Real Legendary drop rates and other statistics for 9785 chars [Spreadsheet]

[PowerGamez]

If there was any specific advice for content to be run by me right now in 7.2 what is the best advice someone can give? My rogue, who got 1 legendary 41 days ago, has done NH every week in at least one difficulty, at least 5+ mythic dungeons each week. I usually complete the weekly cache quest, but haven't done much with the emissaries since this is my alt. Chain runs of mythic+ dungeons? Praying more? =p

Weekly do:

-All Emissary caches
-Clear a 10+ Mythic plus dungeon
-LFR clear - EN, ToV, NH
- Normal clear - EN, ToV, NH
- Heroic clear of EN, ToV, NH

Do these things and you'll get a legendary every 2-3 week.

[Felgong]

I have got one legendary in the first boss of a normal LFD Heroic of the day run, after having spent like 3 weeks without logging. I literally came back from vacations, logged, queue for the heroic, and the first boss game me the legendary, that was my first kill or reward from activity. Therefore, I consider there's a BLP that includes total time spent without getting one legendary and naturally, I think it's hard to compute this with the statistics, unless you also include activity time.
Also, regarding M+, both my main and my only alt have got one legendary each from (oddly, both BRH) from a M+ run. My druid, actually, from a run that failed to meet the time requirement. So, yes, M+ does give and count for legendary drop and BLP.
PS: Almost forgot. I have seen a number of people getting legendaries from The cache you get from turning 100 legion fall resources (the table), and my last legendary came from this source.
PS2: I have a guildie that got one legendary from a Dauntless Trinket. The dauntless trinket was looted from a normal mob, he clicked on it and KJBW came as a loot instead of a 850ish trinket. That actually means the legendary was "created" by the spell you cast when you click on the dauntless token.

[Direpenguin]

You're wrong. With a big enough dataset you can determine drop chances in mythic, mythic+, heroics, WQ caches and other places. This may help people who are trying to farm for a legendary.

Hi, I read a bunch of useless statistical work someone did on a game, and it made a Legendary drop for me! How, you might ask? Well I ran a Mythic+ dungeon, and on the following Tuesday, there was a Legendary item in the chest. See? quoteunquoteFARMING!!!!!!

- - - Updated - - -

Weekly do:

-All Emissary caches
-Clear a 10+ Mythic plus dungeon
-LFR clear - EN, ToV, NH
- Normal clear - EN, ToV, NH
- Heroic clear of EN, ToV, NH

Do these things and you'll get a legendary every 2-3 week.

Don't forget Blingatron! It wouldn't be proper farming(tm) without Blingatron everyday...

[Eyliria]

I'm testing a hypothesis that bad luck protection is built on all specs at the same time.
I've been very reliably getting a legendary every ~15-17 days by clearing all LFR/Normal/Heroic and SOME Mythic content (most EN Mythic and 4 Nighthold), as well as some sporadic M+ (the M10 for sure) and never skipping an Emissary cache.

Well, this week I got Frost Mage bracers on wednesday, promptly switched my loot spec to FIRE, within 24 hours I was graced with Fire Mage bracers, then swapped loot spec to ARCANE and again, within 24 hours, was again graced with Arcane Mage bracers.

A mage in the guild did the same thing and was able to get back to back fire and frost legendaries (but he hasn't really played since, he doesnt play a lot, period).

Mind you, my legendaries all essentially came from Broken Shore Legionfall Supply Turn-in caches (one came from a world chest in the broken shore, the other two came from Recompense of the Broken Shore -- the turn-in bags you get)

Yes, totally useless and anecdotal and even if the other mage and 5 more people in guild had got it to work, it would still not be statistically significant... BUT, we've known ever since that Developer Q&A that bad luck protection was going to be much more spec specific, but they never clarified specifically how it would be built between specs, or how it would be 'spent' when you got an item (and I asked this specifically - Lore even said he'd get back to us with the answer, and he never did).

