I can farm act 1 easily with my Monk in my DPS gear, and can survive early act 2 with more defensive gear. I went for DPS because not long ago a lot of people were advocating speed of farming runs over fruitfulness of individual runs, but very high MF builds seem to be a popular choice now. I'm asking for your help because I'm becoming frustrated with not being able to find any half-decent gear with my current set-up.

Should I sacrifice some DPS to increase my base MF? Should I sacrifice a lot of DPS to maximize my MF? Or should I keep trying to break through Act 2 to the point where I can farm it effectively?

This is what I'm farming act 1 with now: 21k DPS (unbuffed), 1000 LOH, 31k hp, 600 res, 5500 armor, 17% crit chance, 100 crit dmg

I'm not a fan of MF because of the guaranteed rare at 5NV. I thought it was overvalued before I saw Kripp's tips where he was running with almost no MF. He was selling 100M of rares a day with only MF on his follower. And while you won't get come close to that, the theory behind why to prioritize dps over MF remains the same.

As a monk who completed the game on Inferno quite some time ago, I believe the only acts worth farming are act 1 and act 3. I acquired most of my gear from act 1 and beat Inferno Diablo before even attempting farming runs on act 3. My current get-up is very similar to yours except I run with 200+ MF. MF does increase your chances of rolling each tier of rare by a certain percentage, IE, 50% will give you 1.5 times the chance for rolling that specific rare, 100% will double your chances, etc. The only difference being that in act 3, the chances of a high level (63) drop being significantly higher. All things considered, I prefer farming act 1 because it's very quick for me and I feel that the strength of the MF balances the time differential JUST ENOUGH to merit preference.

A couple additional points:
1) I can't farm act 3 in my MF gear. I need my best gear to farm it.
2) I only farm for 1-2 hours at most. I don't play a ton.
3) I would never farm act 2. I think the difficulty leap is too high (I don't even know if I could farm it with MF) and there are too many annoying monsters, randomness of elites, etc. Even though it's BORING AS HELL, I still recommend act 1 :).

Just my two cents.

In my opinion it depends. If i am with a group (I am a wizard playing with barbs, monks, dh's) I go more mf because they can tank. If I play alone or with one other person, I need dps to survive. However, if you are a tank, go in between because then you are able to do your job while getting paid :)

I Play a tank barb going through act 2 MF is ok at best but the best finds i have found and they aint great have been when im running between 75-100 MF ii have run upwards of 220 before NV and have found nothing of value.

I personaly prefer GF

I'm not sure where your MF is on your gear currently but you could probably get decent MF without sacrificing other necessary stats by just having it on equipment with fewer useful affixes. Boots, shoulders, and helms are pretty useful places to have MF. To a lesser extent amulets and shields provide good MF while sacrificing relatively little.

First of all.. your AR is too low . I guess most of your gear is not double resistance of something . 2nd , if you can reach 200%MF with NV is consider quite good . It's possible to reach . NV gives already 75% on MF . You only need 125% left . How to achieve it ? . Get the socketed helm with MF base and amulet as a start coz they give the most MF in any part .

I suggest you stack your follower with MF as well coz it gives a bonus to you .

At the moment , I am doing a test by attempting to create a monk with 2000AR and see if it can tank Act 3 by using only 5 - 8 million gold on items .

Pretty fun .