What character makes the best MagikFinder in the Mod?

[gravity]

So, i'm making my way through the Maiar difficulty now...i'm in Angbad with my dark elf. I wanted to play a build i was very familiar with, and since there aren't any super MF items as in D2LOD 1.10, I figured that i'd find some good stuff along the way with the Elf as i got a feel for the mod.

So now, my plugY stash is bursting at the seams with decent starter items and i want to make a true MF character to sniff out the uniques. I know that rares more often beat uniques, but what can i say? I am a collector..

Any thoughts?

With the greater emphasis on sockets and the easy to find anna runes, i'm leaning toward whoever can wield the most stuff with the most sockets. Right now i'm thinking Summoner, though i am not certain.

I'd love to get in touch with another ME Mod player..So post! let's game together!

[Bloodtitan]

well i am almost certain it is no melee character you want to/can use for MFing in the later stages of valar difficulty. once again elemental ranged chars rule over melees, maybe even the summoner which i did not test yet.
i am playing a holy fire/holy shock dunadan supported by a holy freeze mercenary and because i found decent stuff like daerons rapier it was a rush to valar difficulty which i reached with lvl50 ... looks a bit early?

anyway, i needed everything i could get to increase my combat performance, there was no room to add in magic find stuff. this is reserved for sorceress, rohirhim, summoner and maybe trap-darkelf.

playing northman in eldar act 5 is a pain. nearly made me quit the mod because of the stupidly strong dragons. they outclass morgoth in any case which is a joke... so dont even think about a MF/find item northman if you want to do morgoth runs.

[Elessar]

Actually, any character can build up a decent amount of magic find in the ME mod, just some can afford to replace more stats with magic find. Both my Dunadan and my Complete Dark Elf have a couple hundred magic find on them (not including their mercs), more than either could hope to have in LoD, and both are into melee combat to some extent.
My Summoner at 77ish or so doesn't have nearly as much mf. Neither does my Sorceress, though she can probably afford to better than my melee chars.

With that much mf, I still do fine killing stuff up to Morgoth himself in Valar diff on my Dark Elf and Dunadan(as fine as any character is going to do soloing him, that is). I do ok as far as finding uniques as well. I don't get a unique every other monster (and you never should), but they drop often enough for me. Sometimes there's a dry spell, sometimes you get two or three in the same game.

As I recall, you'll want something with power if you intend to get all the uniques, because only Morgoth and maybe a few others will drop the highest. You remember the dungeon portal areas in Act 5? Those are supposed to be for an extra challenge with extra rewards in Valar diff(i.e. they are tougher than most other places). You'll want to be able to survive those as well.

As for the dragons, if you know how to fight them, the dragons are easy. There's no "easy" way to fight Morgoth except with a full group of 8 people.

Take care and good luck
Elessar

[gravity]

Is the forum slow to load or is that just me?

anyway, i'm approaching 50 with the summoner now and with 235% mf, he's doing alright. there's this set called tools of the master that gives +5 to all summoning skills and they're all socketed (except, the wand says its scketd, but you can't put anything in it, nor can it be socketed with the quest) so i've been putting ptopaz's into them. my skeletons do fine, though i just switched to a might merc and the radius on it is far, far smaller than in LOD...kind of a bummer to me. but so back to MF- i've found a lot of uniques for only being in Maiar Act II..really i can't complain. I can post what i have found if anyone is interested. Finding lots of set items too, though nothing stellar as i'm not in Valar. Looking forward to it..hoping to find more MF small charms as the MF mods on boots, gloves, rings etc (the masters tools set is wand, shield and helm) aren't typically over 15-30% unless you get some regular old magic MF boots where the MF mod is the only decent thing about them. but, with the skeletons and merc doing the fighting i suppose i could do that. just a tad boring is all, though the rares can be really good so perhaps i will lluck out in the future.

btw- i've been posting over at the diabloii.net single player forums (SPF) about the mod since they decided that not all mods are bad. swing on by and say hello if you care to. my name there is gravitysrainbow.

peace.

