Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 268 - 277 Spelly Thief

Chapter 268: Chapter 277 Spelly Thief

Players in Instructor Ding’s team did have some with good attitudes, still joking around on the voice channel to comfort him.

"Just wait, tomorrow you’ll be all over the streaming platforms’ hot search: Shocking! Big-time streamer quits overnight, all because of unlucky draws!"

"I think the main issue here is you, Instructor. You’re the leader after all. You’re unlucky, so the whole team gets dragged down."

"We might as well not call ourselves the Brotherhood Guild anymore. Let’s just change our name to ’Black Hand Legion,’ and Brother Ding, you can be the biggest Black Hand."

Instructor Ding wasn’t having any of it: "Nonsense! I haven’t even touched the boss yet. How did I become the Black Hand?"

The teasing continued: "True, you haven’t touched the boss, but you don’t even get the chance to! You’re the leader and the first one in the instance, yet every single time, the final boss respawns at the first spot. If you don’t take the blame, who will?"

Instructor Ding felt helpless and could only gather his spirits to continue leading his team to tackle new challenges.

Of course, you might wonder if repeatedly wiping had any point. Although not very useful, it did indeed carry some benefit.

The team’s coordination was gradually improving. Everyone was dodging skills more adeptly and handling certain mechanics with greater ease.

But the same problem remained, once it reached the third phase, the team would quickly wipe due to the healers running out of mana. They couldn’t maintain healthy health bars for the entire team, and the frequent spawns of small mobs were beyond the team’s area of effect capabilities. To top it off, the boss had too much health to focus-fire down.

Instructor Ding could only repeat the strategy over and over, trying to delay the wipe as much as possible.

"Priest is targeted, quick, all Priests stop healing!"

"Everyone else stop all AOE, and don’t hit the Priests either!"

Under this boss’s mechanics, when Priests were targeted, all their healing would turn into damaging effects. One misplaced heal, and a teammate could drop dead on the spot.

Immediately, the three Priests in the group ceased their spells and started attacking the boss with their minor holy damage abilities.

Though targeted and unable to heal, it was better than idly standing by. Despite being spec’d for healing, the Priests still possessed a few offensive spells. After all, every little bit helps, and damage has to be scraped together bit by bit.

Additionally, targeted professions would turn into red names, which meant others had to halt all AOE and avoid mindlessly attacking these red names, or they’d end up inflicting losses on themselves.

Fortunately, having tried the boss so many times by now, everyone had more or less gotten the hang of it, avoiding any major blunders and working seamlessly together.

However, at that moment, Instructor Ding suddenly shouted out.

"Hey, Tooth Decay, what are you doing??"

The person he was yelling at was a regular gaming buddy of his, who had played with him in Prometheus before. His full ID was "Brother Diabetes Made Me Tooth Decay." Due to the outrageousness of his ID, many people remembered it.

The raid environment was chaotic with twenty players focused intently, most didn’t have the capacity to see exactly what had happened.

Only a few players sneaking a peek at the back ranks were able to observe.

Raid positioning was deliberate, and usually, apart from those bosses that required spreading out to avoid AOE insta-kills, most ranged and healing professions would stand together.

Tooth Decay, being a Mage, naturally stood with the main group.

In Shadow World, Mages were considered a versatile profession with rather conventional offensive skills. It was unlikely for them to cause any issues.

Yet there was Tooth Decay, casting on a recently targeted Priest who turned red name, with the progress bar showing the name of the skill: Spelly Thief!

Tooth Decay said, "It’s fine, I’m just having some fun."

Instructor Ding was a bit speechless: "Be serious, we’re raiding! Even if we’re likely to lose to this boss, we still need the right attitude. We have to keep dreaming because what if we succeed? Then we would become the first team to defeat Nephalor in the game!"

Tooth Decay hurriedly responded, "Alright, alright, no more messing around."

By this time, he had completed the Spelly Thief spell’s cast. After a two-second delay, he began casting again, but surprisingly, he didn’t conjure a Frostbolt or Fireball Technique. Instead, it was a Holy Fire that zipped towards the boss, inflicting a hefty 80 points of damage.

"Pfft!"

