nope i dont die much my merc has a helm that fullz my mana and i just put the ball up and go to town lol my blizz is doing 5400k damage must the time the enemy cannt even hit me

250mf is where ull find the most

I've found 225-275 to be the best mf for me.

I still find stuff with my sorc, she's at 450 herself, add merc and it's just shy of 500. I started finding decent stuff after i broke 200 though. 700 mf does seem a bit excessive, just get lots of blues that way.

how is it that lower mf can increase the quality of drops?

It doesn't.

From Arreat summit:

Is there an ideal % Magic Find Number?
No. The more the better. Previously a bug resulted a penalty for more than a certain percentage, but this has been fixed.

http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/magic/magicfind.shtml

MF doesn't increase drop quality, at least not directly. All it does is increase the chance something with magic properties will drop.

This post was edited by Red_Chaos1 on Mar 13 2010 07:37pm

and well, quality = magic/rare/eth i suppose, and tc is always just random. so more mf should be better? (as long as you can kill fast enough)

Yeah.. TC is random.. can't control that.

The way I look at it is this.. since you can't control which base item drop.. you should try your best to increase the chance that once the item dropped it will be unique/set. In that sense the higher mf the better. Now if you take 10 min to kill the boss with 1200mf, vs someone who take only 1 min with 200mf. The person with higher kill speed will get more chance to roll base item drop thus over time will find better items. But my sorc can kill just fine with 5k bliz. and 750mf. Let me see how fast I can kill baal and get back to you, then we can compare.

eth and sockets aren't part of the mf equation. In fact, you want less MF, as the odds of a white eth/soc dropping are greater. More MF means more magic stuff will drop, meaning less chance for pure eth and whites to drop.