UO Second Age

Forgive me if this was already brought up, but..

Mini-update with small fixes Feb 26 1999 11:25AM

The mana drain and mana vampire spells have had the chance of being resisted raised substantially.

This patch note seems to imply that prior to the patch date, these spells were more useful than after the patch date. I'm wondering where UOSA mana drain/mana vampire falls into this?

It's hard to tell with something like this, because back then high resist was rare, while here and now high resist is a must.

Thanks.

Now, this is something i would like to see more in new-skool uo pvp. Mana drain was actually used back in the day, i have yet to see a free-server bring this to the fore-front.

As for the resist debate, i'd like to say most pvper's had 9X.X resist back in the day. Atleast in the guilds i was apart of, if you didnt have 90 something resist, they either helped you get it or they verbally abused you until you got it. There were also bugs to GM resist quickly.

I don't know what the resist table for mana drain was, but I do know resist didn't effect how much mana it 'drained.' It either worked or it didnt, and when it did all your mana was gone! Eval might of played a role in your chances of succeeding as well.

Creager wrote: As for the resist debate, i'd like to say most pvper's had 9X.X resist back in the day. Atleast in the guilds i was apart of, if you didnt have 90 something resist, they either helped you get it or they verbally abused you until you got it. There were also bugs to GM resist quickly.

I don't know what the resist table for mana drain was, but I do know resist didn't effect how much mana it 'drained.' It either worked or it didnt, and when it did all your mana was gone! Eval might of played a role in your chances of succeeding as well.

Tank mages use to use mana drain at places like the Blood Elementals to keep them at 0% while EVing them. This would get more tank mages farming (that Lich lord room update should also help). T2A Tankmage farming was very easy and very effective and it created more opportunities for pvp to occur outside of the few "local hot spots" on each server.

On my 0% eval Tamers, I use mana vampire constantly. It's my 2nd most use offensive spell!

bump? doesn't seem like there has been any progress on this area.

Mana Vampire has some potential Mana Drain being fourth circle is easily resisted.

ONSLAAAAAAAAAAAUGHT

Mana drain was always fairly easy to resist, but it did work, even on people with GM resist. I know back before everyone was using vent, my guild on ATL would have one guy use mana drain as a lead off spell in group fights. We used it to signal who the target was, then the rest of us would dump on him. If it didn't work, then so be it, normal fight ensued. But when it worked, the target was screwed, & his guildies were all busy trying to heal him instead of being able to fight back.

I won't say we were the only ones that used this tactic, but we were the only ones I ever saw doing it. That always surprised me since it was pretty damn effective for us & how we used it, any time it worked we were at a huge advantage right off the bat.

I was searching for information on this topic in 2006 after Divinity went live and found a post made by Runesabre (Kirk Black, ex-Lead Programmer) in late 1999 stating that the chance-to-resist Mana Drain and Mana Vampire was simply a flat 80% at the time.

Unfortunately, neither the original post or its archived version at the old Moongates Update Journal (now deceased) are archived.

I wonder if there is anything in the demo code that can shed some light on this?

The severe gimping of Mana Drain and Mana Vamp came with the resist changes in early 1999 I belive.

uniqueuser wrote:...in late 1999 stating that the chance-to-resist Mana Drain and Mana Vampire was simply a flat 80% at the time.

At GM resist?

The spells Mana Drain and Mana Vampire work slightly differently. The calculation for the chance-to-resist these two spells is known to be similar, if not identical to the calculation for direct damage spells. However, instead of reducing their effects by half, when these spells are resisted, they are completely resisted, having NO AFFECT on their target. When they are not resisted, they take a percentage of Mana OUT of their target's attributes. In the case of Mana Vampire, that mana is given to the attackers attributes. How this percentage of mana is calculated, noone seems to know. Observations seem to show that these spells can take as much as 65-75% to as little as 30% of the mana currently available to the defender....

http://www.uosecondage.com/stratics/UOS ... igence.htm

Derrick wrote:The severe gimping of Mana Drain and Mana Vamp came with the resist changes in early 1999 I belive.

uniqueuser wrote:...in late 1999 stating that the chance-to-resist Mana Drain and Mana Vampire was simply a flat 80% at the time.

At GM resist?

At any resist.

Thinking of playing UO again, so I resumed my search into this and found what I missed last time:

Post #761:
Original url: http://cob.xrgaming.net/devboard/messages/2706.html
From:Runesabre Date:September 28, 1999 at 8:15 pm In Reply to:Red name please fix this VERY ANNOYING..... Subject:I would suggest running some tests or visit...

... the UOVault Mage Tower and see what they have to say.

Mana drain and Mana Vampire are treated specially. Regardless of your Magic Resist level, you will completely resist a Mana Drain or Mana Vamp 80% of the time.

Source

The complete dev archives can be found here.

Was this ever addressed?