MF is the only difficulty slider in this game

I've been playing ARPG's since Diablo 1, and one thing that I just don't get, is why MF as a item stat needs to be in these games at all. PoE has taken it to the extent that the entire endgame is itemized using MF as the variable to control difficulty. Why is that? Can't a difficult encounter or zone be difficult because the monsters are hard to kill and deal lots of damage? Shouldn't gear/builds/skill be the deciding factor? Basically, shouldn't the guy with the biggest stick and the strongest armour kill the boss easier?

Alas no...doesn't work that way at all.

Let me use an example from last night to explain where i'm coming from. I have a LA ranger, I play basically self-found or I do the odd trade between my RL friends when we party together, so I am not going around with auction house type gear. But that being said, I do ok when I spec for dps. about 10k frenzy, 2k LA, I have 3500 life, capped resists, yadda yadda yadda. Sadly, I have only 30% iir and no iiq except I can weapon swap to a cull stick and finish off a mob with the iir/iiq gems. But basically i'm going around killing 99% of mobs with 30 iir. As anyone knows who has ran with that level of mf vs say, even 100+ iir and 30-50 iiq, the difference is incomparable. It's like playing two different games. With the former you are in a wasteland, the latter, it's christmas every day. So ok, you are saying, just get more mf. And so I did, I played gear tetris to try and swap to a bunch of stuff like Goldwyrm and Aursize and also a couple rings with mf on them, but guess what happens? I lose hundreds of life, I lose a ton of evade/armour, I struggle to cap resists, and my frenzy dps drops by 2000. I've nerfed my own character to the point where the same dungeon I ran yesterday with ease is now considerably more dangerous.

So I ask...why? I have better gear sitting in my stash! Way better, perfectly optimized gear with no mf on it. When am I going to use it? Never, except maybe if I hop into a public game with someone who is the designated mf culler. Makes no sense to me. So now I have to try and find gear that does the same thing my other gear did, only also has mf on it....

Back in diablo2 it was the same, I'd to meph/baal/pindle runs etc wearing 600 mf worth of gear and find great stuff that I would put in my stash for later, and later never came, because it had no mf on it. Silly.

And then there are Maps. The entire Map system is based on trying to manipulate the variables on what is basically a magic item, so that it has enough iiq bonus on it to make it worth running, while not having lethal variables that will kill you with your crappy mf gear on. Same idea basically. Using mf as a difficulty slider.

I don't know why GGG doesn't just scrap mf as an item stat, make encounters difficult based on their level, make drops balanced according to the difficulty of said encounters and let us wade into battle with the gear that kills things fastest and keeps us alive the longest.

Anyway that's my $0.00002 :)

Because



1) That would make too much sense

2) MF is crack in the ARPG world, it keeps players coming back for more

3) I agree with you and hate MF, but I don't think its unfortunately going away...

You have better gear in your stash, but you're not using it because you want to find better gear?

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bluefalcon74 wrote:

You have better gear in your stash, but you're not using it because you want to find better gear?

Its a catch-22 and is the biggest problems with most ARPG's


Its a bad idea that stuck and doesn't seem to be dying.

I guess I shouldn't be too critical because I'm wearing Aurseize myself. They purely suck except for that I find twice as many orbs and rares while using them. I think at a cartain point once I get decked out better I'll stash them. I've found about five uniques (self-found) and only Aurseize gets any use.

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bluefalcon74 wrote:

I guess I shouldn't be too critical because I'm wearing Aurseize myself. They purely suck except for that I find twice as many orbs and rares while using them. I think at a cartain point once I get decked out better I'll stash them. I've found about five uniques (self-found) and only Aurseize gets any use.

IIR does not effect orb drop rate.

@Maelthor you are right, playing the game without MF gear is not good if you want min max loot

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bluefalcon74 wrote:

You have better gear in your stash, but you're not using it because you want to find better gear?

This is very common.

But anyway, I have 12 IIR because the good boots I bought had it. I don't use MF anymore. Every single prefix/suffix counts at high levels, and forgoing life/leech/attributes on my amulet to wear Stone of Lazhwar was something I barely convinced myself to do. So for me, MF is out of the question, unless I had a godly item with an extra mod and it turned out to be IIR.

Then again, I don't get many uniques or rares (I actually get more rares than I expected from my previous experience with not using IIR, but uniques are very rare for me). But, I also am still alive at about level 86, which matters more to me. I wouldn't even wear Aurseize anymore. I used to, but not now. I always die at around 80 when maps start getting hard.

That is one thing about HC: at high levels, you have an incentive to max your character survivability/effectiveness, rather than MF. If you look at all the most expensive amulets (for example) in standard, they're generally all gold amulets.

And while there are certainly people stacking MF in HC leagues and just running bosses or fairly low level maps (I'm sure there are people doing high level maps too, but it's hard to imagine they live long unless they have godly gear), all those top ranking players and streamers generally aren't.

Edit: and the people running MF generally are not solo players.

pure dps builds get more exp dont u feel thats a fair exchange for more items?

Every build wants damage. Items provide damage. But damage affixes aren't OP because they're somewhat build-specific.

Every build wants survivability. Items provide survivability. But survivability affixes aren't OP because they're somewhat build-specific.

Every build wants magic find. Items provide magic find. And it's always flat with no strings attached whatsoever.

Except Gifts From Above. That ring is what all magic find should look like.

It seems like the OP is suffering a severe case of self-induced trauma. You seem to be torn between your addiction to getting more gear, and your want to play the game with your current one - so you are asking GGG to ban your drug(MF).

In actuality, GGG has been reducing the effectiveness of MF-ing ever since release.
The IIQ gem has been removed from new leagues. Grouping gives you a bunch of IIR, which makes stacking IIR on top of it less useful(yes, it's still useful, just less so). Bosses now drop *significantly* increased loot, which means that a regular-geared person just culling bosses and select rare mobs will get an amount of gear much closer to that of a dedicated MF-er. Yes, they haven't flat out removed the stat yet, but there's been *great* strides towards making it unneeded - I hope you can at least appreciate that.