Prospecting - whats the real drop rate for rares?

[Ban-roll-on]

After prospecting almost 8K stacks of elementium ore its pretty obvious Ocean Sapphire and Zephyrite have the highest drop rates and that Inferno Ruby is the lowest drop rate.
Every time I prospect I clear my bags, and Ocean Sapphire and Zephyrite are always at the top of the list.

Seems like drop rate is:
Ocean Sapphire=Ember Topaz>Dream Emerald=Amberjewel=Demonseye>Inferno Ruby
Zephyrite>Jasper=Alicite=Hessonite=Nightstone>Carnelian


I am speaking from pure experience here this is not what it "feels" like, this is what it is. While I have not recorded my results, I have always noted which dropped most and which dropped least and its always Blues are the most and Reds are the least.

[rubmyshock]

What is your question?

[dgreen]

I actually get more inferno rubies than anything else. You just have bad luck

[Deleted]

What is your question?

did you read the title of the thread?

[rubmyshock]

did you read the title of the thread?

Yes i read the title. Posts that ask why they aren't getting the drops they want and then claiming the drop rates aren't correct are rubbish (while he doesn't claim this word for word, thats the gist of his post). Even with the 8k he spent on ore as well as the other times he bought ore to prospect, his sample size is too small to accurately say anything. RNG is RNG. Unlucky, no conspiracy theory here.

[Powerogue]

I always just assumed all the blue gems were equally rare, but that doesn't mean you'll always get the exact same number of each. if the comments are anything to go by, if you try that again you'll get completely different statistics.

[Tiglits]

Yes i read the title. Posts that ask why they aren't getting the drops they want and then claiming the drop rates aren't correct are rubbish (while he doesn't claim this word for word, thats the gist of his post). Even with the 8k he spent on ore as well as the other times he bought ore to prospect, his sample size is too small to accurately say anything. RNG is RNG. Unlucky, no conspiracy theory here.

He's not suggesting a conspiracy theory. He's asking a simple question. Quit being so cynical.

http://www.wowhead.com/item=52185#prospecting says that it's generally around 5% for each blue, but dream emerald and ember topaz are appearing 1% higher. I would trust, fairly well, a sample of 3,000,000 prospects, too.

[Grimgore]

The drop rate for rare gems has been the same since TBC. First with Adamantite, then Saronite, and now Elementium. It's ~4% chance per prospect to get a particular color of rare gem. Occasionally you'll even get multiple gems. All the colors have the same chance to drop. However, just because they all have the same chance doesn't mean that out of 120 rare gems prospected, you'll have 20 of each color. You have lucky streaks and unlucky streaks. If you flip a coin 100 times, it's highly unlikely you'll get 50 heads and 50 tails. You could get 62 heads and 38 tails. It's even possible (though unlikely) that you'd get heads 100 times in a row. It's just like that with the gems. You could get tons of reds and hardly any blues, or vice versa. You could get this same pattern (many more blues than reds) for 10 days in a row, or you could get the opposite. It's just RNG. I've been guilty of falling for this myself in the past, where I would be prospecting stacks upon stacks of ore and get tons of reds. Thinking I was on a hot streak, I'd purchase a boatload more ore off the AH at slightly above my usual buying price, only to hit an unlucky streak and get very few gems that can be cut for a 'decent enough for time invested' profit. It's truly random, don't look for patterns b/c you'll just be fooling yourself.

Source: 4 years of mass-JCing for AH profit and probably close to a million prospected rare/epic gems by now throughout the years.

[Deleted]

What is this doing in the PvP section exactly and how has no one mentioned this before me?

[Ban-roll-on]

edit: pvp section? oops Meant to go in Professions.

Like I said, almost 8k stacks since Cata has come out.

Sometimes I get Inferno Rubys approaching Ocean Sapphires and then I get what I got with todays prospecting:
50 stacks of Elementium Ore

6 Inferno Ruby
15 Ocean Sapphire
11 Ember Topaz
9 Dream Emerald
8 Demonseye
6 Amberjewel

34 Carnelian
39 Zephyrite
40 Ember Topaz
44 Nightstone
40 Alicite
45 Jasper

Bad session for Inferno Ruby and very good session for Carnelian but of course not more than Zephs, only approaching like I said. But as you see Blues are the most of what I got. But allot of ember topazs like usuall, thank God they cut into something that people buy

Edit: Searched through mmo-champ forums and wowhead forums and did some google searches and Ember Topaz definitely have a higher drop rate than the others, thats fact. But like I said, they cut into something that actually sells so its not all bad. From my experience with Ocean Sapphire I would say Embers and Ooceans Sapphs are higher than average drop rates and Infernos are lower than average.

[Stanton Biston]

In the future please report out of place threads.

[Darkfriend]

Last time I went through 4 gbank tabs of ore, I got around 15% more infernos then any other, although I did get lots of zeph.