MF and character build questions

As the title states, looking for advice.
for TL;DR skip the first part Also, playing Non-Ladder

I have a lvl93 blizz sorc equipped with 3 piece

Tal set,

Shako, etc basic mf gear as well as anni and Storch sitting around 500mf, Merc has Insight

Leviathan and

Tal

Helm. I have been doing runs in full games (soloing in cow, Chaos,

Terror) to kill the bosses, Pindle and/or Ancinet tunnels and Arachnids lair to find gear, trying to save for Enigma or other runewords. However I am having an extreamly hard time getting anything, having only found an

Ist and 2 puls worth of stuff in a little over a week. I don't run with groups because I can never pick up drops before others do so i run solo in full games.

TL;DR

I guess my first question is what are the best areas now to run? I assume Tzones but what ones are good for a cold sorc. Also do amount of players still increase drop quality/quantity or does that only effect xp and runes?

2nd question, I am planning to make another character if I can manage to finally find/trade for what I need, I was originally planning on making an Hammerdin as they are good at almost anything or lightning sorc but not sure how to build one now, and if they are good at mf/rune finding or just for fast clears. I also wasn't sure about other fun/good classes that can be used to find items or runes somewhat effectively. Would it be better to make a cow/Chaos/Tzone character to farm for rune drops or go for a full MF build? Also with changes in the game what are the best builds for these that aren't outragously expensive? I will/can share what my sorc uses and swap gear between characters.

Blizz sorc might be the best build in the game now with sunder charms. A budget one like my new ladder one can completely obliterate

Terror zones. I suggest making a ladder character even if just get enough resources to trade for a cold sunder charm to eventually give to your non-ladder sorc.

Otherwise you're looking at hammerdin or lightning sorc for efficiency. Hammerdin is pretty expensive to get to Enigma but lightning sorc is even more expensive to get to top end gear I think. (although I love my physical bowazon fast running around and 1-2shottting everything in p1)

Terror zones are definitely best for leveling 93+ hdin can kill basically everything but it is slower with a budget build, light sorc needs Infinity to function properly.

I think at the very highest end of gear lightning sorc is going to be fastest with sunders, but that will require many bers worth of gear to make happen.

Areas: best are areas with ilvl85+ (pits, Chaos etc) and all

Terror zones (some

Terror zones have low density of monsters thats makes them bad for XP and also for MF).

characters: I personally hate sorc (lately I have been thinking of making

Nova sorc with that mana shield build - I already have all items needed for it).

I MF with Foher - 450MF -

Shako, hoto, hoz, Enigma, mage fist, war trav, arach mesh, amulet (+1all pala skills, 18MF - thats low, 20all res and +54mana) dual nagelrings both with 29%MF.
all charms are sc with +7MF +

Gheed and two skillers - I am at 446MF. Merc run Infinity andy and Fortitude.

I also have MF barb - I use Grief and botd using

Frenzy, arreat face with

Topaz in it and Skullders armor (i bought perfect for

Ist and upped it) or u can go with Wealth RW thats 1x

Lem rune as highest rune. All other gear is towards MF. And to be honest it can clear everything p1 kinda fast considering with

Find Item I have one more chance to loot. Off hand I went for cheaper 2x alibaba (both have 2ists in it) instead of 2x crystal swords with 6ist each. I have MF 450% and for

Find Item 750%. But foher is faster and more entertaining for myself. I so change this barb into goldfind barb (hell

Travincal easy. I am at 1200% gold find off hand I have 2x crystal

Blade with 6lems at 2100gold find).

Foher can suprisingly clear all act bosses and even keyruns - nila immune to lighting take some time. And if there is something light immune I just skip it.

You said u dont have Enigma, so you are stuck with sorc - keep in mind that

Frenzy barb if u keep

Frenzy fully charged isnt that much slow in terms of running on the map and with

Find Item you get 2nd chance of finding item - but for similar

Frenzy MF barb you need strong weapons dual Grief or BotD to get mana leech.
Once I was talking about MF with friend, he used blizzard sorc (without high end gear) and with my barb I cleared pits a bit slower than him with same MF + I was using find items. Maybe it was because his monsters spawn as cold immunes dunno. But clear speed was comparable to bad equip blizzard sorc. If you do math, he would have to be twice as fast than me because of

Find Item with higher MF and ofc sometimes it wont pop up any item due to

Find Item aint 100%.

