Guild Wars 2

Hey guys

I’m just wondering if the loot bags drop from champions or guards in WvW dmg based, or is it entirely RNG?

Like for example in EotM, i was trying my best catching up with the front line with the commander and spam my most dmging combo i can perform on the champs but they die so fast and i dont get any loot… pls enlighten me with this cos its bothering me quite abit.

Basically each mob has a certain amount of damage you need to do to receive loot. After that threshold the system will do a roll (the RNG bit) to determine what you get, this roll may still result in no loot.

If you are a member of a party the total damage your party has dealt is compared against the threshold to determine if a roll is done, after that the RNG is individual (taking each players MF into account etc..)

For more details: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Loot

Yeah you need to cause a % of damage to count that you participated, but the tag is just a yes/no , if you tag it then you get the reward for the kill.
That is the reason you see people looking for party, in a party the tag system is calculated by party and not by player.

Ahhh right that makes so much sense now… thank u guys for explaining <3

Sadly, the above is incorrect. Or, at least, only partially correct.

There is a damage threshold that must be reached, but for most characters this is achieved in just two or three hits. If you’re a condition-based class with low direct damage it might take a bit longer. But with what you’re saying here, that’s not the problem you’re running into. The bigger problem you’re having, and one that’s not well-known among the player base yet, is that only a certain number of players can actually receive loot from a given enemy at a time. And damage is not the threshold used to determine who gets it.

Aside from that minimum “2-3 hits to get credit” mentioned above, loot is given on a first come, first served basis. The first players to hit a given enemy reserve their right to get loot by doing so. People who are trailing a bit behind in a large group (50 plus players, at least) and hit the enemy late will not get loot, no matter how much damage they do. They’ll get event credit fine, but no champion loot bag. There is apparently some kind of limitation in the system that prevents loot from being given out to too many players at once.

There is one way to bypass this. Parties. As Belzebu said above, players join parties to help to get credit for kills. The common perception is that you get more champ bags when partied because your group’s damage is pooled, but that isn’t the case. Instead, as long as one player in your party is among that first 50(ish) players to hit the enemy in question, that player will qualify for the loot drop and share his rights for the loot drop with others in his party. This allows the normal limitation for ‘maximum players who can get loot’ to be exceeded, and it’s a big reason why people assume that they aren’t getting champ bag drops because they aren’t doing enough damage, rather than the real reason of simply tagging late.

There’s inevitably going to be responses here saying that I’m wrong. To those people, I encourage them to test things out themselves, at a heavily zerged event such as Frozen Maw. Fight the boss twice, under two different circumstances. First, go there solo without a group, ignore the pre-event portals/guards/etc. and stand ready to tag the Champion Shaman once he becomes vulnerable (pack a stunbreak or Stability in case you strike too early and get launched away). Hit him a few times, deal maybe 2000-3000 damage to him just to be safe, then back off and walk away and idle for the rest of the fight. You’ll get a champ bag from his corpse when he dies. Next, come back the next day with a full group of five who are all going to try this experiment together. Go do the ‘close the portals’ pre-event together, and when the Shaman becomes vulnerable, have your whole group stop by where the portals were for about five or ten seconds to let everyone else engage the boss, and only then charge in. Go for max DPS on the Shaman, break out your Hundred Blades and your Lava Fonts and your Backstabs and everything else you can bring to the table. It won’t matter, when it dies none of you will get a champ bag off his corpse despite your party dealing tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of damage.

It’s a simple test that’ll prove the real reason why people don’t get champ bags. I’ve submitted this as a bug report in the past, and seen others do the same thing, but as of yet there has been no response or acknowledgement from Arenanet. It might simply be too deeply ingrained in their game engine to be easily fixed. But in the meantime, to avoid suffering from it, you need to make sure that you engage and tag the enemies you want loot from very quickly when you’re travelling in a zerg. It’s not something that comes up too terribly often, since 50 plus players are required before anyone starts missing out on loot, but with world boss trains and WvW zergs, it certainly can hurt people.

gotta love the max player thing. If you use ranged weapons, you can usually tag an enemy quick enough to get credit. I normally always get a bag with my ranger, and i almost never party up in EOTM.

The champ bag will drop if you get credit for the kill unless it is an event where the mobs dont drop loot (ex. fort defense in the Silverwastes)

wow thanks alot for the detailed info Mao, i was getting annoyed when i tried my best combo rotation did huge spike dmg but nothing dropped, its all about the timing eh? guess i def need some ranged wep when i follow a zerg train.

nanomidgy.9180:

wow thanks alot for the detailed info Mao, i was getting annoyed when i tried my best combo rotation did huge spike dmg but nothing dropped, its all about the timing eh? guess i def need some ranged wep when i follow a zerg train.

Focus on high mobility; make sure you always have swiftness (np in a zerg) and pack as many leaps, teleports, shadowsteps etc. as your class allows and stay on the ball as to where the zerg is going and group up, 5 chances are better than 1. Quite certain a Sword/Warhorn + Greatsword Warrior can get to the target quicker than its arrows for example.

Suggestions:
Elementalist: D/D with Fire 3 and Air 4 as ‘leaps’ or Staff for Swiftness/Range/AoE with Blinding Flash and Fiercy Greatsword.
Mesmer: Blink, Far-Reaching Manipulations, Master of Manipulations.
Necromancer: No idea…
Thief: Dagger 2, Shortbow 5 or Sword 2 (requires target) with utilities such as Shadow Step, Infiltrator Signet (requires target)
Ranger: Greatsword for it’s leap on 3 with a Longbow for tagging.
Engineer: Rocket Boots, Grenadier trait for Range.
Warrior: Sword/Warhorn for swiftness and a low cooldown leap along with Greatsword with Whirling Blade and Rush.
Guardian: Greatsword for a tiny leap, Sword 2 for a tiny teleport (requires target) and Judge Intervention / Merciful Invervention (both require targets, enemy/friend respectively.)

Most zergs don’t require all your effort to keep up, but it sure is easier with certain classes.

thanks nova!

yea i play a thief atm, i just respec some of my trait into trickery for longer distance steal and acrobatic for swiftness in order to keep up, spamming dagger 2 sb 5 and every speed signet or utility i can, sometimes its just not enough comparing to others… but hey thanks for the answer, now i also know how to keep up as other classes

Grassrab.9302:

……. After that threshold the system will do a roll (the RNG bit) to determine what you get, this roll may still result in no loot.
……

You are mistaken about that last statement (show a link to some proof if you can, please).

From the wiki page you linked (LOOT):

Participation

Each player who participates in killing a monster will have the opportunity to loot the body. Each monster has a damage table and a threshold value of damage done to it by the player before it will give full credit for the kill. This value is about 5% to 10% of the monster’s health. The loot dropped is unique to the player, and loot received by one player does not affect what another player receives. One monster may drop the same rare item for multiple players.

I see no mention of the possibility of NOT getting any loot if you reach the damage threshold. Again, please provide links to relevant data that states otherwise (in no way am I implying the wiki is always 100% correct). I have certainly never dealt what I felt was sufficient damage killing a foe and received no loot (if the foe provided GUARANTEED loot).

If what you meant by the “no loot” statement was that some foes do not always give loot, I apologize for just misunderstanding your post a bit.