Enchanter CHA

[bigups43]

SO is charisma a chanters main stat on this server, or is it int? Does cha affect the duration of charm, mez, soothe etc?

Ive heard from more than a few people that it doesnt, would like to know before I sink money into cha gear.

[Vondra]

ENC mez is fixed duration based on the level of the spell, if it lands, it lands.

CHA will make your mez land more consistently (this is the main reason to raise CHA for enchanters imo)

Charm is random duration and if CHA affects it it is hard to tell, CHA does allow charm to land more consistently.

lull/pacify etc checks against your CHA when determining whether you pull agro if the spells are resisted. I don't think it affects whether the spells succeed or fail.


With high CHA and a blue mob, it is rare for Charm and Mez to be resisted unless the mob has particularly high MR (Especially charm)

[bigups43]

so I should focus on INT, and less on CHA?

[Splorf22]

I would say you want your starting charisma to be less than your starting intelligence but not massively so. My gnome has 133 int and 75 CHA, and I wish I'd put about 10 more points into charisma.

[Vondra]

so I should focus on INT, and less on CHA?

No.

In my time from 1-60, even though I'm very well funded, I never had anywhere near 200 int and maintained very high CHA and HPs instead (cuz you're gonna be getting hit plenty, give healers that little extra leeway to keep you alive) As long as you have a mana pool that works for you, you have enough int.

ENC mana use tends to be fairly constant once your group has the area settled. At that point, your max mana rarely plays into things. Of course, your mana regens at the same rate regardless of your stats, and you're always in a group with an enchanter with clarity...since that's you. Your primary focus is on survivability. CHA gives you that through having your mez work reliably (and to a lesser extent, making sure your charm attempts are successful), HPs give you that through letting you taking the errant hits you're sure to take (So stuff like a hooded black cloak and the 5 AC +55 HP plat wedding rings are useful anytime)



Primary: CHA
Secondary: HPs
Tertiary: Mana (Whether through +int or +mana items)

This is for single group 6 man content. What value you place on these things will differ in raid situations and you can adjust accordingly later on if you want. There's resist gear to consider too, though again that doesn't really play into things much when you're doing a standard exp grind.

[Yinikren]

I charm kite with ~ 145 cha, buffed, more would be a waste. CHA slightly affects the initial chance of resistance for mez and charm spells. It does not affect the duration of charm once it actually lands.

[pickled_heretic]

I charm kite with ~ 145 cha, buffed, more would be a waste. CHA slightly affects the initial chance of resistance for mez and charm spells. It does not affect the duration of charm once it actually lands.

Yes it does

[Werlop]

Yes it does

It has some impact on duration; it's mostly noticeable when you try to charm things at or above your level (which is pretty rare). Otherwise, level and the mob's MR are much more significant.
It also has a massive impact on whether or not the spell lands. With around or over 200 cha, charm is simply NEVER resisted but a mob that is not immune to magic. It's actually a reliable way of crowd controlling certain mobs that are difficult to mez.

The chance for mez to land is supposed to be heavily impacted by cha. I have not confirmed that it is on p99.

Lull is massively affected by cha. If you are naked, lull will have a critical fail (gain aggro) pretty often. With 200+ cha, it almost never does. At level 55+, I was able to use lull to split fairly large exp camps and usually I'd average 1 critical fail every few hours, which comes out to 1 over several hundred casts.

[Rilen]

I stopped using cha gear to charm after the nerf. I just buff and use my normal set up, which is around 190ish cha anyways I guess. Either way before 190 would mean terrible charms in the 50-60 scope of things, now it doesn't seem to make a difference that I can tell.

It does however seriously affect calm, with 255cha you can basically go anywhere you want uninhibited as an ench.

I think it should have a more noticeable affect across the board, but meh. As is it's mostly worthless and would recommend probably getting cha where you can (on items with int/mana/hp) and not worry about it otherwise. Probably 160ish would be enough to charm and do your business to 50.

[HawkMasterson1999]

Often times when charm decides to break over and over again I discover that my cha buff has dropped without me noticing. I rebuff cha and the charm sticks for near full duration once again. So I would say yes, charisma does effect charm duration. I don't run out of mana anyway so I don't worry my int too much.

[Vondra]

I think in the end, the fact that CHA has any effect on your performance...even if it is minor, makes it better than INT most of the time in groups where raising your max mana really isn't of any use.

