It sounds like with loot 2.0 you're noticing some extra TT when you load up a mob with some overkill.
At 20 - 33% damage per hit you're often hitting a mob with roughly 10 - 30% more TT than it takes to kill it, and the loot 2.0 engine will definitely compensate you for this by adding more shrapnel to your loot.
This is easy to test for. Moving ar-matrix 30 to clericdagger 3c (~ 60% eff. vs ~24% eff should be reducing loot by something like 2.5%) was moving my "base" return on small longtooth from 2.xx to 4.xx per kill. Smaller mobs give similar results every time. Proportionately,of course.
That 'session' was a large TT loss overall, BTW. Lots of fun though. You're going to see the exact same returns over time doing this consistently but also, as long as things are working correctly wreck your loot quality for large stacks of shrapnel.
I've done a lot of small testing on loot quantity effects but loot quality is more nebulous, MA haven't given us nearly the info on that but I find that handling the kill in 20 - 45 seconds leaves me with occasional drops of extractors, hides, hairspray, partial TT items, etcetera. Regardless of mob.
High regen or big fat mobs allow for more time spent loading the TT input but have a little higher risk of volatility of course... I've been hunting ambu a few times a week lately and swapping from Ar-Matrix 30 to Enigma L3 CDF i don't really notice a significant overall change. The L3 gives me slightly faster kills (+ about 18% DPS for the same level and weapon efficiency within a couple percent) but moving the kill from 30 - 35 shots to 25 - 30 shots still seems less important than whatever mood lootius is in today.
Walking away from a 200 PED session at ambu doesn't feel significantly different with either gun. More ambu with the higher DPS but less TT input per kill not battling their regen as much means that if the increased kill count doesn't pay off in an extra multi or two, it's not notably different to the TT result of the hunt. Strict logging over a few thousand kills might show a clear effect of the average 18% increase in kill speed on loot quality but as long as it's still in that 20 - 45 seconds per kill the paint cans and extractors continue to drop on occasion.
I went and hunted some levi and let me just confirm that you DEFINITELY don't want to be taking a few minutes soloing a mob and then loot it with <20 looter. So many 2.xx PED levi that a 67 PED global sort of pissed me off.
Anyways some of this is only related to your question but it sounds to me exactly like you're pumping in extra TT and still basing your average loot expectations on a loot 1.0 style fixed TT input based on the mob's HP. This will come back for you in loot quality (probably) but if you're hitting good multis with the turnover it might be less overall hassle than managing stacks of low TT loot with MV.
There's a lot you can do to affect loot right now. I'm not even vaguely sure the impact of over armoring on loot quality but based on realizing the other day that what I though may have been healing loot from 2 pec decay on divine intervention was probably shared loot based on armor decay I took healing hunters at the event.
If I can find a friendly group or hunter today I might get some screencaps of me taking loot without ever shooting or healing at all, in a shared event spawn. I got loot going into the fort lahar event last night to make a waypoint for a player, and I never even equipped a weapon or healing tool. That cleared up the Divine Intervention mystery right away.
Ok I'm swerving off topic because of the armor thing but in relation to what you're saying here, I don't think more DPS is going to change the overall situation a lot. There are lots of things you can use to overkill a mob and in other people's testing as well as mine it has a clear and immediate impact to the loot.
If you're not carrying this out to thousands of events (yet, I know you just got back) the end result may not be clear but in the end you should be walking away with a similar TT return overall. Taking a little more time may result in you receiving more interesting loot.
For the armoring thing, it's a classic compromise. If you are hunting that far downlevel you should probably ditch the armor when you're able to focus on hunting. It's good for your avatar. But IDC about standing in a could of punies in mah'ketta or gremlin /5b it's so much cheaper to wear armor right now.
Seeing armor decay returned as loot even when not shooting or healing a shooter has got me fascinated at the moment. It brings me back around to questions about healer loot and defense costs being returned in general. And also my last sentence about building your skills. TBH maybe you would rather add straight TT to the input for the loot event, than skill at this stage.
I wonder what happens if I feed an extra 10 PED tt into a maff before someone kills it. I wonder if it has to be actually armor, of if it can be my car.
Sorry, that's a lot of extra information, but it sounds like you might be interested. I had a great time figuring out that as long as I kept an equivalent ar-matrix around for backup during periods when DPS swing low I can do just fine for a while (hunting appropriate mobs of course) with a FreanD Delta as the ar-matrix in terms of average TT over a few hundred or couple thousand events.
This saves quite a bit on (L) MU but if you get distracted and carry on during the wrong times the system will take back any savings with a long streak of low average damage per hit and rather than turning into an "overkill bonus" situation you're moving into flat inefficiency. It also means that during those times you are feeding a little extra into the bonus pool.
I love that bonus pool. It forgives so much. Second Shrapnel has saved many a session for me now.
It's a big thing to get used to, that you're controlling (well, managing) the TT input to a hunting loot event which is something that wasn't even a consideration in the old system. The nice part though (for some people, I guess) is that it still seems to be the same old multi cycle pseudoRNG in the heart of it.
Knowledge of certain aspects of the loot engine reaching all the way back to PE still seems applicable. It's mainly only a certain type of player that's screaming about the change. But all of the information that MA has shared is pretty easily tested and accounted for so far.
I still have real questions about how the two direct modifiers to loot quantity are applied but so far no word from them on that. I don't have a specific test plan for that as it would take at least two committed hunters with very different looter levels using a mix of weapons and probably losing PED the whole time at the same mob. It still might not prove anything conclusive and I'm not even interested in the turnover required.
A little carried away again, sorry. Despite some people's comments about entropialife I like this stuff, and exploring loot 2.0 is definitely part of what brought back my interest in the game. After "Loot v2015 - v2017" how could it not? IMO TT+ beats swirls every day of the week.
Continue keeping your eyes open to small changes. Manage your attachments and gear to keep efficiency high at the damager and you can push for more TT or more MV depending on what your style is.
Get your looter level up. 100% that's my top new priority for "avatar development" right now even over dodge/evade. It's exactly the earned bit of VIP adjustment the grinders were asking for and while I don't think it's unfair, honestly - I think it's a lot bigger blow than the "weapon efficiency" nerf.
Enough DPS to kill an eomon in 3-5 hits is probably going to produce one amazing stack of shrapnel
I don't think anyone hoping for item drops wants to do this to their loot quality.