HQ % is misleading

[Iscah]

Now, not only do I not see every 5th node yield HQ on every hit...

I have never suggested a guarantee at all.

Suggesting you should expect to see a 4xHQ node at every fifth node is suggesting a guarantee that your one-in-five chance will happen within five attempts.

Can you answer this: if something has a chance of happening 20% of the time and has never happened in 1000 attempts is it really 20%?

Because the maths is more complex than that simple calculation.

That statistic indicates that at any time, there is a 20% chance that your next four attempts will yield HQ. That string of four, if you get it, will not necessarily line up with the intervals of four attempts at one node. (I assume that would make it 20% x 25% = only a 5% chance that a run of four would line up with being attempt 1 to attempt 4 at a single node.)

So if you are judging your stats by picking out one small possibility and judging your results on that, rather than how many individual times you get HQ/NQ, that's going to be an inaccurate measure of your actual luck.


Also, look at it this way: on any one node, you have four chances at the one-in-three outcome of an NQ item. The short-term odds of it disrupting your string of luck are pretty good, even if overall you got three HQ and one NQ - a 75% success rate, above your predicted average chance.