Something about weapon drops

I was farming grawls outside Port Sledge yesterday b/c I need some necklaces for the holy staff and I came across a very interesting battle and loot. I was fighting two grawl warriors (hammer guys) and a grawl necro. One of the warriors was using a hammer w/ 5:1 vampiric haft. I noticed this because the dmg message told me -5 life steal whenever he strikes me. And what's more is that after I killed him, he dropped a gold hammer. Guess what, I got a 5:1 vamp hammer haft (not salvaged yet). I'm just wondering whether anyone came across situations like that before or not.

Well in pre-searing, you can usually see skales holding off-hand items while they're hopping around, and when you kill them they would typically drop that item. Whether they use that item's abilities, I can't be sure since they're off-hand items, but they probably do.

I also saw someone post a screenshot of a fire imp holding a tower shield. Kinda cute, actually.

yup i came accros that like charr fire callers that use water wands

wow... you all are lucky. My drops is random. I can either get gold items, or purple, or blue. The best gold items i got is a 4/1 bow string in fiery bow, and a superior rune of swordmanship!

Oh, I think I got a 5:1 bow string from a drake, which according the "rules" above, doesnt make any sense.

I see the siege ice golems having offhand elementalist items frequently, it confuses me when they have the fire item...

Don't get me wrong, you don't always see what items they will end up dropping. It's just sometimes you see them holding the items. I've never seen drakes "hold" anything. Even the skales in pre-searing are not consistently holding their items. There's just times when you get that "oh cool, look at what that thing is holding ... time to jack it from it's corpse" moments.

well maybe the bow/string was inside the drake. As in, he ate a ranger

Maybe thats what people were thinking? either way a good imagination will make it assloads more fun.

rofl yeah that might be it but how could a devourer eat a errrrm how do you call that 10 foot high giant ;p

I gotta rock.....

I had a fire imp drop a water wand :O

And I saw the imp boss holding a shield :P It looked really funny

Personally im just tired of npc mobs attacking with lifestealing weapons and drop nothing upon defeat.