This seems to be a fairly accurate description of how the Gathering bug works. Credit goes to zhouzhu who posted this on the Hongfire forums.

Originally Posted by zhouzhu

After half a day into it, this seems to be the rule of bug - not even close to 100% though:
- The moment you quit and then start the game fresh will be marked as (state 1).
- After spending some time afk while leaving the browser on, it will tell you to refresh. Press refresh. This mark as (state 2).
- Somehow after you refresh, the UI will be loaded as (state 2) but the stamina value will be revert back to (state 1) after you go on gathering.

A note for resolution: If you don't want your stamina runs low after gathering there are 2 tricks:
- Keep your stamina high whenever you leave your game in (state 1). Then come back to game before the game tell you to. Which then will be count as a fresh start.
- Burn all your stamina to 0 as much as you can before go on gathering. This case will help whenever you decide not to care about what the-hell-is-states I mention earlier.

If you want to abuse it, take some time research and follow trick 1. It can yield around 2-3x your max stamina per day. But since it's a bug, I won't recommend you abuse it. Nutaku won't be happy to find out.

By going with that logic of being at "state 2" using gathering would revert stamina value into "state 1", if we were to go into any dungeons that decrease the stamina below "state 1" using gathering would logically increase it instead of decreasing it but by going with the fact it'll still decrease your stamina so... yeah i believe that kind of description is false

Somehow my stamina went back to normal when I logged earlier (317 / 317). I gained a level and used some of it, and tried gathering, seems it is functioning properly now. However, I still get the feeling that stamina is regenerating fast. I logged off earlier with 194 stamina left, came back after an hour and a half, only to find it at 264.

Yeah, its regging to fast. Usualy i get around 1 level up per Day, but now its 2,x per day. Sometimes the Stamina Desynced, the Reg Time Counter wont work correctly if u refresh. But its way to fast.
_

It's now the 2nd time I got this over Max energy bug now. Just happend before 2 minutes. So it's still bugged. :> Hope it will be fixed after the Event End tomorrow. But the last 2 days it was stable. Not many Gathering Bugs happend to me since then.

Got 85 stam, wasted for daily 80 stam blue dragon stage, 6 stamina left. Do gather once and it says I got 12 stamina, as the result I have 90 stamina right now.

Yep still no fix.

First thing I try after the update: Gather... still bugged... I lost ~60 Sta... yeah...

Despite hours of maintenance the game just gave me 331 free stamina after gathering.

I want to play the event.

I also don't want to get banned for abuse.

Do I just wait until I would've regained my stamina normally?

This sucks...

its there again, yay