Banishment mana loss question

[BlueSteelWheels]

Since the patch I have noticed some strange spikes in mana loss when mobs reach my orb and am wondering if this is normal or if others notice this. For reference I am around WL 380 post-story and just going from map to map consecutively farming better experience and filling out the dots. I set up a mana trap and farm similar to what I see here in various posts, and everything generally goes fine until the numbers get crazy, then win or lose I move to the next map. Before the recent patch I would just let it run and notice the mana slowly run down as monsters banish. My last runs I noticed huge amounts of mana loss though randomly. I checked every mob and they all had banishment amounts in the hundreds and no mana burn marked mobs.

To be more specific - I was grinding for a 550 million mana gem on field N1 today. I had about 400M, rising fast but at the point of steady banishing. Maybe 200 mobs on the field, extremely long, walled path, several slow traps. Normally I'd not even notice the banishment cost at this point, but this time I see it dropping in random 8-10M chunks, bringing my pool from 400M to about 60M where it stopped and stabilized. Pool rose to 300M over time and the same thing happened before stabilizing at 30M. At this point it stopped happening as I cleaned up the last few waves.

Any ideas what would cause this or is there a mechanic that is doing it? No marked monsters on the field. No shadows spawned. The mobs causing it were reavers that said they required only about 300 mana to banish when I checked them all out. Really confused.

[ruphus]

maybe some enemies have mana burn you don't see it
but otherwise repeated banishment can increase their costs drastically

really weird tbh since you said no marked ones, cuz if there is any way you lose that much being mana burn

[fractalgem]

Do you have corrupted banishment on by any chance? If you have that on you can't really afford to leak anything.

[BlueSteelWheels]

Yeah I was racking my brain trying to figure out what could cause it. Wish I had thought to take a screenshot. That map give plenty of room for a long mana trap, a massive maze and amps around the orb. I thought maybe the mobs were somehow stealing back the mana I leeched, but that would've affected every mob and not just a random few. I paused several times and clicked on every mob to check their banishment cost and see if they were marked. I can only guess some sort of bug happened and hope someone can recreate it.

[fractalgem]

Banishment costs do go up exponentially.

If you set a tower to highest banishment cost it'll prioritize the offending mobs.

If there's too many monsters you wont' be able to directly see all of them.

So, a bug's not required.

[Manabender]

What you're talking about sounds like monsters with mana burn.

Some waves of monsters have extra "buffs". These buffs are denoted by marks on their wavestone on the left. One of these is mana burn, which, in addition to its normal banish cost, will also take a small percentage (usually around 1-3%) of your current mana. That may not sound like much, but if 100 monsters each take 2% of your mana, you're left with about 13% of what you started.

(Corrupted banishment doesn't affect the banish cost; it simply makes the monster stronger if you do banish it.)

[BlueSteelWheels]

Originally posted by fractalgem:

Banishment costs do go up exponentially.

If you set a tower to highest banishment cost it'll prioritize the offending mobs.

If there's too many monsters you wont' be able to directly see all of them.

So, a bug's not required.

I'm well aware of banishment costs. As I stated in my other posts I paused, checked each mob by clicking on them and checking their cost. They were mobs that had been banished at most one time, and the tooltip shows you the cost, in this case about 300 to 500 mana. They would then hit the orb and take millions.

I actually manged to recreate it a moment ago on the next map. I let a horde bleed through by keeping my gem a little low. A few mobs hit the gem and brought the mana pool from 200 million (256 to next tier at the time) to 36 million where it stabilized. I even let it run a few waves so the same mobs would banish a few times. Wiped the field, let them bleed again with the same result. If it was a banishment cost issue then it would have been game over. This is clearly a bug.

[MrockBR]

Originally posted by BlueSteelWheels:

Originally posted by fractalgem:

Banishment costs do go up exponentially.

If you set a tower to highest banishment cost it'll prioritize the offending mobs.

If there's too many monsters you wont' be able to directly see all of them.

So, a bug's not required.

I'm well aware of banishment costs. As I stated in my other posts I paused, checked each mob by clicking on them and checking their cost. They were mobs that had been banished at most one time, and the tooltip shows you the cost, in this case about 300 to 500 mana. They would then hit the orb and take millions.

I actually manged to recreate it a moment ago on the next map. I let a horde bleed through by keeping my gem a little low. A few mobs hit the gem and brought the mana pool from 200 million (256 to next tier at the time) to 36 million where it stabilized. I even let it run a few waves so the same mobs would banish a few times. Wiped the field, let them bleed again with the same result. If it was a banishment cost issue then it would have been game over. This is clearly a bug.

I noticed that too.

After a monster is banned, its status does not update the banishment cost.

When these monsters reach the orb, they steal more mana than indicated.

Consequently, a gem oriented to prioritize monsters with a higher banishment cost, selects the base cost, not the actual cost.

[BlueSteelWheels]

Well, I think in my case (after many more runs to watch even more carefully) I may have simply been hit by mana burn monsters. Visibly they look no different, and it accounts for the giant chunks of mana loss. I'm a bit curious if targeting highest banishment cost prioritizes them or not. When I tried, it seemed to let them through when they are clearly the highest. All in all it's not a big deal. I could've sworn I remembered mana burn mobs having a visible distinguisher like an aura in Chasing Shadows but it's been a long time.

[fractalgem]

Originally posted by MrockBR:

Originally posted by BlueSteelWheels:

I'm well aware of banishment costs. As I stated in my other posts I paused, checked each mob by clicking on them and checking their cost. They were mobs that had been banished at most one time, and the tooltip shows you the cost, in this case about 300 to 500 mana. They would then hit the orb and take millions.

I actually manged to recreate it a moment ago on the next map. I let a horde bleed through by keeping my gem a little low. A few mobs hit the gem and brought the mana pool from 200 million (256 to next tier at the time) to 36 million where it stabilized. I even let it run a few waves so the same mobs would banish a few times. Wiped the field, let them bleed again with the same result. If it was a banishment cost issue then it would have been game over. This is clearly a bug.

I noticed that too.

After a monster is banned, its status does not update the banishment cost.

When these monsters reach the orb, they steal more mana than indicated.

Consequently, a gem oriented to prioritize monsters with a higher banishment cost, selects the base cost, not the actual cost.

Um...

Its updated the banishment cost display for *me*, is this a new update that broke something?

And are you sure this isn't mana burn mobs? Those take a % of your pool even on the first lap around. You want to skip angering those.

Mana burn mobs don't have an aura, necessarily, but they show up on the display for me just fine.

[Dragonmaster]

Also the shadows attacks burn mana.

[Gulch]

Last night I went from 400m mana to 0 instantly when banishing. Not gradually, but instantly.
W/L 700-ish and wave 190 or so.

[fractalgem]

How odd. Perhaps there IS a bug with that display...