Avatar loot / spawn mechanics

[slippery]

I believe the current system could vastly be improved upon as it is riddled with holes. The current system has a couple major flaws, the first being the frequency of spawns. Some Avatars are very common, while others you rarely ever see. While in and of itself this isn't inherently a problem, it feels like a large waste of content. Some of the Avatar encounters are enjoyable but you may rarely ever get to see that encounter.The by far largest problem with Avatars right now is the size of their loot tables. With a 40+ item loot table there is going to multiple items that never get discovered on every server simply because they will never drop. It is just far far too big a loot table where your only hope is to pray the pRNG is kind to you. The irony is that here you have this effectively one contested with a loot table you can't dream of touching most of, and then you have Tangrin with a 5 item loot table where you will get every item so many times you don't know what to do with it. So, how do you make it better? A couple ways.First, split the spawns. Put every avatar on its own 17-24 day timer. Yes it is a large window. It accomplishes a few things, it effectively makes a large increase in the number of contested mobs in the game. Sure there are times you are going to go without any Avatar for a while, but there are also going to be times when you have a couple up at the same time. The split spawns allow for a few things. If you want to keep the faction meaning something, the amount of faction could have an impact on the spawn timer and effectively make it shorter. Sure, you are still going to see some more often that way, but it doesn't have the negative effect of almost never seeing others.The biggest thing allowed for by separate spawns is to split the loot table back up and effectively shrink it back down without actually taking away the loot. The Avatar specific items could be put back on each Avatar. Every Avatar would always drop one item guaranteed off the shared table, they would also have say a 33% chance at the specific item. The 33% chance at the specific assumes that rng allowing any given guild that kills that avatar for the entire expansion will get 3-4 of that item. Considering things like turn over and mutliple people wanting it, you are still going to leave a lot of people desiring the item that don't get it in those guilds. However, it stops that item from taking the place of other potential loot when you just keep getting that item. Also note that every Avatar doesn't necessarily have to have the same chance to drop their specific. For a specific that is used by less classes it could be made 20 or 25%, with specifics that are highly sought after by a large variety of classes it could be raised. I've heard a lot of rumors about cloaks being added to Avatars, those should also be in addition to normal loot drops.Also,  in the future Avatars should pretty much not drop Main hand weapon as long as the Epic era is around. People killing Avatars SHOULD (I emphasize should in the fashion that in theory all epics are balanced and desirable) be using their Mythical. Weapons should be limited to off hand and one or two two-handers. The current staff of growth was a step in the right direction with it being secondary only, however this change should also have been made to the current tier staff of light instead of leaving it as a weapon.What else? Certain pieces of loot could be geared to have a better chance off certain Avatars and worse chance off others. This aids in the competitive process. Multiple Avatars are up and a couple guilds are going for them. Which one do we go after? We go after the one that has the better chance of dropping the loot we want.The combination of these things allows for the posibility of Avatars not all having to be the same difficulty. It would give the opportunity for a few "harder" Avatars that have a better chance at dropping the better loot. With all the Avatars on their own seperate spawns it also doesn't mean that a hard Avatar prevents you from getting the loot you would have gotten had an easier one spawned that you could have killed.

[Ama]

<cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote>I believe the current system could vastly be improved upon as it is riddled with holes. The current system has a couple major flaws, the first being the frequency of spawns. Some Avatars are very common, while others you rarely ever see. While in and of itself this isn't inherently a problem, it feels like a large waste of content. Some of the Avatar encounters are enjoyable but you may rarely ever get to see that encounter.The by far largest problem with Avatars right now is the size of their loot tables. With a 40+ item loot table there is going to multiple items that never get discovered on every server simply because they will never drop. It is just far far too big a loot table where your only hope is to pray the pRNG is kind to you. The irony is that here you have this effectively one contested with a loot table you can't dream of touching most of, and then you have Tangrin with a 5 item loot table where you will get every item so many times you don't know what to do with it. So, how do you make it better? A couple ways.<b>First, split the spawns. Put every avatar on its own 17-24 day timer</b>. Yes it is a large window. It accomplishes a few things, it effectively makes a large increase in the number of contested mobs in the game. Sure there are times you are going to go without any Avatar for a while, but there are also going to be times when you have a couple up at the same time. The split spawns allow for a few things. If you want to keep the faction meaning something, the amount of faction could have an impact on the spawn timer and effectively make it shorter. Sure, you are still going to see some more often that way, but it doesn't have the negative effect of almost never seeing others.The biggest thing allowed for by separate spawns is to split the loot table back up and effectively shrink it back down without actually taking away the loot. The Avatar specific items could be put back on each Avatar. Every Avatar would always drop one item guaranteed off the shared table, they would also have say a 33% chance at the specific item. The 33% chance at the specific assumes that rng allowing any given guild that kills that avatar for the entire expansion will get 3-4 of that item. Considering things like turn over and mutliple people wanting it, you are still going to leave a lot of people desiring the item that don't get it in those guilds. However, it stops that item from taking the place of other potential loot when you just keep getting that item. Also note that every Avatar doesn't necessarily have to have the same chance to drop their specific. For a specific that is used by less classes it could be made 20 or 25%, with specifics that are highly sought after by a large variety of classes it could be raised. I've heard a lot of rumors about cloaks being added to Avatars, those should also be in addition to normal loot drops.Also,  in the future Avatars should pretty much not drop Main hand weapon as long as the Epic era is around. People killing Avatars SHOULD (I emphasize should in the fashion that in theory all epics are balanced and desirable) be using their Mythical. Weapons should be limited to off hand and one or two two-handers. The current staff of growth was a step in the right direction with it being secondary only, however this change should also have been made to the current tier staff of light instead of leaving it as a weapon.What else? Certain pieces of loot could be geared to have a better chance off certain Avatars and worse chance off others. This aids in the competitive process. Multiple Avatars are up and a couple guilds are going for them. Which one do we go after? We go after the one that has the better chance of dropping the loot we want.The combination of these things allows for the posibility of Avatars not all having to be the same difficulty. It would give the opportunity for a few "harder" Avatars that have a better chance at dropping the better loot. With all the Avatars on their own seperate spawns it also doesn't mean that a hard Avatar prevents you from getting the loot you would have gotten had an easier one spawned that you could have killed. </blockquote>Avatars are the highest rated contested mobs and having 2 or more up at the same time is a big problem.  Other than that I really can't comment since i've only seen the avatars and never faced them in a raid force. 

