RNG favours highest damage?

zephyrpillar1 · November 2014

Ive noticed the best drops seem to almost routinely, but not always, go to the players with the highest damage. Is this observation correct?

ainarel · November 2014

When I increased my damage output, I started getting some on the usual dragons. But still it's just a chance. High damage increases the chance somewhat, but doesn't guarantee squat.

drinnth · November 2014

Great Success is based off of Damage Taken, Damage Done, Healing Done. Generally your class benefits more from one type. Example GFs get a modifier on Damage Taken, DC get a modifier on Healing Done, DPS get a modifier based on Damage Done. The top 5 players on a 10 player encounter, generally receive "Great Success". This is the reason when 40 players zerg a 10 player encounter dragon, the odd of Great Success drops severely.

Great Success will up the rank of your drop bag by one level. So if you score contribution for an Rare reward, it would be upgraded to Epic. What the contribution levels are necessary to receive the green, blue, and purple rewards are anyone's guess.

Great Success does NOT ensure you will receive a drop, just that your reward level will be at that reward tier. You still have to roll the RNG and hope you hit the Artifact Lottery Jackpot.

Generally the different reward levels have a certain number of token and consumables based on reward level as well as a chance at an item drop also based on reward level.

Chances of items dropping seems to be low. I would chance to guess in the 5-10% range. Thats just to get an item. If you are lucky enough to get an item, the chance that item will be an artifact is probably around 1%.

You are more likely to get random green, blue or T1 armor piece.

Note on release of Mod 5, the chances were set to be higher than they should have been and were toned down by last thursdays patch.

zephyrpillar1 · November 2014

drinnth wrote: »

Great Success is based off of Damage Taken, Damage Done, Healing Done. Generally your class benefits more from one type. Example GFs get a modifier on Damage Taken, DC get a modifier on Healing Done, DPS get a modifier based on Damage Done. The top 5 players on a 10 player encounter, generally receive "Great Success". This is the reason when 40 players zerg a 10 player encounter dragon, the odd of Great Success drops severely.

Great Success will up the rank of your drop bag by one level. So if you score contribution for an Rare reward, it would be upgraded to Epic. What the contribution levels are necessary to receive the green, blue, and purple rewards are anyone's guess.

Great Success does NOT ensure you will receive a drop, just that your reward level will be at that reward tier. You still have to roll the RNG and hope you hit the Artifact Lottery Jackpot.

Generally the different reward levels have a certain number of token and consumables based on reward level as well as a chance at an item drop also based on reward level.

Chances of items dropping seems to be low. I would chance to guess in the 5-10% range. Thats just to get an item. If you are lucky enough to get an item, the chance that item will be an artifact is probably around 1%.

You are more likely to get random green, blue or T1 armor piece.

Note on release of Mod 5, the chances were set to be higher than they should have been and were toned down by last thursdays patch.

wow, nice response, thanks

damnataanimus · November 2014

drinnth wrote: »

Great Success is based off of Damage Taken, Damage Done, Healing Done. Generally your class benefits more from one type. Example GFs get a modifier on Damage Taken, DC get a modifier on Healing Done, DPS get a modifier based on Damage Done. The top 5 players on a 10 player encounter, generally receive "Great Success". This is the reason when 40 players zerg a 10 player encounter dragon, the odd of Great Success drops severely.

Great Success will up the rank of your drop bag by one level. So if you score contribution for an Rare reward, it would be upgraded to Epic. What the contribution levels are necessary to receive the green, blue, and purple rewards are anyone's guess.

Great Success does NOT ensure you will receive a drop, just that your reward level will be at that reward tier. You still have to roll the RNG and hope you hit the Artifact Lottery Jackpot.

Generally the different reward levels have a certain number of token and consumables based on reward level as well as a chance at an item drop also based on reward level.

Chances of items dropping seems to be low. I would chance to guess in the 5-10% range. Thats just to get an item. If you are lucky enough to get an item, the chance that item will be an artifact is probably around 1%.

You are more likely to get random green, blue or T1 armor piece.

Note on release of Mod 5, the chances were set to be higher than they should have been and were toned down by last thursdays patch.

Mind providing links for your claims?

damnataanimus · November 2014

NOT that part.

