NeverLucky

Are you actually unlucky, or do you just remember the losses?

NeverLucky records every group loot roll you see and answers that question with real statistics, not gut feeling. Then it finds the jinx in your group, ranks your whole guild, and keeps score against everyone who ever beat your Need.

Type /nl:

NeverLucky: Rollsalot (Silvermoon):
    Verdict: Unlucky - Less lucky than you should be - unluckier than 92% of players (dice and drops together).
    Fair fights: 46 contested rolls - you won 10, your fair share is 11.1 (-10%) - dice luck: A bit unlucky
    Rare drops: 5 of 12 were for you, 7.3 expected (-32%) - drop luck: Unlucky
    Your dice: average 47.2 over 49 rolls (fair is 50.5), 100s: 0, 1s: 0
    Won per roll type: Need 4/6, Greed 9/62
    Also: 3 free (nobody else rolled), 19 lost to a better roll type, 2 heartbreaks (lost by 3 or less)
    Luckiest win: [Whipwood Recurve Bow] with a 26
    Cruelest loss: [Polished Zweihander of the Beast] with a 90
    Loot for you: 25 of 68 drops (37%) were usable by you, including 13 upgrades. You won 6 of those 25.

Nothing to set up and no libraries to install. Built for WoW Forever, and it works on Retail and the Classic clients too.

Why you'll want it

• Settle the argument for good. Your verdict compares what you won with every way your exact rolls could have gone. "Unluckier than 92% of players" is a measurement, not a feeling.
• It's fair. Only fair fights count: rolls where you and someone else picked the same roll type. Losing your Greed to a Need isn't bad luck, so it never counts against you.
• Did the loot even want you? On WoW Forever, drop luck checks whether the rare gear that dropped suited your class as often as the boss's loot table says it should. A leather wearer watching cloth drop all night finally gets a number for it.
• Find the jinx. /nl group ranks everyone in your party or raid from luckiest to most cursed. /nl guild ranks your whole guild, including members who are offline.
• Every run, judged. /nl current shows how the dungeon you're in is treating you; /nl last tells you how the last one went.
• Grudges that last. NeverLucky remembers your head-to-head record against everyone you roll with, even players who don't have the addon.
• Brag or complain in one click. A small window offers to post your verdict, and you pick where: party, raid, guild, say or yell.

What's new

• 1.4.1: /nl report opens the posting window whenever you want, solo or in a group.
• 1.4.0: luck per dungeon and raid run, with /nl current and /nl last.
• 1.3.0: the guild leaderboard. /nl guild ranks everyone in your guild who has NeverLucky, with no website or extra app.

Every version is in CHANGELOG.md.

Get started

1. Install NeverLucky with the CurseForge app: search for NeverLucky, or open https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/neverlucky.
2. Fully restart WoW. It only finds new addons when it starts.
3. Roll on some loot in a group, then type /nl.

On WoW Forever, also install the DungeonJournal addon by Exehn (its folder is called ForeverDungeonJournal) to turn on drop luck. NeverLucky reads its boss loot tables. Everything else works without it.

NeverLucky starts counting when you install it: the game doesn't keep past loot rolls for addons to read.

See it in action

Instant odds after every roll

One line after each roll tells you what your chances really were:

NeverLucky: Lost [Gavel of Regret] - your Need 98 vs Bob's Need 99 (you had a 25% chance). So close!
NeverLucky: Won [Moss Agate] with Greed 61 against 3 others (a 25% chance).

/nl notify turns these off.

Every dungeon and raid run

/nl current reports on the run you're in, and /nl last on the one before:

NeverLucky: Zandro's last run, Gnomeregan (Normal) - 1h 12m, left 6m ago:
    Verdict: A bit unlucky - You win a little less than you should - unluckier than 65% of players.
    Fair fights: 5 contested rolls - you won 2, your fair share is 2.5 (-20%)
    Your dice: average 42.0 over 5 rolls (fair is 50.5), 100s: 0, 1s: 0
    Luckiest win: [Whipwood Recurve Bow] with a 26
    Cruelest loss: [Polished Zweihander of the Beast] with a 90
    You won: [Whipwood Recurve Bow], [Moss Agate]

• A run is your time in one dungeon or raid. Dying and running back, a disconnect or a /reload doesn't end it, as long as you're back within 30 minutes. Another instance, another difficulty, a longer break or an instance reset starts a new run.
• A roll that finishes just after you zone out still counts for the run.
• One run rarely has the 5 fair fights a verdict needs, so many say "too early to tell". The dice, the fair share and what you won are always there.

