RNG? Seriously I think we should rename it RNGMA. As in random number generator my ass. Smoldering Censer of Purity still refuses to drop. Shared loot table? Yeah. Shared loot table my ass. (Warning, I am predicting an inordinate use of "my ass" in this post.) I don't even know how many boss kills we have in Firelands where this could have dropped. Cry.
There is actually a RNG situation even worse than my staff. We have yet to see the warrior/hunter/shammy token drop in this current tier. At all. We killed Staghelm for the first time on September 25. So we've killed him about 8 times. Our first kill on Rag was about a month ago, so I believe we've killed him 4 times, with a 5th coming this Sunday. With 12 boss kills with tier tokens, and a 1/3 chance each time that a specific token will drop, not a single warrior/hunter/shammy token dropped. I wonder if there's a way Blizz can make RNG just a bit smarter?
I think we've decided that we should change up who technically forms the raids. See, when you get as desperate as we are, we've resorted to blaming RNG on any number of silly and completely unrelated events. Jess or I always form the raids, but I think on Sunday I will make our rogue Violent form the raid. Why? Because he is the luckiest bastard in our guild! He got all of the drops he needed in Firelands weeks ago, often on our first kill of a specific boss. Let's look at Exhibit 1:
I think Lorosia logged out in his PVP gear and he also got bracers off our heroic Shannox kill last night. And of course from our heroic Shannox kill, the heroic dagger drops for Violent as well. So of our raiders I actually have the lowest iLevel. Damn 359 level weapon...
Exhibit 2: Another ranking that Guildox provides where I am on top!
I went through a crazy phase in the spring/summer where I was doing a ton of PVP on K to farm BG achievements. I haven't done much BGing on her in a while, but perhaps I will pick it back up on her. There's my little lock Kimchee in the 12th position and my gnome priest has done a bit of pvp as well. This weekend is Gilneas weekend, and I do still need a number of Gilneas achievements on K. I remember when I hit 50k honor kills, I honestly didn't think 100k was something I'd reach. If I go through another PVP achievement farming phase, it's definitely within reach.
So we got our first heroic FL kill last night. Last raid week we went in to try our hand at heroic Shannox and Staghelm, but didn't get either kills. Then last night we waltz in and killed heroic Shannox on the first pull. We tried Staghelm again, but as much as it pains me to say this, I just don't think we have enough heals to pull it out. We're pushing to 10 on the first scorpion phase, 5 leaps in the first cat phase, but then we wipe when we come back in on the second scorpion phase. The heals just can't keep up. I don't know if another heroic would be better for us to work on. Thoughts?
On one final RNG matter, has anyone gotten any PVE gear to drop in Baradin Hold? We never do. Say it with me folks. Random, my ass!
pseudo-random isn't always fair. ;)
ReplyDeleteThe RNG is supposed to distribute those items across a bunch of different guilds, but any 1 guild won't see the items at the advertized drop rate because your sample size of # of raids is too small to have a standard distribution of loot. RNG only evens out when you average across probably hundreds or thousands of guilds. You'll get skewed distributions when looking at just 1 guild.
/for_science
Grats on the first hard mode kill :D For Staghelm, if healing is a problem, you could try the 0-cleave strat. Start him out as scorpion, and run out at 70 energy. It’s important that ranged dps and healers avoid leaps (just watch for when his energy reaches around 80-90 and run away in case he targets you. Dps will have to stop for a few seconds but it’s worth it to keep your bar full). The only healing intensive part for this strat is the orbs… especially if one of the soakers is targeted by leap. Just keep your healers near the orbs.
ReplyDeleteYou can 2-heal with this strat! This is what my group does.
As for other heroics, Rhyolith is pretty easy unless you have crappy RNG. You can completely ignore the new adds. When we started working on this one, we were trying to control them but realized they didn’t even do much when they reach him. Much easier to forget they’re even there! Aly is not bad either. Just down the meteors ASAP. Everything else stays the same! We two-heal both of these fights.
As for Beth and Bale, well… these fights both have a higher chance of people getting flustered and doing the wrong thing. I would focus on any of the other heroics first. Good luck!
@lissanna
ReplyDeleteWe understand probability theory. We're just surprised by a relatively unusual outcome. I believe we can assume that the probability of the Vanquisher, Protector, and Conqueror tokens are 0.4, 0.3, and 0.3, respectively. The probabilities are understood to be proportional to the number of classes since Vanquisher benefits four classes and the other two each benefit three, and this is consistent with reported drop rates. Furthermore I believe it's safe to assume that each time the loot table is formed the process is independent of other times it is formed, and that the probabilities at each of these are the same. This puts the probability of no Protector tokens dropping out of 12 kills at around 0.01384 or approximately 1.4%. So even out of only 12 kills, it's still quite unusual under the stated assumptions.
I'd second the no-cleave method, K. It's what we'll be trying once we finish gearing up a new member we just got. If your ranged are on the ball and moving to avoid cat leaps as he reaches 100 energy, you only take at most 1 tick of damage, sometimes none. So between that, and no cleaves, there's almost no damage to heal through. AND your melee get to keep their full +supercrazypower buffs the whole time. :D
ReplyDeleteAs for RNG...I am still waiting for the BoE plate DPS boots from Beth. I have killed that bug about 25 times across different characters (and since it's BoE, the runs that were guild runs, the boots would have been put aside for me even if I was on an alt) and I've never even seen them drop. It's not as horrible as your token luck (because TOKENS amg) but I feel your pain! Or rather, your Warrior/Hunter/Shaman's pain.