Now I'm not recommending that you just totally ignore int and truly have a tiny mana pool...but if you've got 160 INT or something, that's more than enough.

[bigups43]

Ok thanks for the info. Can anyone recommend some low level CHA gear?

[socialist]

Your primary focus is on survivability

Confirmed. Your survivability is the most important thing because your spells generate huge aggro and your solo style is dangerous. When I leveled my enchanter to 50 pre-Kunark, I had like 120 int the entire way and it was never a problem. I wore all the hp gear I could get, from 55/5 rings to hooded black cloak. That extra 2-300 hp is far more important than anything else. Mana isn't a worth stacking for anyone except quad kiters and clerics. An enchanter will spend most of their life in one of two situations: never having full mana, in which case a big mana pool is worthless; or mostly having full mana, in which case a big mana pool is worthless. A big mana pool only matters if you routinely spend a full blue bar in one go, people's lives depend directly on your mana, or you can't do anything without mana - wizards and druids (when quadding) and clerics. Anyone else will benefit from a deep mana pool so rarely that it's far better to focus on not getting killed.

There's probably not enough commonly available charisma gear in the game to max the stat if you don't put any points in it, especially if your enchanter isn't a high elf or erudite. Since mana is so inconsequential and stamina gives too little hp for it to be worth the points, you're probably better off spending the points in cha unless you're one of those who believe it doesn't affect anything at all. If you put them into int, you'll struggle to get the unbuffed 200+ cha that most people believe is needed. And once you get access to the better and more rare cha gear, here's the thing to consider:

You will need to wear charisma gear. This is a given. If you put all your points in charisma, you'll hit the point of "enough cha" sooner and can start wearing more pieces of caster gear. This usually has better general stats than charisma gear which tends to give nothing but +cha, so you get better resists and stuff that way. If you had put your points in int, you'd have to wear more charisma gear which doesn't give resists, +hp and better AC that you'll get from your planar set or whatever caster gear you'd wear instead. Basically, unless you don't care about charisma at all, you benefit more overall from putting the points in charisma since it allows you to wear other stuff with better secondary stats that charisma gear typically doesn't have.

If this is for the PvP server, it's very different. After resists and hp, a PvP enchanter wants all the mana he can get. You'll always struggle to kill well-geared opponents because it's hard to land nukes on them, and the only way to try to keep up with this is to get as much mana as you can. An extra nuke or two will sometimes win a fight. You will be in situations where you simply go OOM trying to kill someone with a high mr. It's still not worth sacrificing your own resists for mana, or any slot where you can wear 40 or more hp instead, but other than that you'll want all the mana you can get. Spend your points in int if you're on red99. You probably won't want to solo with charm much anyway on a PvP server, you're basically a freekill for anyone if you do.

[Vondra]

Ok thanks for the info. Can anyone recommend some low level CHA gear?

Drakehide Leggings: 5 AC +5 CHA +5 DEX. 100p or less.
Golden Catseye Bracelet * 2: +7 CHA each. Also very cheap
Incandescent Mask: +7 CHA +5 INT. Costs like 700 or something
Crude Stein: +10 Sta +15 CHA. 150p max.
Rod of Insidious Glamour: +12 CHA. 500p maybe?
Opalline Earring * 2: 2 AC +5 CHA. 50p each, maybe cheaper.
Siryn Hair Hood: 5 AC +13 CHA +10 SV Fire. 1000p or so.

So that's 76 CHA right there.

Your first buys should be 2 Platinum Fire Wedding rings though (5 AC +55) HP. 250p each perhaps.

[pickled_heretic]

In the beginning, +HP is the most relevant stat for enchanters, followed by AC (honestly not much you can do with this one, but it is worth considering) and then CHA, Int, +mana and finally stamina (mainly because stam has a terrible HP return for casters). MR should be in there somewhere, and you should keep yourself self-buffed with magic resist to resist your own aoe mezzes if things get dirty.

The conventional caster logic of maxing mana and int/wis is largely irrelevant for enchanters, particularly after a certain point in your career. When most other casters are getting hit, they are doing it wrong, but when you are getting hit, you are doing your job.

sure, a bigger mana pool is nice, but it is simply not worth sacrificing hp for it. I find that pretty generally, group wipes don't come from me running out of mana, they come from me running out of hp and subsequently dying.

