All is Fair (or is it) When it Comes to Loot
stargrace 
For those who may not know, hot zones change every day at 8pm EST (5pm PDT) so there’s actually a possibility of two a day depending on when you do them. Yesterday for the better part of the day MM (Mistmyr Manor) in Loping Plains was the hot zone. After 8pm it changed to Ravenscale Repository (the hardest of the three instances).
I was on my 78 (at the time) swashbuckler, and thanks to the shadowknight I’ve been gaming with for seven years now, managed to find myself in a group for the hot zone, along with a dirge, mystic, necromancer, and warlock. The zone was fairly easy, I’ve actually never cleared it before yesterday but there’s two ways to do this.
Number one, move through the zone and kill all of the named one at a time – this gives you achievements for each of the named. However, it is not the only way to do the zone. The other way is to pull the zone so that you leave all of the named up – and then when you defeat the final boss, the loot chests to all of those named spawn in a room behind him. This method means you do NOT gain the achievement for killing each of the named, but we thought perhaps we’d have a better chance at a master chest if 4-5 chests all spawned at once rather then individually.
We ran the script, and carefully avoided all of the named until the end. It was great experience for me who had never been there before, lots of discovery in the rooms, and when we beat the final mob – a fabled chest dropped. I figured it was the lockbox that holds a number of rewards (mostly dps geared) and I was right.
Now. In this box is also a bard only charm that happens to be the best bard charm in the game aside from avatar loot. That’s right, it’s the battle drums that bards pay up to 500p (as I saw yesterday) for. The dirge in our group offered to purchase the loot – if no one wanted any of the rewards (or wanted to sell their share pretty much) but I decided to roll on the loot. I typically have absolutely horrible luck, but such was not the case yesterday, and I ended up winning the lockbox. The dirge was really mad, he had lost a roll on the box previously too. The earring on the right is a significant upgrade for my swashbuckler, especially since she is not a raid character and has to gain her upgrades where she can. Now, the little bit of an issue comes into play with the fact that she was not yet level 80 when she rolled on this. In my opinion, your level does not matter as long as you’re contributing to the group. I was parsing 1.5-1.8k at my level which is quite low – keeping in mind that I’m wearing level 72 mastercrafted gear as well as weapons, and I was level 78 so everything was very orange to me. That’s not too horrible of a parse. Once I hit 80 and have more skills available to me as well as my set gear it should take a significant leap.
Would it have been the ‘proper’ thing for me to do to decline for this dirge? If it were a close friend I may have considered it, but I think the results were fair. We both rolled and the dice just happened to be in my favour. Should I feel bad that I won? I wouldn’t normally, loot is loot after all. The dirge then proceeded to exclaim his woes on the 70-79 channel about losing to me, which didn’t make me feel any better about the situation. The group reminded him that MM would be the hot zone again eventually, and that you can also purchase the battle drums from an NPC in the moors as of the next game update. Instead he wanted to focus on the fact that he lost the roll to me.
What do you do when you’re faced with these sorts of situations? I know a lot of people out there have stories about loot and who wins and who it goes to. I don’t feel that I was out of line on my roll, it was a huge upgrade and a nice piece for any scout (there were also some pants, not quite as nice, a charm, another earring etc) and I would have understood if any of them had rolled. Now if the inquisitor had of rolled wanting this piece for their DPS set I may have been a little more peeved, and yes, it has happened before. The day ended with me questing in Moors for the last 20% I needed, and the swashbuckler hit level 79. One more to go and this will be my 10th level 80 character (and hopefully it for a little while, but with the expansion not releasing until February who knows). It’s very neat for me to be playing a pure DPS class, something I’ve never done before. All of my characters are either support or healers.
Hopefully I can reach level 80 today, and then it’s time to start on my epic!
Happy gaming, no matter where it finds you.