Map drop rates drop down after some serwer downs/patches

I wanted to share my thoughts about suddenly dropping map drop rates.

Until last saturday for some time I was easily sustaining T10/T9 (and having significant T11 drops - actually I was bouncing between T11 nad T10). I was running maps by activating map device on second account, so I had perma Elder influence on maps = more chances for map drops. I made a short break, then after returning to game I changed a little bit my atlas. I removed T11, removed T10 Bog and left only Shaped T10 Toxic Sewers. Because my atlas bonus dropeed a little bit, I completed some lower tier maps, so I still had the same 92/157 atlas bonus (this bonus kept me with T10-T11, so what possibly could change). Then I went back to mapping. After running 20 T10 Shaped Toxic Sewers I noticed very little map returns - I was still dropping some T10s, but their numbers were very low. Actually I noticed dropped map drops since I began mapping, but I wanted to check after some bigger number of maps, to rule out bad RNG. I started adding 1 sextans and 2 chisels to map. So I run a little more T10 - no map drops, then couple of dozens of stocked T11 - no map drops, then I run 20 T9 Waste Pools - no map drops, then I went T8 Mud Geyser and no map returns. So I was what the hell, so I shaped T6 Atoll to T11, to have some possible T11 drops. Then I run some T10 - no T10-T11 sustaining. Then I shaped T4 Gorge to T8, T3 Leyline to T8 and still no map returns except of increaded map pool. Then I completed back T11 and T10 that I erased before making break - I endend up with atlas bonus around 97/157 - so I thought, coming back to beggining should fix everything - I was wrong. In meantime I run couple of dozens of T10, T9 on my other accoun that had 120/157 atlas bonus - he did not get map returns - character that I changed noting (well only I shaped Gorge) suddenly stopped sustaining maps. That character was easily sustaining T9s even when its atlas bonus was around 90/157 and with its atlas bonus 120/157 I was sustaining T10/T11 with just "alch and go". So I came back to my first account, finished lvling up to lvl 95. In total I run hundreds of maps, run out of my stocked T9, T10, T11, some T12, I run a lot T8s and map drops did not come back. This thing hasn't changed for 36 hours. Later on I run all my T8 Mud Geysers (and maps from friends), I got around 20-30% of exp towards lvl 96, but I run out of maps - T8 maps!.

The only thing I noticed during last weekend, that according to steam PoE activity, on saturday, when I had a break, there was server downtime. This thing reminded me something similar that happened in January/February (according to steam PoE activity there was something on 7th February) - one day in the morning, game had to patch, but there were no patch notes, so I was like: duh? But staff could have been adding some futute mtx, w/e. After logging into the game I noticed the same thing that happened last saturday - sudden lack of map drops. Actually back then it was worse map drop rate drop down - at that time all map drops were lower tier and that thing lasted for a couple of days. I think I was having only map returns on T6 or T5.

In my opinion, automated script for determining map drop rates sometimes loses its settings after some patching/server restarts.




Towards future opinions: bad RNG - it can happen for a dozen of maps, not hundreds. Also bad RNG on 2 accounts? Maybe if its IP based, but then - LOL? Also in 10 maps you can tell if you can sustain certain tier map drops - there will be significant increase in total number of all tier map drops from almost no drops. Also I ruled out map device failure - I run 60+ T8 Mud Geysers maps on my map device and on that map I have Elder, so additional mobs.

PS. Whats the point of atlas bonus, if it can only relate to low tier map drops and anything left to 3rd party lifting some switch to increase map drops.

Or maybe someone can explain to me what happened, because I'm out of ideas.