Yeah, that connection needed a bit more explanation, as I was mashing together two different concepts without much context…
… which you picked up upon correctly.
As someone who was in a fortunate enough position guild-wise in 0.34 to almost have exclusive access to the ore deals, the distribution rates among the shard types were most likely an even split over the five types. In chests, the distribution rates were also generally even-ish, except for the anomaly that was lesser accessory shards.
Also, in 0.34, players could target specific dungeons to target specific shard types to farm. That was a highly effective practice for advancing gear quickly. Doubly so when a player could target a specific drop and that dungeon also dropped the right type of shard to level up that piece of gear.
In 0.35, all of that went out the window.
- There is no way to target specific shard types anymore.
- In all methods for obtaining shards (shop, bazaar, chests), the drop rates have become weighted. The more “useful” a shard is in upgrading something that has an active benefit to the player, the rarer that shard type became. Offensive shards (weapons, spells) drop more rarely than other shard types.
Weapon shards are further rarer than spell shards, which are already rare drops. When shards drop, weapons shards have maybe a ~5% (1 in 20) chance of dropping from a shard pack. I expect to see a single weapon shard pack per night of farming currently. Some unlucky days, I do not see any at all.
To put this in context, when 0.35 landed, my weapon and shield got the free bump to legendary and I only had to level each of them from 40 to 45.
In that time, I have had Toragon and Gemka craft Epic pieces for all of my remaining weapon armor and accessory slots (took ~2 weeks for the right rolls to happen), and I have leveled all of those pieces from 1 to 35. My weapon finally maxed out last week, and my shield is sitting at 41. If the shop and chest drops bless me this weekend, maybe just maybe the shield might reach 42. I make more progress from the 20 superior shard bundles when they appear than from farming most nights.
I know the game wants me to “give in” and by the 50 shard bundles when they appear, but I’m not coughing up 400 Gems for ~0.8 weapon/shield levels on principle. Surely, though, someone else will.
In the case of weapons, not only did the devs pause weapon ascension, they also put the brakes on players leveling up the weapons they already had to slow down player offensive growth in 0.35.