This is a simple question. I assumed that brass would modify Ervaj to take away more mana, but Cadsuane mentioned in Discord that it definitely does not modify spells in PvP. I tested this with and without mod in PvP, and I got the exact same results for % of mana drained. My question is whether or not the effect works on PCs. Has anyone run any tests with and without a horn mod to see how many casts it takes to drain a mob? Do any of the devs want to chime in? Thanks
I don't have any definitive proof (game code) of what effects are not modified so I guessed. The positive mana effect is obviously not modified or it would mean you need to always equip a lute for the AoE regen songs and they would be very strong. Because that same effect is used for the mana drain, I thought that maybe that one is an exception and should be modified, but that would put the bard song at 858 mana drained every 10 sec and the best enchanter drain is 400 mana with a 2 min recast, so it didn't seem right to me. I checked my notes and I actually didn't implement this part, but for NPCs they should be drained half the effect value and 1/3rd the value if they're above level 54, capped to -105. I found this in the game code and it would make the mods all moot because even unmodded it would cap out. I'm not sure if anybody really did much science on this on real EQ, but I guess my own memory of these things from early Vox raids is that they were ineffective every time people tried them, perhaps this is why. This cap is only on NPCs and of course bards aren't affected by mana spells, positive or negative. Edit: Another thing that I thought might be true is that 'instant' non buff mana like the level 32 song would be modified and that's why the cap was in place for the negative only.. it sortof looks that way to me in the client, but that would mean pumping that song would be very beneficial and possibly force some degenerate gameplay like when people were making mages put mod rods on the ground in velious. Maybe this is right though.. it would pump 27 mana per cast with max mod.
I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that there is a positive bard mana song that is affected by stringed mod? That's pretty neat. I would be inclined to think that this mana drain song should be modified. My reasons are as follows: As you mentioned, it is instant rather than a pulse. Back when the song was released, an easy to equip instrument from Siren's Grotto still had the best available mod outside of Puretone. The best horn from VT didn't even have a better mod. It seems to me the devs wanted to keep that low for a reason. Even in PoP, a better mod is hard to come by. To beat that mod you need to blow Puretone, get a rare drop from fire, get a super rare horn from PoV, or be in a guild that can kill RZ. Bard songs are often the best in class when compared to abilities of other classes. They are generally balanced by short duration, long recast, or a huge mana requirement. I also have a bard spreadsheet that shows that song as modded. That spreadsheet has been very reliable compared to what I've seen on TAKP, and it was compiled around our timeframe. It also shows the max modded mana drain as 747 rather than 858. All that being said, I still think it's up in the air. Are any of the old bard message boards still around? Another point that is a bit confusing to me. Is the max mod for all bard skills 3.7 when all AAs are applied? That sheet shows that as our max, but it also calculates past that if you are holding a bigger mod.
Ya, "the master spreadsheet" from way back when was my only found reference for why I thought it should be modified when I brought it up to solar long ago.
Max mod is 3.9, it's just effect_value * 3.9 but the effect value depends on the formula, not necessarily what the bare value is in the spell data. I am looking at it now and playing around with it, I think that negative mana drain should be modded but capped at -105 when affecting NPCs level >= 55 and 1/2 of the effect value for lower level ones (but no cap, so 429 with max mod). I think that the level 20 and level 32 singing mana songs should be modded as it's the same effect and fixing this would implicitly make that work too. What I didn't notice before is that this is only for instant spells not buffs like Chorus of Marr. That means only the mana drains and those low level non-buff mana granting songs.
Wow, Cassy would be extremely strong if modified. Especially since you can pulse it twice per tick. It's already 14 mana per tick if you pulse it steadily -- competitive with Marr at 21 per tick -- and they stack. Max-modded Cassy pulsed twice per tick would be floor(3.9*7*2) = 54 mana per tick, stackable with Marr. It would make everyone in your group regen mana faster than a level 65 necro who has Marr. And then you could stack Marr on top of it.
Are you saying that if you fix the mod, the level 60 mana drain will only drain will be capped at 105 mana on mobs that are >=55? That's pretty cool about the low level mana songs. Maybe they'll actually be useful after deaths.
Cassy is already extremely useful, IMO. Pulsing it and tapping your Water lute is 35 mana per tick, 67% higher than the 21 from Marr alone. With mods, Cassy + lute would cap out at 75 mana per tick, 357% higher than Marr alone.
I never knew that. I just assumed they didn't stack. I guess you should never assume mechanics work a certain way in EQ.
I don't know, I found this stuff in the client, and it looks like that to me, but it no longer works this way on live so I can't check there - they converted those low level bard songs to buffs, which don't get modded and don't stack, maybe because of this? As Pithy points out, bards are strong mana batteries, and multiple can be stacked in a group, though I imagine this is about as much fun as putting mod rods on the ground is for mages.
