Charmed npcs do too much damage

[koros]

This one is hard to prove, however I have a midlevel enchanter here and on eqmac. My 28 enchanter here just destroys Mistmoore, whereas, my enchanter on eqmac also destroys everything, but his pet does not do nearly as much dps. NPCs hit for max on other npcs WAY too often here, and backstab in particular seems to be an issue.

No real way to verify this other than suggesting the devs make enchanters on eqmac. No patch notes ever spoke about a general npc ac/atk change, so I have to imagine it's classic.

[pharmakos]

wouldn't be that hard to prove really. charm the same NPC on both servers, have them fight the same NPCs, keep logs, and parse them afterwards.

[adam9242]

melee damage in general on p99 seems a bit higher than it was on live, mostly I think, due to the distribution of hits with too many being in the upper half of the damage range

[dali_lb]

Like Adam9242 says, if there is an issue it gotta be because NPC's hit a tad better on EMU servers.

It was first much later in game that they added a diminishing dps on charmed pets, because somewhere between Luclin and PoP, NPC's began to be designed around that you would always have a slower in group to slow them between 50 and 80% so they were redicolous OP'ed dps when charmed and hasted.

Just be glad that it works so well here :)

[heartbrand]

Charm nerf is a month or so into gates of discord because of how crazy mob dps got and how it was being used to trivialize content

[Aeolwind]

Charm nerf is a month or so into gates of discord because of how crazy mob dps got and how it was being used to trivialize content

Charming a quad flurry 1100 hitting trash mob was overpowered?! Lies and slander.

Back on topic, AC values are what might be an oddity. We have the formula for determining Min-max range, and the values in between, what I don't remember us having was the actual AC values for mobs, or how to calculate it.

[Nirgon]

Post logs here vs logs there.

And by logs I mean like 100 fights of each server.

Probably want to make some text files and link them in here rather than [/quote] blocks :P.

But I do totally agree, seeing a dual wielding froglok quadding for spam 120s in Seb feels classic in absolutely no way.

[cyryllis]

hmm charmed mobs for me seem to be doing classic dps- played enchanter all though EQs early years and I never noticed them being stronger in any significant way here (other than the fact that caster pets are WAY stronger here, due to non-classic spell casting AI)

Like others have said, mobs in general may just be hitting for slightly more- so obviously if you charm a mob hitting for slightly more than on eqmac, and send it against a mob with the same hp value, it will die faster here.

This issue will be difficult to address without an enormous amount of data mining, and some seriously deep research into the subject.

[Nirgon]

Charm lasting too long on npcs close in level to the caster can be proven at the same time as running damage parses. Shouldn't take more than 4 nights of parsing and solid EverQuest play.

Furthermore, charming mobs in fear and hate is WAY too reliable even for necros and druids.

[Splorf22]

I would be very curious to see AC logs in general from EQ mac, preferably from a low level player who is not subject to the various AC caps that Verant implemented because they suck at itemization. My gut feeling is that AC is not implemented properly here. I did some AC tests and my enchanter mitigated within like 20% of my warrior. The big difference is that the enchanter got hit way more. 1000AC vs 650AC.

The charm data from EQMac is worthless though IIRC. AFAIK Charm was revamped (and actually made stronger!) in PoP and then eventually charmed pet damage was nerfed because it was getting out of hand.

Realistically I think it's impossible to say much concrete about classic durations unless someone has logs. Nirgon says charm is too good in the planes, yet it's easily possible to dig up posts of people doing just that. My personal opinion (based mostly off of Xornn's Enchanter Guide) is that charm is probably weaker here than live. It would be interesting to try and measure channeling skill though.

[heartbrand]

AC is incorrect here, and I'm really curious to see how it will work with velious

[Handull]

Nirgon: I don't have live experience, but I know charming on p99 and I wouldn't say it is overly reliable *unless* you have tash and malo on the mob, which to me suggests a resist check problem more so than a charm is OP problem. A druid-tashed rat or monkey will often enough result in a fast charm break, less so if care is taken to charm a lower level pet. When I solo'd fear on my druid I could kill 51+ mobs with a charmed pet, but as I recall charm broke enough times and I had to wc cap or die. And charming a 51+ mob in fear/hate (aside from being foolish due to summons on pet breaks) will result in notably shorter charms compared to charming a 49 or 50 pet (level 60 toon).

