Monks and the Item Drop Mechanic

In both playing alongside a guildmate's Monk, and playing my own Monk, it's become apparent that the current Item Drop mechanic isn't very friendly to them. Essentially, item drops are awarded and weighted based off attacks that struck the creature (It may very well even be damage dealt, I'm not sure of the specificity of it, though most I've heard mention it seem to go by # of attacks as a deciding factor). Now, if a Monk does what is ideal (ie. Stay away from the battle and heal, and not come into weapon range of the mobs), they receive significantly less in the way of drops. Doing the Undead Hordes quest from Beetletun a few days ago resulted in a grand total of 2 drops, both at the end of the mission, out of around 25-30 mobs. My Ranger picked up at least six times as many items when he did the quest. Walking from Lion's Arch to Bergen Hot Springs and fighting everything along the way resulted in about 3.

I realize that the mechanic is meant to punish those who piggyback and don't contribute to the effectiveness of a group, but attack rate/damage isn't an accurate measure of that.

Of course, I could be having just a streak of ridiculously bad luck (One shared by a guildmate), and thus be a total fool. But I'm curious as to if anyone else has noticed a similar trend in item drops.

I believe that you're right about the mechanic. They should make it so that everyone who is in a certain radius (maybe the radius should be the same as the diameter of the compass) of a drop has an equal chance to get it.

that is absolutely true. my primary character is a monk and ever since i started playing ive noticed that i get significantly less drops with him than with my other toons.:-/
i guess its the price we pay for keeping the team alive... ha.

Between my three PvE characters I can't say I've noticed my monk getting less drops. But I certainly hope this isn't true

This most probably is true. You can simply try this out in lowbie ares. Have you and a healer friend go where a lot of aggro will come solely for you two. Have the one person slay the horde while the other heals, after the battle is down...

Let's say he killed about 25 Monsters.
Out of those 25 Monsters all dropped loot (as a sign no anti farming is in progress yet).
3 of the items go to the Monk who healed.
The whole rest goes to the one killing.

This is blatantly unfair and if you don't believe, you might actually just go and have a look at it yourself. It is this way, the damage dealer get more loot then the supporters. Same is true for my mesmer. As long as she keeps on interrupting and energy leeching, her loot nearly reaches zero. As soon as she starts bringing spells like Chaos Storm or other Direct Damage Spells... Loot comes in.

Another thing i noticed about loot, if you are outside their aggro circle, you get no loot at all. So while this might be okay, it is a pain as a monk as you HAVE to be outside of the circle to be effective. As soon as you move in, the mobs will start aggroing YOU and bash right away.
But you won't get loot if you are not standing close to those critters (maybe thats why Alesia always is bathing in the masses?).

they said this issue was addressed in a patch like a month ago. I haven't noticed getting less since then, in fact last night I was at thunderhead keep with a group and got 2 maj rune drops and a gold hammer while other megerly escaped with a few blue drops.

I disagree with the theory.

Sometimes i myself may get very little when healing/protecting but isn't it the same for everyone?

For example. When in Fissure of Woe with my guild a couple of nights ago, i got 3 obsidian shards, a shadow shield, 5 shadow bows, a purple armour, a shadow staff, a dye and the usual assortment of junk (like raven staffs, lol).

We had a group consisting of 1 warrior, 2 mesmers, 1 necro, 1 ranger and 3 monks.
The warrior got very few items by comparison, much the same for everyone else although they all did get the occasional nice thing (like shards/bows).

One time in UW i got the majority of the good drops. They all got Dark Poop and glitter but i was left to pick up the ecto and storm bows.

I would love to know the details of the loot calculation system but oh well...we can dream.

Just put it down to bad luck...tomorrow might be your turn to unlock those superiors. Good luck!!

I've noticed this with my monk.

I used to comment on it all the time to my husband, who plays a warrior, that he gets more drops than me. At first he said it was just my perception that I was getting less drops. Though, as time's gone on he's noticed that my monk does get alot less drops than his warrior.

I'm lucky in that we share all our loot. But it would really suck if I were playing this character with PUGs.

I'm extremely skeptical of this, both because it's been addessed in the past, and because, having played three characters to every mission in the game, one of which was a monk, and one an ele (arguably the highest damage dealing character), and one a ranger, I've noticed no disparity between drops of any kind.

perhaps it shouldn't be radius, but what if it was simply skill/attack activity during combat? This would allow for split groups to get entirely random rewards (2 people fighting 1 mob somewhere further off might still get drops from the other 4 or 6 fighting mobs). This way, someone who stands and watches will get nothing regardless of location...

hmmm... dunno... or maybe it should just be 100% random within the party anyway...

