Theft of Thought

[Qtip]

May 8, 2002 3:00 am
------------------------------

** Items **

- We've made some changes that will cause a few proccing items to be*
out of charges after the patch. Players with such items will need to*
petition and ask a GM to swap the item out with a new one
- Focus items using the "Naki's Pernicity" effects should now be*
working as intended
- Focus items that affect a spell's duration should now work for*
clickable items
- It should be impossible to equip an item that will reduce your hit*
points by more than your maximum hit points. Also, hit point reduction*
items should not lower hit points below 1
- Tinkered Compass now adds the appropriate bonus to the sense heading*
skill
- Hit point bonuses on food items should be working

** Spells **

- Higher level familiars should once again survive when their masters*
go invisible, Abscond or Evac
- Fixed a bug that was preventing the Lesser Familiar mana regeneration*
component from working
- Familiars no longer cause damage to their master upon death
- Familiar buff remains after the caster uses the /pet get lost command*
to remove the visual representation
- Torrent of Fatigue should be working properly now
- Allure of the Wild has had its level cap raised to make it a useful*
upgrade*
- Umbra has been improved to give a slightly higher AC benefit*
- A character can no longer trade with an NPC when invisible. Character*
must turn visible before starting the trade
- Characters can no longer scribe a scroll that they can't cast due to*
deity restrictions
- Invisibility should now remain after a link death
-*Theft of Thought will no longer give mana when cast on PC classes*
that do not have mana (in PvP or in a duel)
- Drain/Share spells can no longer be cast on players on blue servers,*
and can no longer be cast on group members on PvP servers. Spells*
Affected: Succession of Shadows, Crippling Claudication, Mind Wrack,*
Degeneration, Zevfeer's Theft of Vitae, Torrent of Hate, Torrent of*
Fatigue, Torrent of Pain
- Spirit Armor scroll no longer lists Shadowknights as a class that can*
use it (they couldn't anyway)
- Bard AE songs now have vertical limit of 50 feet. This is also the*
case for Mass Group Buff
- Gating and porting while in tree form should no longer cause crashes
- Removed all "Begins to cast X spell" text from procs
- Resurrection request box will now reset if you open another window*
while it is up, preventing a problem where a character is unable to be*
resurrected if he has the res box up and he loots a mob or opens a*
trade window
- Fixed a bug with lifetaps that would cause people around a lifetap to*
see, "You feel drained..." instead of "Fippy feels drained..."
- Issues with Healing seeming to be delayed have been fixed (see Spell*
Filters)
- Fixed a bug that was causing "soandso's song ends" to show up as*
"he's song ends" if the bard was targeted, "it's song ends" if not*
targeted*
- Divine Glory received a small upgrade to make it more in line with*
the spell series

** Spell Filters **

- Issues with healing seeming to be delayed should be fixed. The*
problem was with filters that allowed players to ignore spells that*
were hitting them. The following changes were needed to fix this issue
- Player characters will now always see spells that hit them and spells*
they cast
- Players with the Group option set for PC spells will see the start*
spell casting messages for people in their group and they will also see*
when member of their group are hit with spells
- Players with the ALL option will still see all PC spells and spell*
hits

** Spell Stacking **

General stacking changes: Some buffs were not being allowed to stack*
which now will stack, and other buffs were being allowed to stack which*
should not have.*

For example, many stacking problems with spells that have a See*
Invisible or Levitate component are now gone (e.g. Dead Man Floating),*
while a number of stacking exploits that granted too much regeneration,*
too much offense (ATK), too large of a damage shield, or too many hit*
points have been fixed. Here are some of the details:

- Vision abilities (natural or spell-granted) should no longer cause*
spells to fail to take hold
- Bard songs should in general overwrite fewer spells

