Quote (Swordslash @ Wed, 12 Nov 2008, 03:59)
I don't really agree with the concept of stripping all MF just for the purposes of finding whites/greys, because the change isn't enormous. You will get more non-promoted whites/greys, and you can even benefit from higher kill speed, but it's not as huge of a change as some believe. Let's use the following example - Hell cowing, 7 (or 8) players, searching for Archon Plates, 2 possible cases:
1.) Running with max kill speed with 0% MF, or
2.) Sacrificing 10% overall kill speed for 250% MF.
From drop calcs, in case 1 a cow has 1/5056 chance of dropping a white/grey AP. In case 2, 1/5630. We also have to sacrifice 10% of the items in case 2 from the loss of kill power, so that would be (1/5630) / 0.9 = 1/6256 (for purposes of comparison only.)
So in this example, dropping from 250% to 0% MF could net you 23.7% more whites/greys. Sounds nice, and if ALL you care about in the universe is whites/greys, definitely beneficial. But in exchange, you are giving up 50.6% of your uniques, 58.2% of your sets, and 59.7% of your rares. That's even factoring in more kill speed for 0% MF. Seems too costly to me...
Not to mention that it is impractical, since most of use have our normal fighting gear with some MF on it.
The only point that should be made about reducing MF and White / Gray items is really that you will maximise them if you have zero MF. Doesn't mean it's an overall good strategy, just like loading up 1000 MF is a terrible strategy.