Regarding cows: if dont have few jahs and bers lying around to go for

Holy Fire or Dream pala, fastest is Javazon. For cows you dont need much, just get any titans and as many +1skills u can get - use gamble to get gloves 2/20 and rings and amu with +skills, mana and other usefull stats. Imho for few ists you can get decent gear for java to run cows. If you keep Harmony on offhand you have problem with running slow.
Budget Java: titans, Treachery and vs cows everything else is pretty much not needed.

Belt and gloves with +IAS.

worstd2playerever wrote: 2 years ago

I suggest making a ladder character even if just get enough resources to trade for a cold sunder charm to eventually give to your non-ladder sorc.

from what I heard Sunder charms are dropping A LOT. And you cant pass them until ladder is over. Imho if he focused on farming NL to get

Mal he could buy decent Sunder charm after season ends at the same time as if he find it by himself on ladder.

And regarding XP, baalruns gives you more till lvl 94 after that only

Terror zones are better.

But more important is to farm what you like to play

also if u decide to go for goldfind barb and you gamble circlets, some

Circlet's are worthy even 20ber. Thats not bad source of getting high runes for urself

The Flash wrote: 2 years ago

worstd2playerever wrote: 2 years ago

I suggest making a ladder character even if just get enough resources to trade for a cold sunder charm to eventually give to your non-ladder sorc.

from what I heard Sunder charms are dropping A LOT. And you cant pass them until ladder is over. Imho if he focused on farming NL to get

Mal he could buy decent Sunder charm after season ends at the same time as if he find it by himself on ladder.

tbh

Mal will probably be on the high end for a sunder charm by the time ladder is over. You can already get low-rolled ones for

Lem/

Pul. I just want to try to farm a set of one of each type for my own satisfaction.

also if u check my description I do sell cheap stuff for mostly for

Fal-

Pul. I also run run for tokens. And in like 2-3months I am at 5x

Ist,

Vex,

Ohm, 2x

Lo and I have bought many items already so my actual earning is way higher. So trading is really important even if u dont find GG items

worstd2playerever wrote: 2 years ago

Blizz sorc might be the best build in the game now with sunder charms. A budget one like my new ladder one can completely obliterate

Terror zones. I suggest making a ladder character even if just get enough resources to trade for a cold sunder charm to eventually give to your non-ladder sorc.

Otherwise you're looking at hammerdin or lightning sorc for efficiency. Hammerdin is pretty expensive to get to Enigma but lightning sorc is even more expensive to get to top end gear I think. (although I love my physical bowazon fast running around and 1-2shottting everything in p1)

Terror zones are definitely best for leveling 93+ hdin can kill basically everything but it is slower with a budget build, light sorc needs Infinity to function properly.

I think at the very highest end of gear lightning sorc is going to be fastest with sunders, but that will require many bers worth of gear to make happen.

I am currently saving runes for Enigma/hoto etc. Have an

Ohm,

Ist,

Um, and

Pul so a eays away but if there were cheaper builds to run and help find stuff outside of blizz sorc I would try it since my luck is bad lately and it's very slow going right now. I think I'll skip ladder and just trade for the charms once its ended.

Thanks for the advice.

I would

Concentrate on farming for Wealth outside of

Terror zones unless the area is good for cold then. Bosses, keys, etc. Non-ladder you can generate a decent amount of Wealth even trading pgems to crafters trying to get that perfect roll.

First off:
Player count has never increased the quality of drops, merely the quantity. More specifically, it reduces the odds of nothing dropping.

Because of that, farming on a higher player count is only ever a better idea if you can still kill stuff nearly as fast as you do solo meaning you don't lose so much time that you end up with less drops/time, despite the higher drop quantity per kills.

In terms of areas, it depends.

Terror zones are great for xp. Most standard farming areas - once you get to a certain lvl - are not (to put it midly). That's a simple fact.

