One of the questions on everyone’s minds is whether or not Magic Find will be making a return in Diablo 3. This stat has been viewed with some controversy, due to the fact that players will prioritize it over all other stats, with little penalty to their effectiveness. Many of the items in Diablo 2 which contained the + % increased chance of finding magic items, were also some of the most powerful items in the game. This meant that players possessing some of the best in slot gear, were also the same ones who were more likely to repeatedly obtain the rare and premium gear.
To tell you the truth… that’s probably just as it should be.
Personally, I thought magic find was a great mechanic of Diablo 2. MF runs were always exciting, and I hope that a similar element of game play awaits us in Diablo 3. I never had a fully decked out magic find character, but I did have a Barbarian I used to use with great success. Rather than rock all of my magic find items during the fights, I’d typically wait until just prior to the death blow, then quickly switch to my magic find weps before the shiny loots would drop. Always an exciting few seconds just before the loot piñatas would explode.
Anyway, here’s what Bashiok had to say recently in regards to fans’ mixed reviews on whether or not Magic Find should be brought back for Diablo 3:
Quote from Bashiok
I think the trick with magic find, or any sort of tertiary stat that doesn’t directly relate to player power, is to make sure that it’s an actual trade off. A lot of times and specifically for certain classes in Diablo II you could stack magic find and still be perfectly able to fight and kill. So what it really comes down to is properly weighting stats on items and ensuring that if you do want to stack something like magic find, that it’s clearly going to limit your power in downing enemies. Auto-stats to a degree also help out in this regard as you can’t effectively stack stats as easily to offset the loss of stats coming from items that might otherwise help keep you alive or kill at an acceptable pace.
That said magic find isn’t fully drawn up yet, there’s not a complete pool of itemization where we can begin tweaking balance to a degree where we can ensure MF doesn’t get out of hand. It could turn out that we need to take an alternate approach, but, if I had to guess simply weighting the stat properly would be enough. (Source)
I like this proposed change. It makes sense to me that magic find gear should be somewhat weaker than normal gear. This would ensure that only the most skilled and clever players would truly reap the rewards of this stat.
Of course, with the new loot system, this does raise some questions… Since items in D3 will exclusively drop and only be seen by the intended party members, does this mean that less geared players could leech magic find off of more powerful players? I’m sure they’ll figure out something between now and the game’s eventual release in 2015. 😉
What do you think? Would you like to see magic find return in Diablo 3? Does it make sense to balance stats so that characters equipping magic find gear are less effective than those without?
Leave a Reply