In my trawling of the Turbine forums of late, I spent some time in the Instances and Raids forums. I was mostly there to look up combinations of classes that have worked in Sword-Halls hard-mode to see if there were any surprises (I think our most surprising has been capt-capt-warden, surprising due to lack of dps, not lack of anything else – both capts were healing-specced). So I went, and I looked, and of course I got drawn in to reading some other threads.
Now, I don’t tend to forum-browse all that much. I visit the Capt forums for debates on sword/shield vs halberd/greatsword and other Capt-specific areas of interest. I also don’t like to know too much about an instance or raid before I go to it and have some experience in it, so I don’t visit that specific forum area very often. When I do, I check out all the threads of interest.
So I skipped the threads about Barad Guldur – have time to go to the raid with my kin when we get started. Then I might look up specific ways others approach it, or what gear drops or what a capt role should be in the fight. As we’re all obsessed with getting some Symbols of Celebrimbor (you need them to craft 2nd Age items), I was naturally drawn to a thread about its chances to drop.
I’ve been giggling on-and-off since, because it reminded me of our highly-superstitious nature. We can be told a drop chance is 10%, 5%, 1%, 75% and we’ll still think that something about our behaviour can affect a programmed game. As humans, we seem to find random chance hard to deal with. And some of the theories are really great – if you do the fight in a certain amount of time, it increases the chances – if you don’t set off any bone piles, it increases the chances – etc.
It’s actually added to my enjoyment of Sammath Gul because now, in my warped mind, I make up fake rituals to tell people would increase their chance of a Symbol drop. I’m evil. I accept that. We all know the truth is that it’s a percentage, and therefore quite random! We’ve definitely seen it drop more than some in that thread though and less than others. Nature of the beast. I guess the only one I find somewhat believable is that easy-mode has a higher chance of it dropping, but I don’t think that IS the case, unless proven otherwise by someone willing to do the maths and to do the run a statistically significant number of times with the same 6-person group in both Challenge and non-Challenge mode.
