GGG, we should really talk... [WS Drop Log: Tier 8 Maps/100 Waystone update]

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kumogakure#7381 написал:

Why can't map completion always reward 1 waystone of the same tier?

Because that would defeat the entire purpose of having waystones drop in the first place. Sustaining them is a matter of player knowledge and player choice. Some players will choose to juice in a way that does not sustain (therefore needing to buy from other players) while others will choose to oversustain (to be the sellers of the waystones).

Sustain is easy, if you actually take a little time to learn instead of just complain.

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Call_Me_Rage_#9997 написал:

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morbo#1824 написал:

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Call_Me_Rage_#9997 написал:

As pointed out earlier saying this is the norm with n=1 is only a normal way to make an anecdote. Collect data, report results, submit for peer review.

I have my data - a tab full of T13+ and over-sustaining T15 right now.

Besides of what I've already pointed out, also fill out the boss atlas bonus ASAP; the first two points that give more loot and more waystones from bosses are the best (Spoils of War & Radiant Waystones).

In my experience every boss drops from 3 to 5 maps with this setup.

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SSF and Standard are exactly the same - drops wise, because in no way would GGG ever incentivize SSF play over the economy.

Also note that item rarity does nothing for map drops. The % chance on the waystone, the % chance on tablets and quantity nodes on the Atlas influence waystone drops.

So data not formatted, got it.

"In my experience every boss drops 3-5 maps with this setup": How many bosses tested? What's the confidence interval on that? What are the key parameters tested with and without being enabled? How much of an effect are you getting between drop quantity/tier higher?

"Tab full of over sustaining waystones": what is the definition of over sustaining? What is the baseline sustain? How can you be over sustaining if you haven't calculated what regular sustaining is? What is the average efficiency per map? What is your underlying distribution of waystone tier drops relative to map tiers? What is it without modifiers?

Your tab full of unformatted waystone data doesn't help answer these questions and that's okay no requirement to contribute. Wasn't intending a slight to elicit a "Well my tab says otherwise!" response, just saying it isn't usable

Ran nearly 100 map boss nodes, 3-5+ T15 drops is normal if you know what you are doing.

TabS full of over sustained, I've got more than 2 quad tabs full of waystones. I roll, vaal and then vendor anything that isn't good enough.

Sustain is EASY, it's been solved and posted on these (repeated) threads how to do it. There are multiple ways to ensure sustain, this one here is just one (I don't use this same tree, but a lot of similar notes).

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morbo#1824 написал:

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Mojowolf#8585 написал:

Posted part of this already but I am 83 in ssf. I have no stats only my playing exp but my map sustain is an issue. I am currently on t9 quest and I only have access to t5 maps and I already combined my lower maps...

Here's what you should prioritize on the atlas tree, while building up to T15 (at least this worked for me):



All toward waystone quantity & higher tier. (Local knowledge is a very useful node to always have on, though)


The next thing is to prioritize using precursor tablets with "increased quantity of waystone drops" on your towers.

And the most important bit is to use your best rolled maps on boss nodes. Bosses have an increased chance to drop maps (and all loot in general).

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That's all. I played two mod maps (blue) until T14 and still sustained. You can even loot +1 maps from chests when the map is irradiated. If anything, I think GGG will make map sustain harder in the future.

This tree is a great contribution, I'll add it as a parameter to the T7/T8 testing and collect 100 waystones with it to compare to baseline

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Call_Me_Rage_#9997 написал:

"In my experience every boss drops 3-5 maps with this setup": How many bosses tested? What's the confidence interval on that? What are the key parameters tested with and without being enabled? How much of an effect are you getting between drop quantity/tier higher?

- 30+ boss maps in the last several days
- dunno wtf is 'confidence interval'; nothing important for playing this silly game, obviously.
- 'key parameters' are; use the friggin tools that the game gives you ;)

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Call_Me_Rage_#9997 написал:

"Tab full of over sustaining waystones": what is the definition of over sustaining? What is the baseline sustain? How can you be over sustaining if you haven't calculated what regular sustaining is? What is the average efficiency per map? What is your underlying distribution of waystone tier drops relative to map tiers? What is it without modifiers?

- 'oversustaining' = more maps drop that you can run.
- only GGG knows the 'baseline' and all the other analytical mumbo jumbo.

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If you are pretending that you need to test map drops under all variables and conditions, to extrapolate some supposedly useful information... then... good luck, lol :))

Thanks for your contributions

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Valsacar#0268 написал:

Sustain is easy, if you actually take a little time to learn instead of just complain.

I am having trouble sustaining tier 3 maps. I have no currencies (SSF) to juice my maps beyond Regal, and I have only 4 Atlas points so at best the waystone quantity node.

