Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 269 - 278 Can I Learn Priest Skills Now??

Chapter 269: Chapter 278 Can I Learn Priest Skills Now??

Tooth Decay found out that after Nephalor called out a name, the other players in the team became marked in red, indicating that he could steal their skills at that time.

So, he tried to steal from a Priest, still harboring a glimmer of hope in his heart, expecting the situation might change.

However, the result was the same, he only managed to steal a skill called "Holy Fire," which dealt a whopping 80 points of damage!

Priests do have offensive skills, but the damage of these skills isn’t very high. Even if a Priest invests in all the talents that increase Holy Damage, their offensive capabilities would at most, be around sixty percent of a Mage’s.

The "Holy Fire" that Tooth Decay stole, as a Mage, he had no Holy Series talent enhancements of his own, just the raw damage of the skill itself.

Additionally, considering Nephalor was a powerful fire-breathing dragon with extremely high magical resistance to fire, it made sense why the damage was only 80 points.

One could only say that Tooth Decay tickled Nephalor with a light scratch using a casting time of 5+2 seconds.

Feeling helpless, he had no choice but to give up on the idea of researching further.

"Be careful, it’s calling out the second time!"

"Damn, why is it still the Priest?"

"This is some bad luck, ah. Priests, stop healing. Everyone else, don’t hit the Priests! Other healing professions keep an eye on the group’s HP, hit ’1’ if you’re out of mana for an MP restoration skill."

Instructor Ding was at a loss for words, because with so many different classes in the group, it seemed rather unlucky to have Priests called out twice in a row, didn’t it?

As an established healing profession, the significant role of the Priest in raid content goes without saying. Because of their comprehensive healing capacity, most teams consider Priests indispensable, which is why Instructor Ding specifically brought three.

But unexpectedly, due to the call-out mechanism, these three Priests had been unable to heal, and naturally, the pressure on the group’s HP became unsustainable.

This double call-out practically meant a wipeout.

However, it was at that moment that Tooth Decay’s surprised voice came through the voice chat: "Huh? Wait, why is my name also red now??"

Instructor Ding was a Demon Sorcerer and stood with the remote damage-dealers, where he could easily see that this time there were four players marked in red.

Besides those three Priests, Tooth Decay had also turned red.

"Huh?"

Instructor Ding was equally baffled because the boss had called out the Priest profession, but Tooth Decay was a Mage, so why was he called out?

"Check your negative effect bar, do you have... forget it, I’ll look myself."

Instructor Ding hurriedly clicked on Tooth Decay’s avatar, which displayed the various buffs (positive effects) and debuffs (negative effects) the player had received.

And in the debuffs section was a striking dragon head icon, and hovering the mouse over it revealed the name: Nephalor’s Twisted Magic-Priest-Twisted Healing!

It was this negative effect that turned the Priests’ healing into damage.

But logically, this debuff should only be on the called-out Priests, so why did Tooth Decay have it?

Instructor Ding didn’t have time to ponder, as the group quickly wiped.

With the Priests being called out consecutively, the group’s healing pressure had increased greatly, and they did not last long going into the third phase.

Without further ado, everyone continued to retrieve their corpses.

During the voice chat earlier, only Instructor Ding was giving commands and was very serious, but now that they had wiped, everyone was free to speak their minds, and the voice channel became lively again.

"Tooth Decay, why don’t you go respec your talents now? Your Arcane Magic really isn’t cutting it against this boss. Switch to Frost Mage."

"Yeah, you run out of mana after just a few hits. Although the burst is high, it’s no use if it doesn’t last! As a man, you’ve got to have more stamina."

"I think our performance this time was okay, we’re getting more and more coordinated. It’s just bad luck getting two Priests called out in a row. Otherwise, we could have lasted another three minutes, no, maybe even five minutes!"

"Five minutes is impossible. If we could really last five minutes, we would have a chance at beating this boss."

"But regardless, as the team leader, Instructor Ding, you’re to blame for the double Priest call-out! Never seen a team leader with such bad luck."

Many people were suggesting that Tooth Decay should respec his talents. Indeed, for this boss, Frost Mage was the most effective.

Since the boss has high fire resistance, Pyromancers would face lots of resistance, and even without it, the damage from their spells would be insubstantial.

Arcane Magic output was decent but too mana-intensive. Even with mana restoration abilities like Awakening, it was still insufficient.

Out of responsibility for the team, switching to Frost Mage was indeed the best choice.

Tooth Decay heaved a sigh and said, "Alright then, I’ll go respec my talents..."