I think the post Lor made a while ago about ac on a war vs enc show'd conclusively that the problem is pretty big, though I have no clue how to fix it.

[Treats]

Charming a quad flurry 1100 hitting trash mob was overpowered?! Lies and slander.

Back on topic, AC values are what might be an oddity. We have the formula for determining Min-max range, and the values in between, what I don't remember us having was the actual AC values for mobs, or how to calculate it.

I still don't think the formulas for Max damage and the values in between are correct here. There shouldn't be any differing damage tables for different classes -- the only thing damage should rely on is Weapon Skill/Offense/ATK/STR and NPC Mitigation/NPC Avoidance.

Found awhile ago that the STR to ATK formula is not right here. It should only grant an efficiency-ATK bonus after it breaks the 75 point mark.

floor((STR * 2 - 150) / 3)

As for the Armor Mitigation and Avoidance for NPC's this is kind of difficult.

NPC Avoidance is fairly easy as all it relies on is the NPC's Defense Skill and Agility.

NPC Mitigation is difficult to determine what was actually used for this value. My best guess is that the NPC would have used the AC Hardcap determined by their level. This is from my other thread on Armor Class but I have found out a lot of stuff on there is wrong. The hardcaps for Mitigation AC based SOLELY on gear are close though (There is no hardcap on Spell or Class Bonuses).

Melee (non casters)

60 - 289
59 - 275
58 - 261
57 - 247
56 - 233
55 - 219
54 - 205
53 - 191
52 - 177
51 - 163
50 - 149 or 50 - 160
40 - 119 or 40 - 130
30 - 89 or 30 - 100
20 - 59 or 20 - 70
10 - 29 or 10 - 40
1 - 2 or 1 - 10

Caster (Nec/Wiz/Mag/Ench)

60 - 385
59 - 366
58 - 348
57 - 329
56 - 310
55 - 292
54 - 273
53 - 254
52 - 236
51 - 217
50 - 198
40 - 158
30 - 118
20 - 78
10 - 38
1 - 2

+ Monk Bonus for Mitigation
+ Iksar Bonus for Mitigation
+ Rogue Bonus for Mitigation
+ Spell Bonuses

I have no idea how they determined the Avoidance and Mitiation AC for NPC Bosses above Level 60. Possibly could have used straight level for Avoidance (disregarding a 255 cap on Avoidance), but I doubt this because I think hit % stayed the same no matter level of the NPC. Mitigation could have used higher values such as below or possibly even doubling or tripling the hardcap.

60 - 289
61 - 303
62 - 317
63 - 331
64 - 345
65 - 359
66 - 373
67 - 387
68 - 401
69 - 415
70 - 429

[Danth]

Also, there are still cases of mobs that just plain hit for too much, albeit mostly at low-mid levels. Between that and combat generally still acting a little wonky, with an added dash of charm itself probably being modeled on the generous side, you have a recipe for charmed NPC's dominating.

I suspect many of P1999's combat-related oddities stem ultimately from EQ Emulator being based on a version of EQ from after the great combat revamp of circa 2004.

Danth

[falkun]

Charm resist/duration was nerfed on P99 pretty extensively, I do feel devs got that part correct. What could still be off is AC/ATK/DMG calculations. Loraen has already posted how little difference in NPC melee damage is made by increasing AC by 400, which shouldn't be the case. I don't know if its clothies getting hit for too little or plate getting hit for too much, but I don't think the damage calculation considers AC accurately.

