On two occasions we've only gotten 1 loot from Lurker.

I recall hearing the story of a GM that was fired for revealing the loot drops to a BWL raid before they got to the boss.

However, it was 2nd hand and quite a while ago.

I realize this is straying from the topic a bit, and of course, it's been discounted a million times, but I'm still convinced that "seeding" is 100% legit and completely broken.

Typically for our raids I start invites. Going back to when we started Karazhan, SSC/TK, and even T6 content, we noticed *insanely* obviously streaks in loot. Basically anytime I started raid invites, we would see the same 4 items per boss. it was like clockwork. When another officer would do invites (Trouble, some of you probably know him on these boards) we would see a distinct shift in loot. Not much, but some.

So about a month ago we changed things up. For 3 weeks, we ran with completely different raid leaders. Grabbed a random paladin to "seed", had our hunter officer seed, and there was a 3rd who I forget now, probably one of our other shadow priests.

The difference? Suddenly after months of seeing the same shit, we started seeing loot tables that were complete flips.

Examples include... Seeing 80% defender token drops for the first 3-4 months of farming ssc/tk. Soon as we switched raid leaders, our mages were praising jebus for finally getting their tokens.

Azgalor dropped the exactly same loot forever. Swapped raid leaders, got a ton of new loot.

And to reinforce this, for the past 2-3 weeks I've been starting raids again and it went right back into our old loot tables that we used to see 2-3 months ago.


So I guess to wrap this up, yes, we see the same thing with items holding a specific loot slot in the table. But in addition to that, I'm pretty pissed off that the loot system is so fucked up that you end up getting the same shit all the time because they can't figure out a creative way to distribute loot evenly.



The fact that some guilds are working on their *third set* of warglaives, and guilds such as ours, EJ(at least, this is what I've heard), and many others have yet to see a single legendary, is complete bullshit.

Its hard to say how it works in instances, so i wont try to reflect from the following statement to how it works there.
But there are mobs in Blasted Lands called Shadowsworn Adpet's (Shadowsworn Adept - NPCs - World of Warcraft). They usually run around with a staff in their hands, as you can see on the screenshot of the wowhead link. Now if these mobs will drop any weapon, they will have it equipped already and you can see it in their hands instead of the staff they normally wield. This would lead to believe that, atleast outdoors, mobs will have their loot set once they spawn.

Reclaimer: I havent been to Blasted Lands since pre-TBC so it might have changed, but i wouldnt guess so.

Bacon: yes, a completely equivalent way of looking at it, and probably more in line with what's going on under the hood.

Opioid: One story comes to mind, from way the hell back in the day (when MC was cutting-edge), was when some raid's boss got tagged by the warrior's shield spike and registered as tagged to about half the raid. The boss was unlootable when killed. They contacted a GM and explained their situation; the GM told them what dropped and let them decide who was supposed to get it.
The boss dropped some vendor trash and maybe a lava core.
It was well-known at that point that there was some way in which bosses would know whether not to drop pally loot, or not to drop shammy loot. This incident led to the conclusion that mob drops are determined no earlier than when the mob is tapped. The spike is neither ally nor horde, so it failed to load either drop table and just had the default trash drops.

In order to make this jive with the above Table A/B/C stuff above, assume that there are five tables:
Aa: Alliance A
Ah: Horde B
Ba: Alliance B
Bh: Horde B
T: Vendor Trash
Upon tap, or upon death, it looks at who has the tap. In any case, drop T. If alliance, drop Aa and Ba. If horde, drop Ah and Bh.

Now, this was pre-TBC, and the removal of faction-specific classes may have obviated the need for the coding that led to this scenario. It is entirely up in the air if blizzard would have gutten unnecessary code or left it in and largely nonfuctional.

My assumption is that mobs determine drops upon death, depending on who currently has the tap. This is my only explanation for the current group-loot mechanics, both in and out of instances; the main example is group-loot this-item-starts-a-quest items, which drop for all people present that do not have the quest, but not for people out of range or who do not have the quest available. The fact that the item did not drop, and is not simply invisible, is clearly detectable on any skinnable mob.

Why would they go through the extra effort of figuring out some convoluted system that would obviously produce badly distributed loot? The leader of a raid is probably going to be the same from week to week, anyone could see that. I really don't think there is anything more complicated to it than a random number (or several) between X and Y being generated, these index into loot tables. Presto, loot.

And really, if no one, across the millions of people that play wow saw streaks, it wouldn't be random, it would be evenly distributed. There are all sorts of reasons why you remember streaks and why your brain seeks out patterns. This is just another one.

Well your example with rage isnt right atleast.
We got Chronicle of Dark Secrets, Cuffs of Devastation at the same time once.

Vut well that might explains why we never got cloth healing bracers from him in 18 kills.
Our main combo is deadly cuffs/reju bracers.

I've seen this myself so I can second this. Additionnally there is the blue post that confirm that all loot is determined on spawn time (of the mob).

How this exactly works inside (raid) instances for mobs that spawn not at the creation time of the instance but later is a bit hazy but those who do those raid dungeon solo farm runs can certainly confirm that newly spawned in mobs do have loot later on. (Also respawned trash, of course)

I'll try to find the blueposting and will edit this post as soon as I find it.
EDIT: This is the thread: WoW Forums -> Perplexing (Unimportant) Question

Please note that the thread is a bit weird to read. Tseric first said that loot is determined on mob kill, was then asked about the Blasted Lands mobs and later added his "I could be wrong". Then he apparently checked with someone and finally edited his first post clarifiying that loot is determined before it dies. He didn't say it's determined on spawn time but that's what effectively happens.

Thanks! I will check this and if it match, i will correct my initiate post.


I disagreee. Looking at your DKP System you only got Deadly Cuffs & Chronicle of Dark Secrets at the same time. Every Rage Winterchill Loot fits perfect, except this kill, but only Chronicle of Dark Secrets is listed. So i can't check this kill.

Guess i missreaded the dates then

This is interesting indeed.Also, this post comes to my mind.

Are loot drops really random? - WOW Insider
WoW-Europe.com Forums -> Confirmed: Loot is not random

Common sense tells me that it is just a pseudo-random number at the kill or spawn time, and has nothing to do with raidleaders etc. But who knows? Maybe there is also a check that decreases the chance of the same item being drop the next week as the week before?

Atleast it should be quite easy to determine if it's the Raid Leader or the Master Looter setting the loot by running it though all the samples we have.