Observation

[Taushar]

First of all, I am not here to cry nerf or to rant, just to pass on some information on my JC combine experience. I did my JC to GM about 2 months ago. Cleric 65 with average wisdom of about 300 when I did my run from 200 to 250. I got to 200 way back so I don't remember all the detail. I followed the recipe and when I hit trivial, I went on to next gem. My metal change was on completing Opal on Electrum, I went on to gold and as soon as I finished Sapphire on gold went on to Platinum. This has served me well.

So, I have a chanter at 65 with int of 284. He only had skill of 60 in JC but I thought I'd GM him so I can take advantage of JCM AA skills. So last night I started to combine and brought him up to 204. I noticed one difference between the two runs.

With my cleric, I was failling one per stack on average on combines. This is steady through mid 100s (if I remember right) through 250. Of course there were some streaks but mostly I was able to keep it to 5% failure.

On the chanter, I have noticed that I was averaging about 2 failures per stack or more. This was a surprise to me. Even when enchanting all the metals from gold on (I love the new mass enchant spells) I was losing money fairly quickly, specially on the higher end combines. I know that RNG is finicky but this pattern was new to me. Specially I expected to see some smoothing out on statistics from over 30 stacks worth of combine. At one point I failed 5 in a row and was not uncommon to see 2-3 failures in a row. On my cleric, I don't ever remember failing more than twice in a row.

Again, just an observation. This is going to be more expensive than I thought. I will keep you posted on run from 204-250.

Taushar

[llaffer]

Maybe to counter the "will fail less often on trivial combines" from the last patch, they made it so you fail non-trivial slightly more often.

Be sure to have a geerlok

[Taushar]

Well, Geerlock is not really an option since I wanted my Int to be high as possible. Did another batch last night and only went from 204 to 225 and finally gave up. I didn't think it was that hard on my cleric when he did it. It's been a nightmare. I had not one but two hell levels from 203 to 225. One at 205 and one at 217. Both time it took over 10 stacks of combines to get a point up. That's 200 combines plus. Overall I think I did about 60 stacks worth of combine or 1200 combines for those 21 points. or about 60 combines per point. And my Int was 284, which I thought was decent so it was not a good night for me.

Also, I enchanted all metals and theoretically even with 5% loss, I should have been about even or slightly ahead. I went through about 1.2kpp on those combines, which is not too bad but not what I was expecting either. So it seems I failed more that 5% as well, looks to be about 7-10% range.

Going to try again tonight. I was hoping to finish up last night but hopefully tonight.

Taushar

[Taushar]

Ok, got my chanter to 250 finally last night. It was painful. Even with 284 Int, it took me average of just under 40 combines per point. I tried for trophy at 246 with geerlock and failed twice. Ouch. I will try for trophy again tonight. Half more AA point then I will be able to get JCM 1. That would help me with making chains for tailoring runs. I am very tired.

Taushar

[Derryan]

You don't suppose SOE would do something like skew failures on enchanters to make those JC AA look more enticing?

Hmmm.. let's see.

We pay them by the month. + They make content to keep us striving towards nirvana. = We keep paying them to play to get to that point of nirvana.

Just a thought.

Derryan

[EnragedFilia]

first of all, you wouldnt get 5% failure while skilling JC, but normally it hovers right around the break even point with a geerlok. I think the new formula they used to decrease the very trivia failure also increased the nontrivial failure rate, which accounts for the difference. Also, with 250+ int, 10 points less to use that geerlok would have been a good idea.

[Jessikah Moonfyre]

It looks like the RNG was on one of it's nasty streaks for you. I just skilled up from 200-224 tonight with 230ish wisdom (ditched quite a bit in order to wear my geerlok.. the loss of about 100pp per combine hurts). I averaged about 32 combines per skillup (worst being from 208-209 taking 93 combines).

[Lushissx]

I have been working up the past 2 weeks and I notice that i have between 7-10% failure. I use a geerlok and do the closest to trivial gem also. Dex been at 280. Very expensive

[Marteeny]

Dex been at 280

Do you have Wis or INT maxxed? I understand that Dex possibly works for fletching, but I have never heard of it working for JC.

[Taushar]

Originally posted by Marteeny
Do you have Wis or INT maxxed? I understand that Dex possibly works for fletching, but I have never heard of it working for JC.

This is a moot point since the success has nothing to do with stats, only the skill level. If a geerlock was used, it's most likely that the effective skill would have been trivial for most if not all of the combines. In the past, the general consensus was that the trivial item had average of 5% failure. If 7-10% failure is observed by several people including me, I can make three conclusions: either the geerlock is not working, the 5% theory no longer holds or the RNG has had bad influence.

My thought is that if more than one person working multiple days compare the results to the past and see the difference, I would say RNG has smaller influence. I would not think that geerlocks are broken but can not be sure. The most likely scenario is that they have changed the success rate of the near trivial comsines to succeed less.

Just a thought.

Taushar