This is absolutely not classic. Taking a single point of damage or moving in any way (including sitting or standing) always interrupted bind wound. I used to try and sit while using bind wound, it never worked. I was constantly summoning bandages for people as a Mage and using bind wound to assist with heals when needed; nobody was ever able to use it like this.

Combat swings worked differently in 1999 as well. Doing any kind of input that wasn't an instant skill like kick or an instant social, would reset the auto-attack timer (casting a spell, using an item - *even ones with instant activation like JBoots*, starting a bind wound), and it wouldn't start again until you were finished with whatever you were activating. It was VERY important back then to wait for your swing if you wanted to cast a spell while trying to melee, and then immediately cast the spell, because otherwise you were delaying yourself from attacking that much longer. The only exception was Bard songs.

Even after they changed the way auto attacks worked, your bind wound still got cancelled if you were to try and stand up and attack.

This also never worked in classic. Trying to bind wound while casting would just result in a "you are busy" message, or whatever the exact wording was. Same thing with trying to open the spellbook while casting.

This was only true while auto-attack was switched on. Players could turn off attack, cast their spell(s), then turn attack back on. If the player did that then the spell cast wouldn't affect swing timer. Doing this was particularly important when using slower 2H weapons. In early velious era the hybrids were patched so that their melee works like it does now on P99, but all other spellcasting classes had to continue turning off attack (or lose some melee time) throughout the entire classic era.

Of course the above has nothing to do with P99's broken implementation of bind wound, which is long overdue to a fix, but it's good to know in case the powers-that-be ever alter melee to behave more classic-like.

Danth

The casting-in-combat change happened before Velious. While the change was put in as a benefit for Hybrid classes, I don't recall anymore if it affected everyone else too. TBH it makes sense that the change would have affected everyone. There wasn't any other mechanics-based code in that game like that where it was specific to certain classes. All mechanics were universal in the game and the differences came from the exact skills and skillcaps and stats that a class had.

It was just after velious launched and definitely affected hybrids only. It was specifically included in the January 9 2001 patch if you want to look up the archived patch notes. Here's the cut-and-pasted blurb from said notes:

- Melee attack timers will no longer be reset when a SK, Paladin, or
Ranger cast a spell. Previously these classes had to wait a full attack
delay after casting before they would attack via melee again.


Danth

Okay, early Velious era then. I usually group that change in with Kunark era, as it came before the removal of exp penalties (which is more of Velious era proper), and because the increased mana pools and first round of new spells for hybrids happened in Kunark. A bunch of spell-casting improvements happened for them in a span of 6 months.

That patch note doesn't necessarily mean it only affected hybrids though (unless you have a later patch note where it says they changed it for other classes too). There was a lot of lazy code in the game. Hybrids were just the ones constantly talking about how their spell casting in combat was too weak, because they were the ones who were actually trying to both melee and cast all of the time. Knowing the way changes got made back then, it would be pretty standard if they universally changed it, while formally highlighting it as a change for hybrids. I'm interested in knowing the date it got universally changed, if it wasn't then.

I'll try to look it up. The may 8 2002 patch note mentions beastlords being fixed to act like the other hybrid melee when casting while attacking. Will edit if I find more. Might not even be any patch notes if it changed as a relic of one of the client changes or whatnot.

Danth

That happens here too. Its specifically why you have to use a button in the actions window. The actions window is mich more powerful than hot keys and can do a lot of things which if attempted through the hot buttons window give the 'you can't do this right now' message you mention.

That didn't work in classic though. Everything was tried within the available UI at the time and nothing like that was ever a thing.

Sounds to me like someone just pointed out an exploit that isn't classic.