[HawkMasterson1999]

I agree with the hp thing for sure... I wear a HBC, Djarns ring, 55/5 ring etc..

[Werlop]

sure, a bigger mana pool is nice, but it is simply not worth sacrificing hp for it. I find that pretty generally, group wipes don't come from me running out of mana, they come from me running out of hp and subsequently dying.

After a camp has been broken, your mana will be pretty steady throughout the group- it peaks right before you need to rebuff and then hovwers between 30%-70% the rest of the time. If you're above or below that often, either you're doing too little or too much.
Of course, at 51+ the absurd mana offered by Theft of Thought keeps you at FM about half of the time anyway, so you might actually benefit from having more max mana on hand for emergency situations.

[Seaweedpimp]

HP - Mana - Cha

[MammothMafia]

hp - cha - hp - cha - ac - beer - hp. in that order = win

[Vermicelli]

Often times when charm decides to break over and over again I discover that my cha buff has dropped without me noticing. I rebuff cha and the charm sticks for near full duration once again.

QFT

When you are controlling a mob with charm, the mob will make a check every tick based on three things: your level vs theirs (the most influential check), your charisma, and the mob's magic resist. If the mob clears all three checks, your charm will break. So you can ensure that your charms stick for a long time by bumping your CHA and Tashing the mob. If you are in group with a L51 Mage or L49 Shaman, ask them to cast Malo on your pet before you charm it, as the Malo line can further decrease your pet's Magic Resist.

Also, if you are doing your job keeping all the mobs locked down and slowed and all your mates buffed, chances are you won't have time to regenerate to full mana, so don't worry about that max mana pool too much ;)

[Maestron]

ENC mez is fixed duration based on the level of the spell, if it lands, it lands.

CHA will make your mez land more consistently (this is the main reason to raise CHA for enchanters imo)

Charm is random duration and if CHA affects it it is hard to tell, CHA does allow charm to land more consistently.

lull/pacify etc checks against your CHA when determining whether you pull agro if the spells are resisted. I don't think it affects whether the spells succeed or fail.


With high CHA and a blue mob, it is rare for Charm and Mez to be resisted unless the mob has particularly high MR (Especially charm)

To expand a bit. Tash and other MR debufs have a greater impact on charm and mez than CHA.

Max INT then put points into CHA. Running out of mana will kill you faster than a low CHA.

[Jerin]

so I should focus on INT, and less on CHA?

Charisma

I have 209 cha with chanter buff and something like 150s for Int.
While your mana pool might suffer...your an Enchanter you will always have
breeze/clarity/c2 ect..

Only in the most fast paced groups will i come close to having mana issues.
Worst case scenario you play conservatively for a few pulls, hold off on casting your mediocre dd/dots.

Worst case scenario with low CHA, you/groupmate dies cause you were unable
to CC properly.

what do you think a chanters role is in a group setting?
solo?(which means charm)

...sum it all up ...CHA

[Tux]

Without seeing the source code you're all just speculating. The best you can offer is, "based on my experiences I think it does".

Not that it matters here much (different code base obviously), but even the sony reps said essentially nothing of value on the matter.

Here is a link that explains just about every post on this subject ever:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

[Sollannix]

I think the above post on confirmation bias says it all. I used to notice a few times when my cha buff was off and charm broke I would think "aha...it does matter.". That was my reasoning until I realized that when my cha was above 200 and charm ended after 10 seconds, I would think "Aha..well, it was just a fluke.". This was on the same mob.

Being a lot of levels higher than the mob and tashing/malo it is far more important for duration. I've actually started wearing imbued chain for ac and int and agi and more hp gear. I enjoy chainstunning as it saves the cleric mana and is different than the way I've played the class up until this point. If you use your safest stunlock combo it does drain mana so manapool starts to matter. As a chanter I have actually tanked doing this and taken no damage. The existence of the incandescent wand which must be melleed to proc a stun suggests the original devs recognized this was one possible playstyle, I really need to get one. You can do this and still cc and buff, etc. Honestly it's a refreshing change.

I have never noticed an excess of Mez resists with charisma much less than 200, my experience tells me that the importance of charisma is overrated with the exception of not getting aggro on lull resist, it unquestionably makes a difference there. Non aggro for lull resist seems to be the only use for charisma that Enchanters seem to unanimously agree matters.

