new mf thread

[Byaxident]

new mf thread

Im starting this thread because I havent seen many posts concerning mfing since ive been on this forum and 1 thing in particular is starting to bug me. I basically only mf with find item barbs and hell cs is my destination of choice (solo cs runs), although i do mf most superuniques once in a while for a change of pace. I have found a lot of nice gear in the relatively short period of time ive been playing d2 but for some reason martels have always escaped my grasp.

I have found 200+ ed equivalents ( ex:185 ed + 20 ) of just about every weapon in treasure class weapon 54, some of them with godly mods: I think the best exe Ive found was a 235 with nice mods, but the best dmg martel ive found was a 261 with crappy mods and that was about 2 years ago. Ive found godly armors,shields,ammies,rings,boots,gloves,helms... but no martels.
Am I doing something wrong here? Obviously kings modifier can spawn in hell cs ( Ive gotten it on bhammers and gscythes (which are TC 57 many many times)). And yes I have found hundreds of rare martels in hell cs from superuniques,random monsters and diablo.
I guess i just have a martel curse on me.
Anyway Id like this thread to be about a lot more than martels, mfing is one of the things I enjoy the most in D2. However im too tired and bitter to give input right now but I will asap. Please do the same. :smiley:

 

[WarlockCC]

if it makes you feel any better, the best mart I have found is ... eeehm, less then 200 iirc. Mebbe you should reroll some of Diablo's marts with 6PS's.
Or imbue some.

 

[purplelocust]

if it makes you feel any better, the best mart I have found is ... eeehm, less then 200 iirc. Mebbe you should reroll some of Diablo's marts with 6PS's.
Or imbue some.

I've had better luck on rerolling Diablo martels than imbuing martels, but I also haven't had much luck overall in the martel world. Rerolling can be heartbreaking, though, taking an ok usable one to something useless. In ladder season 1 I had a grim shield that dropped from Diablo that I spent an absurd number of skulls rerolling and it never came out- that was depressing.

 

[Byaxident]

Ive never gotten anything worth keeping with an imbue and lately Ive deleted some mid level chars (60s and 70s) without using their imbues. It didnt seem even worth it to look for a white martel or bh.
I think Ive tried rerolling martels only a couple of times and I did it once for each of them. As far as I know the formula for the new items level is something like this:
new ilvl = 0.4 * clvl + 0.4 * old ilvl
Which means that after the first try if you dont have something that you like, you'd better stop it there. Obviously, youd want to start with an item with high level mods.
Anyway, as far as martels are concerned, they seem to be an anomaly to me, maybe someone can explain whats going on here.

Another thing that surprises me concerning mf - and it might just be my imagination doing tricks on me - is that ladder mfing seems to be somewhat better than NL mfing. I heard some people say exactly that and thats why I got on ladder about 1 month ago. Although the difference isnt huge, I think there actually is one. Helmets,gloves and armors etc... seem to get high resists more often and I had found after 3 weeks on ladder, a bh which is almost as good as the best bh Ive found in about 2 years of NL. Then again it might just be weird coincidences.

 

[purplelocust]

As far as I know the formula for the new items level is something like this:
new ilvl = 0.4 * clvl + 0.4 * old ilvl

Yes, that's it, and it tends to stabilze at about 66% the player's level after a few rolls. For example, a level 92 player with an item dropped by Hell Diablo (ilvl 90) has the following sequence:

reroll 1: 92 * .4 + 90 *.4 = 72 (rounding non-integers down)
reroll 2: 64
reroll 3: 61
reroll 4: 60
sucessive rerolls: 60

So indeed, the first couple of rerolls are the most promising.

 

[goomba]

Another thing that surprises me concerning mf - and it might just be my imagination doing tricks on me - is that ladder mfing seems to be somewhat better than NL mfing. I heard some people say exactly that and thats why I got on ladder about 1 month ago. Although the difference isnt huge, I think there actually is one. Helmets,gloves and armors etc... seem to get high resists more often and I had found after 3 weeks on ladder, a bh which is almost as good as the best bh Ive found in about 2 years of NL. Then again it might just be weird coincidences.

my observations mirror yours, even without spending a significant amount of time MFing. (I'm still working on levelling up my two ladder chars)

my "mf baba" doesn't even have item find yet, and is using bsnap + angie's build but has managed to find a couple of fhr/resisty hats pretty quickly compared to some of the stuff my lvl ** mart/mf baba has found on NL.

