Thesis: How the loot tables work
 

In the last couple of days, I was thinking about

„Why is the loot so often identical?“
„How work the loot table?


So in the beginning, I was looking on our own DKP System and compare the loots from identical Bosses. I came to the conclusion: “Whenever Item X drops, Item Y won’t drop!”


What does that mean?

For instance, let us take Rage Winterchill. As everybody know, his loot table contains 12 Items, namely

Blessed Adamantite Bracers, Blood-stained Pauldrons, Bracers of the Pathfinder, Deadly Cuffs, Furious Shackles, Tracker's Blade, Bracers of Martyrdom, Chronicle of Dark Secrets, Cuffs of Devastation, Howling Wind Bracers, Rejuvenating Bracers, Stillwater Boots


I was creating two Item pools, based on our previous Rage Winterchill loots:


Pool A: Blessed Adamantite Bracers, Blood-stained Pauldrons, Bracers of the Pathfinder, Deadly Cuffs, Furious Shackles, Tracker's Blade

Pool B: Bracers of Martyrdom, Chronicle of Dark Secrets, Cuffs of Devastation, Howling Wind Bracers, Rejuvenating Bracers, Stillwater Boots


As we knew, Rage Winterchill will drop two Items.

My thesis is: “One Item from Pool A and the other from Pool B will drop!”


That means, you can killing Rage Winterchill over million times, but you will never see on a kill, that two Items from the same pool will drop!

For example: Blessed Adamantite Bracers and Blood-stained Pauldrons. Both will never drop on a Rage Winterchill Kill.

So I checked my thesis with our own previous Rage Winterchill loots and they corespond to a hundred per cent. A comparison with my thesis and the DKP System from well known Raids (like Nihilum, Last Resort, Forte etc.) shows a match of hundred per cent.

After that, I created these Item pools for every Black Temple and Hyjal Summit Boss and compared them with our DKP System and with the Drops from the same well known raids, . The result was no deviation from my thesis.

I hope i’m getting feedback, which make my thesis weatherproof or not!



Following are the item pools for each Black Temple & Hyjal Summit Boss


PS: I hope you overlook my bad english, because learning english in school is a long time ago.

This was proven pre-TBC and was also done for Kara and Gruuls I think (on these boards), so yes thats pretty much how it works, nice to see a list for the MH & BT bosses, they dont conflict with any memories I have from kills.

edit: on Gurtogg you have Girdle of Mighty Resolve up twice, one in each pool, intentional?

The theory of different pools is spot on, I think. I remember seeing a list like this for Karazhan some months ago. Nice to see one for tier 6 content though.

Yes I am. according to our own Kills & Loots and comparing with Kills from well known raids.

There was a big thread about this Pre-BC that listed what items were on what pool if I recall.

Thanks, good to know. I don't search the whole "Public Discussion Archives". So i will take a deeper look into the archive.

I'm interested in how the pools work now with the non-token T5 bosses with the 3-per change.

Yep, not groundbreaking but it's still interesting information -- thanks for putting this together.

Minor revision to how you state it:
This implies that certain sets of tokens are mutually exclusive. All three tokens are in one pool, from which two are taken, which is why you still have duplicate tokens, but not duplicates of any other loot. So it would look something like (for illidan):

Not necessarily. It's possible for the same item to be in multiple pools. This would look like:

Pool A: [Chestguard of the Forgotten Protector][Chestguard of the Forgotten Conqueror][Chestguard of the Forgotten Vanquisher]
Pool B: [Chestguard of the Forgotten Protector][Chestguard of the Forgotten Conqueror][Chestguard of the Forgotten Vanquisher]
Pool C: Cursed Vision of Sargeras, Black Bow of the Betrayer, Bulwark of Azzinoth, Faceplate of the Impenetrable, Shard of Azzinoth, Stormrage Signet Ring
Pool D: Cowl of the Illidari High Lord, Crystal Spire of Karabor, Memento of Tyrande, Shroud of the Higborne, The Skull of Gul'dan, Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer
Pool E: Warglaive of Azzinoth (MH), Warglaive of Azzinoth (OH), nothing

Yeah, I'll buy that explanation.

The post is ancient, can be found here. Im going to copy and paste the loot tables of the Pre-Hyjal bosses for reference. Please note I take NO credit for this information, simply am reposting it.

I'd also be interested to see how the new 3 drops per non-tier boss works, I imagine it takes 1 drop from A, 1 drop from B, and 1 drop from either A or B though.

I did this analysis for myself a little while ago, and some of my results don't agree with yours.

For Naj'entus I found that Boots of Oceanic Fury fell into pool B, making his loot split 6/8 instead of 7/7. Akama also seems to split 6/8, with Flashfire Girdle falling into your pool A.

Has it ever been demonstrated past conjecture when drops are determined? (on zone in, at the time of kill, or whatever)

I'm sure i'm completely wrong, but it would seem dangerous for the loot to be decided and loaded in before a boss is actually killed. I seem to remember talk of a program in Everquest that would tell you what every mob in an area was loaded with.