Wow... crazy thought, Pithy! Too bad very few people actually actively play bards! *mumbles to self that Pithy's theory craft would lead to countless wizard deaths and necros would never hit sit, other than to get out of FD*
Here's what @Delorne wrote about Cassy on the AK Tem forums summarizing what our bards knew back in 2010: He and a couple of other bards talked about testing whether singing mods affected Cassy, but as far as I can tell, no one ever posted test results. So yeah, no real help, other than perhaps a vague intuition that smart folks knew about it and they probably would've noticed if it gave 50+ mana per tick modded. But who knows.
I can't think of a good way to tell how much mana an NPC has and it was hard to tell how much mana a PC had since it's not shown in the UI. Seems like those things contributed to keeping this stuff a mystery. Maybe the bards burned the test results because they didn't want to be told to pump mana and stand around while other people play even more. I verified that our client does expect 27 mana to be given with max mod for Cassindra`s Chorus of Clarity, and we desync by giving 7 (though it fixes itself each tick) so I will see about correcting this along with reducing the effect of mana drains on higher level NPCs.
I'd strongly doubt that the original manasong was ever modded on live. It would have been so easy to test and everyone would have known, with a playerbase of hundreds of thousands. Perhaps the behavior of mana-bars occasionally decreasing by a pixel or 2 when attempting to cast a spell was related to a client-server communication that relates to the intentional desync you mention, and the server (on old live even) did the same thing you are doing now? And is there a possibility, or probability, that the server-side calc for mana drain also was different from what the client was programmed to expect? we all know what a CF the code for bards is
Anything is possible, but I disagree that it would have been easy to test or that everyone would have known. Because of how EQ works with most of the processing happening on the clients, there is a lot of game logic that we can observe, like the way animations work or the collision with the terrain, those are 100% correct observations we can rely on because that's how it works, it's on the client. The server we work on then has to just be made to track the game state the same way as the client as much as possible. We are not yet able to emulate player model collisions the way the client does, but that would be cool. We also know that even Sony didn't get it 100% right with keeping the client and server in sync everywhere they needed to, there are lots of bugs in this game. There are also some things that we find in the client just by luck - things that don't need to be there, are not executed during normal play, but made it into the game files because they were not explicitly excluded during the game build. Those things are more questionable, it's possible that the version in the client is outdated or incomplete, but all of this is just guesswork and trying to get it close to real EQ. Some outdated or incomplete version of Sony's logic is still pretty good compared to something we just make up. This particular one is code that the client actually executes so I'm more confident in it. If I'm wrong and we discover more information about it, we can improve it again, but right now this looks best to me. The reductions on NPC mana drain rate probably only makes full sense if we knew the correct mana pools for NPCs. The modding will benefit bard drains on lower level NPCs but it is mostly useless to drain things when you can just nuke them instead, IMO. The modding on the pumpable/stackable mana regeneration songs makes this far from a nerf as you can see below. Here is the full detail: SPA 15 (what Sony calls it), SE_CurrentMana in eqemu, should work like this if it's an instant spell: If it's an instant spell, not a buff/debuff, apply the bard mod to the effect value. This only applies to 4 songs: Cassindra`s Chorus of Clarity, Denon`s Dissension, Cassindra`s Chant of Clarity, Ervaj's Lost Composition This applies to all instant mana spells not just bard: If the target is an NPC level 1-51 = effect value is not reduced level 53-54 = effect value is divided by 2 level 55+ = effect value is divided by 3, capped to -105 Here is how Cassindra`s Chorus of Clarity works with easily obtained mods: No mods - 7 mana Singing Mastery AA and no special equipment/buffs: 11 mana AA + Singing Short Sword: 16 mana AA + SSS + Voice of the Serpent: 21 mana AA + SSS + VotS + Amplification: 27 mana (max mod) To figure out your modded value just look up the item's mod value, for example Visor of the Berserker is 2.2, and the AA gives 0.6, you add those together and multiply by the effect value. Some people would say it's +1.2 or +120% instead of 2.2, meaning they're assuming the 1.0 base value and adding instead of just multiplying but it's just a different way to describe the same thing. Chorus of Marr is only 18 mana per tick.
I don't know all that much about barding but I'd agree with Cadsuane that the particular issue of Cassindra's and modifiers would have been very easy to test. (Group any epic bard with any caster. Strip caster of mana regen gear, buffs, and stand. Unwield epic on bard. Empty caster's mana bar to x%. Pulse Cassindra's until it reaches y%. Count pulses. Wield epic on bard and repeat test. Roughly same number of pulses or significant difference? Even in "non baseline" cases - caster has innate mana regen, bard has AA - you'd see the difference right away?) Maybe I'm overlooking something; and of course it's still a "would have been" EDIT: It's not much of a hint but at https://thedruidsgrove.org/archive/eq/t-2481.html roughly mid-page someone said Also, Cassandra's Chorus of Clarity (level 32 bard-song) can add 7/tick, but it is a Singing skill. If the bard is wearing a cloak from Shei Vinitras, and/or has the relevant AAs, this figure can reach very significant values.More mysteries... what about epic? Might have forgotten to mention; might not have been effective on song for whatsoever reason. But may be something for "pro modifiers on Cassindra's".