Everyone nearly burst out laughing.

Tooth Decay also felt a bit helpless: "Seems like this Spelly Thief is just a toy skill. It’s totally for laughs!"

Instructor Ding was somewhat speechless, "I’ve told you before that Arcane Magic is unplayable. That ultimate talent is just a toy, but you didn’t believe me and insisted on trying it out in the raid!

"Fight properly, if your DPS doesn’t make it into the top five later, go respec at your own expense immediately!"

Shadow World, like most MMORPGs, has different talent settings within the same profession, such as within the Mage class, there are distinctions like Frost Mage, Fire Mage, and Arcane Mage.

As a Mage, players could master skills from all three series, but because talent points are limited, they could only focus on strengthening the skills from one particular series.

After investing a large number of talent points, you could unlock the ultimate talent of that series.

This ultimate talent might be a comprehensive enhancement to the values of spells within that series or it could be a unique and brand new skill.

The skill Tooth Decay had just used, "Spelly Thief," was the ultimate talent of an Arcane Mage.

The effect of this skill was: after a 5-second cast time, it steals a skill from the target unit for the caster’s own use, lasting for 10 seconds.

On the surface, this skill sounded pretty amazing.

Stealing someone else’s skills, wow!

In both MMORPG and MOBA games, this type of skill is synonymous with "BUG."

This bug could mean either the strength of the skill or the difficulty in game development.

So when Tooth Decay saw this ultimate talent, he fell deeply in love with it at first sight and embarked on the path of an Arcane Mage without looking back.

As an Arcane Mage, his leveling journey was incredibly rough because Arcane Magic was notoriously mana-hungry, and without good equipment to support him in the early stages, he had to sit down frequently to drink water and regain mana.

While his party members were nearly reaching the final boss, he would just be getting his fill of water to catch up.

After a struggle full of hardships, Tooth Decay finally unlocked "Spelly Thief," only to find out that it was purely a joke in practice!

His first instinct was to steal powerful skills from other monsters.

After all, some bosses or elite mobs in dungeons could wipe out the entire raid with just one area of effect skill; if he could steal that, wouldn’t he be invincible?

But upon actually trying to steal it, things didn’t go well.

Firstly, all powerful bosses, like the final bosses in five-man dungeons and raid bosses, have a high spell immunity, making the spell ineffective on them, to begin with.

Secondly, even if it were possible to steal something, such as from earlier bosses in five-man dungeons or elite mobs in raids, they have a variety of skills, most of which are weak, and the chance of stealing the right one was too dependent on luck.

Last of all, even if he did manage to steal a skill, the damage was greatly reduced.

The reason for the high damage of these monsters’ skills is their high base attributes. When Tooth Decay used Spelly Thief, the skill’s bonus was applied based on his own base attributes.

So, what was originally a raid-wiping Flame Nova became a warm circle of fire that was only good for illumination, with damage that was negligible.

And in a battlefield scenario? It was even more useless.

Because the skill not only had a cooldown but also featured a lengthy 5-second cast time.

The battlefield changes rapidly, and nearly everyone has a skill to interrupt casting, making this five seconds of casting often longer than Tooth Decay’s lifespan.

Even if he was lucky enough to successfully steal a skill in a chaotic battle, it was often some inconsequential trash skill, and after 10 seconds, the stolen skill would disappear.

On very rare occasions, it did have the potential to be extremely effective, such as luckily stealing a Paladin’s invulnerability or a Mage’s Ice Barrier, but the odds were so low it wasn’t worth counting on—stealing the right skill maybe once in twenty attempts.

Therefore, everyone advised him to stop tinkering with that broken skill and quickly switch to Frost or Pyromancer!

Your spell isn’t just broken, it’s breaking your teammates’ morale!

Of course, Arcane Magic wasn’t entirely without merit. Although its ultimate talent was somewhat comedic, it had a very high burst damage from its base skills. It was because of this rare advantage that Instructor Ding agreed to let Tooth Decay join the main raid team.

Tooth Decay had started out playing seriously, but when faced with his depressing numbers and knowing he couldn’t pass anyway, he started entertaining thoughts of conducting some ’research.’

However... it was visibly a failure!

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