Sollannixx Mezzinwitu
Crack deala and haste pusha on the corner of 55th

[Slave]

Charisma provides a straight 1:10 ratio of Mez and Charm resist modifier. If your Charisma is 200, mobs have a -20 modifier to their resist roll. That is by FAR the most important thing that an attribute can do for you as an Enchanter.

[Splorf22]

Charisma provides a straight 1:10 ratio of Mez and Charm resist modifier. If your Charisma is 200, mobs have a -20 modifier to their resist roll. That is by FAR the most important thing that an attribute can do for you as an Enchanter.

How did you decide this?

Anyway its worth noting that if this true the difference between nekkid and 255 is only a -20 resist mod (worth about 1 level).

Shameless plug: http://wiki.project1999.org/Loraen%27s_Enchanter_Guide

[Clark]

Charisma all the way, if you aren't charming you're doing it WRONG. Double rune as well, jaspers over peridots if you're poor.

[Clark]

To expand a bit. Tash and other MR debufs have a greater impact on charm and mez than CHA.

Max INT then put points into CHA. Running out of mana will kill you faster than a low CHA.

Have to agree to disagree. Though the stats will even out in the end because most raid gear has both stats, charisma is entirely more important.

[MammothMafia]

gnome chanter, maxed creation cha. wear incandescent mask and gloves for the small amount of cha over planar gear or +hp +mana items. wear +hp ac rings and earring over anything mana related. at lvl 60 i have about 40pts below 3k mana... considering tot and c2. you will NEVER need anymore mana... if you do.. your doing something terribly wrong. please stop playing your chanter... CHA > ALL

[A1551]

Bottom line, CHA > INT for priority, and here's why. CHA helps charm duration*. As someone said earlier, if you're not charming as an enchanter you're doing it wrong. And increasing your average charm duration (decreasing breaks) directly saves you mana. You get the same benefit (our flagrantly overpowered pets) at a lower mana cost over time as each break is very expensive (charm + stun + possibly mezzing etc. based on your personal tactic, plus time lost medding or doing something else productive while you deal with pet, any dmg you take being healed, etc). If you decrease your break rate, even by a very small amount, you are in essence increasing your effective mana regen (by getting the same benefit over time of pet at less mana expenditure for said pet). That's it right there, the reason I personally believe charisma totally, absolutely trumps intelligence as a priority for a chanter.

Any bonuses to lull critical resist rates (which I hope are well accepted) and MEZ resist rates (which I personally have no idea about without doing some kind of empirical testing) are both just icing on the cake.

*As a response to the idea that charisma doesn't have any impact on charm duration, and people who think it does = confirmation bias -- I understand the argument but disagree. If your CHA buff happens to fall off and you get 4 breaks in a row, someone could fall into confirmation bias and think CHA mattered when it was really a coincidence, sure. However, what I have had happen many, many times is be in a group charming, no variables changing, and kind of go into autopilot mode and let my CHA buff lapse. I might never go under 60% mana all night, but suddenly find myself struggling to keep a minimal reserve up for an extended period, with no remarkable changes in kill rates, etc. I pretty much know now this means I should check my charisma buff and often find it has faded. Fixing it generally leads to a recovery of my mana reserves in the intermediate term. I realize this is personal experience and ideally, we'd have some empirical evidence (which I am now tempted to gather!), but in lieu of such evidence I am confident in saying CHA has at least SOME benefit to charm durations, enough to be significant for mana expenditure purposes. While the difference with CHA may not be very big, even a small (10% duration on average boost) for a high charisma would trump a deeper mana pool, and I believe the benefit of CHA is probably bigger than that.

-Propo Fol

[HawkMasterson1999]

This is like when people say chocolate doesn't make you break out with zits. It's not superstition or confirmation bias when it happens consistantly every time. I've played many many hours charming over the years and charm duration most certainly is effected by charisma.

[Silo69]

Charisma provides a straight 1:10 ratio of Mez and Charm resist modifier. If your Charisma is 200, mobs have a -20 modifier to their resist roll. That is by FAR the most important thing that an attribute can do for you as an Enchanter.

without complicating this thread anymore

^^^^^^^

200 cha = 10% chance to not have a target resist your mez/charm

spot on post!!!!!

