The title pretty much sums it up. A friend are lvl 60 and playing in inferno and we have gear to survive on act 3 / 4, but have high Magic Find gear that only works in act 1 (and barely works in act 2), we were just wondering what would be better to get better drops. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance!
Best Answer
Short Answer
Higher acts are better, unless you can kill at least twice as fast in the previous act. Which act you run should depend on what your current goal is.
EDIT: With the addition of Paragon levels in 1.04, Magic Find slowly becomes an inherent stat as you accrue Paragon levels. To that end, it's impossible to lower Magic Find past a certain point. To that end, this answer gets simplified to completely depend on your kill rate.
For historical purposes, the previous answer is being kept below.
Long, drawn out (with math!) Answer
Preface/Basic data:
Since Blizzard published the fact that Magic Find increases the quality of your drops, as well as the quantity, Magic Find plays a much more important role in your required stats than it used to.
Blizzard has also published the general drop rates for the highest level equipment:
Based on this data, the chance of getting Inferno-class gear is:
Note that this percentage does not affect if the gear is magical or not; that's where Magic Find comes in.
Goals
Most Inferno-class Gear
Description: You want gear. If you punch a demon, you want it to explode with gear. If it's not raining gear, it's because that demon you're eyeing just hasn't exploded yet. Better change that...
You're going for quantity over quality for this goal. Simple and easy is the name of the game. The more you kill, and the faster you kill, will net you more gear for the same amount of time investment. You want the highest act that you can kill things easily. If Act 1 is a yawn, and Act 2 gives you no trouble at all, run Act 2. Same with Act 3. This will let you gather as much gear as you can hold, over and over and over. Magic Find is not a factor for this goal.
Most Affixes Inferno-class Gear
Description: You want gear. The more stuff it gives you, the better. Doesn't matter if it's useful or not. You want the glowing sword that sings, so you can show it off to friends.
This one's a little bit of a moving target. Your goal for this is to try to get as much 6-affix gear as you can. To this end, Magic Find plays a very large part in what you want. Run Act 1 with as much Magic Find as you can possible carry and still have no problems at all. Now, here's the tricky part: If you find you are getting more legendaries than you're really wanting, that means you have too MUCH Magic Find; you want just a little less than that, to get the 6-affix rares. This is the sign that you should move up an Act. Switching out gear to be more survivable will take care of the extra Magic Find, and the higher act will garner you better chances of Inferno-class gear.
Only iLvl 63 gear
Description: You want the best gear that you can get. Anything below this is dog food. Only the cream of the crop for you. If if's not an Infinity+1 sword, your time has been wasted.
This one depends entirely on your kill rate. Act 2 provides almost twice the chance of iLvl 63 gear than Act 1. But if you kill only half as fast, you'll get roughly the same amount of items. That's your metric. If you can kill 100 demons in Act 1 in the same amount of time that you can kill 50 demons in Act 2, you want Act 1. But as soon as you can kill 51 demons, switch to Act 2. The same goes for Act 3.
6-affix iLvl 63 gear
Description: You want the best of the best. It's an Infinity+1 sword, but it glows, sings, and if you let it, it'll dance, too. You show this off to other Nephalem to make them wish they were you.
This is a combination of the previous two goals, and as such, depends on both the amount of Magic Find you can stack, and your kill rate while wearing said gear. This one's harder to quantify, as Blizzard has not released the chances of 6-affix items dropping, most likely to discourage farming the same thing over and over. My gut says that the higher acts have a better chance of dropping 6-affix gear, but I have nothing to corroborate that. So, you'll need to balance this yourself.
Disclaimer: I'm using some hypothetical values to demonstrate my point.
Using the assumption that all enemies (regardless of act) have a 5% chance of dropping a 6-affix item.
You can run through Act 1 with 150% Magic Find
With these values, you get:
So, using that premise, you have roughly a 25% higher chance of getting what you're looking for, with half the Magic Find gear. If your kill rate is equal or just slightly slower, Act 2 is where you should be.
If you can add extra Magic Find and keep your kill rate constant, do it. More Magic Find = better chance of finding 6-affix iLvl 63 gear.
Notes
This is making the assumption of the drop rate of 6-affix gear is equal throughout Inferno. If there is any change in drop rate (and we know what that change is), you can use the formula above to determine what your chances of the item are. You can use your kill rate to determine which act you should be running at that point.
I am also making the assumption that the affix chance is entirely separate from the item level drop rate. If there is any correlation between them, this formula is completely wrong and will require either re-working or starting from scratch.