Hmm, tough one, I personally don't see randomness a problem at all, in fact, I think it's best solution. I of course prefer to be the one who gets a "Luck of the gambler 7.5% recharge" and all that but the great thing about CoH was that even if I didn't get it, I could go to the AH and purchase it because not having the "binds on pick up" and "binds on equip" items was one of the best decisions in a MMO.
Between I9 and I13, Ah prices were reasonable, heck, I remember purchasing said Luck of the gambler recipes for 1.5 milion inf, unfortunately, with the launch of I13 and Synapse's infamous Reward Merits, AH prices went bonkers and never recovered.
Can't blame Synapse, theorically, it was a master movement, he screwed up the game and made a living out of monitoring his mess, in fact, it was even reinforced with new kinds of currencies, merits, tickets, heck, at some stage I was expecting Monopoly notes to be a CoH valid currency.
Anyway, sorry for drifting, point is, random drops are perfectly acceptable providing everything can be bought in AH while keeping AH prices and game currencies under control.-