Pool block rates seem to vary a lot. Some pools I looked at had double the hashrate yet half the blocks found by another!
What other factors influence the amount of block found? Is it just luck?
The difficulty, luck and how quick you submit the found block all influence the chance of you finding a confirmed block. I know the pools vary but you can get a good idea of the hash rate needed by averaging them out.
Really though you need big hash rates to be solo mining any popular coin and you'd be struggling to get ROI I think. If you wanna solo mine keep an eye out for new coins with some potential and solo mine those while the difficulty is low.