[Noaani]

<cite>Amana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Avatars are the highest rated contested mobs and having 2 or more up at the same time is a big problem.  </blockquote><p>Why is it a problem?</p><p>To me, the biggest thing this would change is the fact that if 2 avatars are up at once, 2 guilds have the opportunity to pull and kill them.</p><p>Most servers have 1 guild killing contested mobs, but have several that, while able, simply are not up for the compitition. If there are 2 avatars up at the same time, these other guilds then has the choice to have a few pulls, and peobably get a kill before long. This proposition has the possibility of getting a larger portion of the population experiancing avatars than currently are, which could only be a good thing.</p>

[speedycerv]

more spawns or 2 pieces of loot like in t7 GG

[hugh1]

<p>Should be two items per box imo, its nothing more frustating to kill a avatar and get a [Removed for Content] item, My current guild has killed over 35 avatars and we've not seen robe of al'kabor, but we've had some other usless items which either get xmuted, but that being said we've had decent items to in those kills.</p><p>Recently Tangrin was made 2 items per box so why isnt Avatars?</p><p>Should be looked at and addressed so avatar loot can be disco'ed as there is 42(ish) items on a shard loot table so you got a 1/42 chance per avatar kill and then all your classes need, In t7 2 per box worked well.</p>

[slippery]

I don't believe it should be 2 items per chest because they do spawn way too often for that. All of the stuff I posted above including the possibility at items specific to the avatar dropping in addition to the one standard shared item plus the long split timers is in an attempt to keep roughly the same amount of loot entering the game as is now. However, you would probably see a very slight increase in loot but you would also have a better chance at getting any one given item.

[Xenobe]

At the very least make it so no duplicate loot can drop until the entire table is discovered. Break up the spawns neutral/good/evil and have the spawn seperately. Increase the spawn rate or drop rate if the massive loot tables remain. Killing over 70 avatars and still having at least 10 items undiscovered is very frustrating, especially when other duplicate items are going to alts.

[Kalifi]

<p>I like Slipperys ideas, on top of those. I am wondering how would be hard to make avatars have multiple possible spawn points in different zones even, so one could spawn at Lesser Feydark where as otherone spawns in Greater Feydark? Since they are hopefully changed as new type of encounters anyway. I think that would even increase contested content, as killing same avatar in different location would make fight spiced to be bit different at least. </p><p>Currently they have 1 set location and they camped by lvl1 or so toons all the time. Now if you have ~15avatars with 2 spawn points each you would have 30 places to camp, which should be too much to be kept constant track on them by one guild. Might also help curerent situation to put minimum required adventurer/tradeskiler level to enter the zone back in the game for at least some of the zones Avatars spawn at.</p><p>Also as separate suggestion for "more contested" why not put something like Silent City ringevent type of place back in to game, with some "contested" pops that would drop half decent loot, perhaps small chance to something close to best raidzone drops where as 90% of loot would be average instance raidzone drops. </p><p>You would get lockout activating ringevent (ringevent A can be done activated once per 2 days for succesfull kill as long 18 people in raid have not done in past 6 days you can activate it. On unsuccesfull kill ringevent resets to any other guild for starting it and failed guild gets 10 min lock or so to restart it. Ringevents could have "tiers" in them you need to have done ringevent 1-2 and get "flag" for 75% of raid from it to start 3-4 and so on. Aimed for more casual / semi hardcore raiding guilds.</p>

[Dexter]

Drop rate for a few items needs having a look at.Since RoK release there were 84 avatar kills on Splitpaw; Robe of Alkabor, Chestplate of Solid Malice, Sword of Valor, Fiery Axe of Unending War, Krakenshell Wargreaves, and a few other items from avatar loot table are still NOT discovered.Edit: corrected the number.