Why focus on the Censer? Not that it's bad, but why specifically highlight it, when there's a better option anyway?
ReplyDeleteCenser
438 (H: 490) Intellect
310 (H: 349) Spirit
186 (H: 213) Haste
2334 (H: 2633) Spellpower
Ko'gun + Goblet of Anger
452 (H: 504) Intellect
271 (H: 305) Spirit
265 (H: 299) Haste
2467 (H: 2783) Spellpower
Looks like:
Normal Censer < Ko'gun + Goblet < Normal Ko'gun + H.Goblet < H.Censer < H.Ko'gun + H.Goblet
You could also grab a Chelley's Sterilized Scalpel to go with a Goblet, for 442 int (at the cost of less valuable secondary stats).
In short, I would have gone with "No Censer OR Ko'gun + Goblet? RNGMA."
Assuming each token's chance to drop is proportional to its class representation (that is, 30%/30%/40%), not getting a warrior/hunter/shammy one out of 12 drops has a (0.7)^12 ~ 0.014 probability. That is, it should happen to 1.4% of guilds. Unlikely and unlucky, yes, but not insanely so. (If each token is a straight 1/3 chance, it's ~0.8%.)
@Lissanna: Yeah... I think my head knows its technically random and "fair", but after a certain point it sure feels personal. And as Jess points out the fact we've never seen his token drop is pretty crazy.
ReplyDelete@Anon: Thanks for the tips! We'll definitely have to check it out.
@Jess: I knew the statistics professor would have to get all statistics profess-y!
@Rades: yeah I think Jess actually mentioned how FL is kinda horrible in terms of plate dps drops.
Anyways, I forgot to mention this to you. For the brewfest stuff last month where you have to go extinguish the opposite faction's fire, I took my little level 60 something priest to get that done. I got it done, but then I see this big green scary dinosaur out of the corner of my cute sweet gnome eyes. Then I die. And seriously there is nothing sadder than a dead gnome.
And who kills me... none other than Rades! /cry sweet gnome tears
@Galashin: Because then I would have to rely on RNG to get TWO drops rather than one. :P No, but seriously I don't think we've ever seen the Ko'gun drop. I do think we've seen the goblet drop once but I forget who I passed to.
(Oops... hit post, before I was done)
ReplyDelete@Galashin: Ooh... who ever thought there'd be this much maths and probability on my blog of all places! :p
Anyways, so I think earlier on in FL, it seemed that it was more important to gear up our dps. Getting bosses down before the enrage timer was more the issue than having a lack of heals. So I tended to pass on items, for example that Chelley's scalpel.
Now that we're trying heroics, I'm not sure that it the same case anymore. I know that bosses still have enrage timers on heroic, but I guess I've wondered whether our heals just need more oomph.
Ahahaha, oh man. I wish I had known! But, I'd like to think that I waited until after you got the flame. I know I USUALLY try to let people get their seasonal stuff or whatever, and then kill them once (or if they're fishing - though not if I know you, obviously). It's like, the toll! ;D
ReplyDeleteSmoldering censer... I had NEVER seen it before. Then we got it the last 2 weeks in a row, both on Baleroc. LOLWUT?
ReplyDeleteMy hubby would sympathize with you, Ker! He keeps referring to persistent rumors that Baleroc drops a tanking shield. He is really beginning to believe that those are false rumors!
ReplyDelete@Rades: I immediately went to type "slash" to get ready to emote a gasp or wave or something. But I was dead super fast. But yes, you did let me get the flame done first. So generous of you. <.< (shifty eyes)
ReplyDelete@Zelmaru: Awmigawd! Grats!!!
@Kayeri: Yeah our tanks talk about that shield as well. We did finally see the healing shield drop for the first time last night.
What gets me about the staff though is that because its on the shared loot table it could theoretically drop from any boss. At least the tanks just get disappointed when we loot Baleroc. Instead I'm disappointed when we loot EVERY SINGLE BOSS.
If you guys have the co-ordination and dps I would go for Baleroc. He was our 2nd heroic kill and personally I think he is just as easy as Shannox.
ReplyDeleteWith Domo we tried the ranged strat that everyone talks about and it just didn't work for us. We end up pushing 10-11 cleaves in the scorpion phase then 7 jumps, then 6 cleaves, 5 jumps, then 4 cleaves, 4 jumps then burn him down in scorpian. We run with a holy pally, resto druid, disc priest and a prot pally for cooldowns. We make sure all the pets (2 hunters and a lock) are standing in the stack up AND the hunters throw down their snake trap (it really does help!). Slice would have to give you info on the cooldown usage. I do know we have our 2 melee stay out almost the entire time and have our top dps hunter stay out for the first 5 or 6 cleaves on the first scorp phase. After the 2nd scorp phase our melee shaman comes in and stacks up with us but our frost DK stays out.
I can direct you to our logs if you want more detail.