Purple Drop Rate at -1/+8

Do I understand it correctly that if I am a lvl 50 and I play missions at -1/+8, that my drop rate for purples is the same as if I was +0/+8 or even +4/+8?

Yes and no, really.

Purples drop from any enemies capable of dropping Level 50 IO recipes. A minion has the same chance to drop a purple at -1 as a +4 would. So the drop rate per kill is the same.

However, you're likely to be able to kill the -1 much faster, so drop rate over time increases by going at -1/+8 than at +4/+8.

Great. So AT LEAST as good, but not lower. That was basically what I wanted to be sure of, that I wasn't taking away chances.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn Yes and no, really. Purples drop from any enemies capable of dropping Level 50 IO recipes. A minion has the same chance to drop a purple at -1 as a +4 would. So the drop rate per kill is the same. However, you're likely to be able to kill the -1 much faster, so drop rate over time increases by going at -1/+8 than at +4/+8.

You can't set the difficulty to +8.

You could set it to +4 (levels)/ x8 (players). I guess x8 is, technically, equivalent to +7 players, but no one says it that way.

It's an important distinction. When we see +4/+8 we know you mean +4/x8 from context, but outside of that context, saying "I'm setting it to +3" on a PUG implies you're changing the enemy level, not the number of foes.

Yeah, I always run at level 50 +0 so the non purp recipes sell better.

Just FYI: The foes being at -1 means no shard drops, if one cares about that.

So Lts and Bosses don't have a greater chance to drop purple than Minions? For some reason I thought they did. Hmmm

I know someone who runs a level 47 farm for purple drops. If you don't care about shards, get a farm at 47 or 48. Then farm it with a 50.

I can confirm that running missions set to -1/x8 will indeed give you purple drops. I just fought Sister Psyche in a villain bank mission and after soloing her (and in the same move my first AV level enemy) She was kind enough to give me a purple Unbreakable Restraint proc recipe. As others have mentioned mobs set to -1 will only give you lvl 49 IO recipes (excluding basic IO recipes such as recharge reduction or accuracy.)

I hope that helps.

Just to hopefully toss in some additional clarity, there are usually two uses of the word "rate" used together when people talk about this.

There is the "rate" at which mobs drop purples (or whatever). Strictly, people are talking about the odds of getting a purple drop per kill. For critters of a given rank, this "rate" is fixed. It does not matter what level they are, other than to determine whether it's possible for them to drop the item at all. All minions of level 47+ share the same chance to drop purples, all LTs of level 47+ have their own chance, etc.

Then there's "rate" that's the rate per unit time you can receive the drops. This is simply the the number of eligible critters you can defeat per unit time multiplied by the odds of a drop per critter. Of course knowing your total "rate" here is complicated to calculate since there aren't strictly fixed ratios of bosses to LTs to minions on most maps.

So the odds of getting a purple are the same for any given critter at any level 47+. That means the drops per unit time for which you can get drops goes up if you can can mow foes down faster. Since you can mow down lower-level foes faster, they give you the best average purple drop rate.

As others have mentioned, their level can mess with other things, like how non-level 50 uncommon and rare drops are usually much less valuable on the market.

The way I solved the issue of getting unwanted lvl 49 IOs, Incarnate level shift. Get to 51 and then you can mow down 50s and get the best of both worlds. It gets even easier the more Incarnate powers you gain, last week I got 5 purples, mind you they weren't any of the ones I needed or wanted but hey...