There are some theories as to whether or not luck helps, and whose luck is the determining factor when a monster is killed by more than one person, or is it an average, etc.
Kessa and I have done a bit of research on Luck and figured out a few things. First off, many of you may know, luck only affects 3 things with regard to loot drop:
1. The number of items on the corpse
2. The number of properties on each item
3. The intensity of each of the properties
Additionally luck raises your chances of getting arties in Doom, Ilshenar, and the Anti-Virtue dungeons. I don't know the formulas for that right now, so we'll put that aside and just say that luck helps.
Here is info from the Five on Friday, dated January 12, 2007:
After TWO SOLID DAYS of heated debate, testing, and poring over the code, Wilki finally came up with an answer - basically, loot is created once, using the luck of the top attacker. It's then divided in a number of interesting ways, but no other luck value ever touches it. It doesn't matter if the top attacker is in a party, or if any other attackers are in a party - it's solely the luck value of the top attacker.
So, what are the odds? WARNING: MATH INVOLVED
Well, according to the luck page on Stratics (the strategy and statistics pages, not the forums), the formula for determining your % chance of a bump in either 1, 2, or 3, listed above, is as follows:
Chance of loot value bump = luck^( 1/1.8 )
And the formula for determining how much luck you need to achieve a particular % chance is as follows:
luck required = ( chance to raise loot level )^1.8
So, using your scientific calculator in Windows (Start/All Programs/Accessories/Calculator, then click view/scientific), we can plug in this formula.
Say you have 2095 luck after using the luck statue and want to determine your percent chance of getting a loot bump while feeling lucky. Open your calculator and do the following steps:
type in (or click) 2095 (your luck value)
click "y^x" (pinkish button on the left)
type in "1.8"
check the box labeled "Inv" on the left
click "="
Your display should now read: 70.00067654033455493019216692339
This means you have approximately a 70% chance for a bump.
But wait, there's more!
The amount of items is determined by one roll of luck
The amount of properties on each item is determined by a separate roll of luck (so 15 different rolls if there are 15 items on the corpse)
The intensity of each mod is determined by a separate roll of luck (so 5 different rolls for 5 different properties).
Basically, if you multiply a simple fraction <1 by a simple fraction <1, the result is a number smaller than either of the fractions involved.
For the purpose of simplicity, let's say you have a 50% chance for a bump based on your luck (about 1143 luck). For a given item, the chance it will have a bump in number of mods is 50%. If it happens to have 5 additional mods, then the chance that all 5 are also bumped is 50% x 50% x 50% x 50% x 50%. So, for a given item, the chance that it'll have 5 mods, and they'll all be at or near max intensity is 50%^6, or 1.5625% (1/64th, for those of you who prefer fractions). If that corpse happened to get a bump in the amount of items that spawn, and it has 8 items on it, then of those 8 items, the chances that one will be really nice are 8 in 64, or about 1 in 8.
END OF MATH
The chances rise as your luck goes up.
I just wanted to add that mathematical piece in there for anyone interested. The key to this post was to say that the loot isn't determined by the number of people who attack a monster, or the average luck of the party, but the luck amount of the top damager. So if you're a spellweaver and you WoD constantly, you might wanna wear a luck suit and hit a statue...
Having everyone hit the statue just means that when the peerless boss falls, no matter who dealt the most damage, they will have at least SOME luck.
