Diablo 2: Resurrected
Plutus, Level 92
1300% Magic Find Pit Barbarian
Plutus, Level 92
1300% Magic Find Pit Barbarian
Searching for Magic Items is one of the most tedious yet exciting things to do therefore, creating a successful Magic Find Character is one of the most fundamental aspects of the game. The concept of this build is to gear yourself with as much high Magic Find as possible and develop it around your Hireling who will do the killings for you. The new versatile Frenzy Hireling available at Act 5 is a great damage dealer which comes to perfectionate this build. By utilizing the additions of the 2.4 patch we can reach an impressive 1300% Magic Find. As ineffective it may sound, it's not. Everything works flawlessly and you can effectively and rapidly farm with this insane amount of Magic Find.
In Greek Mythology, Plutus was the God of Wealth and Abundance.
This character follows this God's footprints to become soon the wealthiest being in existence!
Positive
+ Insane Magic Find
+ High Survivibility
+ Find Item at 75%
+ Versatile Hireling
+ Unique build
Negative
- Quite Passive Gameplay
- Some Runs can end up slow
- Requires 18 Ist Runes
- Available only in 2.4
Why does this build work?
- The Pit is located in Act1 therefore it is compiled by the weakest monsters in the game.
- The Pit is a level 85 area meaning anything can drop.
- We are focusing on Magic Find thus, staying at Players 1 is ideal.
- Hireling deals high damage to kill bosses quickly.
- Hireling is your main source of damage hence, your Magic Find can be extremely high.
- Hireling is a Dual Wielder making it possible for extra damage or even more Magic Find.
- Find item in combination with huge Magic Find nearly double our chances for Uniques.
How does Magic Find work?
Since we are aiming for a huge amount of Magic Find it would be wise to know a few important facts about it and adapt your characters and strategies accordingly. Magic Find doesn't work on breakpoints like most things in D2 do and there is no cap. You can just stack as much as you want, more Magic Find is always better. The only issue is that it has some heavy diminishing returns and this is the situation where you have to decide the balance between your killing speed and a decent amount of Magic Find. The most important part to understand is that all that Magic Find does is to give you greater chances of "converting" an item drop to magic, rare, set and eventually unique. Thus, you have to realize that if a Sacred Armor won't drop, an outrageous Magic Find will have zero effect in finding a Tyrael's Might. You have absolutely no control over what items drop, only boost your chances of converting the items that drop to "Magic".
The table above can be found from this article.
Stats
This build needs absolutely no points anywhere so you can spend all of your Stats in Vitality. Strength is only needed to equip our gear but with a Torch, an Anni and Enigma you can do it without spending a single point in it. Dexterity can be avoided completely too but if you plan on using Wizardspikes you will need to add a few points.
- Strength: None
- Dexterity: 75*
- Vitality: Rest
- Energy: None
Skills
We are following a quite a passive gameplay so we don't need to spend a single point in the Combat Skills Tree. This will leave us with plenty skill points which should be used to boost our Hireling's kill speed and generally add any skill that will speed up our runs. Howl is important but tends to be quite unreliable sometimes and this is why the new changes to Grim Ward make it an excellent choice in some cases. Battle Cry can help a bit against sturdy Bosses. Find Item along with its new Synergy are maxed leading to a total of 75% chance to Find an Item. Your remaining points can go to Battle Orders for extra safety even though it's not needed.
Gear
Since we are not going to land a single strike we can completely ignore any damage wise gear. Due to high health and positive resistances safety gear can be neglected as well so that gives us a great opportunity to literally bump as much Magic Find as Possible. The only thing to consider is the 105% FCR which can be easily achieved on switch and the build is ready for take off.
Weapon: Crystal Sword x6 Ists + Crystal Sword x6 Ists (360% MF)
Armor: Enigma (92% MF)
Helm: Shako + PTopaz (74% MF)
Gloves: Chance Guards (40% MF)
Belt: GoldWrap (30% MF)
Boots: War Traveler (49% MF)
Rings: Nagelring x2 (60% MF)
Amulet: Crafted (21% MF)
Switch: WizardSpike x2 with -15% Requirements
Inventory:
Torch, Anni
Gheeds (40% MF)
Small Charms of Good Luck: x28 (196% MF)
Total Magic Find: 960%
- Dual Isted Crystal Swords have the Highest available Magic Find. Crystal Swords fit nicely for their low Requirements.
- Enigma is always the best choice when it comes to speed. Aside for it utility purposes, it grants a great boost in Magic Find as well.
- Shako is another standard item as it offers everything. Immortal King’s Will can reach up to 90% MF and with +2 to Warchies can actually perform better but Shako's mana is too good to ignore.
- Chance Guards, GoldWrap, War Travelers are the highest available items for Magic Find at these Slots.
- Nagelrings are easily obtainable and grant a great boost to Magic Find. Magic rings can reach up to 40% but they are quite rare to find.
- The Amulet is very important since it must have FCR above anything else. The lowest possible FCR on a crafted Amulet is still enough to reach the 105% break-point so try to craft one with Barbarian Skills and as high MF as possible.
