Killing multiple foes at once...

I've racked up over 3000 hours in 34 months, 99% of it PvE. Heroes didn't exist before NF and a party of henchies was crap, so i guess you could say i've done my time in 8-man groups.

Because one guy reports a problem with lag on AoE drops on his PC, you've made an ASSUMPTION that it's a bug and state it as fact. My PC doesn't lag on AoE even with three GW's running at the same time.

Because one guy picked up r7 daggers (doesn't say when he picked them up) you ASSUME they can drop from any sub-level 20 mob (that was your claim, not a Vanq drop) in any campaign and state it as fact. Where are your r7 NM drops?

Because some guy in an ancient QQ thread stated 'my ele doesn't get as many drops' you ASSUME there's a bug with the drop system and state it as fact. To be honest i don't have the time to read 20+ pages, so if you want to make your point provide a link to the specific post.

Using a group of 4 charr in a 4-man zone is too limited to be used as proof - it's a convenient example in an attempt to promote your own biased theory. The same can be said about Skinny Corpse's thread, but i'm more inclined to believe results that have been replicated by numerous people relating to the drops of an entire zone.

You latch onto any and every theory and state is as fact. It's not...just because one guy has an experience does not make it valid for all. And even if it is replicable, how do you know the results aren't as intended?

And how could you possibly know for a FACT that this relates to Anet botching the lootscaling code...you make statements like "the loot system (bugs or hangs) for a sec.", "That is where you see the bug.", "This is a left over from when Anet tried to fix that. instead of redoing the code they patched it." and "its just that with LS in that the code is not properly selecting who gets the drops when you kill them at once. It hangs or hiccups whatever you want to call it."...you're making it up to fit in with your own paradigm and calling it a bug. The drop system doesn't work as you want it to, that doesn't mean it's not working as intended. The simple answer is, you don't know sh*t from clay unless you've had direct access to the server-side source code.

I have no idea what point your trying to make besides making unfounded claims that the entire drop system is bugged on AoE. If AoE makes a difference, how do you explain Skinny Corpse's results? And if AoE makes no difference, how do you explain the Luxon Assassin results from My Lipgloss is Cool? The difference between the two can be explained by the loot scaling system - the only difference is chalks so AoE vs Single comes into play. How do these replicable results fit in with your bug theory? Even if there is a bug, based on Skinny's results you're only losing chalks...so who really cares?

QQ less, play more, there's jack sh*t you can do about it.

Firstly, I fail to see where Skinny Corpse's thread is relevant to this discussion. Neither SoJ nor SV cause AoE damage, and as such the results therein do not apply to the situation we are trying to resolve here.

Now, I reckon there could be two phenomena at work here. The first is that the system is hard coded to provide fewer drops from AoE damage. This is the most logical situation, because otherwise we would be seeing a lot of very rich Elementalists who can earn the same as anyone else in a quarter of the time. My experiments so far seem to back this up, with the largest number of drops from AoE being 4 from 10 mobs (out of 10 runs, where the average was more like 2), and the largest number of drops from killing 1 by 1 being 7 from 10 mobs (out of 3 runs so far, the average being 6).

The second phenomena, which is pure speculation on my part relates to the situation manitoba alluded to where in a full group, one member will receive all the drops when a number of mobs are simultaneously killed (be it with AoE or luck). It is possible that the loot selection process only polls every half second or so to account for differences in lag on the client side. So if all the mobs die within a certain window, the loot selection system will provide all the drops to one person. This would not be a bug, it would be a sensible system to implement in an MMO where everyone experiences different pings.

The problem with manitoba's suggestion is that it assumes that when you enter an area as a solo farmer, 7 "invisible" team mates are actually created to assign drops to. This is ridiculous, as it would be far far far simpler to just divide drop rates by 4/6/8 and assign all drops to the person who is in the instance. I severely doubt the person responsible for the loot assignment code is such a moron that they went for the former system, because the amount of extra coding required would be horrendous. This would explain why AoE farmers never receive more than 1 drop per 4 mobs on loot scaled items. Obviously items that are not loot scaled, such as rare materials, tomes, etc. will drop at the same rate regardless of the way to mobs were killed. This is probably coded into the AoE system too, as there is a reason these drops are exempt from loot scaling.

In future manitoba, work through your theories logically, looking at all the possible reasons why an observation may be occurring, and pick the most likely one, not the first one you stumble across or the one you like the sound of most. It would save the rest of us a lot of time arguing with you over things that simply cannot be true.

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I think some current players are missing past perspective, whether they simply forgot what happened before lootscaling, or started playing after. This AoE effect on limiting drops was not discussed and did not exist before then. This leads me to the belief that it is working as intended as another means to limit the number of drops. Of course, I really don't have an explanation why it was not announced at the same time, nor can I say why questions about it go unanswered. When asked, Gaile went back to describing lootscaling. I'm not sure she understood the distinction. She may have just been confused.

