Patch notes for 1.2.1 include the following cryptic note:
Loot weights have been revised to address some situations where drop rates were lower than intended or where farming certain areas on lower difficulties would result in better drop rates. This also addresses a discrepancy where farming vendors could sometimes be more efficient than killing monsters. As a result, the chance of dropping double rare items, particular in Ultimate/Gladiator difficulty, has been increased.
I’m here to explain what this means, exactly.
As I’ve explained elsewhere, when an MI drops, the game first determines whether it’s magic/magic, rare/magic, magic/rare, or rare/rare, and then rolls specific affixes after that. The change here only affects this first roll. Call this the “affix rarity roll”.
Let’s first look at an example of how these rates have changed from 1.2.0 → 1.2.1. There are several dimensions that affect the affix rarity roll, including game difficulty, the tier or mob or chest that is dropping the item, whether the item is a nemesis MI, and the current “challenge layer”. Challenge layers are areas that have mutators, and come in four flavors: easy, hard, rogue-like dungeon, and endless dungeon. So for our example, we’ll look at how affix rarity chances have changed for a typical green MI dropping from a Boss on Ultimate difficulty outside of a challenge area.
We can see that in this case, the chance of at least one rare affix has increased, and the chance of a rare/rare item is 38% higher than it was in 1.2.0, increasing from 0.74% to 1.02%.
Nemesis MIs got an even bigger buff to their rare/rare rate – it’s now higher than most boss MIs, at least on Ultimate difficulty.
So that validates the claim that
the chance of dropping double rare items, particular in Ultimate/Gladiator difficulty, has been increased
What about the other issues mentioned in the patch notes? In 1.2.0, it was typically more efficient to farm vendors for rare/rare MIs when possible (with the exception of the Creeping Ring, which was bugged). Vendor affix rarity is not impacted by difficulty or challenge layer, and in 1.2.0 the rare/rare rate for vendors was 2%, which was substantially higher than even the boss rare in a roguelike dungeon on Ultimate. The patch addresses this both by the aforementioned buffs to rare/rare rate from drops, and by nerfing the vendor rare/rare rate to 1%.
However, note that it’s still more efficient to farm a rare/rare item from a vendor if you’re not playing on Ultimate difficulty
Or, even if you are playing on Ultimate, vendor farming might still be more efficient if the MI you’re farming doesn’t drop from a boss.
Even on Ultimate bosses, the rare/rare rate from a boss isn’t so much higher that vendor farming might not be more efficient if getting to the boss takes a lot longer than killing the boss.
So I’d say that while the patch does “address a discrepancy where farming vendors could sometimes be more efficient than killing monsters”, it does so incompletely.
Finally, what about the “better drop rates on lower difficulties” bit? There were a few cases of this in 1.2.0. For example, if you were attempting to farm a rare/rare item from hero tier mobs (outside of challenge areas) in 1.2.0, you were better off doing it on Elite difficulty. That’s been addressed by 1.2.1. Note that it’s been addressed again in part by increasing the rare/rare rates on Ultimate, but also by nerfing the rates on lower difficulties.
Another case was Boss MIs in challenge areas. There, Ultimate had the best rare/rare rates, but Normal was actually slightly better than Elite.
It’s also worth noting some changes to rare/rare rates that aren’t explicitly mentioned in the patch notes. Namely, rare/rare rates from Common and Champion mobs have been significantly adjusted. Champion-tier mobs in particular had completely nonsensical rare/rare rates across difficulties and challenge layers. The rare/rare rates for MIs dropped by these lower-tier mobs have been nerfed across the board, but mostly make more sense now (however, note that Common mobs now have a lower rare/rare rate on Elite in a roguelike dungeon than in a normal zone, for some reason).
Overall, I think these are positive changes, a rationalization of drop rates that had drifted from the design intent over time. I personally would love to see the rare/rare vendor rate adjusted further, because I absolutely hate vendor farming, and would prefer that it was never the most efficient way to get a BIS item.
