Harvesting modifier gear utterly pointless - Official?

The following is an answer received from my question in the Dev forum:
Q: Can someone confirm if harvesting is working as intended? With the ability to easily parse harvesting via ACT it is shown, time and time again on threads on this site, that the use of +harvesting gear has little or no effect on the success rates. A capped out t8 harvester with all the modifiers available is barely any more successful in harvest rates or rare rates than a harvester progressing through the tiers, at or significantly below cap. T5 is the obvious example of this. Is this tied in with the RNG again? While I acknowledge that a RNG can only truly be assessed over an "infinite" sample, most of us won't be around for the results of such a test. Therefore I really think that the RNG needs to "appear" to be random over the short term, as well as "be" random over the (infinitely) long term.
A: You need to be significantly over the skill cap of a harvesting tier before you see a significant difference in the success rates. While higher harvesting skill does have an effect in T8, it is much more noticeable the higher your skill is above the node you are harvesting.
If I am reading this correctly it would appear to confirm that the effect of harvesting gear is minute compared with your base skill and as such is probably a waste of time concentrating any time on obtaining. I always thought this was the case from my personal experience. Nice to know that SOE agree.

Well this is exactly the same as tradeskilling bonuses - an entire set of far seas clothing, both sets of jewelery and no significant improvement crafting T8 stuff.
Oh, and the same as Adept III spells, a higher disruption skill (my wiz's currently at the equiv of level 86) and max AAs spent in reducing resistability and still getting resist after resist on level 81/82 mobs. Try casting Fetter, or opening with Bolt of Ice on those solo mobs in LS, and you'll see plenty of resists!
And just don't ask me what my harvesting skills are (on my designated harvester, my mining skill is the equivalent of level 99). That's right nearly TWO entire tiers over the current maximum. Am I ripping Silicate Loams out of the ground like crazy? No, I am not.
The only way to significantly improve your chances is to outlevel the content. No matter what the skill or the content. Do we as players feel this is wrong?

Domino posted on 08-07-2007 in the thread Harvesting change or RNG love ?
"For those who don't know what I'm referring to with the bonus result tables, harvesting works as follows. (If you really don't care about details you can skip this bit.)

For each node in each zone, when you harvest it, there are different result tables set up that tell the game what to give you when you harvest. Your skill level determines which table you use.

For example, using entirely invented numbers, let's imagine that there is a root node in a level 30-40 zone and you go and harvest it with a gathering skill of 190.

The game sees that the root node points to two result tables. Let's call them:

T4_roots_base_result - required skill 140
T4_roots_bonus_result - required skill 189

* The "base" table might tell you that you have a 70% chance of getting 1 root, a 20% chance of getting 3 roots, an 8% chance of getting 5 roots, a 1% chance of getting an imbue, a 0.7% chance of getting a rare root, and a 0.3% chance of getting a rare root + 10 common ones.

* The "bonus" table might tell you that you have a 60% chance of getting 1 root, a 25% chance of getting 3 roots, an 10% chance of getting 5 roots, a 0.5% chance of getting an imbue, a 0.8% chance of getting a rare root, and a 0.7% chance of getting a rare root + 10 common ones.

(Yes, the numbers probably don't add up to 100%, I just invented them on the spot.)

Now we know that if your skill is under 140, you can't harvest the node at all. And we know your skill is 190. So the RNG rolls a number between 140 and 190. If it gets 140-188, you use the "base" result table. If it gets 189+, you use the "bonus" result table. Clearly, as your gathering skill increases, your chance of using the "bonus" result table gets better. (This is where +harvesting skill items affect your results, they increase your chance of using the bonus table.)

As of GU37, you get to start using the "bonus" table at level _8 (so, 8, 18, 28, 38, etc.) You're still not guaranteed to use it, but you have a CHANCE to use it. Previous to GU37, the level at which you could start getting the bonus was much higher, so that you didn't even have a chance to get the bonus table until you had entirely outlevelled the tier. In T6 and T7 prior to GU37 we still couldn't even start using the bonus level at level 70 with 350 skill, so we've been harvesting off the "base" table all this time. Now we will begin to have a chance to use the "bonus" level, so yes, we'll get slightly better harvesting results in T6 and T7 than we were before, but it's actually about the same results as we would eventually have got as the level cap raised and we continued to level up.

