There’s a difference MB - 1 season, 1 instance in that season, vs 14 ENTIRE seasons of results. That’s a big difference. Chalk and cheese. But, please, humour me 
Okay, sure.
Craft 60, level 70, rare belts at the Blacksmith.
Now do “Upgrade rare to legendary” on them at the Cube.
Report your results.
Maybe every other belt drop more often than Chain of Shadows and Zoey’s Secret? I don’t know, just a thought. I don’t contest your experience of course.
They do, but not by the drop rate variances that were reported back with the 2.6 patch. I don’t believe drop rates have changed since then either.
Why? It’s moot, vs 14 seasons of experience.
Because I prefer to base conclusions about drop rates on evidence / statistics than anecdotal reports, and when I don’t know something for sure, I prefer to investigate and find out the actual answer than to go with a hunch. So…
Crafted 60 level 70, rare belts at the Blacksmith…
Used the Cube’s “Upgrade rare to legendary” recipe on them…
Sorted the results by type…
Those results were…
| Belt Obtained | Number |
|---|---|
| Thundergod’s Vigour | 6 |
| String of Ears | 5 |
| Krelm’s Buff Belt | 5 |
| Harrington Waistguard | 5 |
| Blackthorne’s Notched Belt | 4 |
| Crashing Rain | 4 |
| Zoey’s Secret | 4 |
| Sebor’s Nightmare | 4 |
| Sash of Knives | 4 |
| Cord of the Sherma | 4 |
| Hunter’s Wrath | 3 |
| Razor Strop | 3 |
| The Witching Hour | 3 |
| Hellcat Waistguard | 2 |
| Goldwrap | 1 |
| Omryn’s Chain | 1 |
| Chain of Shadows | 1 |
So, whilst it’s a small number of tests, Chain of Shadows would appear to be weighted lower than other belts.
If you’re running GRs and obtaining 300-400 blood shard per GR, that lets you buy 12-16 belts per run. Let’s assume 75% of the belts obtained are blue or yellow, that means 3-4 belts per belt are legendary. If the drop rate for Chain of Shadows is 1 in 60, that means on average it’d take you 15-20 GRs to obtain one.
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Playing for an hour or two last night I got two more Chain of Shadows, and also a couple of Hunter’s Wrath. But I don’t see any Zoey’s. So in my case that belt is the rarest - not that I need that belt anymore.
Adding to this: gambling for Marauder helmets, to get an ancient, I have seen far more Shadow headpieces than Marauders. 
(taking a break after having done Guardian. Not much to play for this season).
Let’s average the blood shards at 350, and 17 GR runs. That’s just under 6k blood shards to get a chain of shadows. I’ve had 4 seasons since s18 where it’s taken me 22k blood shards to get one from kadala.
A very short term test. I am comparing it to 14 seasons of experience…a much larger sample size, no?
Why all these tests when the data is available: https://d3.maxroll.gg/d3-gamble-calculator. Here you can see that all belts take the same amount of bloodshards on avg. But ofcourse rng is rng, for 80% succes rate you need to spend about 7000 BS, for a 99% succes 22000 BS.
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An obvious change for me is to buff Kridershot and Augustine’s Panacea along with Sword of Ill Will and Spines of Seething Hatred to make Elemental Arrow and Chakram viable M6 options alongside Multishot and Cluster Arrow. Why explicitly buff these two skills with the M6 bonus otherwise?
Equally obvious to me is doing something to make the other primary skills competitive with Hungering Arrow. We have legendary items for Bolas, Grenade, and Entangling shot that can be buffed. And there a bunch of currently useless legendary bows and quivers they could pick from to buff Evasive Fire. I get that trying to balance non-piercing abilities with a piercing ability is a challenge, but why not at least try?
And while I’m at it, here’s an off the wall idea. Since M6 buffs Companion, why not have a legendary that switches off M4 firing hatred spenders and instead causes the Sentries to summon additional Companions? Perhaps the legendary item summons a super raven by default, and each sentry summons a super version each of the other pets in turn? These super pets significantly buff the damage of your permanent 9 pet army (with Garwulf), but are themselves glass cannons (including the raven and bat), which are healed when you fire. So your job is to keep the super pets alive, so your zoo can lay the smackdown.
2 Likes
my Shadow toon begs to differ…I don’t even play shadow so all that gear is from GoD and M6…
I have a handful of primal HPS but with wrong elements. Gear isn’t perfect, but seeing all those red borders for a build I don’t play really sucks so you aren’t the only one with lousy RNG for season after season after season. I think 9th Cirri is much harder…of course I got a primal drop the week before the patch that added the 600% HA multiplier.
