That sounds like an EQ wives tale. Just like J-Boots running slower and levitate in fear creating trains. It's just a matter of people not truly understanding game mechanics.

Specialization should check always. Log on live and check it with any spell. It will reduce mana on every single cast. Has done that ever since mana values were shown in the UI and it is extremely likely it did that before the mana value was shown.

EQClerics 2000

I think it is time to ClassicQuest this... Cause this is a pretty big issue if it's not taking effect every cast. Any dev able to weigh in as to the functionality of it on this server currently?

That's not how it works or this AA would not make any sense....


Spell Casting Mastery: (3 skill levels) - Each skill increases the caster's chance of successfully using his specialization skill for the spell he is casting. This works for all spell types. The result is a reduced chance of spell failure (fizzle) and a greater chance of a reduction of the mana cost for the spell. The increase in the caster's chance to successfully use his specialization is 5% for the first skill level, 15% for the second skill level and 30% for the third skill level. Hybrids can not gain this ability because they do not have the specialization skill.

This AA increases your CHANCE of specialization working. If it worked every time then what would be the point. But it also does help clarify that specialization is supposed to reduce the fizzle chance as well as mana usage.

Ironically, I had that very same discussion on the Mac server with the longtime members of the server. Basically... That AA was extremely badly worded.

Get on live and read the description of that AA:

Live Shorthand Descriptions

Basically those AA ranks reduces the mana cost of every single cast by 2-5-10% going from rank 1-2-3 respectively. Meaning with 200 spec and rank 3 AA you would preserve 20% mana EVERY cast.

More EQClerics 2002 this time since we are mentioning AAs:

I'm pretty confident on this one.

Ya it does look like it is supposed to be a flat reduction in mana usage :

Effect on Mana Consumption

Specialization skills passively reduce the amount of mana that is consumed when casting spells from that school, according to the following formula:

1 + (Skill_Value / 20) = Percentage_Reduction

...where "Skill_Value" is the skill point number that the character has in the associated specialization skill, and "Percentage_Reduction" is the perentage of mana that will be preserved.

Thus, for a given spell school, a character gains 1% mana cost reduction just for having the Specialization skill at all, and 1% more for every 20 points of the skill.

This would be huge toward getting casters in the same realm as melees.

To Bugs!

Done

“They’ve done studies, you know. 60 percent of the time, it works every time.” — Brian Fantana

I'm 100% that specialization should go off every time. The reason I know this is because the AA SCM said it increased chance for spec to go off. In that era there was a ton of parses done to show that specialization works everytime and SCM simply increased the % mana saved. I don't have time to look this stuff up right now but there has to be Luclin/PoP era posts explaining what specialization does and what SCM does...not classic but then I seriously doubt anyone actually put in the effort to test this before SCM.
50 spec should be 2.5% mana off.
200 spec should be 10% mana off.
SCM3 should be 20% mana off.