If the battle was Hard it actually makes it more likely that you destroyed all the enemy armor in the process. I’ve heard one strategy was Nets and Daggers, and preserve the armor or other loot possibly. Of course as you’ve said yourself, very little is random about the loot of goblins being goblin loot. In fact, you can pick up the loot yourself during the battle, stand over something you killed, pick up the goblin pike or whatever. Highly correlated.