I literally have ZERO exalts now and got down to 2 regals. I have had a total of 4 exatls drop from the 24-25 maps I did up to this point. I can reforge T3 maps at 45,000 gold each but I only have around 350,000 gold at the moment, so I can't keep doing that.

If there's an easy way for me to sustain Tier 3 maps now, I'd love to take a little time to learn.

RNG in the game is horrendous. GGG has to fix loot drops for everyone at all levels of expertise/knowledge of the game. If they don't they will just be left with the top 1% playing like in POE1. It's only a matter of time.

Update after gathering 100 waystone from T8 maps. Again goal is not to re-invent how to sustain waystones: plenty of guides on strategies, Atlas set up, endgame as a whole Mobalytics and streamers of the world exist and following a guide is a completely viable way to play this game. Also not trying to reverse engineer specific, quantitative drop rate tables and state definitively “This is the loot table”- APIs and dataminers also exist (which could be a slightly less valid way to enjoy a game depending on the ToS) but play games how you want.

TL:DR Follow a guide, this doesn’t contribute anything new to the how of things, but it might be of interest if you are curious in discussing potentially why certain things are happening.

Data is very preliminary so more is always better but suggests some ideas/thoughts. Future studies will either support or contradict the model, and then it will be refined or abandoned.

Summary: IMO if even certain aspects are close to actual it is does seem off but that is a subjective opinion

For the whole sequence I used the same gear, I only changed the Atlas to mix in some testing at varying “Waystone Drop +X%” levels

Preliminary test: Catalog waystone drop rates from Tier 1 maps with and empty atlas. This was done previously but ~20 waystones were collected with the Atlas emptied and then ~20 more with only nodes selected influencing drop rates of waystones, increasing monsters, etc. Nothing related to waystone Tier improvement

Looking at the distribution of waystone tiers dropping from Tier 1 maps had the following



I think intuitively most wouldn’t have a problem with this spread- run T1 get mostly T1, sometimes T2, a little less likely T3. But there is a progression- you can turn T1->T2 so progress and moving forward


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Tier 8 Waystone Drops: Took the previous atlas settings and ran maps at varying +WS Drop % (assuming that this would only increase the number of waystones obtained not the underlying distribution of waystone tiers relative to map tiers but also have normal and low level percentages mixed in). More or less played “normally” just cataloged waystone drops.

With these settings a total of 44 maps were required to gather 102 waystones. Summary of the maps run, what the +WS% was, and the number of waystones collected per map:



Note the Atlas tree technically gives a +12-38% (I would adjust to run below 100% sometimes to not just have 0 and 200%) but that is only added on the map overlay when the waystone also has a +WS Percent. Normal maps should in theory say +12% minimum but if the map overlay didn’t say increased WS chance is was logged as 0

So with a collection of 100+ waystones made a simple pie graph. This is what the preliminary data set looked like:



This is already a bit odd to me- The top half makes sense for the the 7,8,9s and I am not suggesting that you should only get +/- 1 from the Tier you are running. It just seems a little high that running T8s and ~50% of the time you get T6 or less? 25% you get T3 or less? Also noticed that the T5 and T3 seemed a bit overrepresented- its not like the 6s>5s>4s>3s etc (yes it’s a small data set)

Next took the same data but in a different format just laid out linearly: Each bar bucketed in a dropped waystone tier and the height is for counts (I am intentionally ignoring rarity because consensus seems to be that has nothing to do with tiers only influences Normal, Magic, Rare):



Now this really doesn’t seem right or at least very far outside expectations: you would still get lower tier drops from 8s but even if I’m missing 4s and 6s that would start dropping if I collect 1000 I would propose it is still way too generous to the lower tiers.

I think a reasonable expectation, or at least my original expectation, was that there would be some normality to the distribution not these apparent spikes.

This is an example of a normal probability distribution modified with arbitrary map tiers to serve as an example and would be closer to an standard expectation, maybe with the center shifted:



The idea being that games with randomized drops might have low chances but are reasonably predictable. You won’t know the specific rates but you can catalog samples and with enough make some estimates, it might be skewed or but it's the random spikes in the middle that are being frequently observed. Things have a defined chance of occurring and it’s the same for everyone, it isn’t truly random. RNG exists and it’s annoying- good items have low chances and sometimes you can get stuck on the wrong side of the middle by bad luck.

However as a whole if you take enough samples you can infer trends in the underpinnings and returns become somewhat predictable- is this rare or not rare? To some degree PoE could be described as a giant math problem. I'm not estimating a parameter not enough for that, just observing this looks odd.

