Final Fugue: Firethorn's Firebarbs triggering too often

The mana drain effect on Firethorn's Firebarbs (https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=54407) damage shield buff is seemingly triggering on everyone when hit by any spell, including procs and discs.

In a 65 second fight, I was hit by the mana drain 348 times. I'm pretty sure I wasn't casting 5.3 spells per second
("Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn." is the message when you're hit by the Mindbarbs effect. As an additional bug report, it should be "your magic")

Code:

[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Berserker begins casting Heightened Frenzy Strike.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Firethorn is struck by a frenzied assault.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Berserker begins casting Heightened Frenzy Strike.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Firethorn is struck by a frenzied assault.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Berserker begins casting Heightened Frenzy Strike.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Firethorn is struck by a frenzied assault.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Berserker begins casting Distracting Strike XXXIX.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Firethorn is distracted.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Rogue begins casting Twisted Shank XXXIX.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Firethorn is struck with a twisted shank.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Berserker activates Eviscerating Volley.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Firethorn is struck by a volley of axes.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] A healing light shines upon you.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] You healed Andien for 63 (14190) hit points by Shining Health VIII Azia. (Critical)
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Firethorn is stunned by a blinding light.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Rogue begins casting Cloaked Blade Stab II.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Firethorn is pierced by an unseen blade.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] You begin casting Hammer of Magic II.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] You hit Firethorn for 7074 points of magic damage by Hammer of Magic II.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Firethorn is struck by magic.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Rogue begins casting Massive Strike XXVII.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Kibekn hit Firethorn for 12070 points of fire damage by Flamebrand VI.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Firethorn is seared by flames.
[Tue Dec 19 20:44:45 2023] Fire lances through your head when you magic touches Firethorn.

This drains a knight tank in about 15 seconds, it procs every time you swing, you cast, or Firethorn swings at you.

I generally have to let a bard or other DPS tank, or even let Elmara tank it for a while, or I just have zero mana for the final 2 mobs.

You don't even have to swing; you can give the mob your back and it's a steady drain to empty...unless you have a group that kills fast.

This is with raid geared toons, so imagine how much fun group geared players are not having.

Why so? In my last 4 fights Firethorn hit my group with Mindbarbs exactly 0 times.
Seriously, he is just a joke. Elmara tanks him , my pets chew on Firethorn and all group members just cast whatever range damage they can. Not even burning, just mana-conserving mode, he dies just as easy as all other mobs in the mission.

That doesn't work as well when you have little-to-no range damage in the group.

Or you could do the correct mechanic and not get any mana drained at all. Paladins are good at it.

I guess I don't understand how the mechanic works. In the group I run with, the SK tank gets drained to 0 mana every time, but the Beastlord does not. It's not a big deal though. Mod rod and Paragon is enough to mana up the SK and handle the remaining two fights.

I think I've removed it with mana drains on Necro. Try a mana drain?

NPC tank, pet tank, or with PC tank, mana recovery tools, and dps burn work just fine even in a boxed group of 4 group players.

This is fine the way it is IMO.

Care to expand on that or...?

Because nothing in the spell effect says it will drain your mana when you're not even casting spells. Also of note, there are no descriptions for the majority of NPC spells this expansion.

Here is how I understood it:
Firethorn buffs himself with Firebarbs (link above)
https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=54407
Target: Self. It is a buff, and you can see it if you target him.
While it is active, it provides effect Mindbarbs
https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=54408
Target: Single
Here is how I guess it works: it will mana-drain for 1000 the current target of Firethorn (i.e. main tank at the moment) every time conditions are met (i.e. detrimental spell or effect casted on Firethorn)
What was happening (even in your log) - Hammer of Magic proc, Frenzied Strike effect, Cloacked Balde etc. all triggered it and the MT was mana-drained. Even though the tank was not initiating the detrimental effects, it got victimized.
This is just the mechanics, not a bug.
Solution - use a main tank without mana: warrior, Elmara, pet etc. Or recuperate mana after the fight if MT is a knight.

P.S. It seems that my enchanter casting stuns or stun-component spells debuffed Firethorn. I guess a Paladin would just kept Firethorn debuffed all the time and thus preserve mana.

Petalonyx is correct in their assumption. A mana draining spell breaks the mana draining ability of the NPC. Only one cast of the paladin version in my experience.

I love when devs introduce things that make you actually know your class abilities, paladin level 47 Thunder of Karana works fine.

As for the stun mechanic on the final boss it seems to be based on the duration of the stun. It’s a single cast of my 10s stun but 2 casts of the shorter duration stuns.

@Alnitak, I’m assuming you’re using the mana DoT and that is stripping the debuff, not your stuns.

I am not sure what exactly causes the buff to be stripped. Perhaps my chanters dot
https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=64014
does the trick as it has both HP and Mana dot combined.

While that technically makes sense, I do not believe it is the intended mechanic. As the buff is a damage shield, which is a negative effect to a melee user, it makes more sense that the mana drain is intended to be a negative effect to the caster.

So I will maintain my stance that it is bugged until this post is marked as "Not a Bug."

That would be the idea.

I can rear-arc tank this on my paladin and not cast a single thing, and I'd be out of mana in 15-20 seconds. No ripostes, no damage shields, nothing. I hit a taunt in the beginning to get aggro and then it's over. In a melee group you cannot rely on Elmara tanking it solo or you'd be there forever, and any melee user instantly takes aggro over the NPC. I will generally tank it on the bard as there's no mana drain going on there, no matter how many times I'm swinging, procing, casting, etc.

The buff is not a damage shield. It is a "defensive proc" type, which is trigerred not on melee attack but on "detrimental effect" and it responds with mana drain and not a "health reduction". As it is programmed - it is clearly designed to punish "caster" tank and do nothing to mana-less tanks (what happens to bards I am not sure, as bards are not a typical class in all aspects).
Currently, it makes this mob very unpleasant to tank by shadow knights, while many other options just shrug off the effect.
Should it or should it not be like that, did or did not programmers intended it to be like that - those questions are separated from a question "does the effect do what it described to do" ? And the answer is yes - buff acts exactly as described and does what the data suggests it would do causing the expected by description results.
Shadowknights being unhappy? Well, maybe that was an entire intent by coders. Ask them, I don't have any info on that.

Elmara is health-locked at that point, and a single mage can solo Firethorn without breaking a sweat.
And yes , all-melee group with an SK tank does have a difficult problem there.

Anyone have a list of the classes that can instantly remove the mana drain effect with their own mana drain? I'll start.

Paladin - LVL 47 spell Thunder of Karana.
Necro - Any of the mana drain dots.
???

It seems an enchanter can use the same spell against Firethorn and The Captain:
https://spells.eqresource.com/spells.php?id=619
It has both 7.5 sec stun against TheCaptain and mana dot against Firethorn.

Yes. I have a chanter in my team and nearly never witness a significant drain by Firethorn, as my chanters drain cancels his. Mind Whirl does the trick, which I have in my regular rotation anyway.

The buff is 100% a damage shield. It also has a spell proc effect.
Slot 21: Increase Damage Shield by 300
Slot 22: Cast: Mindbarbs if Hit by Spell and Conditions are Met
Slot 23: Limit Type: Detrimental
(I can highlight things in red too!)

We are arguing semantics at this point. The lack of spell descriptions (which has been the norm for the last few expansions) is detrimental to gameplay and should be remedied as soon as possible.