Spells: Torpor Mana Expenditure

[Dolalin]

That could be true.

[DMN]

The idea of someone unintentionally coding in a novel mana reduction on a per tick basis into a spell seems incredibly unlikely. But Verant's patch messages were notoriousy unreliable/vague.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by DMN [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The idea of someone unintentionally coding in a novel mana reduction on a per tick basis into a spell seems incredibly unlikely. But Verant's patch messages were notoriousy unreliable/vague.

I wouldn't think about software development as having "unintentional coding". What probably happened was the programming team was tasked with creating the mana drain feature on spells. But after it was coded and implemented, the game designers, qa testers. etc. discovered that the mana drain feature wasn't a good idea for any of the spells that were being released for the expansion they were currently working on.

Instead of deleting the feature (which can be dangerous in a live codebase, and it could be used later on), they decided to just disable the feature on all of the spells that had it. But they forgot to disable it, and so a bug was created, because the spell had mana drain when it shouldn't.

[DMN]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I wouldn't think about software development as having "unintentional coding". What probably happened was the programming team was tasked with creating the mana drain feature on spells. But after it was coded and implemented, the game designers, qa testers. etc. discovered that the mana drain feature wasn't a good idea for any of the spells that were being released for the expansion they were currently working on.

Instead of deleting the feature (which can be dangerous in a live codebase, and it could be used later on), they decided to just disable the feature on all of the spells that had it. But they forgot to disable it, and so a bug was created, because the spell had mana drain when it shouldn't.

Maybe if the mana drain component of the spell had been there day one of kunark's release, but there was a decent bit of time before the spell received the nerf. I'd imagine 99% of shaman never saw the un-nerfed version of the spell in those days, which is also why it's sad to see this not being reflected on green since it'sa a grotesque distortion of what the situation really was for a level 60 shaman.

i suspect if it truly was unintentional, that what happened was they were monkeying around with ways to make it more balanced. Keep in mind the original cost only 100 mana. They could have finally decided that simply doubling the mana cost was enough of a nerf for balance's sake but actually left the mana drain portion in too essentially double nerfing it.

[Nirgon]

It has the movement and melee snare for physical dealers and a mana drain component for casters and hybrids.

We've seen "drain others mana too" with th evacs so it's not entirely unique.

Rather than a huge cost for the spell, it drains from the target. Makes sense given the cost.

[Keebz]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

What probably happened was the programming team was tasked with creating the mana drain feature on spells. But after it was coded and implemented, the game designers, qa testers. etc. discovered that the mana drain feature wasn't a good idea for any of the spells that were being released for the expansion they were currently working on.

This or something like it is extremely plausible. I'm imagining this was a change for test that accidentally got promoted to production, likely lumped in with a bunch of other changes.

This happens in modern software all the time and who knows what version control and deployment system they were using way back when.

[Jimjam]

Originally Posted by Nirgon [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It has the movement and melee snare for physical dealers and a mana drain component for casters and hybrids.

We've seen "drain others mana too" with th evacs so it's not entirely unique.

Rather than a huge cost for the spell, it drains from the target. Makes sense given the cost.

Shamans had another spell that drained mana too at some point, one of their self only ‘melee mode’ ones.