However, just then, Instructor Ding stopped him, "Wait a minute, don’t rush to respec, analyze that bug from earlier first! Why were you also called out by Nephalor?"

Tooth Decay was also utterly baffled, "I have no idea!"

In fact, the bug had appeared only briefly, and the group had wiped shortly after the second time the Priest was targeted, so most people hadn’t noticed it. Only Instructor Ding, who just so happened to be looking at Tooth Decay’s character when the debuff appeared, could confirm that this was definitely a bug.

Instructor Ding thought carefully about the cause and effect, "Is it because you used the Spelly Thief skill to steal the Priest’s Holy Fire and cast it on the boss, leading the boss to mistake you for a Priest?"

"This bug is so ridiculous! How could the programmers of Nitiandang make such a beginner’s mistake..."

The absurdity of the bug lay in the fact that it didn’t adhere to the basic mechanics of programming.

If the programmers wanted to implement a "boss targets a specific profession" feature, the easiest method would be to read the profession code of the player’s character directly.

In the database, each profession would certainly have a code, such as 10001 for Priest, 10002 for Mage, and so on.

When Nephalor intended to target Priests, it could simply search for all players with the profession code 10001 in the current raid and apply the debuff to them.

Why would the boss targeting be linked to the last skill used by a player?

While it’s true that this could achieve the desired function, it was clearly a much more complicated approach than the first method.

The program would need to detect the skill a player used on the boss, and then use the skill ID to reverse-lookup the player’s profession, which was like taking off your pants just to fart.

"Forget it, Instructor, there’s no need to delve into how the code is written. Aren’t you the best at finding bugs? Think about how we can take advantage of this bug if it really exists!" someone suggested.

Instructor Ding fell into deep thought, "Hmm... how to exploit it..."

"It seems unexploitable!"

What’s the use of this bug? Actually, not much, because the triggering conditions were too stringent.

Under ideal conditions, all Mages would switch to Arcane Magic, choose this Talent, and then, when the boss targets another profession, they would steal a skill from that profession. By using the stolen skill on the boss during the next targeting phase, they could trick the boss. So, when the Mages were targeted next time, they wouldn’t receive the debuff.

Indeed, this could avoid the targeting of Mages, but the risks outweighed the benefits.

First of all, Mages becoming Arcane would consume too much mana, diminishing their sustained output. Besides, no one could predict which profession the boss would target next, and the Spelly Thief skill might not always steal a suitable damage skill.

"So, let’s continue with the usual strategy, Tooth Decay, don’t switch to Frost Mage, just keep using Arcane. Next time each profession is called, try stealing something and let’s run an experiment!"

Instructor Ding, who had been somewhat drowsy before, suddenly perked up a lot, because he saw a gleam of Dawn in scientific research!

Although there was no indication of the bug’s usefulness at the moment, the presence of a bug often meant hidden mechanics!

And if he could find the deeper hidden mechanics, perhaps he could find a way to clear the raid!

...

Without realizing it, the time had reached almost 12 at night.

As for defeating Nephalor, it still seemed a far-off dream.

And regarding scientific achievements, there weren’t many.

Throughout many attempts afterward, Tooth Decay tried stealing skills from various professions, and the test result was that it was indeed possible to deceive the boss this way.

As long as a different profession’s skill was used on the boss before it targeted, it could make the boss mistakenly believe Tooth Decay was not a Mage but a different profession, thereby dodging the targeting effect on Mages.

As for the targeting effects of other professions, they didn’t really impact the Mage.

For example, the Priest’s twisted healing didn’t matter to the Mage, who had no healing skills to begin with.

This was indeed a positive bug... but not positive enough. Because this only gave the Arcane profession a bit more leeway against Nephalor, it was not sufficient to overcome the strong enemy for the whole group.

"Alright, let’s stop here for today, everyone has worked hard!

"I believe that after these days of practice, even if we can’t get past Nephalor, when next week’s raid CD resets, and we start from the first boss again, we’ll slice through them like butter! After all, the team has already gotten well-coordinated!" Instructor Ding didn’t forget to cheer everyone on.

However, someone quickly objected, "What if the first boss is Nephalor again after the next CD?"

Instructor Ding almost spat out blood, "Then I, as the guild leader, will resign to take responsibility, are you satisfied now?"

Everyone hurriedly said, "No need for resignation, just hand out some more red packets."

Yet, while everyone was chatting idly, an astonished exclamation from Tooth Decay suddenly came over the voice channel.

"Hey, holy shit!! How come I can learn Priest skills now?"

At this moment, everyone had returned to the main city, and from the map, it could be seen that Tooth Decay was at the location of the Priest Trainer.

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