- For Switch since we will be horking at main hand, the +1 to skills from Suicide Branch is useless and that makes WizardSpikes a much better option due to the mana and resistances. For the same reason, we do not need to add Ist runes on our Wizardspikes, instead Plain Jewels with -15% Requirements is all we need to spend even less points in Dexterity. Switch is only used for Teleport and nothing else.
- Lastly, fill your inventory with Small Charms of Good Luck, Gheed's Fortune, Torch, Anni and you are set!
"The" Mercenary
The new Act 5 Dual Wield Frenzy Hireling is the core of this build which will take our creation one step further. Not only he is very aggressive which is exactly what we need he has an extra Weapon Slot available which can be used for maximum effect. One Weapon Slot must be used for damage and Grief is the best candidate while the second Weapon Slot can be used for a x6 Isted Phase Blade for more Magic Find. We are using a Phase Blade here instead of a Crystal Sword for the slightly better damage but more importantly for the better Base Weapon Attack Speed. The Armor and Helm are two additional options for more Magic Find. Skullder's Ire adds the highest possible Magic Find on an Armor while StealSkull provides great MF along with some Lifesteal and Attack Speed. A great combination for the Hireling. Depending on your play-style the Hireling can take a variety of directions focusing more on damage to speed things up or to bump Magic Find more to increase every possibility for a Unique Drop.
Weapon: Grief + Phase Blade x6 Ist (180% MF)
Armor: Skullder's Ire + PTopaz (139% MF)
Helm: StealSkull + PTopaz (71% MF)
Mercenary Magic Find: 390%
Character Magic Find: 960%
Total Magic Find: 1350%
Some of the best results after several hours of farming.
The Final Outcome
Let's put everything we mentioned above together now and check how the build performs in action. There are a few obstacles that we either need to avoid or learn to live with them. Once you roll a good map and learn the layout of it, you can start working on your speed. It may take several attempts to get used to the quirky farming routine but in the end you can quickly adapt to make the best out of it. Switch is used only for Teleport and nothing else. When the Hireling kills an enemy Unique Monster you must be on main hand for the full Magic Find to trigger which combined from yours and your Hirelings will be at 1350%. When you are using Find Item on a corpse remember to still remain on main hand for the Magic Find from the Isted Swords but keep in mind that your Hireling's Magic Find won't count for it so you will be horking at 960% MF. Since you are horking just one monster at a time, the low FCR won't slow you down.
We have one main problem which is none other than the uncontrollable Hireling so we somehow need to make it easy for him to target the Unique Monsters without losing much time. Howl is a skill that can helps us with that. By scaring the regular monsters away the boss of the pack will usually remain alone so the Hireling will always target him first. However, Howl sometimes doesn't work as intended and many monsters can still be nearby attacking you. One of the most annoying things though is that the Mercenary casts Taunt which would be great if it affected Unique Monsters. Unfortunately, it doesn't therefore the Mercenary keeps casting it on random monsters which move towards him. Even if the Mercenary is fighting alone with the Boss of the pack, there is a random cast (without any animation) to a nearby monster or two.
This is where Grim Ward is helping a lot. Once summoned, Grim Ward will instantly start working forcing all of the regular monsters to run away. It lasts long enough which will stun them in place once they have reached the edge of the map giving your Mercenary enough time to deal with the Unique Mob alone. It slows them down and it even offers extra damage, more than the Amplify does. Unlike Howl, it always works and it's very reliable to keep all the trash mobs away. The only downside is that Grim Ward requires a corpse in which case sometimes it's faster to use Howl when the area is not that crowed but in high density spots Grim Ward will really shine.
Unique Monsters that spawn with Iron Skill usually take a bit longer for the Mercenary to cut through them. Holy Freeze Aura can be annoying as well. Champion packs also often slow him down too mostly because the Mercenary Spreads his attacks to multiple targets. When there are Possessed and Ghostly Monsters in the Champion packs, the Mercenary takes even more time. For that reason, you might want to skip those to save time. Personally, I usually deal with all of them as wasting a few more seconds is not going to hurt.
Eventually, your farming route should be something like this:
- Teleport on switch to nearby Boss Packs.
- Cast Howl a couple Times and switch back to main hand.
- Cast Battle Cry to the Boss of the Pack if needed.
- Cast Find Item on main hand once the Boss is dead.
- Switch, teleport to the next Boss pack and repeat the process.
- When the area is too crowed, teleport near a weak mob to get it killed quickly, cast Grim Ward and continue.
Conclusion
To sum up, the massive diminishing returns Magic Find has do not let this build to truly shine. Even with this amount of Magic Find getting the rarest Uniques is still quite rare. However, when it comes to hunting uniques, grinding is what this game is all about and as long as the build is doable aiming for high Magic Find is the the way to do it. Such a huge amount of Magic Find usually breaks every character but this one can handle it. Sometimes even slighest increase in the MF may be enough to convert that rare item to the Unique you are searching for.
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