[Splorf22]

"AC: 1053 Max: 140 (10.0%) Min: 32 (15.7%) Avg: 79. AvgDI: 80. PredDI: 86. Z: 0.43 ATK: 1857"
"AC: 1016 Max: 140 (8.0%) Min: 32 (22.7%) Avg: 76. AvgDI: 84. PredDI: 86. Z: 0.41 ATK: 1725"
"AC: 960 Max: 140 (12.1%) Min: 32 (18.2%) Avg: 83. AvgDI: 86. PredDI: 86. Z: 0.47 ATK: 1807"
"AC: 874 Max: 140 (24.7%) Min: 32 (8.6%) Avg: 91. AvgDI: 81. PredDI: 86. Z: 0.55 ATK: 1944"
"AC: 1040 Max: 325 (42.3%) Min: 110 (3.8%) Avg: 253. AvgDI: 207. PredDI: 218. Z: 0.66 ATK: 3103"
"AC: 1040 Max: 217 (48.6%) Min: 110 (0.0%) Avg: 192. AvgDI: 169. PredDI: 164. Z: 0.77 ATK: 4515"
"AC: 1040 Max: 325 (50.8%) Min: 110 (0.0%) Avg: 274. AvgDI: 220. PredDI: 218. Z: 0.76 ATK: 4348"
"AC: 1060 Max: 217 (41.7%) Min: 110 (0.0%) Avg: 186. AvgDI: 164. PredDI: 164. Z: 0.71 ATK: 3693"
"AC: 680 Max: 140 (19.6%) Min: 32 (7.8%) Avg: 89. AvgDI: 81. PredDI: 86. Z: 0.52 ATK: 1427"
"AC: 593 Max: 140 (20.5%) Min: 32 (9.4%) Avg: 93. AvgDI: 87. PredDI: 86. Z: 0.56 ATK: 1360"
"AC: 702 Max: 140 (18.8%) Min: 32 (14.1%) Avg: 87. AvgDI: 84. PredDI: 86. Z: 0.51 ATK: 1443"
"AC: 515 Max: 140 (23.3%) Min: 32 (10.3%) Avg: 93. AvgDI: 86. PredDI: 86. Z: 0.57 ATK: 1184"

Those were my results vs the undead foreman with Liia/Qelen BP healing me. The last four (with substantially lower AC) are Loraen, Sakuragi can't even get under 720 displayed AC while naked. So you can see that Loraen gets hit for about 90 on average and Sakuragi about 80. This doesn't mean that Loraen is a good tank though, because he gets hit by about 70% of the swings while Sakuragi got hit about 45% of the time.

[Nirgon]

I gotta tell you man, people didn't charm shit unless it was green at 40+ on live. That means in seb or otherwise. I've also played a 60 enchanter here pretty extensively and gotta tell you about this charm problem, it turns the enchanter into a god compared to others. My charmed dar knight with mage swords out parsed a decked out 60 monk, I kept the group hasted/claritied/group MR'd and had 1-3 mobs cc'd no problem at a time. No enchanter was doing all the dps with something charmed like this with enough mana to do all of the above listed.

Charming something in fear/hate was completely pointless. They've definitely hit the nail on the head here making mobs more resistant but.. druids charming shiverbacks for regular duration (tashed/malise'd or not) ain't right bros.

Side note regarding planar npc resists:
I was around during the time where the great complaints about mage/necro pets (esp necro pets with fs daggers) on planar raids existed and when mana stones were usable there. Iirc the -10 resist modifier and then ice comet was added to wizards and was barely enough to make us competitive with mage/necros on planar mobs. I could drop my 4 ice comets and maybe get a few partials on it as a lvl 50 with a rather rare full hit. At 60 this greatly improved even without lures (I'd sunstrike shit then, for a rare resist, occasional partial and suprisingly high chance at full dmg), but even at 52 I wouldn't dare use anything outside lure of frost on the planar side.

[koros]

NPC and PC hits should probably be more normally distributed, with npc's having local maxima at min hit and max hit.

PCs should be similar, with the mean being weapon damage x 2 + damage bonus and slight peaks at min and max hit.

NPCs here hit max or near max all the damn time on other npcs, it doesn't look very normally distributed.