Who's the jinx?

Type /nl group in a party or raid. Everyone with NeverLucky answers in the background:

NeverLucky: Party luck leaderboard, luckiest first:
    1. Bob - BLESSED BY RNG - won 10 of 12 fair fights (fair share 6.0)
    2. Zandro (you) - Perfectly average - won 5 of 10 fair fights (fair share 5.0), 6 of 14 rare drops for you (6.0 expected)
    3. Carl - NEVER LUCKY - won 0 of 8 fair fights (fair share 4.0)
    Too early to judge (under 5 fair fights): Erin: 2
    No answer from: Dave - they need NeverLucky 1.1.0 or newer.
    Luckiest: Bob. The group jinx: Carl.

Then it offers to post a one-line version to the group, so Carl knows.

Your whole guild, ranked

/nl guild ranks everyone in your guild who has NeverLucky, even members who are offline right now:

NeverLucky: Lucky Charms luck leaderboard, luckiest first:
    1. Bob - BLESSED BY RNG - won 13 of 16 fair fights (fair share 8.0) - heard 3 days ago
    2. Zandro (you) - Perfectly average - won 5 of 10 fair fights (fair share 5.0)
    3. Carl - NEVER LUCKY - won 0 of 8 fair fights (fair share 4.0) - heard yesterday
    Luckiest: Bob. The guild jinx: Carl.
    Too early to judge (under 5 fair fights): Erin: 2
    Heard from 5 of 7 guild members. The rest don't have NeverLucky, or haven't been online at the same time as you yet.

• No website and no extra app. Each NeverLucky quietly tells the guild its own luck when you log in and after new rolls, at most once every 5 minutes. Everyone's NeverLucky remembers what it hears, so offline members show their luck as they last told you.
• Big guilds show the top 5, your own place and the bottom 5. /nl guild all lists everyone.
• /nl guild share posts the top three and the jinx to guild chat.
• The more of your guild runs NeverLucky, the fuller the board.

Rivalries that last

Every time you and another player both roll the winning type on an item (you both Needed, say), NeverLucky records who got it and whose dice were higher. The other player doesn't need the addon.

NeverLucky: Back with Bob: you lead 2-1 over 4 shared fights (last time 1d ago).

• That line appears when an old rival joins your group.
• /nl vs lists your rivals; /nl vs Bob shows everything against Bob.
• /nl share vs Bob posts it: "NeverLucky head-to-head vs Bob: Bob leads 6-5 over 25 shared fights (14 went to someone else). Higher dice: me 9, Bob 16."

Is the loot even for you?

/nl items sorts every drop at the moment its roll window opens:

The "can't use" check reads the game's own tooltip, so it works in every game language.

Brag or complain

After /nl in a group, a small window shows the line it would post and lets you pick the channel. /nl report opens it whenever you like, solo too. /nl share posts straight away:

NeverLucky: I've won 10 of 46 contested loot rolls (fair share 11.1), and 5 of 12 rare drops were for me (7.3 expected). Verdict: Unlucky - unluckier than 92% of players.

Commands

/nl and /neverlucky both work. On Retail you can also click NeverLucky in the addon compartment (the button by the minimap).

Your luck

With other players

Posting to chat

The subject is your verdict unless you add one: current (this run), last (your last run), session, all (every character) or vs <name>. For example: /nl share guild last.

Settings and tools

How luck is measured

Your verdict has two parts, each judged the same honest way: what happened is compared with every possible outcome of your exact history.

Dice luck. A fair fight is a roll where you were in the winning roll type and at least one other player was too. If 4 people Needed and you were one of them, your fair chance was 1 in 4. Your fair share is the sum of those chances: win more than that and you're lucky. Losing a Greed to someone's Need, and winning when nobody else rolled, don't count. Dice luck counts once you have 5 fair fights.