In terms of drops, regardless of whether you're farming

Terror zones or traditional farming zones like pits or CS, you're usually still better off focusing down the champs and not doing full clears. The obvious exception, as always, is cows thanks to the ridiculous mob density.
The higher lvl in

Terror zones (assuming your char lvl is high enough) does make them theoretically better than the traditional farming zones, among other things because even the White mobs next to your champ packs (i.e. the collateral damage) can drop everything you're after. Plus everything has a chance to drop 45 lifers.

Some

Terror zones however are just annoying AF to deal with and either have stupidly low density or the champs hide so well that it just takes forever to clear them when compared to something like pits or cs. Others though are just brilliant (trav, trist, ..). Adding to that, since you're on NL and don't have a sunder, a fair few

Terror zones will simply be beyond painful for your char to clear.

As a result, the best place to farm is - as it always has been - a function of "what can drop?" and "how long does it take me to clear?" but is now also a question of when are you playing and what is the current

Terror zones. For a few zones, you'll want to pick

Terror over anything else. For others, you'll want to stick to pits, CS or wherever it is you most efficiently do your traditional farming. Which zones exactly those are depends entirely on your build and your playstyle.


Lastly, I would challenge that whole "blizz is best now!" claim.
Sure, it kinda rules the intro level farming as you can clear any zone with nothing but a cold sunder. But it still doesn't scale nearly as well as other classes and builds do, simply because blizzard has a hard stop on kill speed via the cast delay. You'll never clear an entire screen in a split second like other builds can simply because you can only cast 1 blizzard which doesn't cover nearly your entire screen and then you sit and wait. All in all..mweh

The Flash wrote: 2 years ago

Areas: best are areas with ilvl85+ (pits, Chaos etc) and all

Terror zones (some

Terror zones have low density of monsters thats makes them bad for XP and also for MF).

characters: I personally hate sorc (lately I have been thinking of making

Nova sorc with that mana shield build - I already have all items needed for it).

I MF with Foher - 450MF -

Shako, hoto, hoz, Enigma, mage fist, war trav, arach mesh, amulet (+1all pala skills, 18MF - thats low, 20all res and +54mana) dual nagelrings both with 29%MF.
all charms are sc with +7MF +

Gheed and two skillers - I am at 446MF. Merc run Infinity andy and Fortitude.

I also have MF barb - I use Grief and botd using

Frenzy, arreat face with

Topaz in it and Skullders armor (i bought perfect for

Ist and upped it) or u can go with Wealth RW thats 1x

Lem rune as highest rune. All other gear is towards MF. And to be honest it can clear everything p1 kinda fast considering with

Find Item I have one more chance to loot. Off hand I went for cheaper 2x alibaba (both have 2ists in it) instead of 2x crystal swords with 6ist each. I have MF 450% and for

Find Item 750%. But foher is faster and more entertaining for myself. I so change this barb into goldfind barb (hell

Travincal easy. I am at 1200% gold find off hand I have 2x crystal

Blade with 6lems at 2100gold find).

Foher can suprisingly clear all act bosses and even keyruns - nila immune to lighting take some time. And if there is something light immune I just skip it.

You said u dont have Enigma, so you are stuck with sorc - keep in mind that

Frenzy barb if u keep

Frenzy fully charged isnt that much slow in terms of running on the map and with

Find Item you get 2nd chance of finding item - but for similar

Frenzy MF barb you need strong weapons dual Grief or BotD to get mana leech.
Once I was talking about MF with friend, he used blizzard sorc (without high end gear) and with my barb I cleared pits a bit slower than him with same MF + I was using find items. Maybe it was because his monsters spawn as cold immunes dunno. But clear speed was comparable to bad equip blizzard sorc. If you do math, he would have to be twice as fast than me because of

Find Item with higher MF and ofc sometimes it wont pop up any item due to

Find Item aint 100%.

Regarding cows: if dont have few jahs and bers lying around to go for

Holy Fire or Dream pala, fastest is Javazon. For cows you dont need much, just get any titans and as many +1skills u can get - use gamble to get gloves 2/20 and rings and amu with +skills, mana and other usefull stats. Imho for few ists you can get decent gear for java to run cows. If you keep Harmony on offhand you have problem with running slow.
Budget Java: titans, Treachery and vs cows everything else is pretty much not needed.

Belt and gloves with +IAS.