- Harness of Spirit no longer stacks with spells that grant Strength or*
Dexterity boosts. It was never intended to do so
- Harness of Spirit and Avatar should now stack properly
- Call of the Predator and Warder's Protection should no longer stack
- Arch Lich should no longer overwrite innate racial vision abilities
- Levitate and Dead Man Floating should no longer conflict
- Dead Man Floating should no longer conflict with any vision abilities*
(natural or spell granted)
- Spirit of Eagle should no longer cancel Levitation/Levitate spells
- Fixed a stacking exploit with Armor of Protection and Armor of the*
Risen
- Focus of Spirit should no longer overwrite Visions of Grandeur
- Focus of Spirit should now stack with the Whistling Fists effect
- "Circle of" Druid spells should no longer stack with their Resist*
counterparts.*
- Shroud of Spirits and the Cloak of the Akheva should stack properly*
now
- Cantata of Soothing should no longer overwrite Clarity spells
- Cantata and Chorus of Replenishment should no longer overwrite Acumen
- Bladecoat no longer overwrites Clarity II
- Lower level druid group buffs should now be less likely to overwrite*
higher level buffs
- Avatar and Force of Nature will no longer stack
- Ancient Feral Avatar should now stack properly

** Alternate Advancement **

- Improved Familiar should now be better than Greater Familiar
- Fixed a bug with Permanent Illusion that was causing the caster to*
see his illusions drop when zoning, even if others continued to see the*
illusion
- Trolls and Iksar no longer receive double regeneration ability from*
AA abilities
- The Archetype skill Casting Deftness will no longer supercede the*
Class specific Quick Buff casting time reducing skill. Note that at*
this time there is a maximum benefit to casting time bonuses of a 50%*
reduction
- Casting deftness was changed to reflect the increases presented by*
the in-game help (5, 15 and 25%)
- Turn Summoned should now work on all summoned creatures, not just*
pets. The text should correctly say that there is only one level for*
this ability
- Improved Reclaim Energy now works with the epic pet
- Fixed a crash bug caused by Call Corpse
- Alternate Advancement abilities that affect a spell's duration should*

[Qtip]

Should be able to /duel a group member and mana tap(usually the tank). I dont know if this is a bug on the red server as well, but currently doesnt work.

[Azlani]

Whoa. Nice find. That's huge for enchanters. Bards finally have charm mana again, too!

[Qtip]

Any response by gms on this issue?

[Snackies]

The patch date referenced above appears to be post-luclin release and wouldn't be in the timeline of p99.

[Daldaen]

Yes but that's how it functions on P99 now.

From Kunark - That patch you should be able to get mana when ToTing a Melee.

However on P99 you cannot. So we are in Luclin era regarding this mechanic which is incorrect.

[Colgate]

does theft of thought still take mana from bards?

i think it does, but it shouldn't

[ducktv]

does theft of thought still take mana from bards?

i think it does, but it shouldn't

yeah its not supposed to drain a bards mana iirc. but bards don't need mana anymore because dirge is garbage. so they're pretty much just mana batteries.

[Daldaen]

Bards should only lose mana using 2nd charm and Dirge.

No mana drain effects should function on bards because of special bard coding.

[Qtip]

Bump any word from Gms? More information needed?

[Qtip]

Bump for my enchanter friends!

[Qtip]

Bump for all my enchanter brothers of norrath.

[Qtip]

Bump

[Qtip]

Pmub

[Qtip]

Bump for my enchanter pals.

[evilkorn]

It also does drain mana from bards, not that it's a big deal if you aren't charming.

[Qtip]

Should be able to tap any class. Also you should be able to tap pets(dont know if this currently works or not). I seen nizzarr made a post about this 4 years ago and no gm responded.

I posted the patch notes. If a dev could respond and let me know what other information I need to post I will. You also couldnt mana tap npcs without mana.

[Qtip]

Bump. See you all in another month when I bump this again. Stay strong my enchanter buddies.

[Qtip]

☆☆BUMP☆☆

[-Catherin-]

bump

[-Catherin-]

^

[Qtip]

^^

[-Catherin-]

^

[Ezekiel]

^

[Rygar]

FYI I think in cases like this it is important to establish this was a consistent behavior of the spell in the initial bug report. Who is to say there was a glitch from the previous patch and it was not working as intended, then fixed with this patch?

I recall finding mention of this behavior happening in era, even if it wasn't well known, but I think a major change such as this warrants a little bit of in era corroboration.

When I get some time I'll dig up a few posts. To clarify, I do believe it should be fixed and am not doubting the change, but perhaps the devs want a bit more reassurance.

[Aalderon Crystafire]

While more research is never a bad thing I wouldn't assume necessarily that that is what is holding this up -- patch notes are a very strong indicator, after all. I imagine that the coding for this could take some work -- with it affecting PCs without mana bars but not NPCs -- I don't see the evidence for it working on pets, however?