Drop luck asks whether the rare loot that dropped was for you as often as it should have been.

• What counts: every Rare or Epic (blue or purple) piece of gear that drops in your group, whether you roll on it or not.
• What's "for you": armor of your class's best type at your level (a hunter wears leather until 40, then mail), a weapon your class can use, a shield for warriors, paladins and shamans, a libram, idol or totem for its own class, and rings, necks, trinkets, cloaks and off-hand items for everyone.
• The fair chance comes from the boss's loot table. Grubbis in Gnomeregan drops mail gloves, a shield or a leather belt. For a hunter under 40 only the belt fits, so each Grubbis drop had a 1 in 3 chance of being for them.
• Drop luck counts once you have 10 rare drops from known loot tables. The tables come from the DungeonJournal addon on WoW Forever; other clients have none, so drop luck is off there.
• /nl drops shows each drop and its table, and /nl status checks the class rules against the game's own tooltips.

The overall verdict combines the two (by Stouffer's method, for the curious). Being unlucky at both is rarer than being unlucky at either, so two "A bit unlucky" parts can add up to "Unlucky".

"Luckier than 87% of players" means that out of everyone with exactly your rolls and drops, 87% would have done worse than you.

What's shared, and what isn't

• Your item history never leaves your computer. It's saved in WoW's own SavedVariables file and nowhere else.
• The leaderboards share a handful of numbers: fair fights, wins, fair share, rare drops and the luck percentiles. They go to your group when someone there asks, and to your guild when you log in, after new rolls, and when a guildmate asks. They travel as the game's hidden addon messages, not chat.
• /nl private stops all of it. Other players then see you as "keeping their luck private".
• Nothing is posted to chat unless you say so, with the Post button or a /nl share command.
• Anything other players send is checked: numbers are capped and text is cleaned, so nobody can break your leaderboard or sneak links and colour codes onto it.

Compatibility

• WoW Forever first, plus Retail and the Classic clients (Classic Era, MoP Classic and others).
• No libraries, no hard dependencies. Every game function is looked up by name and called safely. If Blizzard renames or removes something, that one feature switches off instead of erroring.
• Any game language. Loot chat is read using the game's own text for your language.
• Three roll sources, using whatever your client has: modern loot history (Retail and WoW Forever), the older loot history some Classic clients have, and the loot chat on every client. When there's loot history, chat only fills gaps and never counts a drop twice.
• Midnight-era restrictions are handled: data the game hides from addons is skipped, and the leaderboards cope with the addon message block during boss fights and Mythic+.
• Trial and Veteran accounts can't send addon messages, so they see the leaderboards but aren't on them.

If the AddOns list says "Out of date" after a big patch, tick Load out of date AddOns on the character select AddOns screen. NeverLucky will usually still work.

What isn't counted

• Personal loot, master loot, bonus rolls and /roll: they aren't group loot rolls.
• Drops from before you installed the addon.
• On a client with only loot chat and roll spam turned off, chat only names the winner. Those drops are counted as seen, but they can't count toward dice luck.
• For drop luck: green drops, drops that aren't in any loot table, and drops saved before 1.2.0 if your armor type has changed since.
• Runs are recorded from 1.4.0 on, so older drops don't belong to any run.

Installing by hand

1. Fully quit WoW (Exit Game, not just logout).
2. Extract the zip into your AddOns folder, so you end up with Interface\AddOns\NeverLucky\NeverLucky.toc:
   • WoW Forever: World of Warcraft\_forever_\Interface\AddOns\
   • Retail: World of Warcraft\_retail_\Interface\AddOns\
   • Classic Era, Anniversary or MoP Classic: _classic_era_, _anniversary_ or _classic_, then \Interface\AddOns\
3. Start WoW, click AddOns at character select and make sure NeverLucky is ticked.
4. In game, type /nl status to check it's running.

Your data is saved per account in WTF\Account<ACCOUNT>\SavedVariables\NeverLucky.lua, one section per character. Each character keeps up to 25,000 drops, and the newest 500 keep every player's roll.