Been running 85 areas as well as meph and andy, aa for Tzones I mf in cow/Chaos games so usually Tzones are lvl94-96 anyways.

I was saving for a new character build and currently have

Ohm,

Ist,

Um,

Pul but having a very hard time finding stuff to trade off so thought of finding other options.

FOH sounds fun, just need to get gear (and find the build) but seems setup is the same as Hdin as far as gearing so may try this and I don't care for it switch over.

I have 2/20 gloves already so java zon is plausable but need the rest still. Does MFing in full games provide any advantages like it used to other than increased rune drops and xp?

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

First off:
Player count has never increased the quality of drops, merely the quantity. More specifically, it reduces the odds of nothing dropping.

Because of that, farming on a higher player count is only ever a better idea if you can still kill stuff nearly as fast as you do solo meaning you don't lose so much time that you end up with less drops/time, despite the higher drop quantity per kills.

In terms of areas, it depends.

Terror zones are great for xp. Most standard farming areas - once you get to a certain lvl - are not (to put it midly). That's a simple fact.

In terms of drops, regardless of whether you're farming

Terror zones or traditional farming zones like pits or CS, you're usually still better off focusing down the champs and not doing full clears. The obvious exception, as always, is cows thanks to the ridiculous mob density.
The higher lvl in

Terror zones (assuming your char lvl is high enough) does make them theoretically better than the traditional farming zones, among other things because even the White mobs next to your champ packs (i.e. the collateral damage) can drop everything you're after. Plus everything has a chance to drop 45 lifers.

Some

Terror zones however are just annoying AF to deal with and either have stupidly low density or the champs hide so well that it just takes forever to clear them when compared to something like pits or cs. Others though are just brilliant (trav, trist, ..). Adding to that, since you're on NL and don't have a sunder, a fair few

Terror zones will simply be beyond painful for your char to clear.

As a result, the best place to farm is - as it always has been - a function of "what can drop?" and "how long does it take me to clear?" but is now also a question of when are you playing and what is the current

Terror zones. For a few zones, you'll want to pick

Terror over anything else. For others, you'll want to stick to pits, CS or wherever it is you most efficiently do your traditional farming. Which zones exactly those are depends entirely on your build and your playstyle.


Lastly, I would challenge that whole "blizz is best now!" claim.
Sure, it kinda rules the intro level farming as you can clear any zone with nothing but a cold sunder. But it still doesn't scale nearly as well as other classes and builds do, simply because blizzard has a hard stop on kill speed via the cast delay. You'll never clear an entire screen in a split second like other builds can simply because you can only cast 1 blizzard which doesn't cover nearly your entire screen and then you sit and wait. All in all..mweh

So realistically player count doesn't matter for unique/champion/bosses as they have set amount of drop quantity anyways and really only effects weather a regular mob will drop something?

Blindfire187 wrote: 2 years ago

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

First off:
Player count has never increased the quality of drops, merely the quantity. More specifically, it reduces the odds of nothing dropping.

Because of that, farming on a higher player count is only ever a better idea if you can still kill stuff nearly as fast as you do solo meaning you don't lose so much time that you end up with less drops/time, despite the higher drop quantity per kills.

In terms of areas, it depends.

Terror zones are great for xp. Most standard farming areas - once you get to a certain lvl - are not (to put it midly). That's a simple fact.

In terms of drops, regardless of whether you're farming

Terror zones or traditional farming zones like pits or CS, you're usually still better off focusing down the champs and not doing full clears. The obvious exception, as always, is cows thanks to the ridiculous mob density.
The higher lvl in

Terror zones (assuming your char lvl is high enough) does make them theoretically better than the traditional farming zones, among other things because even the White mobs next to your champ packs (i.e. the collateral damage) can drop everything you're after. Plus everything has a chance to drop 45 lifers.

Some

Terror zones however are just annoying AF to deal with and either have stupidly low density or the champs hide so well that it just takes forever to clear them when compared to something like pits or cs. Others though are just brilliant (trav, trist, ..). Adding to that, since you're on NL and don't have a sunder, a fair few

Terror zones will simply be beyond painful for your char to clear.