[Splorf22]

Then my preferred method is still the attack slow. Using Shiftless Deeds a 49th, a mob changes from a 3 second attack tic to 6.5 seconds! Instead of taking 66% of the damage it normally would by using haste, the mob takes 46% percent of the damage it would take. This pretty much means the mob will have just over 50% health for the second pull, and be nearly dead when it's time to kill the pet off. Plus, when charm and root break together, the enemy mob swings so slow you can almost ignore it while resetting your charm, making the worst case scenario so much less dangerous. So where's the downside to this? Mana cost for one... Feedback is 70 mana for the fight. Haste is 250 mana for two fights. Shiftless Deeds will be 400 mana total, and has a chance to resist, where buffs don't. The fight also isn't sped up in any way. Even with a damage shield the fight ends faster--but with attack slows the pet just swings like normal--but in a game of control that normal speed swing is what I'm interested in. Honestly I get about two fights per charm in easily using the attack slow for "the edge".

You gain a new animation, but this isn't really enough to solo--the only chance you really have to maintain a solo with the animation involves frivolous usage of Rune V, and a lot of Dementia casting. If you have the bucks for this, I invite you to continue the practice, but this will hurt your pocket boot fast, and approaches the danger of charm soloing at this point. Your animation is so fragile, trying to solo with it is almost like trying to fight just wizard style. I recommend saving the animation for farming equipment for your twink. Charm soloing is very dangerous now, and if you do choose to fight this way, it's important to consider this factor--if the average charm is 2.5 minutes (reasonable with my experience), can your pet finish the fight with your pull in that time? At one point in charm soloing, about 40 to 50, mobs you charmed could kill two other mobs before charm broke. You will find with the colossal increases in total hit points of the mobs, even the heavy hitting charmed pets have trouble finishing a fight in under three minutes. Dealing with a charm break is practically expected at this point, unless you are able to locate a set of low hit point mobs that will carve each other up quickly. I no longer recommend using slow on the enemy mob, as you will rarely hold a pet that can survive two fights in a row, and losing your pet can often mean zoning because you don't have the mana to nuke finish a mob. Successful charm soloing usually involves a pair of mobs spawning together, rooting one, charming the other and letting them battle it out, doing your best to make sure your pet barely wins, allowing you to break charm and have a fleeing mob left to finish off with nukes. You may even consider hasting your pet, to make for a reliable kill time. If you choose this route, then I suggest slowing the enemy, and going for a two mob kill before charm breaks. A strong haste is often enough to pull this off, but you can go from full health with Rune V up to very dead in seconds in this situation.

So obviously some people were charming more than greens. And remember:

While at a point and time I felt that Charisma was the end all be all of charming, my ways have changed, and Drekaar solos charm style with 85 Charisma.

I'm sorry if you don't like it Nirgon, but when you have a game where the mobs are stronger than the PCs, a skill like charm is going to be OP as fuck. If it were up to me a spell like Allure would cost 800 mana. But it doesn't. Based on what Xornn wrote if anything I think charm is too weak here.

[Nirgon]

NPCs here hit max or near max all the damn time on other npcs, it doesn't look very normally distributed.

Koros def one of my fave posters and totally agree here

I'm sorry if you don't like it Nirgon, but when you have a game where the mobs are stronger than the PCs, a skill like charm is going to be OP as fuck. If it were up to me a spell like Allure would cost 800 mana. But it doesn't. Based on what Xornn wrote if anything I think charm is too weak here.

Charm was certainly a powerful spell and it should be here. But the risk/reward isn't quite in line. I'll read through this Xorn posting but I did group with enchanters who had all their sky/hate gear, buffed their CHA and had their epic. The advice of them that I succinctly recall during the time was "find a good green and charm it".

Having a dar knight charmed, even at 255 CHA for more than 4 minutes is crazy. I think its more to do with the resists than with the CHA duration.

IE: Huggie I think it was came by the necro guardian house and saw me with said charmed dar knight and was like seriously how the hell do you have that thing charmed that long. To which I responded, yes this is not classic.

