Has ANet secretly improved drops?

Go to the sell forums, the price check forums and what do most of the staves and wands and focii have? Near collector like quality. People are finding 20/20 Earth staffs, but with a water magic req. Theres a 20/20 healing rod out there with divine req. In the builds forum, I even seen a guy showing off his death rod with like 17/15, but it was Death magic.

Have they improved the drops, so that it stays within a profession? I'm not seeing too many three or four attribute staves drop anymore. In fact, every blue and purple rod or staff that I've identified in the last few days will either have a recharge or casting with either the same attribute as the wand/staff or at least from the same profession.

I do believe in a recent interview or in one of those game magazines, ANet stated that they wanted to see more multi attribute mixing in professions, specifically elementalists. One of the skills they previewed to encourage this required you to cast a water hex to get extra damage out of a air magic spell cast on the target.

Did ANet improve the drops to encourage this as well?

I sure hope they did. I might start doing my chest runs again if this really is true. Getting those 3 attribute/profession staves from chests was just annoying, if they really improved it to stay at least within the profession of the req, then I might actually be able to get some money out of these staves.

Did anyone else notice this, or is it all in my head?

I can't confirm this. I got many completely unusable multi-profession items in the last time, just like before. As for the chest runs - don't know where you plan to do them, but to my experience, chest drops in certain areas (*cough* desert *cough*) have been "anti-improved".

Well, it could also be that everyone is subscribing to the hype that the economy is going to go down in a huge massive fireball of Wall Street 1987 proportions. They could be selling off all their perfect or near-perfect items. Notice the flood of Crystalline Swords? Add those to the new ones being found, and it would certainly look as if drops are getting better.

Or -- the community as a whole is becoming more educated and they've decided to get other peoples opinions on what their item may be worth, etc.

Better drops = Sell off your goodies NOW !

Oh yes, its almost here. The complete collapse of the Guild wars economy. Ascalonian guards will stop getting paid, then leave their posts, and the next charr invasion will succeed. Charr will replace NPC's. Henchies will be Grawl.
Pets will turn on thier owners. The end is near.

part of the reason we are seeing better drops overall is because we just saw 3 region servers added to the core systems database. thus increasing in game drops over the entire system... since PvP is most prominent in those servers, its understandable that PvE drops will have improved slightly over the whole game. Just as it will when new areas open up in the first few weeks... alla SF and GFP ... however give it a week or two of farming and it will be back to normal... thankfully Chapter two is coming and that will attract a lot of the hard core farming hoarders out of the prophecies regions... One can also speculate these kinds of people are making room in their inventories for this endeavor as well, so massive sell offs of stuff they have been sitting on for months now is finally hitting the open market... and being redistributed in the game. (If they sell to Merchants that is)

So do people want good drops, or do they want bad drops?

Bad drops = OMG FARMING IS NERFED

Good drops = OMG EQONEMY IS RUNED, SELL, SELL

So, confusing...

Frankly, I haven't noticed a difference in the drop rate since September, but then I don't really farm.

I started 5 man oro runs recently. I've gone 5 times. Four of the time only one green, or no greens drop. One time, five dropped and four went to the same guy :\

Ettin runs? Barely anything. I think my chracter isn't working as intended

I've never had any luck with the ettin myself. I've already unlocked all the minors and majors so there isn't any real point to farming for that one-in-ten-run-if-that chance of getting a gold, and then that gold not being a major or one of the sups I already have. Only a handful seem to be worth much on the market besides.

I used to farm gryphons twice a day (before and after work since its like a ten minute run, if that). At one point I'd get on average between two and four golds per run (generally nothing worth writing home about, occasional no gold flukes of course), but as of late its been next to nothing. And the chests out there are a perfect way of wasting 225g, or however much those keys sell for.

So to answer the OP, for myself, no, I've not seen any improvement. Quite the opposite. Cash from the gryphons is steady, usually between 2-4p per run depending on the amounts dropped and what the vendor trash sells for, but I wouldn't really call myself a farmer and haven't any interest in amassing a small fortune.

Sides I play a Geomancer, and there isn't any real options for her outside solo-farming. I'd love someone to prove me wrong there but... ^^

I did a couple solo uw runs over the weekend and had 3 golds drop in just one run.. one was a smite rod with 20% to divine, +3 mana>.. you might have something there on the regular drops being better

The 20/20 Healing Prayer Holy Rod I saw was quite damn impressive too. I'm not too sure about the drops being increased though, it's not that I've seen that many recharge/casting speed of the same attribute lately.