As a result, the best place to farm is - as it always has been - a function of "what can drop?" and "how long does it take me to clear?" but is now also a question of when are you playing and what is the current

Terror zones. For a few zones, you'll want to pick

Terror over anything else. For others, you'll want to stick to pits, CS or wherever it is you most efficiently do your traditional farming. Which zones exactly those are depends entirely on your build and your playstyle.


Lastly, I would challenge that whole "blizz is best now!" claim.
Sure, it kinda rules the intro level farming as you can clear any zone with nothing but a cold sunder. But it still doesn't scale nearly as well as other classes and builds do, simply because blizzard has a hard stop on kill speed via the cast delay. You'll never clear an entire screen in a split second like other builds can simply because you can only cast 1 blizzard which doesn't cover nearly your entire screen and then you sit and wait. All in all..mweh

So realistically player count doesn't matter for unique/champion/bosses as they have set amount of drop quantity anyways and really only effects weather a regular mob will drop something?

Not quite.

Champs, Uniques and SuperUniques drop a specific number of items/gold no matter what. They don't have a nodrop and are hence not affected by player count. Normal mobs (including their minions if I recall correctly) do have a nodrop and are affected by player count. Bosses have their own special little calculation in that they have a base nodrop that gets adjusted by player count up until reaching a potential max.

Mephisto for example has a lower nodrop chance on p5 than on p3 and on p3 than on p1. On p7 however it is the same as p5 because his nodrop reduction caps on p5. I believe it capped at 5 for all of them but don't quote me on that one.

To make things more complicated, player count isn't player count. SP /players is easy as you dictate the factor for the nodrop adjustment with it directly. Online, you get 1 for yourself, 1 for partied players that are within 2 screens and 0.5 for players that are either unpartied or further away. So getting to 5 in split MF runs for example is actually quite rare as you usually get yourself (1) and seven folks in other zones (0.5 each) = 4.5, rounded down = 4.

Item generation in general isn't quite as straight forward as one might have hoped.

(Personally, I tend to just farm on P1 either way..mainly because it is too annoying, trying to find people for consistent split runs)


https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Item_Generation_Tutorial
If you ever have too much time on your hands.

rune drop has nothing to do with MF. Its a separate thing, thats why if u wanna farm cow for runes and bases you dont want to have MF, because higher MF means less bases.

I will try to simplify how MF works.

Lets say you kill enemy who has chance to drop 0-4 items:
1) first is rolled how many items will drop - lets say 2
2) it will decide which item it will be including rune - lets say you get

Shako and rune
3a) it will roll a dice based on your MF what

Shako it will be - ethereal/superior/socketed or magic or rare or

Harlequin Crest or any combination
3b) for rune it will roll a dice based on rune probability

How to improve rune drop: areas with very high density of mobs - thats why cows are one of the best. But if drop will be

Eld or

Jah its based on probability on rune roll.

But some monsters have higher chance of dropping runes than other. For example wraiths in

Arcane Sanctuary or those dangerous "lighting ghosts" and few more.

The Flash wrote: 2 years ago

rune drop has nothing to do with MF. Its a separate thing, thats why if u wanna farm cow for runes and bases you dont want to have MF, because higher MF means less bases.

I will try to simplify how MF works.

Lets say you kill enemy who has chance to drop 0-4 items:
1) first is rolled how many items will drop - lets say 2
2) it will decide which item it will be including rune - lets say you get

Shako and rune
3a) it will roll a dice based on your MF what

Shako it will be - ethereal/superior/socketed or magic or rare or

Harlequin Crest or any combination
3b) for rune it will roll a dice based on rune probability

How to improve rune drop: areas with very high density of mobs - thats why cows are one of the best. But if drop will be

Eld or

Jah its based on probability on rune roll.

But some monsters have higher chance of dropping runes than other. For example wraiths in

Arcane Sanctuary or those dangerous "lighting ghosts" and few more.

Thanks, However I'm aware how mf works and that it doesn't effect rune drops. despite my noobish questions I played D2 original and LOD a LOT when it first came out and for several years after. However I forgot a lot of the more intricate things like player count and area's to mf, especially with all the changes made in the newest 2 patches. I was actually asking if it's better to build another mf character or to build a quick clearer to run Chaos and cows to try for rune drops.

