OK someone help me out here, x hour lock outs = x Fightfire missions a day x mobs have a x % of dropping one of 4 items x players in a group roll on items leaving you what % out of x missions Can it take years? because not many people are going to do the mission x times a day? oh and then you have to spend even more time doing stuff and leveling said items....
No it won't take years. Lots of people do them once a day. Some do them twice a day. Some do them every couple days... lots already have all four.
I’ve run the mission probably 20 times. Maybe I’m extremely lucky, but I’ve gotten 3 boots, 3 gloves, and 1 ring. With the amount of effort required to do Hunter of POP and the Collections for COTF+, I’m not even in a rush to get Gloves / Shoulders. Will probably take me a dedicated month of killing in POP for that Hunter and I just have far better uses of my time at the moment. In summary: I like the system as it is.
RNG hates you. I’m 7 for 52 thus far. Ironically 4 sets of shoulders and no gloves, though. I like the system, but think it would be nice if other missions had a chance to drop these to encourage grouping/non gribble style behavior.
Or put them on Strange Magic instead of Fight Fire... a much more challenging mission to ensure people run the mission with a group rather than 2 boxes and a team of mercenaries.
Got my first drop 3 runs in. Got my second drop 44 runs in. Got my 7th drop 50 runs in. According to Ngreth and everyone I know (including my opinion), there's no special way to trigger, enable, harm or otherwise effect the drop rate except to keep trying. As for how long, it's hard to estimate if you take into account who rolls against you. But from the numbers I've seen people report, it "feels" like you've got a 10-20% chance to get a drop per run. The good news is that it's a very fast, very simple mission that's easy to get to. And if your team can CC the mobs it's easy. I could easily two box it with my warrior and shaman.
Also, if it makes you feel better, getting the augs you want is several times harder than getting the initial item. And the evolving item without an aug you want is not going to last through the next expansion.
For folks trying to target a specific evolving item, this is going to be a miserable grind. Could the evolvong items be placed on group merchant for equivant of 30 mission currency rewards or something like that? Fight Fire is not fun at all after 10x.
Haven't even seen one drop yet (call me the cooler). But from what I understand the elite on the server have full sets on multiple characters because you failed to realize the mission could be exploited. And by the time you did the crackheads already had their items. Same old situation, nothing new.
Paladins can solo it. I thought I made that clear. The mobs are rootable and everything but the armors are stunnable. That should help.
I know three paladins that did this daily. It took them about 45 minutes a run. They have all their evolving items now.
In our fellowship of 12 real people (no boxes) I think 1 person has 2, and one has 1.. I don't know of anyone else who has one of the drops, and we run 2 or 3 of these a day depending on the day. I duo'd it with one of the chanters this morning. (no drop of course, le sigh.), I've seen 2 of the 3 drop, but I did not of course win either.
I have ran this mission roughly 60 times. I have seen 6 x gloves, 7 x rings, 7 x shoulders, 1 x boots. A couple of the runs I had two drops in. If you are doing the missions on lockouts make sure when you request it you don't have the dz loot lockout as it will always be a little longer than the actual task timer depending on how long it takes you to complete the mission.
How is it Exploitable? There's a Loot Lockout when you kill the first mob in the instance. If you have the loot lockout the items won't drop.