...so I wonder if you can really 'Cascade' your bad luck protection like this and get legendaries for all your specs once you know you are 'due', which, as a few people on this thread have pointed out, is essentially every ~20 days if you do all emissary caches, all LFRs, and all Normal/Heroic raids.

I would be interested in knowing how other people fare by trying this out. If it turned out to work this way, it would be a phenomenal way to get shared legendaries out of the way of your 'main' spec by trying to force them to roll on your other specs. It would also be a great way to get all those legendaries for your offspecs.

Maybe I just got lucky, but, since they did iterate/change on these things, and mentioned it... I'm hoping I struck on something by accident.

[danieltang34]

I'm testing a hypothesis that bad luck protection is built on all specs at the same time.
I've been very reliably getting a legendary every ~15-17 days by clearing all LFR/Normal/Heroic and SOME Mythic content (most EN Mythic and 4 Nighthold), as well as some sporadic M+ (the M10 for sure) and never skipping an Emissary cache.

Well, this week I got Frost Mage bracers on wednesday, promptly switched my loot spec to FIRE, within 24 hours I was graced with Fire Mage bracers, then swapped loot spec to ARCANE and again, within 24 hours, was again graced with Arcane Mage bracers.

A mage in the guild did the same thing and was able to get back to back fire and frost legendaries (but he hasn't really played since, he doesnt play a lot, period).

Mind you, my legendaries all essentially came from Broken Shore Legionfall Supply Turn-in caches (one came from a world chest in the broken shore, the other two came from Recompense of the Broken Shore -- the turn-in bags you get)

Yes, totally useless and anecdotal and even if the other mage and 5 more people in guild had got it to work, it would still not be statistically significant... BUT, we've known ever since that Developer Q&A that bad luck protection was going to be much more spec specific, but they never clarified specifically how it would be built between specs, or how it would be 'spent' when you got an item (and I asked this specifically - Lore even said he'd get back to us with the answer, and he never did).

...so I wonder if you can really 'Cascade' your bad luck protection like this and get legendaries for all your specs once you know you are 'due', which, as a few people on this thread have pointed out, is essentially every ~20 days if you do all emissary caches, all LFRs, and all Normal/Heroic raids.

I would be interested in knowing how other people fare by trying this out. If it turned out to work this way, it would be a phenomenal way to get shared legendaries out of the way of your 'main' spec by trying to force them to roll on your other specs. It would also be a great way to get all those legendaries for your offspecs.

Maybe I just got lucky, but, since they did iterate/change on these things, and mentioned it... I'm hoping I struck on something by accident.

Ive been switching back to forth from fire to frost on my mage, but ive never gotten two legendaries within 2 weeks.
All my legendaries are shared legendaries maybe thats why...

i have chest, 2 rings, trinket and boots =(

[Melkien]

For people wondering about relinquised and legendaries, today a guildie got a trinket legendary from a Relinquised Trinket.

[Eyliria]

Ive been switching back to forth from fire to frost on my mage, but ive never gotten two legendaries within 2 weeks.
All my legendaries are shared legendaries maybe thats why...

i have chest, 2 rings, trinket and boots =(

That would be a double kick to the crotch if not only did shared legendaries count towards all specs (we know they do), but they also reset BLP on all specs when they dropped (because they count for all specs).

[Meowchan]

I currently have 9/10 holy legendaries (missing shoulders). It's been 8 weeks since my last legendary (full time holy loot specilization). I do all LFR/normal/HC/Mythic each week, emissaries, and some M+. I have 15k KillPoints. I've made two tickets asking about it in the last 2 weeks and Blizzard told me both times 'we've looked into your char and everything's fine'. I can't help but feeling my character is bugged in some way, but could be I'm just incredibly unlucky.

