I started tracking my results so I know for a fact that these numbers are correct.
I spent 1450 blood shards and received 8 legendary phylacteries. They’re 25 each, so getting 8 out of 58 means 13.79% were legendary. I don’t have any clue what the chance of phylacteries from Kadala being legendary are, so I have no issue there. There were also zero ancient or primal, which again I have no issue with.
Next, I spent 1025 deaths breaths upgrading 41 of the rare phylacteries (that’s all the death’s breaths I had). This is a 100% chance to make 41 legendaries, of which it’s been stated that you should have approximately a 10% chance to get an ancient. Statistically I should have received 4 ancients, but only receiving 2 is not a big deal. I’m not sure how to do the math, but receiving just 2 instead of 4 is likely a small chance (at least under 20% odds?).
Okay, who cares I received 2 ancients out of 41 legendaries instead of 4. The problem is that after taking a 5-10 minute break I decided to open a greater rift (I left the game on in a private room). When I entered the rift there was a system error (ps4), and when I restarted Diablo 3 it went back in time! The last save must have been entering town with the 1450 blood shards and 1025 death breaths… so I got to spend them again.
Whoever knows the math, I’d like to see it. The odds of me receiving the EXACT SAME has to be extremely slim. I received 8 legendaries from the blood shards, again none of which were ancient or primal. Then on the 41 rare upgrades I received exactly only 2 ancients.
Sadly I don’t have a way of knowing for sure if I received the exact same items, but it appeared that way. Maybe a rare item gets the legendary upgrade stats it can receive when it drops, but having Kadala give me the exact same items the second time doesn’t seem right. That I thought was supposed to be 100% random, but if I received exactly the same items two times then that means it’s not at all random and it’s been predetermined exactly what I’ll receive.
I guess at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if it’s predetermined that I’ll get 1 primal after 700 legendaries and then 1 primal after the next 100 legendaries, as that still averages out to the 1 in 400 a lot of people say… but that would imply that I can never simply be a lucky person who happens to get better than average odds. Overall that might be fair, but thinking you have a chance to beat the odds is what adds excitement to the game.