Game Mechanics: Theft of Thought

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[Ezekiel]

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[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/...ircle_(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/20010827...ML/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

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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

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?