Solo'ing Yields Better Loot??

Hello,

So I have been playing on/off for almost 3 months now & I am noticing more & more players have created builds for "solo'ing".

Initially my reaction was like "Why in the world would you want to do that when you can bring heroes/henchmen etc" Then someone told me that you actually have better/more frequent drops going solo. After doing some reading I see alot of contradictions. For example:

"With loot scaling, the advantages of soloing are limited to rarer items only."

Farming alone will yield fewer total items than farming with a full party, though more items per individual character.

Certain items are not affected:

Skill tomes
Scrolls
Dye
Rare materials
All rare (gold colored) items, All unique (green) items
Special event items

So which is it? Does solo'ing actually yields more items/rares or no? I am aware gold is split amongst heroes etc, but does having heroes in a group actually effects drop percentages?

solo builds have been around since prophs came out - ie the original 55 monk who is still used to this day.
One main part of solo is that all gold is yours and not shared within the party but with loot scaling in theory you get same as being in party but sometimes in practice you can get more drops that in team and a few times you get same amount ( probably luck of the draw ).
So if a zone can be solo`d then why bother bringing heros/hench that will only sit in 1 place and steal gold ?
Btw one stage there used to be almost as many duo/trio builds as there was solo builds like 600/smite , 55/ss just to name a few.
Heros a while ago i think had a fix - i believe that they used to affect drops and players would bring heros and get them out of compass ( drop range ) so the player got more drops.But anet fixed it so the game see`s h/h as being actual extra players instead of ai members ( almost said bot lol ).
I hope this helps - sometimes some questions approach gray areas that are had to prove/disprove.

To save explaining a lot of the detail again there are a few threads around that provide some information on the issue.

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

I'd suggest having a search if you need further information as this has been brought up several times in the past.

When I solo farm to plains in UW, I average 6-10 ectos (15 being my best), if you bother to take a crapload of heroes, I doubt you will get one or two.

Feel free to give it a go

I see a lot of people bring heros to UW and keep them flagged away so they can't get drops.
They will swear until the end of days that it increases the ecto drops when you have a larger party. But ectos are a rare crafting material, which means the drop rate is not affected by party size.

Too many variables to be certain of anything in this game, would have to ask the people who wrote it.

Must be newish players as ive seen many times on guru posts that state heros are only to be used for first chamber clearing and getting to chaos planes and they shud be dunped in mountains.

The biggest problem is actually proving/disproving things like i said.
8 man human party you can compare drops but with 7 heros you cannot see ( tho rare occuraances happen when u can ) what "drops" they get.
Scenario - fred goes into uw with 7 heros and gets 3 ectos .He goes in next with 8 human party and gets 4 ectos.Now fred may think heros have stolen my drops as i got more with humans.Getting ectos is down to luck but fred may not see things that way.

Anet will never divulge exactly how drops work and thus we have the dilema of a split camp - one says one thing happens and the other dismisses it and says its done a diff way.
I go by - party size may/maynot affect drops and drops are luck/random so thats it - i wont lose any sleep thinking what is right or not - just accept its sods law :P

heh..

i find that as long as i have a bottle of wine while i play, the amount of drops really doesn't matter.



ntopic:

i find that for farming gold or whites (to id for gold) that solo can have its advantages. as for rares it feels the same solo or hero'd out makes no difference. been skunked with/without and have good times as well. if your just lookin for golds, run chests imo.

cheers
d