However! I think with high CHA the values are rather close but again, full duration charms for druids in plane of fear are just crazy. Highly resistant mobs should be just that and break charm very easily.

In seb on a 60 wizard I can spam root without resist really ever on a krup or illis knight here. On live, bok and above would definitely get fairly regular resists on root. At 57 I solo'd seb entrance with my wizard epic on live and based on my experience here on a 60 wizard, I noticed 2 things:

1. I didn't regularly resist force shock type spells NEARLY enough (140+ magic from a blue con source, it should literally not land once) and cold nukes from shamans and fire nukes from wizards even at 180ish range were hitting for quite a bit (even back to back to back full damage hits) whereas at that resist range from a blue con caster on me should rarely if actually ever land one of those spells on me.
2. Root landed every single time I casted it on blue cons.

I stand by this as something I do exactly remember as I did it for many hours, across many weeks in my playing and have in fact tested it here.

I further stand by my assertions on Sirran being dictated here and that mage sword procs need to go away in this time line based on the facts that we should be at END (last day) of Kunark on our time line and SK bash for epic and mage sword proc on unsummoned from pets fix was in in the same patch.

That's all for today~

PS: Shit is getting classic from the recent wave of fixes I saw which does indeed include Sirran. Let's tie up mage sword procs + necro heal retro being dispellable.

[Splorf22]

Nirgon you rely too much on your memory. Just because you talked to an enchanter who liked to charm green/lb cons is not proof that charm sucked. In fact if you talk to most enchanters here they will only charm lb pets. It's mostly those of us that learned with the (insanely OP) Pre-Kunark charm and then couldn't quite give it up that charm higher-level stuff and figure out ways to make it work. Like when The A-Team charms those splits in Sky, recharming by yourself is basically impossible. You get to run around screaming for help while someone else mezzes them.

http://web.archive.org/web/200101231906/http://forums.castersrealm.com/eq/Forum8/HTML/000930.html

Heh tell that to a enchanter friend of mine who soloed the king room in guk. It's not easy but they have the power of a necromancer. Err oh yah this was pre expansion at 49 too.

enchanters are nearly useless too (except for the occasional charm against something like Venril Sathir's guards which RARELY works).

Well I've played both, my enchanter I only took to 40, but my necro went to 50th pre-kunark. From what I saw in my many trips to POF/POH is that the enchanters did a very good job, of charming things (as long as they weren't scarelings ) and I did alright on my necro up there. There were times when I didn't feel I was that useful, but we all contributed to the end result.

So as always some people can do it and some people can't, but the mechanics make it possible.

[Nirgon]

I'd invite you to consider my noticings on having 180 range of resists and getting hit for full by the lower end blue con frogs in seb as a 60 wizard here, and root landing on them every time vs somewhat rarely (I realize this is without tash but it should give some idea of scale).

Sometimes I rely on my memory, and make what appear to be the prophecies of an insane person. But then things out of literally nowhere like an earth pet dual wielding scythes turns up from someone's hard drive.

I'm not saying patch this immediately based on how I say it should be.. I'm saying this is definitely something to look into (read: not just a wild goose chase waste of time) and you should test charming an npc in seb and having it beat on another on eqmac.

I don't want things easier or harder, or favor one class or another. I just want to play on a server classic enough that its almost impossible to tell. Charm feels OP for numerous reasons.

[koros]

Look, it's a lot of fun playing enc with super strong pets. But charm doesn't break enough. I played a rogue and my perma partner was one of our servers top enchanters. I made him charm in seb, even tho it broke all the time. I made him haste it and i'd give it proc weapons and the whole 9 yards. I kept -mr gear to give pets, etc. Nirgon is 100% right, resists are out of whack. A level 60 should basically resist almost all spells from npcs in seb, especially ones with a double resist check, while simultaneously having very few resists on your own spells. Myconid resist is too high btw (slow wasn't that hard to land at 60).