I decided to search the documentation portion of THE bard spreadsheet. I found some interesting notes. Line 56: " Manadrain(60) has now been found (Thanks Janlara)." -Maybe googling things like Ervaj + Janlara + Manadrain could turn up more information on how that was found. I assume Solar is correct though. Line 85: "Cassindra's Chorus of Clarity (32) is no longer pulse-based and no longer stacks with itself." -I take this to mean that the song was changed rather than the calculation. Does this mean it was stackable during our timeline? Edit: I just realized that I should have posted the version. I have been using 4.24. I just found that 4.23 was posted on 3/24/2004 as a reference. I found that in The Concert Hall.
More information from 2002 regarding Ervaj: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/theconcerthall/viewtopic.php?p=15393#p15393 "ok song specs, 18ish sec recast, brass bace song. epic boosts it to about 350-380 mana drain. didnt try with puretone." "A brief test in PVP at the bazaar last night demonstrated a 400-450 mana drain with puretone, that amplification didnt increase it. I don't have the epic yet so I cant confirm an extra bonus with it (gut feeling is no ,as it's brass based) It did appear to stack (2 lvl 60s bards drained "victims" twice as quickly as one alone)" "I got this song yesterday as well. I did some brief PvP testing, so here's what I found. Singing (No Epic) - Just under one half bubble of pally mana. (About a 220 drain) With horn (Immaculate Shell horn) - Just over a full bubble of pally mana. (His best guess was 400 to 450 mana.) So in my opinion, for non-epic bards, this is another song that definately benefits from instrument swapping.Raido" Interesting that it was actually working in PvP back then.
The drain amount reduction above level 52 only applies to NPCs and it will be modded after patch. You can drain 220 x 3.9 = 858 mana from a PC with max mod, which is pretty stupid but EQ PvP is that way. Thanks for bringing this up, it's always nice to find subtle things like this.
The level 32 mana stacking thing is pretty interesting. I'm a bit into this read, but it looks like it should only be able to land once per tick. Otherwise it would have created some phantom mana. It is affected by mods as well according to people from in our era. https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/theconcerthall/32-manasong-and-instrument-mods-t3270.html
It's hilarious that I started this whole investigation ages ago because I wanted to more reliably stop sneks from gating/healing in ssra using bard manadrain. Now it will be even weaker, while PVP drain will be massive
That's interesting, that sounds almost like how I had it before, different regen on client and server, though it's unclear if that person's issue is purely from bard song or something else contributing to the desync. There were other instances of these types of client prediction desyncs in that era, one I vividly remember from Velious is Aaryonar's Cloud of Disempowerment. For whatever reason, even though walls blocked this, the buff packet was still sent to nearby clients who were not actually affected on the server, so they would see their mana disappear, but using a clicky would re-sync it temporarily, like that post describes. Phantom mana disappearing. I looked at trying to find a way to disable the client side 'regen prediction' and there doesn't seem to be a way without excessive hackery, so the best we can do is overwrite the client mana regularly with what the server thinks the mana is. As I was saying, it seems easy to test it now, but that post describes people's attempts at doing just that but there wasn't a clear display of true mana on the client, and even the mana bar could fall out of sync with the server, further confusing the situation.
Yep. The desync thing sounds like it affected more than just bard songs. They could force what you implemented by using clicky spells to cause an update. It was like the client would guess, but it needed the server to approve the guess, which would only happen when you attempted to cast a spell. They did seem to settle on an agreement to how the song itself worked, but they never did figure out everything that caused the desync. My guesses from the evidence presented in the thread are: Server only allows one pulse of each type of song per tick Client didn't ask for a server mana check until you attempted to cast any type of spell People would stand after seeing a client tick but before a server tick when trying to kite Gnomes At one point someone mentioned that there was drift between the server and the log. I guess a bad clock over at HQ or locally could have played a role as well.
Regardless of accuracy, giving bards an infinitely stackable 54 mana/tick song seems like a terrible idea.
could have a competition to see how quickly someone can get full mana after dying with 5 bards in group pulsing 50mana/tick each
It does, but the thread specifically states that you could only benefit from one pulse per tick. That still seems like an insane amount, but at least it isn't hundreds of mana per tick.
I dont understand how it would limit you. Its not a buff. Its like saying you could only be healed once per tick. There is no buff icon associated. It just adds mana when landing
