The Importance of Luck

Does your luck impact how much you enjoy the game?  Does your luck impact what you are capable of doing and what you get in game?  Does luck impact how well you can perform?

I am one of those people that has no luck, or seemingly none the majority of the time.  While I have had my rare dance with lady luck here and there I usually end up standing on the side without a dance partner.

On my main I have run UP near 500 times for the mount and now that mounts are account bound if you add all my characters together I am probably closer to 600 and I have still never seen it drop.  Same for the stonecore mount.  I have no clue how many times I have run that one.  For a few months I used to do 5 runs on normal every day, so I easily have to be over 300 there as well if not more and have never seen it drop.

Then there are my weird luck moments.  The mount in MT I got on trip 80 yet the easier to get pet I have never seen drop.  I recently just bought it being I gave up trying to get it.  The jewelcrafting meta patterns that are now drops in mists have given me the same luck.  I got every single meta gem pattern except 4 while leveling, three of those 4 I got pretty quickly once I hit 90, two of them in the first raid I stepped in.  The one I wanted the most, the agility one for my hunter, was the last one I got.  So I had luck, but not good luck, if you will.

There is that fish in org that I have been trying to fish up for years.  On alliance characters, on horde characters, on every character to the tune of what has to be close to 50 hours of fishing there if not more and I have never seen it.  At least if I ever do get it the achievement now it goes to all my characters so I do not have to do it again on another.  But look at the one in ironforge and me catching three of them while I was there fishing for something else.  How is that for weird luck?  Or is that still no luck?  Maybe the two of my characters that got the achievement for the one that didn't get away before they even had a fishing skill over 50 but my main, which has over 20,000 fish caught now, had that as the last thing it got to get the meta because it could not catch it at all.

How about gear drops?  Anyone that has ever raided surely has a story about that one piece that eluded them.  My hunter first killed DW before the buff, the first time I saw the staff even drop it was at the 20% buff, the bow after the 25% buff.  That is a lot of clears without even seeing it drop.

During that time we started doing it with two groups a week and I still never saw the staff or the bow drop even when I was not on my hunter.  By the time the 25% buff was out we were doing it with three groups a week and in none of those three had I ever seen the bow drop until that one time.  In that time it even took forever to get the drops in the LFR.  The staff came first but I lost the roll a few times and the bow really liked to give me a kick in the nether regions by dropping for the first time ever in the LFR the week before I finally did get the real one.  So I waited months with none and get two in back to back raids.

Luck really does have an impact on how you feel about the game, at least it does for me.

In a way I kind of like it, it gives me something to aim for.  Like soloing UP for the drake.  Whenever I am bored I will do it and now being the mounts are account bound I have 17 or so characters I can do it on easily to try to get it so if I ever get bored there is something for me to do.  So I can see how having no luck sometimes is a good thing, it creates content.  If I had it already that would be one less thing I had to do.  But it doesn't change the fact it still gets frustrating at times.

It gets even more frustrating when you know someone that has lots of luck.  There is someone in my guild that has the best luck in the world.  I was doing kara weekly for the mount and he asked me what I was always doing in kara on tuesdays, asking if I was farming to make gold or something.  I said no, the first boss drops a mount so I only do it for the mount each week.  He said he was going to give it a try.  5 minutes later he gets the achievement.

He then asked me what other mounts there were.  I said I was soloing SC every day to try and get that one and he posts a link asking, this one.  I said yes, he said, it dropped his first time in there and he won it with a one hundred.  I was afraid to ask him about the one from VP but he said he had that one too, and the rare that fly's around deepholm as well, it was right there when he first zoned in on his first visit there.  He just has super luck.  Whenever I told him about something it never took him more than 5 runs to get it, ever.

He had gotten the time lost proto drake on three different characters.  He even got it for two guild members that he was showing where it spawns and it spawned as he got there.  I am not kidding, really.  I have never even seen the dead body of the time lost proto drake.  The week after he got the kara mount I was joking around and asked him if I could borrow some of his luck and invited him to a group so I could go in and do kara.  That was the week I got the kara mount, because he was in the group with me.

