Magic-Find Sorc

[Luke]

Stumbled upon this good Magic-Find Sorc Guide! Maybe useful for you pindle botters / Pindleskin killers

There are three ways to magic-find mephisto with sorceresses. Well, quite a few more then three, but three methods work really well:

1) Static/Orb him, dodging all his attacks (this takes a while, as orb does not do tremendous damage)

2) Moat trick (get him stuck on the moat, while you back up towards the entrance, firewall or meteor from a distance)

3) Meteor him him, get the stacking meteor flames going, and use cold resist + DR + 75% blocking to COMPLETELY negate his attacks, while staying just out of range of his poison nova. (this is my preferred method - see below)

ALL sorcs should always have Teleport, Town Portal, a cold damage skill (Frozen orb/GS), and Energy Shield mapped to keys easily accessible and preferably close to your primary skill keys. Also, Frozen or Shiver armor always seem to help considerably if you can spare the skill points, and only 1 point is needed in the armor of your choice.

Mephisto/Pindleskin is my primary magic-finding route. Another good idea for a Nova-sorc or a "DR Meteor Sorc" is to magic-find in cow games. While you still can't grab lev-90 items, you will get a great number of rares, experience and charms.

Sorc Magic-find equipment:

Helm: 3-socket PTopaz helm - 72% mfind
Tarnhelm w/Ptopaz (up to 74% mfind with +1 skills)
Shako w/Ptopaz (74% mfind)

Armor: 4-socket PTopaz armor - 96% mfind
3-socket armor with Wealth - 100% mfind
Skullder's Ire Ptopaz'd - up to 145% mfind (clvl dependant)
Tal Rasha's Armor - 112% mfind, 40% resists, 65% mfind bonus for set

Amulet: Rare/Magic 1-35% mfind amulet
Tancred's Amulet (78% mfind when combined with boots)
Tal Rasha's Amulet (65% set magic-find bonus with set)

Weapon: Gull Dagger (100%)
Oculus (50%) (80% with Ist rune) and +3 skills
IstIst Alibaba (up to 159%)

Shield: Blocking shield/Whistan's guard (0%) - blocks mephisto's orb, easier solo-play for mfind runs
Runeword: Rhyme shield (25%) great stats, great blocking, very easy to make
4-socket Monarch (100%) - insanely expensive, insanely heavy to wear (156 str)

Rings: 2 sojs (don't take these off unless your mana level is VERY high)

Belt: Tal Rasha's (10-15%) - 65% mfind bonus if worn with armor/amulet
Goldwrap (30%)

Gloves: Frostburn (if you use energy shield to stay alive)
Chance Guards (40%) if you don't use eshield, or have no problems surviving

Boots: Tancreds (boost's amulet mfind to 78%)
Rare/Magic MF boots
War Travelers (up to 50% mfind, great stats)

A Few more Sorceress Magic Find Tips

1) Block sorcs can kill Mephisto faster - jump up next to him, ignore his attacks, then weapon-switch to magic-find equipment right before he dies. (whistan's guard works just as well as stormshield IMO here, as long as you have full blocking & resists, so this is not a "DR Sorc argument") If you do this, mephisto won't move around as much, you won't spend as much time dodging, and your attacks will be more accurate/effective. Mephisto's "orb of death" is physical & cold damage, and is 95% of the time blocked completely by a whistan's guard shield + dex. I usually stand right next to him blasting him, and with 500 health, I've never died to Meph for months, and this way you get to totally ignore the "firewall" technique and just jump up to him. I usually TP to his side of the infernal gate and draw him back a bit from the blood lords...

PVP-style shields also are great for teleporting to level 3 very quickly and safely, and ignoring pindle's group physical damage, and unless you deal in duped equipment, you only lose a 25% shield and some dex.

