Stingy PQ bosses since Tuesday's patch?

I implore people not to troll or derail this constructive thread. I am not sure why my highly reasonable comments are eliciting personal attacks. You can choose to ignore me (click on profile -> press ignore) or message me in private.

Shoulders = Spaulders. All/All = All classes, all races ala 'Brilliant Earring of Alliance' and 'Horseman's Hallow'.

For those who say they did hundreds of PQ's for little to no result, were you in the fight from the start? My understanding from what I heard is that to obtain the celestial drops you had to be in the fight from the start with decreasing quality of rewards the later you jumped into the fight.

Re: Benito posts - perhaps there is some history I am unaware of but I have noticed a number of times a post by Benito always seems to invite attacks feeling like bullying behavior and ends up destroying discussions.

You do realize that shoulders are visible pieces in EQ2 and All/All isn't a thing because as a general rule EQ2 doesn't restrict itemization based on race? You also brought up face slot items, which also don't exist in this game. So, snarkiness aside, do you actually play this game or are you just an EQ1 player throwing in his 2 cents because you're bored at work?

Additionally, please stop messaging everyone who disagrees with you or calls the validity of your commentary into question.

Here's my feedback on the reduced celestial drop from overland PQs -

I have a whole stable of alts, and for the benefit of my guild/friends for heroics I'm working on a healer. Now, unfortunately I didn't work on the healer during the ethereals event so she has 0 peculiar coins and 0 ethereal items.

This alt, while admittedly is still working on the sig line achievement for the celestial offhand, is in fabled heroic and raid hand me downs (yay leather), in almost all slots. She has the upgraded premium mount, all extra barding slots unlocked. She has the premium celestial familiar but can't afford to ptw to level it. Because she has no ethereals or celestial items she is rocking ~4900 resolve but only 230k potency. I might be able to eke out to about 250k once I have the offhand achievement item and infuse it and swap in some better bardings.

The problem is that I have RoS raid gear on her, and the premium stuff, and still barely, BARELY, make the potency mitigation threshold for heroics. How is someone coming back that doesn't have current raid gear and the premium pack supposed to even make a dent in heroics, if not for getting drops from PQs? No one wants to spend 2 hours in one heroic.

IMO either the PQ drop rate needs to be reverted to what it was, or left how it is now and the potency mitigation in heroics tuned down so that people with under 310k+ potency can do these in a timely manner. Otherwise few will do heroics actively until next ethereal/reducer event.

Please consider restoring it to the drop rate it had at launch. It took a lot of effort to begin with. I have no idea where this "Dropped as common" is coming from but I have not met a single player that felt like that was the case.

Celestials are the only entry people have into heroic content, even with level 8+ familiars and fully trained mounts it requires 4 or more celestials to do anything in heroics as a DPS.

It's more likely that your fervor is too low. You need to go back two expansions for the runes.

I'm kind of in the same boat, DPS-wise. Can you elaborate on this, just to get me going in the right direction?

You need to go back to CD and run all the heroics for the 55 fervor rune, Fabled Kael for a 35 Fervor rune, then run the BoL weeklies for the 50 Fervor rune. You can also raid CD or BoL content for an 80 Fervor rune. Other runes/gear and AAs have smaller amounts of Fervor that also help. You want it over 200, and over 300 you pretty much one-shot trash mobs in solos. This is another continuation of shabby game design that DBG thinks contributes to quality gameplay.

Alright, I can work on that, thanks. Sitting at 150ish right now.

That's unfortunate. Because I thought since solos and heroics were so terrible it was reason enough to keep playing. But now I see, the plot thickens...

Yep always in the fight from the beginning. Some people just have rubbish luck, I'm one of them.
I did get a couple of pieces, but for the amount of PQ's I did, if they're claiming they were dropping at a high rate, I was robbed. Celestials for me were definitely the 1%.

This is my theory.

I've noticed on both EQ1 and EQ2 that drop rates on rares always tend to be good at expansion launch (i.e. harvesting on BoL launch, velium ores on EQ1's ToV and CoV launch) but subsequently nerfed (after 1 month or so).

It is possible that the "generous" drop rate is meant to reward early adopters and loyal supporters of the game. Think of it as a triple currency bonus.

So instead of looking at it from a negative perspective (loss), it is better to appreciate the previous drop rate as a "launch bonus." You may ask then why isn't it advertised? I suspect that openly advertising a "launch bonus" could offend (and turn away) late adopters/customers.

Unfortunately, this kind of negative backlash will ultimately lead to low (conservative) drop rates in future initial expansion launches.

To support my theory:

An EQ1 player said:

This is EQ1's feedback and reaction to their rare nerf:

Looking for Ores in all the wrong places | EverQuest Forums (daybreakgames.com)

I always thought it was the bait and switch approach. Start with common drop rates, until the word spreads and people get excited, then cut the chance back to rubbish. If people complain about never seeing it there will be those who can say but I got it, I even got 2 of them so it must just be your rotten luck with rng, just keep playing and keep spending.

As an example I certainly recall getting a LOT of fabled familiars in first week of Season 7 familiars, like 2 out of 3 familiars was fabled, then week later could only get treasured familiars. This sort of odd luck does not exist, that was obviously an adjustment of the chances.

It may be difficult to discern the exact motive. But I am not sure that releasing a liberal (generous) vs. conservative (stingy) drop rate would affect expansion sales. If you consistently play EQ2 standard ruleset, you'll buy the expansion no matter what. The pre-order buff is worth the early acquisition. (I find boxing on EQ2 annoying so I am not sure how it would affect expansion purchases for multiple accounts). Therefore, I lean towards attributing more to rewarding early adopters and loyal customers.

Though, regardless of the motive, I unfortunately foresee the devs opting for initial conservative drop rates where it can be later tuned more liberally without the backlash at content launches in the future.

This feels like it's been standard practice for as long as I can remember. Drop rates are high and raid bosses are easier at the beginning, then when the initial rush of people get their shiny new stuff, they throttle it back because- oops, it wasn't meant to be that generous, now it's working "as intended." I remember it being like that all the way back in Velious. Scars of Velious.

alright after the patch my guild has done 7 pqs. (7*24=189 rewards). we got one celestial, and it was plate shoulders rewarded to a defiler.

DBG - what level of rarity are your shooting for? if someone REALLY REALLY wants to farm a choplicker, how many PQs should they do to hope to get it? because at this rate... how many celestials are on the loot table, 10 or 15 including the shoulders which you mostly cannot even wear, yet still have a chance of getting? so 189*10, are my odds of getting a choplicker 1/1890?