[gravity]

Is the forum slow to load or is that just me?

anyway, i'm approaching 50 with the summoner now and with 235% mf, he's doing alright. there's this set called tools of the master that gives +5 to all summoning skills and they're all socketed (except, the wand says its scketd, but you can't put anything in it, nor can it be socketed with the quest) so i've been putting ptopaz's into them. my skeletons do fine, though i just switched to a might merc and the radius on it is far, far smaller than in LOD...kind of a bummer to me. but so back to MF- i've found a lot of uniques for only being in Maiar Act II..really i can't complain. I can post what i have found if anyone is interested. Finding lots of set items too, though nothing stellar as i'm not in Valar. Looking forward to it..hoping to find more MF small charms as the MF mods on boots, gloves, rings etc (the masters tools set is wand, shield and helm) aren't typically over 15-30% unless you get some regular old magic MF boots where the MF mod is the only decent thing about them. but, with the skeletons and merc doing the fighting i suppose i could do that. just a tad boring is all, though the rares can be really good so perhaps i will lluck out in the future.

btw- i've been posting over at the diabloii.net single player forums (SPF) about the mod since they decided that not all mods are bad. swing on by and say hello if you care to. my name there is gravitysrainbow.

peace.

[gravity]

Is the forum slow to load or is that just me?

anyway, i'm approaching 50 with the summoner now and with 235% mf, he's doing alright. there's this set called tools of the master that gives +5 to all summoning skills and they're all socketed (except, the wand says its scketd, but you can't put anything in it, nor can it be socketed with the quest) so i've been putting ptopaz's into them. my skeletons do fine, though i just switched to a might merc and the radius on it is far, far smaller than in LOD...kind of a bummer to me. but so back to MF- i've found a lot of uniques for only being in Maiar Act II..really i can't complain. I can post what i have found if anyone is interested. Finding lots of set items too, though nothing stellar as i'm not in Valar. Looking forward to it..hoping to find more MF small charms as the MF mods on boots, gloves, rings etc (the masters tools set is wand, shield and helm) aren't typically over 15-30% unless you get some regular old magic MF boots where the MF mod is the only decent thing about them. but, with the skeletons and merc doing the fighting i suppose i could do that. just a tad boring is all, though the rares can be really good so perhaps i will lluck out in the future.

btw- i've been posting over at the diabloii.net single player forums (SPF) about the mod since they decided that not all mods are bad. swing on by and say hello if you care to. my name there is gravitysrainbow.

peace.

[Bloodtitan]

now that my new sorceress is about to kill Sauron Reborn in valar difficulty, i doubt there is a better magic find character/masskiller than a FO/FB sorceress. this build is way above any melee character.
i also have had good experience with a poison javelin rohirrim.

[gravity]

well, i've gotten the MF on the summoner up to 485%. I'm in act 5 Valar now and yes- it is difficult but only if i'm trying to bbulldoze my way through. If I am vigilant, I make good progress. I just got a bit sidetracked with other characters. But, that does mean that i do not know what lies ahead so perhaps it's premature to speak. But, so far so good with the MF summoner.

I'm using skeleton fighters, like..22 revives, a thorns merc, attract to get things started, then switch to iron maiden. also one in amp damage for immunes. When i'm at full force, most things disappear into the meat grinder of the thorns/iron maiden combo. Just gotta keep the force up and not get nailed by a stream of magik damage from succubi or rammed to death by those reanimated crushing blow fellows.

and sorry for spamming up the thread with dup posts.

[gravity]

So i am making a sorc to see if she tops the Summoner in her ability to accrue MF. So far, i am doubting it although i could see where her faster pace might make up for her lack of MF%. She's currently at 230% but i will lose half that soon as i can no longer reasonably get through with the ArAnna armor.

Trying to ween myself off of cold spells completely. So i am going for Meteor and Chain Lightning. I'm level 30 now and cannot currently beat the fire dragons as they are I to F. So i am trying to level and sink points into CL.

But i do think they are too strong. Too fast as well. Sorry Kahn. I can see stumbling across one or two of them, but not a whole gang. Dragons don't run in packs anyhow. But, that's just an opinion. The whole mod's great and there's no denying that and it's safe to say methinks that there will be no further development of this mod (d2's not the most current of games now is it? but oh so sweet).

