Which ATs have the best chance of getting VR and R in trials?

I've been running several of my toons in the trials and noticed that ATs with lots of AoE seem to have the best chance of getting rares and very rares. Is this the case for everyone else? My fire controller and crab has been getting more VRs and rares than they will need but my brutes and scrappers have not even earned one VR since i20 live...

Random is random.

There are misconceptions about the reward system. I can't find the post at this moment, the devs have explained that the reward system works basically like this: If you sit on your hands, 10 threads, if you participate, then a you get a random reward. People who get a bunch or rares, and very rares, are just lucky people. People who don't are unlucky. Anecdotal evidence of certain ATs getting more and better drops, is not enough to say that the devs are wrong or lying or something. Even if it were evidence you could use, 10-20 (or whatever the total number) stories is not statistically significant.

Random is random. Did you participate enough to generate a roll to determine your reward table? If not, you get threads. If so, you get a roll on the reward table. As far as I can tell, going inside the door and doing something - anything - in each portion of the trial gets you out of the threads and into the random roll. The distribution likely isn't set up for 25% common, 25% uncommon, 25% rare and 25% very rare, but could be 40% > 30% > 20% > 10% or something entirely different. Voodoo gameplay tactics aren't going to do anything but make you - and by extension, your team - less effective.

I have a whopping total of three purple drops in my history of playing this game, across all of my characters. Odds are that I should have gotten many more, but it's random. Average the drops out across all of the players in all of the history of potential purple drops and I bet it works out awfully close to what the devs intended the drop rate to be. Just because I haven't gotten "enough" doesn't mean that there is something wrong.

On the other hand, my FF/DP Defender now has six VRs in BAF trials. He certainly isn't outdamaging anyone and had two of those before he even had any slots unlocked. I had him die three or four times in a particularly terrible run and he still got VR. Why? Because it's random.

Again. One person's story is NOT statistically significant. Even if you've run a dozen runs on a dozen characters, that's only 144 runs out of the potentially tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of reward rolls.

Also, how much of these stories is really just hyperbole? I'm not accusing people lying, but I do know human nature, and when people get frustrated they start to exaggerate, whether consciously or not, people will say things take longer or happen more or less often than they did. Back when I worked for the mouse, we always said to subtract 45 minutes from any wait time that a guest told us they waited and that would be their actual wait time. And you know what, it was a pretty good estimate.

How much of you really have been keeping a tally of all their rewards? Not most, not the ones over the last week or month, every single one. Only the devs have that information, and if the percentages in the data are near where they expect them, then I'm inclined to believe them.

My personal experiance from a couple hundred trials leads me to not think not everything is 100% random.

It seems without fail my high dmg AOE characters get almost only rares and very rares. While low dmg or toons lacking AOE get commons and uncommons. I sure it has a random element in the formula, but it appears to be skewed on certain characters.

I've got four characters who have 3-4 VRs each, all drops. (No purchases with Emp Merits or cash.) They are: a DM/Regen Scrapper, a DB/Regen Scrapper, a Dark/Dark Corruptor, and a SM/FA Brute.

So I've got a mix of high damage, not so high damage, AoE-capable and pretty single-target-oriented characters there.

If there's anything we can do personally that affects this (and some fairly heavy duty analysis by Arcanaville using volunteered logs from other players suggests there probably isn't), it's not specifically your AT choice.

It seems that there are probably still some issues for Masterminds and possibly anyone who relies heavily on pseudo-pet powers, like rains, patches or things like Trip Mines. That problem seems prone to make them not meet the cutoff for avoiding the "10 threads" reward. There's no correlation so far proven that anything above that threshold affects whether you can affect whether you then get a common, uncommon, rare or very rare.

It is likely that how well your league performs overall impacts how likely you are to get a very rare. That's because the devs said as much. They just didn't tell us how the league is scored.

I believe it's random but sometimes it makes you wonder what system the dev is using because on my Soldier (who has tons AoE damage) has yet to get a Very Rare. My Fort has got two Very Rare so far but she is also the one I've used the most.

Now, on a Sunday morning I tried to get my Martial/Will Stalker to Alpha tier 3 for the first level shift and he did like 6-7 BAF runs. Remember, he was only lvl 50 so his contribution (with very limited AoE damage) had to be crappy and even I admit that but during those 7 runs, he got TWO Very Rare and ONE Rare. Explain that to me!!! lol I thought my Stalker was leeching during the fight but the game certainly loves me.

So if you ask me which AT has the best chance to get Rare and Very Rare, I have to say it is Stalker and it's just a pure guess.

It's Brutes for me. I have taken 4 of them through the trials so far and they're just swimming in rares and very rares. In fact, ELM/ELA brute has something like 5-6 very rares sitting in his salvage inventory with just 20-25 runs through the two trials. That's the amount of runs it takes for me to unlock all four slots and create tier 3 rares before moving on to the next level 50.

I've also had decent luck with my Doms, Corrs, and Stalkers. My MM's luck is plain awful.

Fire/fire/fire blaster here

total VR's since I20 released trials and I did 1-3 every night

0

ZERO

;_;

edit: it's my belief that certain attacks do not count towards 'participation' still. Pets, Mastermind pets, targeted AoE all seem to reduce your likelyhood of rewards. Possibly damage taken as well. I notice my characters that are mostly punching things -always- get much better rewards.

It's likely that if you did not get the threads table at the end of the trial, you had the same chance of getting a rare or very rare as anyone else on that trial. At the very least, if your individual participation score does affect your end roll, then Baryonyx outright lied to us all.

If you did get the threads table though, and get it regularly, you will be better served by changing your playstyle to a more aggressive, enemy-oriented one. A number of things seem to count for 'participation' but the only one that I consider solidly confirmed to count at the moment, and seems to count very strongly, is 'attacking things.'

How much damage you do doesn't matter. Whether or not you actually kill anything doesn't matter. If it's single target or AOE doesn't matter. Using powers that attack things a lot - even if it's the same power over and over - is currently what I'd call the best method to 'not get threads.' And thus to have a shot at a rare or very rare.

However, since we're on sextuple secret probation (1 - not told we're being judged; 2 - not told what we're being judged on; 3 - not told what helps or hurts our score; 4 - not told what our score is; 5 - not told what score we need; 6 - not told when it changes) in the trials, I have to add the disclaimer of "your mileage may vary" and "this could change tomorrow and we wouldn't know it until it stopped working."

Re: "Punching" characters get better salvage:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=259449

DuoLAM and they both get Uncommons.

Seems to imply a randomness once the salvage participation point has been reached. As in, if the type of reward were participation based, they both should have gotten R/VR since they were the only participants. Of course until more people are knocking these out it's hard to tell.

It could be something as stupid as a streak problem for those that seem stuck in uncommons for long stretches, but I'd like to think it's not as simple as that.