Loot Amount Question

Gameplay Dungeons, Raids and Scenarios
1

Is there any documented source explaining how loot quantities for raid bosses work with flex raids and group loot when raiders are locked?

Our case is that we have two raid teams, and multiple people that want to run with both teams. Obviously people who kill a boss with the first group of the week will not also be able to receive loot from the second group, but our question is, does their presence in the second group mean that the group overall will receive less loot?

I.E.: If a group of 20 people only has 10 players eligible for loot, will the amount of loot dropped be scaled to 10 or 20?

2

It scaled this way during Personal Loot. I’m not sure if it works that way now during Group Loot.

An important question to ask though is does it matter? If the second group would only be running 10 without the other 10 people who are locked, they would be getting the same amount of loot either way, so you may as well raid with your friends and not sit them for no reason.

If the second group would pug up to 20 if they didn’t have the locked people, there may be twice as much loot, but twice as many people competing for it. Is it worth bringing 10 randos who will compete on rolls for your loot rather than getting half as much that all goes to your group?

3

I guess in my brain it’s less important how many pieces drop, and more important where they drop. This isn’t how the numbers work, but to keep to the example - if the first group had thirty people dropping 15 pieces, and 10 of them aren’t needed and go to waste, would they have also gone to waste if they dropped in the second group even if the total pool of players rolling were smaller because half the group was locked out?

Maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way, I’m almost definitely down a rabbit hole at this point, and that may not even be in the realm of loot volume anymore, but I’m trying to understand, fundamentally between all of the different variables (class comp/drop tables, loot trading, loot volume scaling, etc) is it possible for one group to do something that effects the loot/rewards another gets?

If the answer is yes (my gut is thinking this is the case as I read this back) that’s probably still okay, but it’s something we’d like to be aware of. If you could math it down to “group 2 will get x% less loot because of this”, whatever that number is, it’s small enough that it probably doesn’t really matter, and I doubt we’re in a situation of sitting people vs not because of it, but I’d definitely still like to know how it works.

4

Because I’m not positive about Group Loot, I can’t give you hard numbers. But I can give you a window into what it looks like mathematically if it follows the old Personal Loot design.

Each unlocked person contributed a 20% chance at an item drop, so each group of 5 was a guaranteed item. A group of 20 would receive 4 items, a group of 10 would receive 2 items. A group of 13 would receive 2 items and have a 60% chance of getting a 3rd.

Adding locked players added people to the raid, but didn’t increase the loot percentage. So a group of 10 unlocked players would still get 2 pieces of loot, even if the total raid size was 30.

With that background established, a lot of raid leaders observed that bigger raid groups had more loot and only wanted to invite unlocked players. Many guild raids would prohibit their members from pugging so keep their loot pool large.

But it doesn’t really work that way. A group of 20 unlocked players has a 100% chance of 4 items. But what if one of them is locked? 19 unlocked players gets 3 items guaranteed, but the 4 item is the one that sent people into fits. There are 4 possible outcomes. The raid gets a 4th item and the locked player didn’t receive one (64%). The locked player received an item and the raid doesn’t get one (4%). The raid gets a 4th item and the locked player received an item (16%). The raid doesn’t get a 4th item and neither did the locked player (16%).

Adding all this together, the chance that the raid gets at least a 4th item is 84%, with 16% of that actually being a 5th item for the raid because of the person who pugged early. However, there is a 16% chance that the raid only gets 3 items. Taken over enough iterations, those two 16% chances will average out and the amount of loot per boss will remain 4 for the group of 20, regardless of who is locked and who isn’t. The numbers change, but the principle is the same for more locked players.

If Group Loot uses the same proportions, then it is always best to just run your raid with the people you want to raid with, and not worry about the drop numbers, because the math doesn’t really change unless you’re able to convince a bunch of unlocked pugs to come and not roll on loot.

If there is a static number of drops for each boss, regardless of raid size, then the fewer unlocked players you bring the better, but I would be shocked if they allowed something so easily exploitable to exist in the game. You could funnel X number of items to a single unlocked player for every boss, which would be insane.

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5

Awesome! I’d assume it’s a safe assumption that the numbers haven’t changed and this is still more or less how it works, just within the context of how people roll on loot itself having changed with group vs personal loot. If that’s true then this is what I was starting to sense would be the correct approach; just bring your friends/guild and the loot will even out.

Thank you for the detailed writeup!

6

It’s actually worse now. If your raid has 19 out of 19 loot eligible players, your raid will receive only 3 items. If you grab a 20th player, you’ll get a 4th item. It used to be that you’d get 3 items and have a 4/5 chance to get a 4th item. They are doing everything they can get away with to slow down player progression.

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7

We did a normal raid on Saturday to get alts some boss kills for the Vault and some extra gear from bosses. Had between 12 and 15 people and 4 of them were saved, just helping out for kills.

3 of the bosses only dropped 1 piece of gear, while the other 2 dropped 2 pieces.

I didn’t read everything posted above about the numbers for loot, but figured I’d post what little info I could provide.

8

Do you have anything you can cite where it says that explicitly? I haven’t seen anything either way, but if the previous post is correct, it sounds like it’s not fixed in groups of 5 if they’re getting 1 or 2 pieces.

I’m also pretty sure that my group of 22 got 4 pieces per boss most of the time, but that there was at least 1 that dropped 5. I can’t say with 100% certainty, and I’m not sure if there is a way for me to find a record to confirm, but if that’s the case, it would mean the partial percentage is still a thing.

Ultimately, it still doesn’t affect whether or not you should bring a friend who is locked. If you’re right and it’s fixed, your 19 man raid is going to get 3 items whether or not you bring a locked person, so if you want to raid with them you just bring them. It would only matter if you were choosing to give a locked person a slot over an unlocked person. But as long as you can bring both, the locked person does nothing to hurt your loot.

9

That’s just what I’ve experienced for myself since they reimplemented GL.

10

Okay, so it’s possible that your groups have just failed the partial rolls then. I’m not certain either way yet, so I guess we’ll have to keep watching.

11

Every time?

12

Do you think you have a statistically relevant sample size over the course of two weeks? What was your raid size and how many bosses did you kill at that size without any partial loot wins? I can tell you exactly what the odds of that happening are.

13

Not 2 weeks. Since prepatch.