If you don't feel like reading the whole thing, here is a list of the conclusions they draw in the post:
- Magic find increases the class ("item-color" or rarity) of the gear found.
- Magic find does not increase the number of items found (aka not effective on quantity).
- Magic find does not increase the iLvl of the gear found. *The guaranteed rare drop from Nephalem Valor is an additional drop and it is possible to roll a legendary instead of rare.
- The guaranteed rare drop from Nephalem Valor is applied to goblins as well.
- Nephalem Valor is superior to magic find; in terms of maxing rare items found, it "devalues" the effect when compared to farming without the buff, but magic find is still an effective affix!
- Early results indicate that MF does increase the number of affixes on rare items, however, the effect appears to be minimal and close to neglible for the standard elite drops. It does, however, appear to have a prominent effect on the NV rare drop.
- Whether or not magic find affects the affix rolls themselves (aka not how many affixes you get, but how good the affix values turn out) is not investigated here, but there is no reason as of to suspect that magic find would increase the stat rolls.
- The item drops in a predetermined sequence with each item dropped coming from a "slot". These slots have different chances to roll out a rare item, but only one of them (out of 4 gear slots without NV) seem to have the possibility to hit a NoDrop. The research mentioned here is very early, but is an important aspect if a complete picture of average drops is to be computed.
- The items dropping from elite packs appear to be divided into "slots" that drop in a specific sequence. An elite pack has 4 of these slots and if 5xNV is effective a fifth is added. These slots have different chances to roll out a rare item: Gear slot 1 and 4 seem to be identical and have a base dropchance of around 10% for rare items, gear slot 2 and 3 seem to be related but have a very small chance to roll a rare item and gear slot 3 has a 50% chance to hit a NoDrop. Gear slot 5 (the NV slot) is always at least a 4-affix rare item.
