Does herding affect drop rates?

The other night I partied with someone to go hunt drakes and they had me (tank) run through and herd them all up. She said they dropped better items when they were grouped. We didn't get many rares, but it prompted me to do testing. I normally farm Mergoyle Wavebreakers near Gates of Kryta. I usually get at LEAST 1 rare for every mob of 3 wavebreakers. Well, I tried herding them 2 or 3 times and got bumkis.

Here's a streaming video, for the curious. (not great quality)

So, it appears to me that it actually decreases the chance of getting rares. Well, it's more than appearance. Over the span of two days, I'm positive that for this particular area, grouping reduced rares significantly.

Any input?

edited: typo in the filename.

That's a very interesting experiment. It seems to make sense for me to get less rares since herding them together makes it easier to kill them (all my dmg is splash dmg) but for a warrior hitting 1 to 1 it should increase the chance... (if it were related to difficulty)

That's a very interesting question and one that I don't think I can answer. To me, it seems that herding wouldn't make one bit of a difference, but with SLUG's observation of it making it easier to kill them, it might lower your chances. Of couse, along the same lines, it could raise your chances due to the fact that you take more damage while fighting multiple enemies and would therefore be "harder".

I really can't say. Sorry that I can't give you a square answer. If you keep experimenting with it, maybe you'll find the answer and be able to enlighten us all!

Herding getting less drops doesn't make any sense. Each monster has its own chance to drop something.

The only way this could happen would be if in the game code it specified a maximum number of drops per unit of time. My own opinion is that this would be very unlikely.

Agree.

Well, what I was thinking is that it's a chance per mob to get a rare. Once you aggro a bunch of them, maybe it's considered 1 mob? As I stated though, I am 100% convinced that with the creatures and area in question, I received considerably less rares/uncommons when I grouped them.

As for warriors and the 1on1 thing, if you watched the video I used Symbol of Wrath and Cyclone Axe exclusively.

Now what do you consider a rare I consider rares being purple or gold items blue items are not rare.

I consider rare anything not white, since blue, purple and gold are all more rare than white...

Personally.. when ever I go Drake hunting I find that All I get is crafting materials. I have never gotten an Gold rare there. And I go by my self. No Hench and no healer.

that videowas awsome. i loved it. the game is really fast paced. i never noteced that be fore.

the drops are just random at a time i got 3 rares ..........another time i got none from the same group