Legendary Professions Assets:

Normally, I would not open a thread about a topic without a fair amount of information to support the topic, but, considering the sheer impossibility of opening enough boxes to generate a sufficient sample size to provide more supporting information, this topic will, unfortunately, have some basis in assumption. @asterdahl as professions appear to be your development focus, please read through the thread or at least the bullet points at the end. Also tagging @nitocris83.

So, the assumptions made will be the following:

1. The drop rate of tools is not modified over time.
   
2. The quartermaster's pack and the artisans's pack have the same drop chance for legendary tools.
   
3. Both packs can drop the same tools.
   
4. The drop chance of tools is roughly 9/(30240+20422+6019)= 0.0001587, or 0.01%, or 1 in 6297. This number was arrived at from the samples taken by @rainer#8575 which can be seen in video 1 2 and 3.
   

According to a discussion I had with a certain developer, who, admittedly also claimed he did not know the system very well, all legendary tools have the same chance to drop and are not biased in any way. There are 17 different types of tools, as follows: Anvil, Awl, Bellows, Bezel Pusher, Chisel, Crucible, File, Grindstone, Hammer, Jeweller's Loupe, Mallet, Mortar, Needle, Philosopher's Stone, Shears, Swivel Knife and Tongs. If every type of tool can drop a legendary version and, assuming a tool does drop from a box, the chance of all tools is unbiased, then you have a 1 in 17 chance of getting a specific tool.

Which...Brings about my point here, where if you look at the samples taken in those videos, 9 tools dropped, 4 of which were a philosopher's stone, 4 of which are a crucible and 1 of which is a hammer. Assuming you are trying to get 1 specific tool, you either succeed or fail. If we classify a crucible as the tool of interest (a success) that makes any other tool a failure. The probability of getting more than 3 crucibles in 9 "trials" is... ~0.1186%. This is exceptionally low, which could be a sign of the following:

1. Not every tool has a legendary version (ie, the probability of getting a crucible is higher).
   
2. The drop distribution of tools is in fact biased and not unbiased.
   
3. An unlikely event occurred.
   

Unfortunately, due to the exceptionally low drop chances of legendary tools, it makes it very difficult to reduce the likelyhood of 3 and provide more substantial evidence for 1 and 2. However, whilst we the players cannot be certain about this, the developers can do a database query and check how many of each tool there is and if it appears to be roughly even, or they could simply check the coding. However, whilst somewhat anecdotal, another piece of evidence to support this is the distinct lack of other tools on the auction house.

To date, on the PC auction house I have seen a needle, crucible, mortar and philosopher's stone. I know of 1 copy of a hammer existing on preview and I know of no other tools currently in circulation on PC other then those already listed. Whilst you will often see crucibles and philosopher's stones pop onto and off the auction house, seeing any other tools, at all, is a rare occurrence. If these tools were equally likely to occur, I argue this would not be the case, as crucible is, objectively the best tool out of all the professions assets in terms of the professions it caters towards and if it was as likely as the others, it would be seen less on the auction house then them.

The short of it is, I feel the following should be done:

• The droprate of legendary tools should be left the same, even though it takes approximately 50000 lockboxes that contain a profession's pack being opened to generate enough professions packs to create on average 1 tool. This is because they are intended as super rare chase items.
  
• Instead of dropping a tool, the pack drops a "tool bag" which gives you a choice of any legendary tool you prefer. These items are already super rare, no need to add another layer of luck on top of it and I say that as 1 of the very few players who feels the drop chance of tools at the moment is fine.
  
• At the very least, if that is not considered, look into whether the drop rates of tools is unbiased.
  
• When a legendary tool or tool pack drops, an admin message should be displayed. These items are far rarer then anything in a lockbox so it makes no sense that there is no admin message. This serves 2 purposes, the 1 is so the person gets told they won something and the 2nd is that people actually want to know when new tools are created, that is how rare they are.
  
• Possibly, the option to buy a legendary tool of choice for 5 million trade credits.