. Sorry your luck is just plain awful.

[Pretty Pixie.8603]

> @"Legendary Defender.5631" said:

> I constantly have 363% magic find from guild buffs and other buffs but I don't get any better drop then when I had 100% magic find. As matter as fact I got more rare and exotic drops at around 130-150% magic find then I do now. Now I rarely get rare drops maybe an exotic drop a month and very very rarely an ascended. I feel as if anet messed up in their math maybe or magic find was just a gimmick to get more money from players.

> EDIT: I forgot to mention that I am not the only player that has noticed this. Maybe if some of them can come in here and comment about their experiences.

 

You make some vague unsubstantiated claims, appeal to majority, and then attack others who disagree. How do you expect anyone to take you seriously?

 

 

[Drecien.4508]

My MF is 247% and I get tons of rares and exotics from mobs and bosses alike. Plenty of ascended front fractals and wvw and pvp. So it does help.

[Ygomogad.1836]

RNG is RNG my dude. You either love it or hate it doesn't matter cuz it gives no fuck and does what it wants

[zerorogue.9410]

Magic find does not increase your chances in finding rare loot. Rather It reduces your chances of getting nothing from a drop roll. This in turn increases the drop rates of all other categories.

 

EX: You have a 40% chance to get nothing and a 30% 20% 10% to get other items.

with a 100% magic find you instead get a 20% to get nothing and a 40% 27% 13% for other items.

 

This of course makes more and more Mf less and less rewarding, and allows them to scale it up to infinity without anyone dropping exotics with every kill.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

> @"Legendary Defender.5631" said:

> > @"Just a flesh wound.3589" said:

> > _Now I rarely get rare drops maybe an exotic drop a month and very very rarely an ascended._

> >

> > I wish I had your drops. I can’t remember when I last got an ascended, maybe a year or two ago, and my last exotic was months ago. I don’t have 100% magic find though

>

> the ascended come from wvw and fractals. i dont think you can get them from regular pve unless its in like a boss chest

 

Back on the old forums someone posted results of opening ~11,000 Champion bags. These results included one (1) Ascended Item. So, they can drop from Champ bags, which can be obtained in PvE as well as WvW. The drop rate, in this rather large sample, was .0000909

 

Of course, Magic Find does not affect Champion Bags. If it did, .0000909 x 300% would be .0002727

[Zaklex.6308]

> @"zerorogue.9410" said:

> Magic find does not increase your chances in finding rare loot. Rather It reduces your chances of getting nothing from a drop roll. This in turn increases the drop rates of all other categories.

>

> EX: You have a 40% chance to get nothing and a 30% 20% 10% to get other items.

> with a 100% magic find you instead get a 20% to get nothing and a 40% 27% 13% for other items.

>

> This of course makes more and more Mf less and less rewarding, and allows them to scale it up to infinity without anyone dropping exotics with every kill.

 

That's not how it works, try turning that around...if you had a 1% chance of getting something before hand, with 200% MF now you have a 3% chance of getting that same item...that is how MF works, which is why you need such a large sample size to even do comparisons...see Illconceived Was Na's post above with the attached examples.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

I maxed out my magic find and it is the best thing I ever did. Once I did that, I got 3 precursors as drops.

[Rauderi.8706]

> Why is magic find so lackluster?

 

Because the rewards are lackluster.

You probably get more blues and greens than white/gray gear and just never noticed.

But for rare/exotic: 350% of .00001 is merely .000035. :expressionless:

[mtpelion.4562]

If you buy one Mega Millions lottery ticket, you have a 1 in 302,000,000 chance of winning the jackpot.

That is your "base Magic Find".

 

If you buy 4 Mega Millions lottery tickets, you now have a 4 in 302,000,000 chance of winning the jackpot.

This would be 400% Magic Find.

 

The reason you think Magic Find isn't working is because you are only looking at the jackpot. If you check the other end of the spectrum though, you'll see that your odds of getting a piece of green gear went from 1 in 24 to 1 in 6.

 

Magic Find is about the whole loot table, not just the top end of it.

[Biff.5312]

> @"Legendary Defender.5631" said:

As matter as fact I got more rare and exotic drops at around 130-150% magic find then I do now. Now I rarely get rare drops maybe an exotic drop a month and very very rarely an ascended.

 

My magic find is at about 155%, and I've never gotten an ascended drop. I think in two years I've gotten maybe 3 exotic. I think you are just mis-remembering how much worse it was, and you've gotten blase about the good rewards. If I ever got an ascended drop I'd be in total shock.