I wrote that because you asked few comments ago.

I think without Enigma its not ideal to get non sorc MF character.

If you are happy with ur sorc keep playing it, if not go for java for cows. Or take a break from MF and play new character like zoo druid or something just for fun you might be lucky and if not you can anytime switch to ur MF sorc.

But if u will find what you looking for thats based on your luck. If your luck is same as mine I would recommend to uninstall game because you will never find anything

but also keep in mind if you make new character especially budget Java for cows it will cost you only your time and few runes which are faaaaar from Enigma.

For me important is to have fun. I dont have fun with sorc so I am not playing her even she is kinda best for farming.

Imho best way to get rich is to make smiter and do ubers over and over. You have guaranteed drop on keys, every run u get torch. And sorc torch are being sold for decent runes even now.

With your sorc if u do keyruns over and over again. Every 3hrs you should be able to do ubers (ofc its based on luck). Last time I found any

Key I found 5keys in single game. But that was 2-3weeks ago and since then I havent seen single

Key - probably out of stock? (I am not much focusing on

Key runs now, but I still do Summoner/Countess via

Terror zones every once in a while).

Or just focus on tokens, its guaranteed drop as well. and they are still being sold for imho a bit high runes.

Rerolling spirits. This week I sold 2x 35FCR for

Ist each.

As I said earlier. I am selling cheap stuff. But thanks to those cheap stuff I have 2x

Lo now.

The Flash wrote: 2 years ago

I wrote that because you asked few comments ago.

I think without Enigma its not ideal to get non sorc MF character.

If you are happy with ur sorc keep playing it, if not go for java for cows. Or take a break from MF and play new character like zoo druid or something just for fun you might be lucky and if not you can anytime switch to ur MF sorc.

But if u will find what you looking for thats based on your luck. If your luck is same as mine I would recommend to uninstall game because you will never find anything

but also keep in mind if you make new character especially budget Java for cows it will cost you only your time and few runes which are faaaaar from Enigma.

For me important is to have fun. I dont have fun with sorc so I am not playing her even she is kinda best for farming.

Imho best way to get rich is to make smiter and do ubers over and over. You have guaranteed drop on keys, every run u get torch. And sorc torch are being sold for decent runes even now.

With your sorc if u do keyruns over and over again. Every 3hrs you should be able to do ubers (ofc its based on luck). Last time I found any

Key I found 5keys in single game. But that was 2-3weeks ago and since then I havent seen single

Key - probably out of stock? (I am not much focusing on

Key runs now, but I still do Summoner/Countess via

Terror zones every once in a while).

Or just focus on tokens, its guaranteed drop as well. and they are still being sold for imho a bit high runes.

Rerolling spirits. This week I sold 2x 35FCR for

Ist each.

As I said earlier. I am selling cheap stuff. But thanks to those cheap stuff I have 2x

Lo now.

I like the sorc, but I do want some other characters also. currently saving to make an Enigma just very unlucky with drops lately. I did manage to trade a Dracs for

Ist today so no I have an

Ohm, 2 ists,

Um, and a

Pul. I also have around 25is pgems, though I don't know how many pgems =what runes so that isn't too helpful. I do find hard to find items, they just aren't useful ones unfortunately. Like today I found Trang

Belt so now I have the full set, for whatever thats worth, and I also found

Horizon's Tornado but that also isn't really worth much. Also have so decent stuff but trades cheap like 34% viper but it's still hard to trade off. Owell, I'll keep at it maybe I will get a REALLY lucky drop soon...hopefully. Thanks again for the advice.

I agree with the recommendation that you have different options to change it up and keep you interested. The drop rates in this game are low enough that the winning farming method is the one that you enjoy the most and can keep grinding with.

No offense, but it sounds so odd to me that somebody could level a character to 93 and still be under the delusion that MF = value. It's not.

You want high value? You do

Travincal. The most expensive and valuable things in the game, especially on non-ladder, are charms and jewels. Bases are second best. Runes, third.

Your sorc can do Trav just fine, you only need to ignore Toorc, but the crème de la crème is the Trav barb. Build one, hunker down and get rich.

Terror zones are a distraction and a new way to level. Nothing more.

Travincal is still king.