The majority of people who post on the official forums (the 5%) who also think anet changes the salvage rate of ectos on the fly whenever they don’t get an ecto every time
You mean, like this for a couple of months?
http://i46.tinypic.com/2j51mgz.jpg >> http://i45.tinypic.com/2hhgcn8.jpg
Yeah. Petty whiners, those.
I wont even post all the links to threads about loot nerfes (and believe me official forums are not the only place you can find them).
Oh good. You did 12 salvages. That conclusively answers any question about rate of return.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/crafting/PSA-There-has-been-no-Ecto-Nerf/first#post845139
I made this post a month and a half ago.
I have not stopped doing mass salvage batches. My answer for you is still the same.
However the original poster’s mention of Orr drops is the one that intrigues me.
For a long time I did track Orr drop volume, attempting to quantify boundaries by using the Grenth run. I tracked average rares per run, lodestones per run, approximate length of run, used a consistent 200% magic find, made sure to avoid DR, always formed a full party when possible, etc. etc.
I know that there are too many variables to consider, not to mention that being fairly unable to measure kill(drop) volume leaves me unable to quantify rate. In addition, we get into the variance of monster kill spread (elementals, shades, risen, spiders, etc.)…
In spite of it all, though, I couldn’t shake this notion that for whatever reason, the drop rates in Orr were substantially reduced. I noted constant data points of between 5 and 9 rares per Grenth Run prior to that large 11/15 patch. You may remember that patch allegedly buffed Veteran/Champion drops, etc.
After that patch, most of my data points read 2 rares or fewer. Very rarely did I even see 4 rares, whereas prior, I even had data points that went up to the high teens (17, 18).
Obviously, the first 10 times, I just said to myself that it was variance, but beyond that I was really inclined to think something was wrong. Porous Bone drop rates went up ~33%, a non-negligible increase given that a single item was something pretty concrete, and quantifiable. I used those and the Ice Stones as my primary way of measuring kill volume, reasoning that on average, they would increase or decrease linearly based on how many individual drop instances I had per run.
Being a very stern proponent of using large sample size to mitigate random variance, I was obliged to collect more sufficient data before jumping to conclusions.
The porous bone issue was particularly curious. It really nullified many of my theories as to why I would be getting fewer rares. Was the lower rare drop a basic function of, for whatever reason, me killing fewer monsters? Then why would I have more bones? Should they not be a 1:1, linear ratio with kill volume? Why was I not experiencing a similar increase with Ice stones?
I was willing to burn my time for science up to December, when I stopped doing Grenth out of the rationale that enough was enough. I do not force the conclusion upon the rest of you, but at least personally, rare loot drop in that event has gone down about 50% post 11/15, and junk loot drop increased by 33% (I concluded that the drop frequency was not changed, but the table shifted heavily downward in quality) Interestingly, lodestone rate and ice elemental junk:item ratio stayed fairly consistent, but it again is a difficult thing to say for sure. The lodestone itself is a very rare drop, and is forced from Grenth runs via high kill rate. Good luck or bad luck will skew the data massively.
This post has at least prompted me to go and try to take a look one more time.