2) No one seems to realize that the Tancred Amulet + boots combo is one of the best for non-uber magic-finders everywhere. Not only are these two set items common and very cheap, they provide 78% magic find and 30% walk/run at the same time. The "suggested" average of an expensive and rare 40% War Travelers + a 30% MF amulet only provide 70%, although it's possible to get more out of this combo (ex. 50% War Trav + 35% amulet)

3) Fire damage works quite a bit better on Mephisto then cold/lightning, due to his resistances. Use Meteor or Firewall here (my personal bias being Meteor) Either are MUCH faster then Frozen Orb

4) Mephisto is highly cold + lightning immune, which leaves fire skills as the primary method of killing him. Out of the three "primarily" fire skills, Hydra doesn't do damage fast enough, Firewall is clumsy, and doesn't work well unless you stop Mephisto completely (ie. the Moat trick), leaving Firewall, which initially does less damage per sec, but hits a much wider area, and the burning damage stacks up fantastically, to a much greater degree then firewall. I scraped my MFind firewall sorc for a meteor one long ago, then adapted this sorc to cows, hence the "DR Sorceress guide" out there in the strategy forum today.

5) Energy Shield - and wearing ANY damage/mana item (eg: Tal Rasha's belt, which is of course a MFind item) gives you constantly back mana from physical damage, keeping your energy shield up constantly and allowing you virtually always enough energy to teleport out of bad situations

6) Something that is never emphasized is that magicfind is horribly capped if you are trying to find uniques. It is much better to kill a boss "50% faster" with 300% magic find (211% for uniques) then it would be to kill him slowly with 600% magic find (266% for uniques, only 26% more). So irregardless of your actual magic-find, you should wear enough "power" equipment to allow you to survive easily against Mephisto.. The point is to do a huge number of mind-numbing magic-find runs, not to be in constant terror of dying. You will personally do alot better if your sorc is not in constant danger of dying. Definitely boost your cold + lightning resists to max, or as near as possible. Skullder's Ire / Thundergod's vigor work great IMO in this regard. (with Thundergod's, lightning attacks heal you instead of hurt you, and this usually doesn't hurt your mfind too badly)

See: stats.diabloii.net for the actual magic-find percentage calculator. If you speed up your runs by 15% and lose 10% of your magic-find, you are ahead of where you were before.

7) Telekinesis the chest and the way-points - this saves you tremendously on walk/run times, especially when performing multiple repetitive runs over and over again.

8) After killing mephisto, go through the red portal to Act 4. It's much faster starting from act 4 in the next game then walking a long way in act 3.

9) 6% mf sc's are almost as good as 7%'s. Unless you're insanely rich already, most people never magic-find with 30-40 7% MFSC's. Trade for 6%s when you can, but keep 7%'s if you run across them.

10) Finally, get help, from some you either personally know or trust well. I found magic-finding with a sorceress and a barbarian speeds up the runs immensely (barb lowers meph's health faster, sorc teleports to him quicker), and as long as you can share drops, even good ones like Stormshield comfortably, you'll generally pick up more due to the increased drops from having 2 people in the games.

[Apaphos]

Got any tips for beating duriel on nightmare mode besides cheating? He seems to be cold resistant now, so my level 12 frozen orbs are useless on him, and all my good fire and lightning attacks (all level 7 or higher) seem to have little or no effect on him. My beloved iron jang bong and Memory (LumIoSolEth) staff's do noticeable damage, but he always kills me first. Call me crazy, but I think duriel is the hardest boss to kill in the whole game. I dread to see what he is like is hell mode, probably resistant to everything.

[MechaMan]

A BUDDY you just need to get some better items thats all I could help you out there couple of occuluss sojs and some shako fix you right up just message me sometime and tell me who you are.
kings_of_savage
diablo account over 1,00,000 served satisfied customers and im not talking about EDIT: REMOVED
but free stuff I give away all the time and........
: HOLY MOTHER OF GOD SPITFIRE THATS THE LONGEST POST IVE EVER SEEN I HAVNT EVEN READ IT YET... I just read apaphos's reply but damn spit I want to see what you wrote but ill be here all night well here it goes son of a *****.. just playen

[Beorn and Huan]

Thanks for the tips Spitfire i will try them out

[ITH]

all of tht writing or just hack it hehehe:

[trayne]

when all else fails, hit and run lol

[SpoonMan999]

You know it's actually good, if you can afford it, to use Mara's instead of an mf amulet if you have trouble staying alive...especially with good resistances on it...but my preference for killing Meph is running circles around him and nailing him with firewall just after his attack so I can avoid all of his attacks this way...plus don't just stock up on mf charms get some resistance charms as well since you will stay alive a very long time...run/walk charms also help in this strategy.

[trayne]

my amulet, armor and helm have the resists with a couple of charms. rest has mf. using an istist gull chance guards tals belt and some mf charms. workin good so far.