Dispelling commom henchmen myths

Quote: Originally Posted by Ryun

Well also remember that the bosses don't ALWAYS drop stuff.

Also, From what I originally understood, only the 6 named bosses in the contest drop greens. Am I mistaken about that?

There is another site that has a list of all the bosses, and a list of the 3 green items they will drop, with links and pictures to the ones that have been found. Obviously the most common are the ones in Grenths, but as usual shortsightedness occurs, and people don't realize the bosses that roam in the Furnace, and they have the slightly better weapons.

The link is in here somewhere.

There is only 1 problem with your experiment wiz12268, you did runs with henchies and then alone, this is apples and oranges. Alone if something is going to drop its automatically yours, there is no chance for it to go to someone else. A proper experiment is with 5 henchies and then 5 players, apples to apples, then calcutalte your percentages.

Most of the runs I go on are 5-6 man human runs.

My point about henches. With them I have yet to get a green drop at all. I even went out with my solo build with Menlo a couple times but he died pretty fast and I was worried he might get "my" drop, even if he was dead.

Unless Anet throws up the algorythem then we won't know. Some guys swear they do wel with henches. Some say they don't. All I know is that when I go with a team of humans, whether I am getting the drops or not I SEE them. Might be psychological, but it also makes the math a little easier to figure out.

It is still all guess work for sure. I could solo and die 20 times and maybe get a green, or I can team up rune the whole maps and get a few chests, and do it in the time it took me to solo a couple bosses.

I am a devout henches guy. I finished the game with all henches except for Thirsty River and Thunderhead Keep. Damn, I have done almost all the quest in the new area with henches. But if I am solely looking to go get weapons or to farm, I will join a PUG team.

i always feel i get more/better stuff with henchies... probably because i don't see any other drop than my own with them though... oh well.

I exclusively party with henchmen and have so far sold off approximately half a million gold worth of green items from Grenth's Footprint and Sorrow's Furnace.

PS: And yes, this is more than one item ... I typically sell items from Grenth's Footprint for 5-15K, and the ones from within Sorrow's Furnace go somewhere between 15-30K depending on how far I had to hop to get them.

The 12.5% using 8 people is not entirely correct. You have to also calculate the chance that a boss will even drop a green item vs nothing or something else. Suppose it is 25%. Then your actual chance is ~3% in a group of 8 and 25% if you dare solo. That is a big difference!

I can do a 3 man team for farming bosses OUTSIDE SF....haven't tryed inside as there are bigger groups and more necro/mesmer's/monks

Its best to take 3-4 man teams when looking for drops.

Odds of getting a drop has always been 100%/(#of party members)

If a drop would go to a henchie it just doesnt drop.

Gold always drops and is split evenly amoung players and henchmen.

While smaller teams have higher drop percentages, theoretically they cant fight through mobs as fast. So compared to a 4 man team an 8 man team should be able to kill mobs twice as fast. However this requires more coordination and experienced players in one group.

See here's the thing everyones forgetting. The game uses ONE random number generator for drops (basically). Try loading up a number generator and find random numbers between 1-8 and you will find a lot of repeat numbers, but overall it will be even accross the board. The problem is that there isn't a random number generator for each person, so it's not going to be even among one character or even over the account. Therefore, you not getting drops can easily be the repeats of non-favorable numbers while it's being evened out by tohers getting favorable numbers.

There is NO WAY to test drops out and the only way to verify people's hunches that there is anti-henchmen code is to actually see the code. Any tests are going to be inconclusive.

i think some of the math here is incorrect. or someone is understanding it wrong...

12.5% doesn't mean you will have 12.5% chance of getting a green. it simply means you will get 12.5% of what actually DOES drop. with henshies. you can not know what the other 87.5% is. with human players. you know what it is. you just can't pick it up. but theres more on the ground. and therefor people assume they get more drops without henchmen. i am pretty sure the henchmen get the same amount of drops as a human player. the difference is the AI vs. Human intelligence. you can trade with human beings. while the henchmen don't give a shit what they get. or what you want to have

Quote: Originally Posted by Charcoal Ann

It was said twice and I'm going to repeat it.

kill a boss, it has a 16% chance of droping a green item, a 24% chance of droping an armor, a 30% chance of droping purple weapon and a 30% droping a normal weapon.

So IF and only if, the boss will drop a green weapon you have a 2% chance of getting the green item. A 3% of getting an armor, 3.something for purple and normal weapons. As you can see, it is not simply 12.5% chance of getting this item. You have to take into account the % chance of boss actually droping this item also. And if there actually is a change in droping % if you are solo/henchies/PUG then you have a really complex formula that most of us wouldnt be able to start to comprehend. If done about 130 runs with henchies and about 40 2 man runs with guildies and I have yet to see one.

Quote: Originally Posted by immolatus

I didnt get them from anywhere. I made them up to show the point. Its is said that they are random, well sometimes it will have a 100% sometimes a 0%. Doesnt really mater. Every game that has a drop system will have a % chance drop number that will either be random or specific, in this case its obvious that its random, therefore the accounts of people getting 2 or 3 on 5 to 10 runs with henchies and other people doing 200+ runs with henchies and getting crap

One possible theory... and its only a theory

If you consider that the game MAY decrease drop rates the more you farm.......
So if you farm solo or with henchies a lot, the game mechanics only uses your decreased drop rate in the equation.
While if you farm in PUGs, maybe the game takes an average of all human players, and if their drop rates are better than yours, it will increase the average, so you get better drops.

Confused?!!! Well its only a pie in the sky theory

Mmmmmmm pie...

i don't quite understand what the original poster's point is supposed to be

henchmen take drops same as real people. but henchmen suck. they are weak, and mentally deficient

granted, a lot of real players fall into the same boat as that

but even so, taking a weak, mentally deficient henchman who is going to take drops that he is not worthy to take is a great reason in and of itself not to take that henchman

much better to take competent real people instead

Quote: Originally Posted by pchliu