Incidentally, all nodes within a level range (in this example, all nodes in level 30-40 zones) point to the same result tables, so it makes no difference whether you're harvesting in one zone or another."

The answer they gave isn't very detailed, but essentially correct. Harvest gear has very little effect on harvesting comapred to the completely massive effect of the RNG.
What you need to know about harvesting is that there are two lookup tables when you harvest.
When you harvest, a roll is made against the level of the node and your skill level to determine if you are going to use lookup table 1 or lookup table 2. If your skill level is not high enough, then you're always going to use table 1, but if it's higher than the node's level then you get a chance to use table 2. Therefore the higher your skill levels, the more chance you have of using table 2.
Now, as nobody outside the devs knows what the % chances are in these tables, who can say if it's worth it ?
For example, if the chance of getting a rare in table 1 is 1% and the chance in table 2 is 2%, are you going to notice this difference in anything other than massive sample sizes ? Is it in fact more likely that the RNG going to have more of an effect on your results ?
Bottom line - increasing harvest skills makes it more likely you will use lookup table 2 rather than table 1. Will this actually make any noticeable difference to you ? No. Any difference you think you see if just RNG in action.

Maybe they forgot to put T9 and T10 harvesting tables, so there's no bonus to jump to.

Anyway, as with any gear choice, what is the point in striving to acquire gear if it does nothing? The Harvesting cloak quest, the Far Seas gear, the Epic Tradeskill Cloak. If all of it does next-to-nothing, why bother?
There should be a measurable result from having these items.

If I get the unicorn, I'll be harvesting as if I'm a level 108 miner. I'd damn well expect it to have measurable effects.
I'm just not convinced it would.
How long since my last post? Currently as a level 99 miner, I have received NO rares in T8 and all I've been doing is harvesting.
Y'know, whatever explanation you got for it, RNG, tables...whatever, doesn't make that result any less wrong.

feldon30 wrote:

There is a measurable effect. How are you measuring?
There's a handy little the Harvesting plug-in to the free utility Advanced Combat Tracker that tracks your harvests, so the number crunching geeks (that would be me) can see what's happening. Remember, to get valid numbers you must start with a large number of samples, so harvest 100 nodes, or better, 1000.
I don't know how the T8 harvesting tables are set up for bonuses (Ms. Domino would have to address that) but you can really see a huge difference in the number of rares harvested in lower tiers. The bigger the numerical advantage of your harvesting skill vs. the node level, the better your chances of rolling on the bonus table.

Lets say the base table has a .5% chance of a rare. while the Bonus table has .75% chance (or a 50% increase in chance)
That means even if you got to the point of having a 50% chance of hitting the bonus table , you would only see a 25% increased chance of harvesting a rare which translates to another .125% (so your chances are .625% instead of .5%). Let say the base range of t8 is 340 to 440, you would need 540 harvesting skill to see that 25% increase.

The difference between .5% and .625% is so small that it would be totaly masked by the RNG in this game.

MrWolfie wrote:

How exactly are you calculating "levels"? Your max adventuring or crafting level gives you (level x 5) harvesting skill capacity. So to be effectively a level 108 miner you'd need a harvesting skill of 540. Current level 80 gives you a max of 400 skill, so you'd need 140 in bonus skill.
Lets see: overclocked pick 20, unrest boots 25, tradesmen's necklace and belt 10, harvesting cloak 25, unicorn 25. That is a total bonus of 105 for the lucky soul that managed to get the pattern drop in unrest. (I never did and I've done hundreds of runs) So what am I missing for the extra 35?

Meirril wrote:

My mining skill is 548, everything else is 538. I have the unrest boots and to my knowledge, all possible harvesting gear/mount.
Think you forgot the epic earring, that gives +25, the unrest boots only give 20, not the 25 you listed (at least mine do). The unicorn gives 48.

as a new player I do have this question..

I realize that at maxx level you're not getting much (if any) benefits to having the +harvesting bonuses - but now my question is - did you notice/gain a benefit at non-maxx level?
Being a low level crafter who's working their way up - is it pointless for me to get +harvest gear of any type? Or is it that it helps you really only NOT being max level?