[Feral Druid ist Op]

I do:

-all Emissarys
-all Mythic +0
-LFR EN, ToV, NH
-Normal EN, ToV, NH
-Heroic EN, ToV, NH
-Mythic EN, ToV, NH
And the most important thing Broken shore Emissarys and 50 Netherportals a day (cap) if the Netherdisrupter is up.

i get sofar 1 leggo all 6-7 days

[T1berius]

i cant figure out mine

[Loosecannon]

So, I have a theory that 'badluck protection' is not actually a thing, and that Blizzard just said that it was so that people wouldn't cry about when they didn't get a legendary. They've never released any information on it, and the only way to 'increase' it is to spam the content which can drop legendaries, until one eventually drops.

Statistically, spamming this content will increase your chance of getting a legendary, and provided the drop chance isn't so uber low it's ridiculous I'd think that's possible. I'm sure there are people who do a lot of content who aren't active on MMO-C or other sources, so we don't get to hear their vain cries about never getting any.

Just a theory, but who knows?

[barackohmama]

So, I have a theory that 'badluck protection' is not actually a thing, and that Blizzard just said that it was so that people wouldn't cry about when they didn't get a legendary. They've never released any information on it, and the only way to 'increase' it is to spam the content which can drop legendaries, until one eventually drops.

Statistically, spamming this content will increase your chance of getting a legendary, and provided the drop chance isn't so uber low it's ridiculous I'd think that's possible. I'm sure there are people who do a lot of content who aren't active on MMO-C or other sources, so we don't get to hear their vain cries about never getting any.

Just a theory, but who knows?

BLP is definitely a thing. The actual droprate of the legendaries is very low. That's why you can predict when you're getting next legendary to roughly a week if you do the content at the same rate. Anything +/- 2 weeks is very rare. Higher droprates of the first two legendaries is also a thing.

[Loosecannon]

BLP is definitely a thing. The actual droprate of the legendaries is very low. That's why you can predict when you're getting next legendary to roughly a week if you do the content at the same rate. Anything +/- 2 weeks is very rare. Higher droprates of the first two legendaries is also a thing.

I work in finance, and did a Physics degree quite a while ago so I'm by no means a statistician. Isn't that what would happen with a low drop rate without BLP (sounds like a vaguely normally distributed result)?

I definitely agree that the chances are higher on the first couple though.

[Tech614]

I work in finance, and did a Physics degree quite a while ago so I'm by no means a statistician. Isn't that what would happen with a low drop rate without BLP (sounds like a vaguely normally distributed result)?

I definitely agree that the chances are higher on the first couple though.

No, what would happen without BLP is bindings, mount or glaive drop rates which are all over the place. Legion legendary are really damn consistent because you always get to that point in BLP where you have a very high chance to get one at about the 10 day mark if you do a lot of content. You can get very lucky and get one the next day, or unlucky and get one in 2 weeks but there isn't much variance other then that.

[Puri]

I work in finance, and did a Physics degree quite a while ago so I'm by no means a statistician. Isn't that what would happen with a low drop rate without BLP (sounds like a vaguely normally distributed result)?

I definitely agree that the chances are higher on the first couple though.

The deviation would be higher. I have now over 90 legendaries over 14 chars, and I can pretty much predict +-4 days when my next legendary is due. You can be lucky and get it significantly earlier, but I am yet to be unlucky and get it significantly later.

A few numbers: With just doing the EC daily plus the legion supplies you get via the app you are getting a legendary every ~35 days. Considering the chance is equal for all those events, we are looking at 35 daily caches plus ~20 legion caches plus ~5 paragon caches, so about 60 chances to get a legendary.

So if it was linear (getting one legendary every 60 attempts), we would have a chance of 1.6% to get a legendary. Using this fixed drop percentage, it would mean you would have a chance of over 50% to get it within the first 42 chances ((1-0.016)^42), which equals about 24 days . And looking at the other end, it would mean you would still have a 15% chance of not getting a legendary in 120 chances ((1-0.016)^120) which equals about 70 days.