Someone said in a comment that it sounded as if I were jealous over gear but that could not be further from the truth because gear is gear you will get it sooner or later, it is the luck factor I am jealous about.  I will freely admit I am jealous of lucky people.  Totally green with envy.  Like the time I told my girlfriend I had been fishing for 9 hours trying to get the fish in org and she comes in, trains fishing for the first time, and starts casting and catches it at the same time she hits 15 skill.  Jealous is absolutely the word for it.

I have never been a lucky person in game and it does effect my enjoyment of the game to some degree.  There is no fun in doing something over and over with no results knowing that you will probably have no results because you are unlucky.  I like things with an out clause if you will.  Like last noble garden with the egg hunt.  You could get lucky and get the mount in an egg or if you did not you could collect 500 of them and buy one.  It puts a number on it.  You know that if you have bad luck that even in the worst case at 500 you will end up with it.  You will have been awarded for your effort.  It is a consolation prize for the unlucky, like an angel of mercy for my in game soul.

Luck is not all about drops for mounts, or pets, or achievements or gear, now luck has added itself to another part of the game.  It is also about how well you perform in game now.

Two damage dealers in the exact same gear doing the exact same abilities the exact same amount of times over the same time period can have two completely different results based on the luck of the critical effect.  There seems to be a bug in the game where critical strikes can have a huge range and that will effect your over all DPS.

Just yesterday I did terrace twice in the LFR. I like to practice being I am not raiding with my hunter right now and it is better than getting stale at it, don't laugh, it makes sense to me to keep in practice.  On sha, which is basically a tank and spank for the most part I had two completely different results all because of the critical strike luck effect.

The first attempt I was with a rather poor group which usually means your DPS will be lower. I did not do bad but not exceptional either and ended with 96K, which I think was quite respectable for 480ish gear.  Second attempt with a much better group which usually sees your DPS go up as you spend more time in burst phase with shorter fights I ended with a horrible 70K.  Both attempts I was taken away once, both attempts I switched to adds.  So both attempts I played it the exact same for a basically tank and spank type fight and had two completely different results.  How?

Attempt one I had luck on my side and my critical strikes were much higher than my second attempt which seemingly had very low critical hits.  I must say I am not liking that luck now plays such a huge factor in DPS.  To the tune of 26K, that is over a quarter of the DPS I should be doing, which is roughly 100K on that fight.

Has the importance of luck just entered something that should be about skill and gear?

I am not sure I like that doing your job is now all luck based.  With my luck that means that even if I do everything perfectly I can always expect to do badly because I am not getting those lucky critical strikes that seemingly hit for up to 6 times what they should.  There is no reason that kill command should have critical strikes of 50K on one fight and 300K on another when not influenced by any outside buff.  A range of 50K-60K in the same gear makes sense, a range of 50K-300K based on luck does not.

It is not only one character either as my priest has seen greater heals with a 160K critical and greater heals with a 480K critical.  I can't say much for tanking as tanking has always seemed about luck a little.  Will you avoid the hit or not, but it seems more so now.

I tanked one random with a guild healer that asked me if I got new gear because we went half the dungeon before they needed to throw a heal on me, even past 2 boss fights where they DPSed the entire time because I never needed a heal.  I said nope, just getting lucky with avoidance.  I had never experienced that type of a luck streak before and it makes me think that it could have very well happened the other way around and I took constant hits even with cooldowns if my luck had been bad that day and it would have caused a slew of wipes.

I can understand the luck factor for things like drops.  Even gear drops that hate me.  I can see that and see why it is there, it creates content and gives people a reason to do things over and over.  I am not sure I can see why how well you do your job in game should be based on luck however.

Has wow become a game completely about luck and nothing else?  Where does the importance of luck lay now that it effects something that should be skill and gear based?

On a scale of one to ten where do you place the importance of luck in today's game?

I would call luck a huge factor now, an eight at least.  Luck it worth at least 26K DPS as I see it.