Mana Preservation

[Huurgh]

I searched and found nothing so here my question:

How exactly does todays Mana preservation work?

a) Is it the fixed listed amount?

b) Is it on a up to listed amout base?

Ty for the answers.

[Bloxr Fatso]

Unless they've changed it over the past 3 years, mana preservation, unlike a lot of other foci, worked at the listed amount. If it was 10% mana preservation on a 100 mana spell it would cost you 90 mana (without other considerations such as spell casting mastery factored in). Damage and healing foci work from 1-n% where n is the amount of the focus. Distance, mana pres, duration, and spell haste are all set percentages.

[Sowslow]

[Brohg]

It's my understanding that spell haste and range foci, and beneficial duration foci are fixed; they always work to the full degree possible. Mana preservation, spell power, and detrimental extension foci are variable, they fluctuate every cast from 1-max% alteration of the spell data. I guess I'll be checking Bloxr's assertion this evening, since it's counter to that.

[Unmei]

Brohg is correct. Mana Preservation has never been fixed. It is a random focus between 1 and the max percent.

And yes, Detrimental Duration is random while beneficial duration is fixed. Initially when focus effects came out, beneficial duration was random too, but people got crabby about buffs wearing off at different times and it was changed.

All foci other than range, beneficial duration, and spell haste are random.

[Bloxr Fatso]

I always thought that detrimental duration was also fixed. The "extra" ticks came from when the dot actually hit and faded. For example:

If a dot with a 45 second duration AFTER the focus landed 1 second after a tick "happened," -- start+1 -- it would last to start+46 (1+45) and 46/6 is 7 (and change) letting the dot do 7 ticks worth of damage. If the dot hit 5 seconds after the tick "happened" -- start+5 -- it would last until start+50 with 50/6 being 8 (and change) letting the dot do 8 ticks worth of damage.

I'm not completely sure now because it seems that "ticks" don't work the same as far as dots go. EQ actually seems to measure things in seconds for the most part, but still has things occur after 6 seconds (such as dot damage). It used to be that when you would stack dots on separate mobs, the damage on all the mobs would occur at the same time (thus proving the idea above). Now if you stack dots on different mobs, they each start their own timer.

As for whether duration is fixed - time a dot a few times.

[Dakota]

Timed detrimental duration a while back when comparing Turgur's Swarm to TA, and did indeed confirm that detrimental duration is indeed random from 1 to X onto the duration.

[Unmei]

Gah. I can't find my stupid post on how detrimental duration works and I'm utterly too lazy to write it all up again.

Short form:

You always get 1 tick.
You only get more than 1 tick if you get a random roll on your focus that extends the spell two COMPLETE ticks or more.

So if you have a ten tick duration spell, you always get 11 with detrimental extension, but in order to get two ticks, your extension must randomly extend the spell by at least 20% - a 15% extension will just round down to one tick.