Dispelling commom henchmen myths

I have 3 characters. The monk always gets the most and best drops. I open a chest....gold item. I go down with a group...green item! Once in Fissure, I played for about an hour and got 2 gold items from a creature drop and 2 shards!....they hated me.

My warrior on the other hand doesn't get crap!

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In my experience I get the same amount of drop with a PUG as with a group of henches. Tho in both cases I feel like I get less than 1 in 8, lol.

No one has said anything about bosses or any other enemies for that matter dropping nothing with a all player party....i went out 4 times yeterday farming bosses with 5-6 man PUG's and every run there was at least 1 boss who dropped nothing for anyone.....where does this fit into the equation?

I have gone solo into Grenths, solo as in totally alone no henches, and no pugs.

I can kill all of the bosses except yakslapper, and the mesmer. So depending on which ones spawn depends on the how many I get per run.

I have done it 5 or 6 times, I have killed 10 bosses in that time, and died about 100 times. But I wanted to see what happened.

I got TWO green weapons from 4 different bosses. I got the righteous maul with +15% while enchanted, and I got a bow from the ranger boss. The long bow not the recurve. A few times I got the experience scrolls, and a couple times I got nothing, and once I got a blue armor(rune)

I have gone out with varying numbers of henches from 3-5 about 50 times, and have yet to get a single green drop from a boss. I DO get a lot more gold drops, but probably because I see them and I am killing more enemies with them. BUT I also can get the Mesmer boss and Yakslapper with the henches also so a couple extra bosses along the way. I have also goneinto the Furnace with henches and killed maybe 20-30 bosses in there. I figure I have killed well over 200 bosses with henches without getting a green drop.

I have also gone out with varying PUG groups maybe 10-12 times, and I have gotten 3 other greens in those runs, and I obviously have seen what the other players get. I don't like PUG games, but I have come to realize that the drop rates are significantly higher with uman players than it is with henches.

Even at the simple division of 12.5% I should have gotten 25 greens after killing 200 bosses. Even if only 2 of 5 bosses drop a green, that would still mean I should have collected 10 grean weapons. But I have gotten ZERO.

But after going in with PUG groups the drop rate of bosses is closer to 70% than 40% for green items. When you see 12-15 greens drop when you clear the furnace and Grenths twice (the way in and the way out) that tells me all I need to know.

They have geared the game towards HUMAN teams. Gotten away from solo and also henches.

I still solo the other areas I did. I went yesterday for the fun of it. I in fact did get more colored weapons. Not sure if that was because I had stayed away a week or if it was because they have tweaked the drop rate in some areas.

But as far as thenew area there is no way you can convinceme that with henches the drop rates for green items at least holds to a simple division rate as 1/8 of a chance. Or even 1/8 of a chance of whatever the probability of a green drop is overall. Because ZERO is still ZERO, and while it is all luck, I am pretty damn lucky. So not getting a single green drop in all those runs is NOT bad luck.

I am not pissing about the greens, I don't think they are all that great to begin with. The 5 I have found weren't allthat. Only two were even useable in my opinion, the mesmer wand with 10/10 cast/ recharge, and Thorgalls hammer (I think) the one with the furious upgrade on it in any case. The other 3 were nothing speacial.

I was just adding what I have found from going into the areas quite a few times. And before you say I have been tagged, not likely since I just started the PUG games AFTER all the solo and hench runs, so I have found the 3 greens after mre than 60 runs in the areas. Not to mention the quest runs I have done, which might get the number up to 75 or more.

Taking henches = a low low probablity of getting a green. Definately a low chance of seeing one.

I should note that I did this with 2 toons. My monk and my ele. I have yet to bring my ranger or MEsmer up since they don't seem to be popular classes for unknown reasons, and mesmers can own the mesmer casters.

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Well also remember that the bosses don't ALWAYS drop stuff.

Also, From what I originally understood, only the 6 named bosses in the contest drop greens. Am I mistaken about that?

There is another site that has a list of all the bosses, and a list of the 3 green items they will drop, with links and pictures to the ones that have been found. Obviously the most common are the ones in Grenths, but as usual shortsightedness occurs, and people don't realize the bosses that roam in the Furnace, and they have the slightly better weapons.

The link is in here somewhere.

There is only 1 problem with your experiment wiz12268, you did runs with henchies and then alone, this is apples and oranges. Alone if something is going to drop its automatically yours, there is no chance for it to go to someone else. A proper experiment is with 5 henchies and then 5 players, apples to apples, then calcutalte your percentages.

Most of the runs I go on are 5-6 man human runs.

My point about henches. With them I have yet to get a green drop at all. I even went out with my solo build with Menlo a couple times but he died pretty fast and I was worried he might get "my" drop, even if he was dead.