As I have said before my experience, and it has been extensive over the years, is that you seem to be more likely to pull a rare off a node when you are levelling up (and therefore not at cap) than going back down the tiers when you are at cap. It's only anecdotal I know, although I do have ACT logs that "seem" to support this, but you never see anyone come on these boards saying that harvesting in all the gear and on the unicorn gives you appreciably higher success rates do you?

Celena wrote:

Thanks for explaining that for me, Celena. My mining skill would be 543, if I had the unicorn (lol, I gave that to my armorer who is my lowbie adventurer and has little runspeed). I guess you must also have one of the races that gets a +5 to mining too??

Holymoly@Runnyeye wrote:

I think it's perception based though. Most people don't parse harvesting, and when you harvest but are not getting what you need, it sems like it takes forever. When you do parse a large data sample, we've confirmed many times that the numbers really come out the way Domino described.
The harvesting gear really does noticably improve your rare chances vs lower tier nodes. I remember being frustrated doing the harvester cloak quest that I was getting all rares in Timorous Deep, just using Solstice + tinkered tools, because I needed commons.

Koriani@Lucan DLere wrote:

Having the gear can be beneficial while levelling up, because it has more benefits than just supposedly making rares more common for you. The higher your harvesting skill the quicker you can move into the next tier of harvesting. Sometimes, getting those last skill updates on foresting or trapping (or -- ugh -- fishing!) can be a pain, but if you have an extra +20 skill you'll reach the level that much quicker. You'd only need a skill level of 70 to move into TS or Nek (from CL or Ant), for example, when it'd normally require that you have 90 skill.
Also, some of the equipment speeds up how quickly you harvest a node, making your levelling in harvesting less time consuming.

Sigrdrifa@Lucan DLere wrote:

Um, but weren't you also massively outlevelling the content? (ie. you were level 80-ish harvesting level 1-9 nodes).
Having equipment that put you over the requirements for T8 harvesting would really make little difference. You're still going to reap loads of rares whether you equip extra harvesting equipment or not because you're ALREADY way over the skill requirements for that tier.
Your test isn't empirical unless your character has a level of 1-10 while harvesting in T1, and then they equip harvesting gear and you test again. Or you test naked level 80 vs. fully equipped level 80 harvesting in T8.
What I'm saying is that equipping harvesting gear that puts your skill level way over the requirements for T8 should get you the SAME results IN TIER 8 as outlevelling the lower tiers. What you see as a level 80 harvester when harvesting in T5 should be the same as being a level 108 harvester (aka with all your gear on) harvesting T8 nodes.

Sigrdrifa@Lucan DLere wrote:

Did you actually read the OP? They were using the ACT plugin and saw no benefit whatsoever to having enough Harvesting skill items to increase their Harvesting tier essentially to T10. What is the point in questing and grouping in TSO tradeskill instances to get all this stuff if it doesn't actually increase harvesting in a measurable way?

Sigrdrifa@Lucan DLere wrote:

People ARE running ACT. And this thread is about current Tier. Current tier harvesting is 400. People are harvesting with 540 and not getting anymore rares. Essentially they are two tiers higher than the nodes, yet not getting any additional rares. This is clearly broken.

Holymoly@Runnyeye wrote:

It seems from your answer that if my level 80 sage/conjuror with maxed harvesting skills is harvesting in T5, I should get a real benefit from the harvesting gear. But not so if I am harvesting in T8. However, I'll keep my gear on. It brings me luck

I would be interested in hearing Domino's take on it. Remember that a while back the rare drop rates were adjusted, and made way too plentiful. The price of rares plummeted, and so therefore did the price of crafted goods. It was ghastly if you relied on harvesting and/or tradeskilling for your income.
Then rare rates were tweaked back a bit later, and prices for rares and mastercrafted recovered somewhat, but pricing (at least on LDL) never went back to where it had been.
One thing I suspect (but haven't examined the data for yet) is that rare drop rates were adjusted (along with everything else) to make levelling easier and faster, then to slow down dramatically at end game. My guess is that this is how SOE is coping with the complaints of "I never have anyone to group with". By making it ineveitable that everyone shoots to level cap, then we all are playing in that tier, whereupon progress grinds to a near halt.
So anyway, I just want for rare rates to not go up in such a way that they depress prices for harvesters and crafters, is all.