[Rygar]

I'm not sure about the pet angle, they did make a change earlier in timeline that made pets no longer count as NPCs and made them 'more PC like'. So not sure if that would work exactly.

I did try and find some more evidence of this working, it does have an interesting drawback:
http://www.members.tripod.com/xornn/Circles/13th_circle_(51).htm
Theft of Thought - I mentioned one of those spells you can't imagine not having... this is one of them. 25 mana per cast, which you target a caster with. 2 seconds later you will have 346 mana (51st) to 400 mana (60th) from your target. Wandering Mind move over, there's a new mana tap in town. The recast, 2 minutes--which is a pain, but when you've got a lot of mezzing to do, regaining 20% of your mana bar every two minutes is really nice. If your group won't leave a caster mob till the last kill of a multiple pull, train them, it's just free mana waiting for you. Now, in addition to this, there's a handy little trick you can use when you find yourself low on mana (and needing it badly) with no casters around. /duel someone in your group, whichever you like. You will no longer be able to buff them, but you can both /camp when death is not imminent. You can cast Theft of Thought on anyone you're dueling, and even if they don't have mana, it will still tap them. They will also fall victim to PB stuns, AoE Mezzing, and any mistarget casts you have, so take care. Still, when you have 10% mana and you're going to lose control of the fight, that monk over there is a limitless source of mana just begging to be tapped.

I believe this guide is referenced a bunch from back in the day, so pretty sure it's classic. Kind of would be a pain to be a melee and get tapped for mana, but then can't receive haste buffs (didn't realize you couldn't get buffs). Obviously AoE stun on charm breaks will be a thing too.

Also, in digging around I found some interesting tidbits on how there is diminishing returns when the target is level 53+:
https://web.archive.org/web/20010827202051/http://boards.station.sony.com:80/ubb/everquest/Forum1/HTML/000151.html
If ToT always pulls the same amount of mana and scales up with level, could you please explain why the mana bar barely moves when you ToT mobs over level 55. Example, if I TOT a mob under 55 I can get 1 bubble of mana back, but if I do over 55 I might get a quarter of a bubble.
Thanks for your time.

Areppaz

***************************

Sure, easy really.

The amount taken and given by the spell is based on level, just like damage spells. Also just like damage spells, Theft of Thought can be partially resisted. So if you get less mana back, that's because the NPC partially resisted the spell.

Im using ToT on mobs one common thing seems to happen, the higher level the mob the less you receive back into your mana pool.

I can understand this from a resist point of view or whatever (personally i would rather it be a stable amount like harvest), but my question is this;

Does the gain back into ones mana bar refloect how much was taken from the mob? Or do you always take a set amount from the mob, its just how much you receive that is level dependant?

Theft of Thought takes a set amount of Mana from your target and returns it to you. This amount scales up as you level. The numbers will be the same for both sides, meaning if you take 100 mana from the target you will get 100 mana. The mana stolen, and the mana returned are both level dependant.

Now granted this says level 55 mobs, there are 2005 developer comments regarding class re-envisioning, saying there was diminishing returns over level 53:
3/15/2005 (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/alt.games.everquest/theft$20of$20thought$2053|sort:date/alt.games.everquest/BXVLNja1dXs/HQhFptlA4Q8J)
We plan to change the way mana drain works. In the past the spell had
diminishing effects on NPCs above level 53. We will be removing that
limitation so you can use Theft of Thought on higher level caster NPCs and
we can introduce more powerful spells in that line, in the future. However,
we will also be changing drains so that they only return the mana the NPC
has instead of always returning the full amount. If an NPC only has 100
mana and your spell does a 400 drain, you will only get 100 mana. This is a
necessary change as most NPCs, including non-casters, are given small
amounts of mana in order to power some innates.

The 2nd bolded statement is also interesting regarding 'given small amounts of mana in order to power some innates'. I wouldn't put it past some archaic coding work around where procing weapons or clickies had to verify you had a mana pool since you were technically casting a spell, so perhaps melee classes had 1 mana in their mana pool to bypass this problem and also enabled ToT to work on them? Seems to imply some NPCs were also like this.

Regardless, it did confirm that even with a small amount of mana you still would get full effect from a melee PC ToT tap (but perhaps partial only if they are level 54+)

[Brocode]

is that a thing?