The part where he claims only the top 5 get great success. And the part about great success upping loot level by one xD

asterotg · November 2014

I dont think, that there is a fxed number, we did a few middle sized HEs in a party of 3 ppl (just us, no randoms fighting the HE). The one with the worst gear did not allways get great success, but sometimes. This speaks for min dps/ heal/ dmg taken as the factor for great success.

damnataanimus · November 2014

magenubbie wrote: »

The part about great successes slightly increasing the drop rate on stuff is explained somewhere in a dev's post here on the forums just after IWD was released. As for the top 5 only getting a great success, that's news to me. As far as I know all you have to is reach an certain target number of healing/tanking/dps points to get a great success. This target varies per HE of course.

Yes - but he claims it bumps you up a loot bracket. I wasn't aware there were brackets for loot, bracket implying that everyone is in whatever bracket. AFAIK there are only 2 outcomes to a HE, Great Success and Encounter complete. The way I understood what he meant by that, is that people with say Encounter Complete are assigned a position (bracket if you will) within that, implying there is more than one result within the outcomes. Obviously great success has (or is meant to have) slightly better drop rates or there'd be no point to getting them -.-

drinnth · November 2014

If you watch when you open your encounter boxes, it states what type of success you had. This ranking is based on contribution to the event.

Minimal to first tier contribution is generally green and usually has the lowest rewards and depending on encounter a chance at a random green item.

The 2nd contribution tier is Rare/Blue. This gives slightly better rewards than the 1st tier and depending on encounter a chance at random blue item.

The 3rd contribution tier is Epic/Purple. This generally gives the best rewards and depending on the encounter a chance at random purple item.

Technically each event has a finite amount of contribution that can be gained. Damage Done = max hit points of the encounter, Damage Taken = max damage possible by the mobs in the encounter based over the average time it takes to do max hit points of the encounter, Healing Done = max amount of healing done capped usually by Damage Taken.

While it is quite possible if all things were fair for many people to get a Great Success on an encounter, the randomness of GS, ability, spec, skills and artifact gear make it so that you will not likely see each player obtain the same contribution as all other players at said encounter. For 1-3 man encounters, you may see all 3 participants get a Great Success but the likelihood of such an occurrence will be rare. The same can be said for 3-6 man encounters and 6 to 10 man encounters. So far the only 6 to 10 man encounters where this rule does not apply is the Rothe Valley and Whispering Caverns dragon due to their hit points being scaled to meet the increased number of players arriving at each encounter. In this case 20 at Rothe Valley and up to 40 at WC.

With the limited number of contribution points available at each encounter and unfair scale of gear and competency, the odds of half of the participants at any given HE to not score a Great Success is very high. Meaning half of the ppl at the encounter will out-damage, out-tank, out-heal the other half.

You may note some ppl go to a specific herald and try to 2-3 man him before the zerg arrives, this is to ensure they will receive a Great Success on the encounter by arriving early and doing as much damage done/taken and healing as possible before the zerg train arrives.

Lets do some simple math.

10 man heroic, max contribution 10,000 pts.

10 ppl show up, contrib fairly spread over 10 ppl, each receives 1,000 contrib.

20 ppl show up, contrib fairly spread over 20 ppl, each receives 500 contrib.

40 ppl show up, contrib fairly spread over 40 ppl, each receives 250 contrib.

Now if I was a betting man, I would fair to guess that Great Success for this situation would show up at 750-800 contrib, maybe a bit higher but lets try to give everyone here a fair chance for 10 men.

I would also guess that Rare Tier contrib would be slightly lower than great success or maybe even the same value as great success, of course it is most likely a range. say 0-499 is 1st tier, 500-799 is 2nd tier and 800-1000 is 3rd tier.

Lets go back to the example above.

our 10 men all got great success and each hit 3rd Tier, go team!

our 20 men, no one got great success but everyone did at least make 2nd tier, not bad! better luck next time.

our 40 men, well no one got great success and everyone only scored 1st tier, time to reevaluate whether the zerg is the best option.