A distribution of probabilities is just a loot/drop table. Expectation was for a somewhat normal or skewed distribution regardless of the width but one that moves roughly in relation to map tiers- not these frequent “anomalies” where you get T2-T5 drops on T15s at the rate you do (or these T3 and T5s on T8s). I think the preliminary data confirms this is occurring and it doesn’t seem to be a single drop table skewed or otherwise unless somebody slipped when typing the weights for the 3s and 5s in…..

Wait- it doesn’t seem to be one drop table? Multiple waystone tier drop tables covering different Tier brackets? You wouldn’t really notice that as you are moving up tier by tier but you definitely would notice it at T15- especially if as you move to higher tiers the lower tables aren’t actually diminishing much as a possible bracket and really just diluting out your chances of getting something in your current bracket...

That could explain a lot…

Rest is theory/conjecture pending more data but if we look at the T8 drops now allowing for the possibility of multiple simultaneous drop tables I think there is a hint that this might have some support even in the preliminary data- one centered around 3, another 5, and the last 8- this is not a fit of the data just for illustrative purposes:



Yes the chance of getting a waystone to drop close to the tier you are at is weighted higher (~50% at Tier 8 with the data in hand) and you can follow a guide to address this in different ways but it is the lower bracket drop tables being there at all and weighted pretty high that seems to explain how you get T1s and T2s dropping on 8s or 12s or 15s.

What happens when we go to T15? Are there two more dilutive drop tables covering T9-T12 to compete against? Does it further dilute out the chance of a waystone dropping close to your map tier on a T15 map thus being consistent with the general mood that T15s don't drop on T15 but not even T13/14- what is this T2? Does it account for the max being 16 or does it get cut off and diluted out further?

Here is a massively overly simplified theoretical model of “how a waystone drops”- is it accurate to the decimal? Very likely not but models get refined with more data. Overlaid are also perceived impact points about where you are practically influencing things related to waystone drops:



• Increasing monsters increases the number of items because you have more chances to get not nothing (kill more things= get more loot)
• Increase Quantity of items to get more from the increased monsters (make them drop less nothings)
• Increase Quantity of Waystones to get more waystones from the pool of increased items (waystones might be “items”, shift chance toward waystones)
• This is the theorized dumb part- before you “find a waystone” there is a check to determine which bracket the waystone is going to be found in- a Low table of useless, a Mid table of meh, and a High table of okay
• Congrats you found a waystone and it’s in the 1-4 bracket, now your chance of a tier higher is applied but only a tier higher relative to the bracket it was placed in... Exciting news! It's a T2 and a rare!

Seems what we really want is a way to influence the middle branch so waystones get pushed into higher brackets- Generally making your maps as stupid as possible is a good bet, just don’t die- again nothing new in the how, follow a guide. But maybe this is why that is the consensus recommendations

But is there any way to deflect waystones into higher brackets before you "find" them? Looking at the atlas there might be one but this is now semantic conspiracy instead of just conjecture.

If you look at the boss tree there’s a few things that are going on in the specific words GGG used. Specifically the “25% chance to drop a waystone”- That’s a weird phrasing, not 25% increased chance but a flat 25%? On each item that loot explosions out? Hmmm, curious

And the second to last node toward the top “10% chance to drop a waystone of a higher tier” That is also different phrasing than “10% chance to be a tier higher.” Conspiracy: GGG/POE is too detailed for that to be meaningless and a typo, drop of a higher tier= in a higher loot table bracket "found a tier higher"=“found a tier higher than what I was originally but in the bracket I was placed in.”

Unfortunately, I do believe you need T15+ waystones to get boss points but there’s a guide for that too. Taking a brief pause to appreciate the irony that one of the most/best recommended ways to address the challenge sustaining T15 waystones is to do something that requires T15+ waystones to accomplish. So we should probably just buy those if we are struggling

But continuing to T14 to see if this holds. It’s just a theory. Very likely incorrect so get more data- 1000 I think was the next target.

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Call_Me_Rage_#9997 написал:

Now maybe you might say "But the devs said the drop rates are the same, just no trade so we know it's fair to compare." Yes and they also said armor does something.

The funny part is you can test the armor thing so easily as a monk. Put on the evasion counts as armor as well, -40% evasion invoker ascendancy node and remove it. Even with the extra eva (only takes me from like 78% to 84%), I feel infinitely squishier.

The ONLY things changing are armor/eva and eva is getting better, yet it all feels worse. I wonder if it's almost like people don't understand the math of the game (general eHP is FAR lower in PoE2, so armor doing less per armor makes perfect sense). If you had an item with 100 flat physical damage reduction in PoE1 it would FAR weaker than 100 flat phys damage reduction in 2.

But it's fine, people hate math and would rather base logic on feelings.

Did a small sample of T14 maps a few days ago.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3685996