Let's say we just defeated the first boss of EV, which drops the columi gloves. I already have the columni gloves, so I don't really care to loot. Before we start looting can I "exit area" which would allow the rest of my teammates a higher chance to get the columi gloves? Or is the loot based on who was there when he died?

 

If so, can I take off at like 3% health?

 

How about hardmodes? Could I exit the area before looting to allow the rest of my party members a higher chance to get their loot?

 

When is loot decided?

 

Thanks!

no one knows?

You're implying that the loot dropped by the boss somehow is affected by who attended the operation?

 

I was under the impression that no such 'smart loot dropping' was being done by the game. random loot is random. Or am i just totally out of the loop?

 

edit - i now know about the normal mode operations 'auto assigned loot' thing. But general concensus is that still only affects who randomly receives the item, not which loot is randomly generated.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Spifff

Loot is random. Nothing you do will influence what drops.

On hardmodes you don't have the "assigned" loot that you do on normal; it's basically just random. I am fairly sure the loot that drops is set once the boss dies, not when you first loot him. I mean, you could try to exit area right before a boss dies -- people outside the op definitely do not get kill credit so it may work.

Ok i am out of the loop and am just finding out about this normal operations auto assigned loot thing and now i see the point of the OP's post. I thought he was trying to influence what loot was randomly generated to drop. Now i see he just doesn't want to be auto assigned a duplicate item that he already has. Although he does mention hardmodes and i thought you could do master loot in hardmodes.

 

So does it ever happen in a normal operation where loot drops that no one can use? In other words i'm wondering if in addition to auto assigning loot the game is genearating peices that are guaranteed that someone in the group can at least use.

Edited February 1, 2012 by Spifff

I can tell you it does not generate useful loot most of the time.... it's totally random. We had a couple of bosses drop items and give them to people who did not need them at all nor anyone else for that matter. Basically became vendor trash. Again, this is for normal modes only and yea... it's a poor system.

You're implying that the loot dropped by the boss somehow is affected by who attended the operation?

 

I was under the impression that no such 'smart loot dropping' was being done by the game. random loot is random. Or am i just totally out of the loop?

 

Alright, I guess I didn't realize that not everyone knew about the operation looting system.

 

When you loot in an operation, there are certain items that are "destined" to players. That is, only that player can loot that item, and it goes with their class. This is how the columi gear gets dolled out. The biometric crystal alloys and schematics get rolled on. I am biochem, and already have my medpac, adrenal, and stim, so I don't care about the alloy. The only schematics that drop are "Tionese" level schematics, so I don't really care about those either.

 

I just wondered if I could affect the "destined" loot by leaving, or walking away early, before the boss died or people started looting.

 

From the responses so far, I guess no one really knows.

I can't imagine that if you are outside the zone that it will assign loot to you as you won't be credited for the boss kill unless you are inside when he dies.

 

Who knows with this game though, since apparantly some bosses can kill you while you are standing in the fleet, maybe they can give you loot too.

Wild speculation here without having ever stepped foot in an operation. Just using other mmo experience and general guessing to write this post.

 

I would guess that the auto assignment of loot is not done until the boss actually dies. So if you drop group (does swtor let you drop group while in combat?) before the boss dies, then there is no chance it will assign the loot to you. So this might be a valid strategy.

 

I base the assumption on the fact that it can't realistically do the auto assignment at any other time.

 

It can't do it when you zone into the operation. Because then it would have to do it for every boss when you first zone in and every time you zone back out or switch group members. Plus the idea that loot has already been destined the moment you zone would freak people out.

 

It can't do it when you pull the boss. No other game has done it this way and there has always been that problem that if you disconnect, release and leave the instance, or leave group before the boss kill happens you don't get loot. I can't see SWTOR having chosen to do it this way.

 

It can't do it when the first person 'loots' the boss. Otherwise you could kill the boss, switch out a bunch of raid members, and then loot the boss thus giving loot to people who weren't there for any of the fight.

 

 

This leaves the only option to be that loot is decided when the boss dies. It's the only sane choice. Then again Swtor does seem to do somethings that make us question Bioware's sanity.... but moving on... Therefore if you can get into a state that SWTOR consideres 'out' of the kill, loot should never be assigned to you. Run out of range, leave the instance, leave the group, or go offline. One of those should work.... theoretically.

Edited February 2, 2012 by Spifff

Alright, I guess I didn't realize that not everyone knew about the operation looting system.

 

When you loot in an operation, there are certain items that are "destined" to players. That is, only that player can loot that item, and it goes with their class. This is how the columi gear gets dolled out. The biometric crystal alloys and schematics get rolled on. I am biochem, and already have my medpac, adrenal, and stim, so I don't care about the alloy. The only schematics that drop are "Tionese" level schematics, so I don't really care about those either.

 

I just wondered if I could affect the "destined" loot by leaving, or walking away early, before the boss died or people started looting.

 

From the responses so far, I guess no one really knows.

 

I dont think just leaving the zone before looting would help, we have had ppl outside of the zone while somone who wasnt supposed to looted the boss and it still assigned items to them, however I would imagine if you dropped group before the boss died you would not be on the loot table list for when he does die so if you have 2 of the same class and your fully geared and a colmi peice drops it I imagine it would auto force itself to the person who didnt drop group but I doubt anyone has tested that yet, I personally have thought about doing this on some normal mode ops bosses myself.