Note: The math used here was very simple on purpose, in a real encounter with an amount of chaos you will not likely see such even distributions.

reddevilbs · November 2014

Since Module 5: Zerg vs Dragons start, I killed 4-5 dragons alone and even then, the ultimate drop is not guaranteed. Even tier 3 drop-epic/purple is not guaranteed ....

karakla1 · November 2014

Hrm,... i killed plenty of dragons like 50+ of them and got 6 Belts (2x Lathandar, 1xINT Belt, 2x Blackice Belt and 1x DEX Belt). It is really rare for me to not get a great success but i got at least one belt drop from one dragon which i got no great sucess (i think it was a lathandar belt).

drinnth · November 2014

The 1st few days of Mod 5 had higher chances to receive an item, this was tuned down or back to normal via the patch last thursday. I'd like to see if anyone has recorded their drops since last thursday, and while items are still dropping the occurrence has become a bit more rare.

karakla1 · November 2014

I don't think so. I got three belts yesterday.

drinnth · November 2014

Well you are one extremely lucky dude. I have killed over 100 dragons and gotten 3-4 T1 purple drops and not seen an artifact. So pat yourself on the back, RNG loves you.

damnataanimus · November 2014

drinnth wrote: »

If you watch when you open your encounter boxes, it states what type of success you had. This ranking is based on contribution to the event.

Minimal to first tier contribution is generally green and usually has the lowest rewards and depending on encounter a chance at a random green item.

The 2nd contribution tier is Rare/Blue. This gives slightly better rewards than the 1st tier and depending on encounter a chance at random blue item.

The 3rd contribution tier is Epic/Purple. This generally gives the best rewards and depending on the encounter a chance at random purple stuff or a chance at an artifact.

Technically each event has a finite amount of contribution that can be gained. Damage Done = max hit points of the encounter, Damage Taken = max damage possible by the mobs in the encounter based over the average time it takes to do max hit points of the encounter, Healing Done = max amount of healing done capped usually by Damage Taken.

While it is quite possible if all things were fair for many people to get a Great Success on an encounter, the randomness of GS, ability, spec, skills and artifact gear make it so that you will not likely see each player obtain the same contribution as all other players at said encounter. For 1-3 man encounters, you may see all 3 participants get a Great Success but the likelihood of such an occurrence will be rare. The same can be said for 3-6 man encounters and 6 to 10 man encounters. So far the only 6 to 10 man encounters where this rule does not apply is the Rothe Valley and Whispering Caverns dragon due to their hit points being scaled to meet the increased number of players arriving at each encounter. In this case 20 at Rothe Valley and up to 40 at WC.

With the limited number of contribution points available at each encounter and unfair scale of gear and competency, the odds of half of the participants at any given HE to not score a Great Success is very high. Meaning half of the ppl at the encounter will out-damage, out-tank, out-heal the other half.

You may note some ppl go to a specific herald and try to 2-3 man him before the zerg arrives, this is to ensure they will receive a Great Success on the encounter by arriving early and doing as much damage done/taken and healing as possible before the zerg train arrives.

Lets do some simple math.

10 man heroic, max contribution 10,000 pts.

10 ppl show up, contrib fairly spread over 10 ppl, each receives 1,000 contrib.

20 ppl show up, contrib fairly spread over 20 ppl, each receives 500 contrib.

40 ppl show up, contrib fairly spread over 40 ppl, each receives 250 contrib.

Now if I was a betting man, I would fair to guess that Great Success for this situation would show up at 750-800 contrib, maybe a bit higher but lets try to give everyone here a fair chance for 10 men.

I would also guess that Rare Tier contrib would be slightly lower than great success or maybe even the same value as great success, of course it is most likely a range. say 0-499 is 1st tier, 500-799 is 2nd tier and 800-1000 is 3rd tier.

Lets go back to the example above.

our 10 men all got great success and each hit 3rd Tier, go team!

our 20 men, no one got great success but everyone did at least make 2nd tier, not bad! better luck next time.

our 40 men, well no one got great success and everyone only scored 1st tier, time to reevaluate whether the zerg is the best option.

ok then if you say so

henry404 · November 2014

In an effort to figure some of this out I am now in the habit of "saving up" the dragon results until I have done all 5 so I can pay more attention to those results. Because I have a slow mount I usually get a mix of results, typically only one or maybe two Great Successes. And I have to say that I have seen no correlation between Great Success and the loot. Obviously you get more coins, but I've had a variety of blues and a couple of purples. Interestingly, the two purples came from the "medium" success level. I have not yet had a belt but I live in hope.

The reason for my tests was that I was trying to figure out whether it is better to go for great success on just a couple of the dragons or just get any success at all 5. And I conclude that all 5 is best. Plus, I love the crazy race between the dragons, especially fun as a slow rider.

I think the importance of great success may be somewhat overstated.

RNG favours highest damage?

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