We *loved* dire charm, because it kept him from running lom charming all the time. My level 28 enchanter can keep a level 26 perma charmed without issue, that is not at all classic.

Charm like other check by tick spells should not last nearly as long as it does. Maybe one of the reasons is that on live, npcs and pcs had an innate 5% chance to resist/land any spell as long as the target wasn't immune. Perhaps that's why charm durations average out so high here.

[pharmakos]

I gotta tell you man, people didn't charm shit unless it was green at 40+ on live.

people are ballsy-er in general on P99, but i think it has more to do with the fact that we have a greater understanding of game mechanics now.

[Splorf22]

I'm sorry guys but I don't believe your memories are capable of telling the difference between a 2 minute average charm and a 3 minute average charm. The human brain is just not capable of estimating that kind of thing so precisely in the presence of huge variance. Xornn's guide gives us way more concrete information about what he was able to do with charm.

The biggest difference between here and live? The WC cap. If i had to eat a death for every time that thing has saved me Loraen would be level 0.

[TarukShmaruk]

Koros def one of my fave posters and totally agree here



Charm was certainly a powerful spell and it should be here. But the risk/reward isn't quite in line. I'll read through this Xorn posting but I did group with enchanters who had all their sky/hate gear, buffed their CHA and had their epic. The advice of them that I succinctly recall during the time was "find a good green and charm it".

Having a dar knight charmed, even at 255 CHA for more than 4 minutes is crazy. I think its more to do with the resists than with the CHA duration.

IE: Huggie I think it was came by the necro guardian house and saw me with said charmed dar knight and was like seriously how the hell do you have that thing charmed that long. To which I responded, yes this is not classic.

However! I think with high CHA the values are rather close but again, full duration charms for druids in plane of fear are just crazy. Highly resistant mobs should be just that and break charm very easily.

In seb on a 60 wizard I can spam root without resist really ever on a krup or illis knight here. On live, bok and above would definitely get fairly regular resists on root. At 57 I solo'd seb entrance with my wizard epic on live and based on my experience here on a 60 wizard, I noticed 2 things:

1. I didn't regularly resist force shock type spells NEARLY enough (140+ magic from a blue con source, it should literally not land once) and cold nukes from shamans and fire nukes from wizards even at 180ish range were hitting for quite a bit (even back to back to back full damage hits) whereas at that resist range from a blue con caster on me should rarely if actually ever land one of those spells on me.
2. Root landed every single time I casted it on blue cons.

I stand by this as something I do exactly remember as I did it for many hours, across many weeks in my playing and have in fact tested it here.

I further stand by my assertions on Sirran being dictated here and that mage sword procs need to go away in this time line based on the facts that we should be at END (last day) of Kunark on our time line and SK bash for epic and mage sword proc on unsummoned from pets fix was in in the same patch.

That's all for today~

PS: Shit is getting classic from the recent wave of fixes I saw which does indeed include Sirran. Let's tie up mage sword procs + necro heal retro being dispellable.

The only spells that would reliably resist against lower con mobs were those with secondary effects attached to them - Force Shock against 150 MR would basically never ever ever ever land because of the stun, but a regular nuke would land all the time for full damage or at least partial damage.

[pasi]

The biggest difference between here and live? The WC cap. If i had to eat a death for every time that thing has saved me Loraen would be level 0.

Concur with this. Although, I would argue that complete knowledge of the game and stable connections make a larger difference than the WC cap.

[cyryllis]

Although, I would argue that complete knowledge of the game and stable connections make a larger difference than the WC cap.

Exactly.

I mained an enchanter on live for many years and I never remember charming greens. I charmed less during my early levels, due to not having good cha gear, but when I did charm it was always DB cons. It was risky back then and it is still risky now, but we know so much more. We attempt harder things today also because it seems everyone has access to a pocket epic cleric now and has WC caps- so the downtime for fucking something up is far less severe.

[Nirgon]

I'm going to cross reference the Sirran charm thread with the people in here refuting my posts before casting down judgement on their claims.

Then I will cast down judgement.