Most readers here are probably aware of two features of the game that are currently considered to be problems by the community: loot pool pollution and unused enemies.
Loot pool pollution is the issue of numerous bosses or named enemies having too many items in their designated pools, so that the chance of obtaining a specific desired item from them is badly watered down by the presence of too many other “rare” drops in the enemy’s special loot pool.
By “unused enemies” I mean named or boss enemies that either do not respawn or do not have a unique loot pool, so that they either can’t be farmed at all or produce only world drops if they are farmable. This reduces replay value because there is less reason for players to revisit certain areas of the BL3 Universe.
Others have done the work of compiling a master lists of the designated drop sources for all the legendary items in the game. I used the information from This Spreadsheet.
K6 has posted a video Here covering all the unused enemies, with a link provided to a document that lists them.
Obviously this is a two birds with one stone situation - moving some of the items in the overpolluted pools to become designated drop(s) for unused enemies (while making many of the non-respawnables actually reappear) addresses both problems. This too has been proposed by numerous members of the BL3 community so I don’t claim this as my work either.
What I wanted to do is develop a list of the enemies that have the worst problems with pool pollution and a set of suggestions of which unused enemies could take on item(s) from those pools.
However, I’m also going to suggest a (very short) list of items that I think could be removed from the game entirely without any loss to players - because they are redundant with other items (two+ items doing essentially the same thing), because their effects are underwhelming, because the item in question is somehow anti-synergistic with its intended purpose, or some combination of the above.
I count up how many drops are in each enemy’s loot pool, how many of those drops are unique, and how many items have multiple designated sources (there aren’t many of these, but they do exist, and there’s absolutely no reason for it).
Those are the criteria I used to determine the priority list for de-polluting the pools. I want to emphasize that this method does not take into account whether any individual item in any enemy’s pool is considered “desirable” by the community. With one exception: I think the bosses at the end of the Circles of Slaughter should have high-quality drops. SO I changed the makeup of their loot pools a bit to improve the quality of the items they drop.
For purposes of these counts, I ignore whether an item can be obtained from a loot-o-gram and I don’t count Dinklebot. I also ignore Wotan’s chance to drop M4±only items like Vosk’s Deathgrip, the EM-P5, or the Driver com, so these items are treated as unique drops from their non-Takedown sources (similar to the M6+ items).
Additionally, for purposes of which unused enemies should take on items from the polluted pools, there are a few non-respawning enemies who probably shouldn’t respawn, such as Long-Arm and Brayden; both of these enemies appear near or in areas that should be “safe” zones once the player has cleared those areas in the main story. Once these areas are cleared, they should stay cleared. But an enemy like Sheega does not fit this description; there’s no reason she should be non-respawning.
First, a brief review of the numbers: in the main game only - not counting events or paid content - there are by my count 219 legendaries that can currently drop. There are roughly 65 - 70 extant enemies that have designated drops, depending on the method used to count (e.g. are the Power Troopers 5 separate drop sources or 1? Are “Thunk and Sloth” counted as 1 or 2 drop sources? It isn’t self-evident how enemies like these should be counted.) Under the loot pool allocation methods I would use, there are 54 unused enemies that could receive designated drops.
Including the 54 additional sources that I identify would reduce the number of drops needed in each pool to 2 per source - with very few exceptions.
Therefore I adopt the following rules for determining what the new drop pools should look like: Besides Wotan, the Valkyries, and Trial bosses, most enemies should not have more than 2 items in their designated loot pool. Any enemy with designated drop(s) should drop at least one item that is available regardless of Mayhem level. Enemies with unique drops should - again in general - receive higher priority for de-polluting their pools.
This means that an enemy such as Captain Traunt must lose either the Tankman’s Shield or the Kaoson (I chose to leave him the Kaoson because I want a reason for us all to kill that guy many, many, many times. KAOSONS ON TRAUNT!). So for a few enemies, I do move unique items out of their drop pools; but in general I try to avoid doing that.
I have also tried to maintain, where possible, some semblance of having an enemy’s drops fit the “theme” or “feel” of the enemy, or at least of the area in which they spawn.
Because there are so many enemies and items involved in this reorganization, I will not attempt to list everything here. This post is long enough already.
Instead I will provide a link to a copy of the Spreadsheets I used to do this: Designated Drops & Unused Enemies
This is a slightly simplified version - I have removed a few auxiliary sheets I used for reference and got rid of formulas. I’m hoping that at least some of these suggestions will at least be considered, but if they’re not, at least it might create a fun discussion.