Furthermore, i thought that Prevent Monster Heal kept them from regenerating Hp's. It isn't that i cannot damage them, it's that their regen health rate is so high there's no keeping them down. And my PMH amulet isn't preventing this, though i thought that it would.

On a different note, the Sorc seems to find different things than the Summoner does. So the new exposure is kinda neat.

And in town tele...don't know why you can't in vanilla. I love it

UPDATE/EDIT:

Alright, well as it turns out, my sorc really needs the cold skill to slow everything down so i've gone with the frost orb/chain lighting split. maybe i could make it without cold, but not with all the emphasis i've put on my MF rating which is now at 499% with the sorc. She's currently lvl 65 i think, and so her lightning skill won't be going up much further (currently does up to something like 1485) and unless i find a set with lots of sockets that won't milk my skills or cast rate, I've got the equipment i'll have for the rest of this build. I've found a couple pieces of Miriel's Heritage, which seems like it's made for the caster, but i don't know (and probably won't know for some time) what the full set bestows.

I suppose this goes for every chracter, but once you get to Dol Guldur, your game play changes to be a bit more defensive in this mod. For this, the sorc is superb with the right button set to tele and the left alternating between Orb and Chain. Coupled with a Rogue merc armed with a very effective rare crossbow (up to 351 dmg) this build's pretty hot. Only thing i wish i could (and hmm..maybe i can) adjust more is the hit recovery. Seems like it's all too easy to be hit frozen to death in this mod.

All in all- i think elessar's right at least as far as the nec vs. sorc goes- any character can be a decent MFer. Only thing i'd add is that the Sorc can do it a bit faster if you are slick with tele-ing and have a decent CR. Plus with a nec, before every MF run, you have to get your minions which is good and bad- good in that a lot of stuff i've found drops while minion gathering, but bad because if the mlvl of your minions isn't that of the place where you ran out of them (like the worldstone chamber- sry- can't recall the mod name for the room) then most likely that run is over.

Maybe i'll come back and post my equipment for some lone ME modders reference.

[Bloodtitan]

PMH needs a physical hit and it doesnt have 100% success. also, it does not last forever so dont go AFK to town once you hit them. and yes, most likely you and your merc will not be able to survive and hit dragons so they do not regenerate anymore. which is why i requested dragons damage cut half earlier...
you probably have to lure all the dragons out of morgoths hall and park them somewhere near the entrance. morgoth will think you killed them and enter the worldstone chamber. this way you should be able to quest on.

[gravity]

yeah. i just hate to resort to such things. i would think that any decently assembled build should be able to pass any point in the game, even if it means you have to get tactical a la seperating them. those dragons make a fire sorc useless. I'm trying to use the rogue merc as she fires with all my fast teleporting, but there's just no way she has the damage and life to take one of those things out.

i did get through last night, but i had to redistribute my skills with plugy into all cold. made me feel dirty it did.

hey titan think you can get a char to Maiar before friday?

[Bloodtitan]

uhm lol. spent all my free time to get the frenzy barb to valar.. gonna be too tough now, timewise
sure can help your sorceress with the barb, AFAIK exp limiters are off after lvl25 anyway.

and yes, i really wonder about the frenzy barbarian. a whirlwind barb is so weak in comparison it made me think this mod wouldnt allow a decent melee char.

[gravity]

Ok, sounds good. is it tonight we are gaming?

[Oldih]

One nice Northamn would be making it use huge defence values with the cost of killing powers, aka ironbarb in LoD.

So you use mastery, concentrate, iron skin and shout as your main skills, and also natural resistances up to lvl10 atleast.

So in ME-mod, IS and Shout at full and when making Shout you get 2x more defence, and with Concentrate, while you are striking, you get 75% more def to the time, and if you have stuff with high defence (like these which gives you def by your char´s level and some resists etc), it is quite hard to hit you with melee and make you perfect bullet-proof vest.

Dunno how it works in ME-mod, but atleast in normal LoD this combination works fine.

But then again, this build has bad sides that not good for MF hunt, I still would rely on good ol sorcs.

But on the other hand, that ironman build has its own good sides, especially since melee-monsters can´t hit you easily because good defence, so it is good in some cases, but then again against magical enemies\ranged enemies, sorc would be beter.