 

[Zodijackyl]

The best martel I've found was probably around high 280's range, nothing special.
Ladder season 1 I found a 190 Battle Hammer off Meph, probably my best drop in recent years.
I've had some luck finding SOJs, Ladder season 1 found 6, Ladder season 2 found 3 on NL while finding none on NL, Ladder season 3 have found 12 so far (tied for second worldwide in classic SOJ finding I believe)

 

[Byaxident]

Hmm I think I must of found about 10-15 sojs in 2-3 years of NL. Found my first one on ladder after 2 weeks and a half.
Weirdest soj drop? Popped the last seal in cs and some champion or demon I hadnt killed "died". While walking towards Diablo I see a unique ring just sitting there. :flip:

 

[ForeverMe]

Zod where do you mostly MF in NL to find your sojs? I've been playing since 1.03 and I haven't found a single one yet...

 

[deathisdeadly]

Best mart I've found was a 291. I sold it for 5, and unfortunately the guy has a c/o of 10 atm.

From now on, I'll start adding proof. The holder is currently *j0hn10 . Yes, the first is a zero.

 

[deathisdeadly]

Zod where do you mostly MF in NL to find your sojs? I've been playing since 1.03 and I haven't found a single one yet...

What I like to do is collect unique rings. You should mf NM Andy, NM D, Hell Andy, Hell Meph, and CS, of course. As tempting as it is to identify them, I really think it pays off in the end. I've gotten 4/10 before. You should try it.

 

[Zodijackyl]

Zod where do you mostly MF in NL to find your sojs? I've been playing since 1.03 and I haven't found a single one yet...

Found 2 of them rushing in nightmare off act bosses with lightning sorcs (duriel and mephisto), and one off trav.
Lad SOJs found off of Diablo, Andariel, Flayers, and Trav, and maybe one of them was a CS drop not off D. All in hell. All 6 in LS1 were off Andy.

 

[Locke07]

If I am looking for the good rares I need to equip my chars, what is the best way to do that. I have a lvl 50 sorc that I can lvl up to use and MF andy and Mephisto, or I can make a Baba with find item to run different places. I am looking for the top of the line rares what do i use?

 

[Byaxident]

I would continue leveling your sorc until she can safely and rapidly kill meph. I wouldnt bother with andy if I were you (youre on NL arent you?) since the quality of her rares are generally sub par. The only advantage with her is the quest bug, but if its to receive crap every time...theres really no point. She does drops sojs tho, but if you are on NL, youre gona get richer quicker by hunting nice rares than by hunting sojs. :tongue:
Id say having an mf find item barb is a must. With good gear he can run everything pretty efficiently with maybe the exception of tal rashas tomb; theres prolly no reason why you would wana go there anyway ( I have to say Ive never tried mf tomb runs however). Hell cs is the place where ive gotten pretty much all of my nice rares, using a find item barb. It might be scary at first but with a lil practice, you can easily do solo cs runs with a barb under 5 mins. My ladder barb currently dies a lot more frequently in trav than in cs. He doesnt have high resists since hes using angelics.
Anyway, I would make both and switch from one to the other once you get bored playing with the first. Good luck.

 

[Zodijackyl]

MFing on NL isn't really worth it, values there are complete crap and legits are nearly worthless.

 

[Byaxident]

How is he supposed to equip his chars if he doesnt mf?
For someone who started playing NL late and mfed himself to where he is now, I think Im doing pretty damn good. Ive traded legits for mass sojs, dupes worth more than 10 sojs and sometimes even more than 20. So, ya, I guess I disagree.

Of course NL and ladder economies are quite different, but its still possible to find legits that are better than the dupes.

 

[deathisdeadly]

It doesn't help much when the Ladder GG's are going to be mass duped in NL.

 

[Byaxident]

I have another problem here. I made a blizz mf sorc specifically designed to take out meph. My problem is related to the amount of mf she should actually have.
I started killing him with around 350 mf and I was getting WAY too many unique,set items. I lowered it twice and she currently has 222 but I still keep getting failed uniques(I dont mind about those so much),uniques, sets and failed set items. Theres nothing more annoying than getting failed set martels and exes again and again.
I was going to lower my mf once more when I lost some items in a self xfer due to a realm down I came back from in about 40 secs. For some reason the game I had been xfering in was closed...wtf?
Anyway my question is, in your opinion, what is the sweet spot for mephisto ie. what is the best amount of mf to get the highest ratio of rares vs other crap?
She runs meph exclusively.

 

[Byaxident]

2nd soj after 1 month and a half on ladder. hooray for me!

 

[Zodijackyl]

Congrats on the SOJ find.

MFing on NL isn't worth it because there's not many players, and those who are there are already rich in dupes that you can hardly compete with starting up.