Unless Anet throws up the algorythem then we won't know. Some guys swear they do wel with henches. Some say they don't. All I know is that when I go with a team of humans, whether I am getting the drops or not I SEE them. Might be psychological, but it also makes the math a little easier to figure out.

It is still all guess work for sure. I could solo and die 20 times and maybe get a green, or I can team up rune the whole maps and get a few chests, and do it in the time it took me to solo a couple bosses.

I am a devout henches guy. I finished the game with all henches except for Thirsty River and Thunderhead Keep. Damn, I have done almost all the quest in the new area with henches. But if I am solely looking to go get weapons or to farm, I will join a PUG team.

i always feel i get more/better stuff with henchies... probably because i don't see any other drop than my own with them though... oh well.

I exclusively party with henchmen and have so far sold off approximately half a million gold worth of green items from Grenth's Footprint and Sorrow's Furnace.

PS: And yes, this is more than one item ... I typically sell items from Grenth's Footprint for 5-15K, and the ones from within Sorrow's Furnace go somewhere between 15-30K depending on how far I had to hop to get them.

The 12.5% using 8 people is not entirely correct. You have to also calculate the chance that a boss will even drop a green item vs nothing or something else. Suppose it is 25%. Then your actual chance is ~3% in a group of 8 and 25% if you dare solo. That is a big difference!

I can do a 3 man team for farming bosses OUTSIDE SF....haven't tryed inside as there are bigger groups and more necro/mesmer's/monks

Its best to take 3-4 man teams when looking for drops.

Odds of getting a drop has always been 100%/(#of party members)

If a drop would go to a henchie it just doesnt drop.

Gold always drops and is split evenly amoung players and henchmen.

While smaller teams have higher drop percentages, theoretically they cant fight through mobs as fast. So compared to a 4 man team an 8 man team should be able to kill mobs twice as fast. However this requires more coordination and experienced players in one group.

See here's the thing everyones forgetting. The game uses ONE random number generator for drops (basically). Try loading up a number generator and find random numbers between 1-8 and you will find a lot of repeat numbers, but overall it will be even accross the board. The problem is that there isn't a random number generator for each person, so it's not going to be even among one character or even over the account. Therefore, you not getting drops can easily be the repeats of non-favorable numbers while it's being evened out by tohers getting favorable numbers.

There is NO WAY to test drops out and the only way to verify people's hunches that there is anti-henchmen code is to actually see the code. Any tests are going to be inconclusive.

i think some of the math here is incorrect. or someone is understanding it wrong...

12.5% doesn't mean you will have 12.5% chance of getting a green. it simply means you will get 12.5% of what actually DOES drop. with henshies. you can not know what the other 87.5% is. with human players. you know what it is. you just can't pick it up. but theres more on the ground. and therefor people assume they get more drops without henchmen. i am pretty sure the henchmen get the same amount of drops as a human player. the difference is the AI vs. Human intelligence. you can trade with human beings. while the henchmen don't give a shit what they get. or what you want to have

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It was said twice and I'm going to repeat it.

kill a boss, it has a 16% chance of droping a green item, a 24% chance of droping an armor, a 30% chance of droping purple weapon and a 30% droping a normal weapon.

So IF and only if, the boss will drop a green weapon you have a 2% chance of getting the green item. A 3% of getting an armor, 3.something for purple and normal weapons. As you can see, it is not simply 12.5% chance of getting this item. You have to take into account the % chance of boss actually droping this item also. And if there actually is a change in droping % if you are solo/henchies/PUG then you have a really complex formula that most of us wouldnt be able to start to comprehend. If done about 130 runs with henchies and about 40 2 man runs with guildies and I have yet to see one.

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I didnt get them from anywhere. I made them up to show the point. Its is said that they are random, well sometimes it will have a 100% sometimes a 0%. Doesnt really mater. Every game that has a drop system will have a % chance drop number that will either be random or specific, in this case its obvious that its random, therefore the accounts of people getting 2 or 3 on 5 to 10 runs with henchies and other people doing 200+ runs with henchies and getting crap

One possible theory... and its only a theory

If you consider that the game MAY decrease drop rates the more you farm.......
So if you farm solo or with henchies a lot, the game mechanics only uses your decreased drop rate in the equation.
While if you farm in PUGs, maybe the game takes an average of all human players, and if their drop rates are better than yours, it will increase the average, so you get better drops.

Confused?!!! Well its only a pie in the sky theory

Mmmmmmm pie...

i don't quite understand what the original poster's point is supposed to be

henchmen take drops same as real people. but henchmen suck. they are weak, and mentally deficient

granted, a lot of real players fall into the same boat as that

but even so, taking a weak, mentally deficient henchman who is going to take drops that he is not worthy to take is a great reason in and of itself not to take that henchman

much better to take competent real people instead

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