My first character:
Me/Mo, healing enchantment focused-
Got 2 minor runes total after beating all of the missions.
On the final mission, like 5 people in the group got gold armors, and none of them were me. I repeated the last mission again later to capture an elite I'd missed, same deal! I got 1 blue, and 3 white items.

I don't know if it's that way currently, but there definitely was a noticeable difference in drops in the past.

That's why I mentioned that the prevailing theory seems to be attack rate, although that seems a rather spurious thing to base a loot mechanic on, with speed buffs and whatnot.

And if it was addressed, I totally missed the patch notes in which they talked about it, and that's my fault.

quoted for truth

I'd like to sign the petition that monks get more drops. True we might be mistaken for being charitable because most of us are pacifists who prefer healing our fellow teammates to partaking in the spilling the blood, but every once in a while I start to get agitated when the warrior in the party gets his fifth drop before I get even my first. Please all mighty and holy Dwayna, drop us more loot.

I did the Thunderhead Keep mission with my Monk last night and got several blues and 3 purple drops, while concentrating on healing only and rarely attacking with my holy rod.
However,
this felt like an exception, as the drop rate is usually far lower than this, so maybe they fixed s.th. recently or it was just pure dumb luck?

I'm a Blood Magic Necro/ Fire Magic Ele, and I get crap for drops. I swear the monk is getting better stuff than me. I do think it is partly damage-based, but maybe how fast you deal it?

I can cast a Meteor Shower and a Fire Storm and then Life Siphon and Life Transfer a whole group of enemies and kill them all alone, if they are stuck somewhere, and nothing dropped for me. Nobody else could attack this group of monsters because they were out of sight and stuck behind a wall, but I wasted the whole group and got nothing.

There must be something else affecting the selection of who recieves items...damage must be part of it, because some of those warriors just rake in the items...but I can't figure out what else could be part of it...

Though...I do agree that Monks get shafted with item drops, I have my own Monk, I just wanted to point out that its not always them. I believe Necros, Mesmers and Monks get shafted on drops because they are more support roles.

Bah, until the monk has to pay a tithe to Dwayna the drops can stay the way they are .

Maybe the drops should be determined based on what class you are. It's annoying when my warrior is getting staves and the monk swords...

Oh yeah,
that's another problem:
- with my monk I got lots of mesmer drops
- with my warrior lots of monk drops
- with my ranger lots of ele drops

<------- me too

I HATE IT

Why does my warrior monk get 12 bow drops in a mission? (Bloodstone Fen)

I have noticed this also, I though I was the only one with the problem. Most other classes get 3-4 drops then I get my first one

1) I got my first fire sword after acending, when helping a guildmate in a mission for the 10th time. :eek Where most people in the group had gotten 3 allready with that char.
2) In FOW after the ghost reaches the center of the circle, after clearing the entire area I have a total of 1-2 drops.
3) In UW I usually get my first drop after you have killed all the skid (forgot their name), and are either killing the first spider group or have reached the 2nd ghost.

I also belive that we get shafted with the xp. I noticed that if I just heal I get 25xp, If I have my holy rod in auto attack I get 27xp (remember that I'm still healing so I might hit the mob 1 - 5 times only)

totally false from my experiences

if I go as a level 20 Ranger in Old Ascalon/North Shiverpeak missions

armed with barrage, I kill the most the stuff in a level 10 party
(many things die before party even touches it)

I do not get most the loot



I 2box sometimes (play with 2 computers and 2 accts)
- very easy to observe that loot drops are random

sometimes my 2nd character does *nothing* but stay in combat range

my guild mate monk get rare gold drops all the time while i dish out the damage!
it really is just pot luck i think, as one person who does nothing can have drops more than a W/Mo running in head first

I have not seen any noticeable default weighting of loot drops. They seem to be completely random, so I don't believe your claim about Monks.

Heck, I've played the game through with an Elementalist first and I didn't even get a single Major rune and only 2 Golds the entire game. I went through with a Monk character later, strictly a Healer, and my drops were amazingly different. I got 11 Major runes, 2 Superior runes, 13 Golds, and too many Minors to count before I even reached the Fire Islands. This is deinately not what you claim.

However, that experience also goes against the "random drop" thing. I do believe the default loot drop is random, but it can be noticeably affected by your playstyle. Various possible factors are distance from the battle, whether or not you engaged that enemy, the average level of your party, previous loot drops that mission, plain old luck, and how many times you have died. Attributes that are profession-specific, however, do not affect loot drops-- i.e. attack speed, damage output.