Last season free primal was Inna boots…which you can’t even wear to push.
My free primal this season was GoD gloves…so maybe I get a little RNG love…but I doubt it.
Non-seasonal, I have a full primal set of Natalya’s, with some of the supporting legendaries also, and it’s a build I’ve only ever played to get the set dungeon mastery.
I’ve had 2 M6 primals drop this season, a N6 primal, a UE and a GOD primal…nothing for shadow set. But, it is early season.
9th Cirri only requires 2 particular rolls to roll correctly, vs HPS’ 3. I’d say the latter is far harder. I am also judging this based on the number of perfect 9th cirri and bomardier quivers that I get from rare upgrades or gambling vs HPS. It’s bad enough that I get 3 or 4 of the other 2 for evey HPS that kadala doles out. And this is based on every season since s14 I might add. It’s not a small sample size or rose tinted glasses. It’s real player experiences.
I am beginning to think that Blizzard has code in the game that relies on AI to intelligently work out what build you are playing and then dynamically decreases the drop rate of your desired items.
Also, I have seen the GR70 clear free primal drop a primal for another character class (that I don’t even play lol) 3 times. Given that it’s what, a 1 in 10 chance of loot2 dropping an item for another character class, before you even take into account a primal, what are the odds of that happening, and happening a bunch of times lol.
PS your s6 gear is very nice!
Well first off 9th cirri is usual in the cube, and lot of people wear double handbow (dawn+ valla) , but if you want to use the cirri (like in the combination with buriza) then you would want crit, AD or cdr, hungering arrow damage and the legendary affix as close to 600%, so that is like at least 3 stats need to be good (cdr/AD can be compensated on other pieces).
Bombadier at least crit rolls natural, but you still want at least high sentry dmg and high cluster dmg, and prefarable AD dmg so thats at least 2 stats you need.
HPS you would want crit, impale damage and legendary impale close to 100%, elemental damage is a bit exchangable but preferable would be cold or fire. So also needs indeed at least 3 stats.
No they are just tracking your heartbeat, eye movement and pupil width to determine what you like and dislike, then they instruct zoltan, myriam and kadala to give you exactly what you dont want.
That’s the game’s way of telling you not to play impale! 
Elemental really isn’t changeable, losing up to 20% is a big dip in damage. I also personally prefer lightning dmg - both fire and cold are pretty horrid with hatred management, and as soon your hatred dips below X %, there goes aquilas. I know some recommend stone gauntlets instead, but I have never liked the item design.
LOL! I pity whoever is tracking my ugly mug
LOL!!! I was enjoying Firebird shields MI, until Blizzard ruined it completely. I occasionally enjoy helltooth garg, and of course, UE MS. But, that’s about it for builds in the game that I actually enjoy. I can of course play GOD HA (I admit that I suck at it though, despite my best efforts) and M6 MS sentry too (better at this, but dislike sentry playstyle).
I did enjoy PoE, but it was so unreliable - constant crashes that it was frustrating to play and I gave up on it. Their builds are crazy button mashing too and that’s not enjoyable for me. I want to play the game, not mash buttons (the 2 are NOT the same).
That would be me and OMG it’s a nightmare…I appreciate the sympathy… =)
In other news. As a fun little side bit on the RNG of things. A friend of mine and I play certain sets by default every season. I prefer UE and GoD, while she always plays the Nat Hybrid. So we always toss each other the gear we don’t use while playing together. Inevitably however she leaves for the day to do other things and I continue grinding along solo. Anyhow, it is scary eerie how often that a primal of her preferred set will drop shortly after she has left the game. There have been times where 30 mins after she left, she will call up asking if her primal dropped yet. This season it was a primal Marauder helm, however since I actually played M6 more this time around it was actually of use to me for a change of pace.
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It is changeable in the sense you can switch the impale rune towards the element of your HPS, that way you dont lose your 20%. But you say you only want to use lightning (sounds like another pigeonhole you put yourself) because of recource, i understand that on lower grifts its an issue, but on higher grifts you still have that issue?
But anyway my point was every item has alot of stats you want for it to be good, early stages you accept a decent one, but for endgame you really want all of the stats to be good. In that way i dont see that much difference between the quivers, bombadier at least roll with crit natural, but it has 2 stats that highly vary, and then you really also want AD or cdr or rcr also for endgame.
Good thing i look like George Clooney then 
LOL!
Lucky you guys on PC can share drops. We cannot share ANY drops on consoles…
And now you have my sympathy, so full circle =)
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