We don't have this kind of deviation ingame, at least I have not experienced this. As I said I can narrow down the latest expected drop of a legendary to about one week, this would not be possible with a fixed probability.

[Kendevis]

I think there is something dirty about legendaries.
In my experience, almost half of the legendaries I got, were from emissary caches that I skipped for 2 days.

What I mean is that if you Skip day 1, skip day 2, and make 3 caches on day 3, you have much higher chances to get a legendary than make cache on day 1, make cache on day 2 and make cache on day 3.

They enhance drop rate not for those with bad luck. They enhance chances on those that seems like are stopping playing game!

[Cityfella]

You cant get legos from Paragon chests right?! Atleast that's what i heard

[Loosecannon]

The deviation would be higher. I have now over 90 legendaries over 14 chars, and I can pretty much predict +-4 days when my next legendary is due. You can be lucky and get it significantly earlier, but I am yet to be unlucky and get it significantly later.

A few numbers: With just doing the EC daily plus the legion supplies you get via the app you are getting a legendary every ~35 days. Considering the chance is equal for all those events, we are looking at 35 daily caches plus ~20 legion caches plus ~5 paragon caches, so about 60 chances to get a legendary.

So if it was linear (getting one legendary every 60 attempts), we would have a chance of 1.6% to get a legendary. Using this fixed drop percentage, it would mean you would have a chance of over 50% to get it within the first 42 chances ((1-0.016)^42), which equals about 24 days . And looking at the other end, it would mean you would still have a 15% chance of not getting a legendary in 120 chances ((1-0.016)^120) which equals about 70 days.

We don't have this kind of deviation ingame, at least I have not experienced this. As I said I can narrow down the latest expected drop of a legendary to about one week, this would not be possible with a fixed probability.

Good Response, I have only one character with 10 leggos, so my sample size is obviously quite small, can certainly see the rationale there.

Question: do you think this would still hold true if:

1. The chances for every source were not equal (some things having higher drop %, as we seem to see in game)
2. You heavily inflated the amount of attempts you were having by doing a lot of content?

As I said, my statistics is rusty, but I would imagine above could have a compression effect on the time distribution of drops, leading to an answer which is more easily predictable? (As well as shorter tails?)

I'm sure I could prove this out myself if i used a pen and paper and a lot of agonising over precisely how this worked from a mathematical point of view, but that's my gut feeling.

[Puri]

Good Response, I have only one character with 10 leggos, so my sample size is obviously quite small, can certainly see the rationale there.

Question: do you think this would still hold true if:

1. The chances for every source were not equal (some things having higher drop %, as we seem to see in game)
2. You heavily inflated the amount of attempts you were having by doing a lot of content?

As I said, my statistics is rusty, but I would imagine above could have a compression effect on the time distribution of drops, leading to an answer which is more easily predictable? (As well as shorter tails?)

I'm sure I could prove this out myself if i used a pen and paper and a lot of agonising over precisely how this worked from a mathematical point of view, but that's my gut feeling.

Using fixed probablity, we are looking at a assymetrical gaussian distribution bell with an open end at the right side.
What you want to achieve is to narrow the body of the bell, this is not possible by either changing the drop chance or increasing the number of attempts - the first will just linearly grow the bell, and the latter will just narrow down your samples of attempts to the center of the bell.

To make the main body of the bell larger you need to increase the probablity with every attempt, which is pretty much how they told us BLP works.

Obviously there are many questions left on how the BLP really works, what increases it and by how much. But considering the predictability of legendary drops out of experience I am fairly certain it works as they say it does.

[Xenodrake]

I been tracking my Legos every time I got a new one. I do the same content every time and I now have all of mine for Havoc DH. It took roughly 3 weeks per Lego for the last 4. All I do is as follows: all the LFR's, Mythic+ till I have a 15 or 16 done, Current raid on heroic and normal, and the emissary's each day that is it.