Has anyone else noticed that master and ancient spell books haven't been dropping since the last patch? I've run over fifty AG's and not one master or ancient book in past two days Please let me know if anyone else has noticed this. thx much
Did you by any chance turn off all exp? My plan for my warlock was to turn off all exp at 94/340, but when I did I found the masters dried up quite a bit. It could have just been bad luck, but it also could be by design.
Agree with Hijinx. Soon as I turned off Exp, they all but stopped dropping. I went from at least 1 per run to maybe...MAYBE 1 per day.
XP has nothing to do with it. I'll sometimes run an extra character through and the drop rate for my 94 with no xp gains will be the same as my other character.
I'm currently in the process of leveling quite a few alts - catching up after a couple years break. I've been running agnostics like crazy and I'm 100% sure the drop rate of masters and ancients were turned way WAY down. Out of perhaps 40-50 zone runs after the patch I think maybe a total of 1 master dropped. Maybe 2. Contrast this with before patch when you'd average maybe 1 a run across the group - sometimes you'd even get 2 per run and I've had even a couple runs with 3. I can guarantee it also has nothing to do with XP locking because I'm leveling up an illy from scratch and am at 100% XP and have encountered the same thing.
February 5th was the last patch to address the 90-100 master drops in LADs. It was later corrected in another thread to say that they still had a chance to drop from zone bosses.
While I firmly believe in Finagle's Law being the reason behind such things, SOE (Daybreak) has done an admirable job in convincing me that ninja nerfs are the true culprit. I used to get at least 1 on every run...sometimes 0, sometimes 3-4, but almost always at least 1. Now? 1 every 5 runs, if I'm lucky. I know..."Correlation does not equal causation"...but if we are going to use sayings to describe this anomaly, I prefer "Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, its probably a duck".
2 thing working there RNG can be a pita [thats saying it nicely] and where we sell spell upgrades and pots ect those items became much more rare to drop making more money for Daybreak and you can choose to think what you want on that part.
No offense to anyone but those claiming this are RNG related just aren't correct. At all. If it were isolated to someone's bad luck, it likely wouldn't replicate across other accounts if it was pure RNG related. I just went through logs and could post results backing this up but too much work and I know what I'm seeing. Also we're talking about general master drop rate here, not any fixes with 90-100 masters. Like I said, I am leveling an illy up from scratch at 100% XP and he's currently at 57 or 58 and has experienced the same things with masters. Plenty before the patch. Maybe 1 or 2 in a couple days of play after and a ton of zone completion runs over all of the instances.
I run dungeon finder a lot and I came here to post about just this... Seems I am not mistaken. Haven't seen a single one drop on any of my characters while leveling them in the dungeon finder. Without a doubt some unannounced change was made.
If it runs like a donkey and sounds like a donkey, it might still be a zebra. (Granted, if you are not at a zoo, and you aren't in the African savannah, it probably isn't a zebra.) Regardless, the point of the correlation vs. causation comment is that things can frequently occur at the same time without having a causal relationship between them. However, just because there may not be a causal relationship between them doesn't imply that there aren't conditions that can make both more probable. In essence, I'm saying that A does not necessarily imply B, but I'm not discounting* the possibility of both A and B occurring due to C. (However, I'm not saying that those conditions are necessarily present in this case, either.) In the case of the xp gain state vs. the master drop rate, it is also possible that confirmation bias could be playing a part. This is my suggestion. Do two sets of experiments with a character that is above 90, but not that close to 95. For the first experiment set, stop all XP, and run the zone that has the greatest number of named mobs. Repeat this 10 times (each time resetting the zone before entering it). Every time you get a master, record that data. Next, turn on xp and run the same zone. Repeat this 10 times (again, resetting the zone before re-entry). Every time you get a master, record that data. The next day do that again (possibly with a different character if the previous character is too close to 95). Do this for 10 days (including the first day). That should give you 110 iterations of that zone with each XP state. Although that is still a small sample size, it might still show patterns (however, you can't entirely rule out the possibility that all of your data is anomalous). * In this context, the meaning of discount is to regard as unworthy of consideration, not to sell something for less than its previous price. I'm only clarifying that in the unlikely event that someone didn't understand its meaning from the manner in which the word was used.
To be precise, I wasn't stating I had noticed a difference with xp on or off; The change I had noticed affected all levels equally. I imagine someone could also parse* the records if they cared to, and show a pre-update post-update comparison...however I do not care enough. It isn't like a change, if there were one, would be reverted. I never expected such a generous drop rate on masters to given, especially since a level 90 toon could lock xp and run agnostics until they have their masters for 90 to 100, and that would interfere with station cash purchases from spell upgrades. It was nice though for the lower levels, especially given that the only groups you are likely to find as you level up are in agnostics...it helped provide players with some lower level group content reward. * In this context, the meaning of parse is to examine subject to detailed analysis by breaking up into components and not to describe (a word) by stating its part of speech, form, and syntactical relationships in a sentence. I'm only clarifying that in the unlikely event that I too can gain my Pedantic Merit Badge.
Fetish, the post to which you made a reference in your initial post in this thread was replying to two posts that were attributing the current drop rate to having xp turned off. If you weren't taking a position in favor of that possibility, why include any verbiage from a post that indicates that the two just might be coincidental? (That question was largely rhetorical, so there is no need to answer it.) I'm starting to get the feeling that you referred to my initial comment in this thread with the purpose of provoking an argument. Since I have better things to do than get drawn into a non-productive discussion, and given the contents of your post, any discussion that we will have in this thread will become non-productive, I'm placing you on ignore and I recommend that you place me on ignore.
This is why when they stopped dropping for me, I assumed it was by design. It really doesn't make sense to allow people to leave LADs fully mastered.
I did a quick log parse. Here's my master drops for my playtime on 3/9 (including three distinct periods of grouping): Code: (1425879785)[Mon Mar 09 00:43:05 2015] You receive \aITEM 2011959459 -318442521:Dismay II (Master)\/a. (1425924329)[Mon Mar 09 13:05:29 2015] You receive \aITEM 1724419315 1175678126:Chromatic Storm III (Master)\/a. (1425924459)[Mon Mar 09 13:07:39 2015] You receive \aITEM 787920446 347391531:Synergism II (Master)\/a. (1425927181)[Mon Mar 09 13:53:01 2015] You receive \aITEM 578420041 13911293:Extract Mana III (Master)\/a. (1425927914)[Mon Mar 09 14:05:14 2015] You receive \aITEM 1044383842 -577415482:Entrance IV (Master)\/a. (1425951100)[Mon Mar 09 20:31:40 2015] You receive \aITEM -180480279 493042644:Ultraviolet Beam VI (Master)\/a. (1425953566)[Mon Mar 09 21:12:46 2015] You receive \aITEM -550195819 412842344:Nightmare III (Master)\/a. (1425956160)[Mon Mar 09 21:56:00 2015] You receive \aITEM -2117306363 -737909117:Ultraviolet Beam VII (Master)\/a. (1425956360)[Mon Mar 09 21:59:20 2015] You receive \aITEM 443123054 -1869890097:Flash of Brilliance III (Master)\/a. (1425956508)[Mon Mar 09 22:01:48 2015] You receive \aITEM -894040576 -973710728:Manatap II (Master)\/a. From that point onwards I have not looted a single master on this character and his playtime has included multiple runs in multiple LADs on 3/10, 3/11, 3/13 and 3/14 and everything has been exactly the same - slider set to 100% XP etc and he's gone from level 36-60 in that timeframe.