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From my experience, AoE does not affect non-loot scaled items. The majority of my tomes, dyes, and greens have all come from AoE farms. I am of the opinion that the system was made like this so that high-risk/high-reward farms like UW are unaffected, as AoE builds there are generally riskier than VwK builds. Other oft-farmed areas such as raptors, vaettirs, hulkings, etc. where there is no discernible difference in the difficulty of builds will be made less profitable according to their speed. I could be wrong, but again it is the most logical explanation.

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Yeah i don't think it does either. Skinny's been following this thread and will hopefully test a Nuker vs SV. Results should be interesting.

Heres the thing the SV vs SoJ thread and the picture of the group of char clearly shows that there is now secret plot by anet hindering the skills that a player uses by reducing the drops they use.

See you finally found why I linked that thread. Yes the problems with loot system have been ingame for 3 yrs. I know its hard thing to believe. They patch one part of it and it makes more problems.

No event items are not a part nor do they have anything to do with the normal loot system as they are on there own seperate loot table. You can teel that easily by getting them with normal drops from a kill and by thing that dont have a loot table such as the animal in Min Cho's estate and testing dummies on the ISLE.

Yes AoE effect does in fact effect the excluded-LS items.

Yes I saw him there in Rata Sum too. I even put in over 30 also lol. Pulled almost 1200 of each event item using a similar VmK build. If I would have sold the event items and other stuff I quite positive I would have hit nearly 800k also. Considering just in gold drops and merchant crap I got about 150k alone. That was using ancestors rage as a finisher. It was NM also.

Right about similar to what My ele would have hit the weekend before if I hadnt had to work taht Sat.


As I have shown already there is no alternate coding if you use AoE. As I said earlier if that was the case then the picture of the 3 kills and 3 drops with AoE simple wouldnt exist.


BTW Talarian. I have more than thought through and tested every thing Ive said. Seems some people still want to believe that the sun revolves around the earth. Why did I use the example of invisible henchmen is because some people here cant do simple elementary math as evidenced by this thread

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...t+loot+scaling

Makes it easy for some on here to understand math to use words like invisible henchies.


BTW Antithesis - Did you also happen to notice the name of that thread where the pic of the q7 came from that might give you a close idea of when it dropped for him. Just a little hint you may want to check.


Then again heres another picture its 5 drops using AoE outa 20-24 kills in an 8 man area

I'm not going to argue about whether or not the system is bugged, that's pointless and our side-debate is derailing the thread. You're either brilliantly intuitive or a complete loon...i haven't decided which

An AoE nerf makes perfect sense considering Anet's reasoning for implementing it - to cripple the bot farmers who mostly used SoJ. Leaving lootscale exempt items out of the AoE code also makes sense if AoE results in less merchfood. Your viewpoint is diametrically opposed to most of us.

After reviewing some of your posts and threads, I think you're saying all drops are random and AoE does effect non-lootscaled items. You've got a problem with that theory based on Skinny Corpses results. I'm really interested to see if Skinny gets different results with an AoE Ele vs SV.

Are you also saying AoE doesn't effect chalk drops, so AoE vs single is irrelevant? How does that explain MLiC's Luxon Sin run and those of many farming forum regulars who claim similar results?

PS I got about the same drops as yours - 1200 of each plus merchfood netted me about 500K...bunnies sold mostly for 250g, eggs mostly for 125g. Looong grind, but it was worth it for the r1 to r4 treasure hunter boost (i don't do chest runs and only use keys i pick up)

I've been reading through this post for about half an hour now, checking Wiki and what not for more info on loot scaling.

It seems to me that most people are looking far too in depth into this. Manitoba has raised some quite interesting ideas though.

I've been playing for about 2 and a half years now and from my experience i believe that AOE vs Single damage are EXACTLY the same. I have no evidence to back this up other than my own observations.

I think the whole loot scaling thing has reduced ALL drops. This includes 8 man parties. Although i don't join party's much anymore (heroes are often smarter than most players lol) i do remember back before the AI nerf and hard mode. FoW runs were the way to go for me. But now even in hard mode the drops seem to be about 20% lower. (no i didn't work this out with some theory, its just what i think)

Either way i don't think there is a "Conspiracy" within Anet to ruin our fun lol (Although they do have a damn good attempt at it) The only thing that they have tried to do it to get players to join party's. Thats what it's all been about, even in a statement made by Anet they said

"People who play in normal size parties, including parties of heroes and henchman, will see no difference at all from loot scaling. At the same time, they will notice that normal mode is now much easier to farm, and that the introduction of Hard Mode provides a place they can play where the loot is better than ever before. Thus, people who play the game primarily in parties will simply make more money than they previously did."

But one point i would like to raise is, the whole "Invisible team" theory and flagging henchmen. If henchmen are flagged away, will this improve chance of a drop?

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