OP Items

Just having the feat should be enough to make them drop, right? Or do I need to also be wearing the gear at the time?

All you need is the feat. If you have alts, you can buy the feat on them and increase your odds.

There's a chance of getting an OP collection piece from Cyborg's mission reward box, from all of the weekly reward boxes, from the duo, alert and both raids, as well as the extra treasure boxes at the end of the instances (the odds are low, but they are there).

To add to that, wearing the gear once you've popped the feat does nothing to increase your odds. And being that the drops are not guaranteed, you have a better chance of seeing an OP collection piece if you run multiple toons through the content (not an actual odds increase, but better chances of seeing something overall). There's nothing you can do to force better odds (even praying to RNGesus usually results in nothing)....so all you can do is run the content, look in the broker for the cheaper selling pieces. Good luck.

So it’s a ‘if you have the feat, sometimes it’ll drop, but usually it won’t’ deal. Lovely

I have alts, but the highest of those is about CR35

I just don’t have enough free time to run/level alts the way some people seem to do

I only have 2 current toons but even having 2 seems to make the collecting go faster.

That's the way it is with everything RNG based in this game. It's not a new concept or addition. I still haven't completed the regular Johnny Quick style because the Purple chest won't drop for me no matter what content I run or how many times i've replayed. In this one example though i'm lucky that I can eventually buy it from the vendor (would have done that sooner, but I was busy buying Elite gear and working towards the Vendor OP collections).

Before Amazon Fury 3, OP items were fully formed drops, not collections. They only dropped in one instance, and they were not tradeable. The drop rates for those were just as bad if not worse than the drop rates for the most rare collection pieces (with the possible exception of Complex Crime Scene Riddle, which seems to share the same bad drop rate as the Prime Battleground OP Helm). At least you can trade the collections...making it a little less impossible.

I've only seen 2 OP gear drops. 1 was the OP Belt from Prison Break back in 2016. The other was the OP Hands from Rip in Time last month

Certain op collections only ever drop in certain places.

In terms of earth 3 content the three rarest collections drop in the alert those are

Owlmans calling card and intel on owlmans family history and intel on deathmatrix (sorry not in game so can't check exact spelling)

You should be able to pick up most of the others pretty cheaply.

Don't run event content op collections don't drop in there.

Deathmatrix drops off second boss in the alert owlmans drop off last boss.

There is a chance you'll get one of the blue treasure box at the end of the alert as well.

Older pre-revamp OP gear was worth fighting for and had longevity, now it's "new episode dropped now old OP gear is irrelevant " type of deal. It also "use to" give us "Toughness" stat bonus as well so it was literally a golden relic back then. I miss pre-revamp now other than AM spamming.

As a melee dps on most toons I still very much appreciate having tank level defense/health on some of my gear, but your mileage will vary