+5 int = 2% of my mana, +20 int equal 8% of my mana

at my lvl my max charm costs me roughly 16% of my mana

so one fail charm or resist, or early break at any point = 16% mana wasted

cha > int if (resist is not met) > cha

the return on +cha over +int is 2:1 with the current game mechanics

but when it comes to random number generator id rather be holding the 10% chance to not resist out of 8 rolls than to have 2 early breaks or god forbid a straight resist

balance is everything, finding that sweet spot

[Splorf22]

You guys are all proposing a false dilemma. The choice is not between CHA and INT. If it was, I'd go cha all the way unless I was fighting L56+ mobs when Rapture is useful (its a huge manahog). I don't think its a huge difference but I would trade 500 max mana for a 10% increase in charm durations and not think twice about it (5% I'd have to consider a bit but I'd probably do it).

The choice is between CHA and HP. And I am firmly on the side of HP there. When you start charming L50+ mobs with weapons and epic haste against L55+ mobs that hit for 200+ . . . you need HP and AC. Loraen has 75 starting CHA and just epic+insidious halo+sky shoulders+sky neck+buff gets him to 180. Throw in the CHA you get from a Hiero cloak and random hate pieces and you'll hit 200 without trying, and after that my personal opinion is HP/AC all the way.

[Sollannix]

Thanks for clearing that up Splorf/Loraen. I remember grouping with you on your monk alt in KC where i was "healing" you with the str rune cause we couldnt find a real healer, lol.....I enjoyed that. I read your guide and liked it, thank you for posting that to the wiki.

As Loraen said, I don't think that anyone is denying that charisma plays a role in charm duration...what is being questioned is whether or not you get a significant increase in the duration and thus if the gear used to amp up cha would be better spent on something else.....like AC and hitpoints to increase your survivability. I think even an increase in mana would be good in case you need to rune yourself or the cleric in a dire situation, or if you like to stun to save cleric mana. You can still keep a kick ass charmed dps pet and do all of this with less charisma.

My understanding is that higher levels affects duration most, then the mob's MR....and then charisma being a third check. In my experience the third check is so weak you're better off with more AC and HP. I fully understand the argument that even a slightly longer duration = less mana spent on charming over time. But the trade off is lessening your survivability via Ac and HP for a slight increase in charm duration time that is so gimp there are many posts with many pages over the years questioning its signifigance. Again, yes it is true that even a small duration increase of 10% will save you a chunk of mana...but swapping some cha gear for survivability gear just might save you even a ton more time and mana spent waiting for a rez effects timer to end so you can spam extinguish fatigue and rebuff.

One thing that i think also has been mentioned is that charisma also apparently can affect whether or not a mob resists charm....thus eating up your mana even more if resisted. I cant even remember the last time a mob has resisted charm, but obviously that is going to hurt you if you are using a mana hog like Boltrans. It really comes down to a question of gameplay preference.

The following link is to a post that was done by someone who said they did some work to gather data on duration..this is from post-velious live...their result was that they thought charisma affected duration time possibly less than 10%. If someone would like to repeat this test doing something similar with P99 mobs and post to this thread their results that would be awesome.....I wish the devs would just state exactly how the formula worked in terms of the cha third check impact in relation to the first two checks instead of allowing post after post on this year after year ...lol.

The Enchanter is a thinking persons class, which is why we have civilized debates about stuff like this, whereas other classes might be flaming each other over minor disagreements.

Here is the link from 2003(this debate just never ever ends):

http://www.therunes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1148

[A1551]

Am in full agreement about survivability being #1 (Hp/AC), I didn't want to imply CHA was #1, just that it's hard to defend putting int above cha except in very specific situations. Fortunately even with with very affordable gear you can get your hp/ac up a good bit and still boost charisma. Hard to do all three though without having to sacrifice one of them somewhere.

In fact the importance of survivability is more proof that increased charisma trumps int. Nothing quite as dangerous to a chanter as your quadding massively hasted pet breaking. Even a small increase in charm duration would add up over the course of a session. And personally, I think the duration difference is probably greater than 10%, possibly a lot greater. Getting more tempted to test it empirically... ;)

Also, that link to tests based on live was interesting. I know here I almost never (possibly never?) see a charm resist unless I'm using the wrong charm spell.

-Propo Fol

[HawkMasterson1999]

To put it very simply... When charisma buff drops, enchanter and cleric mana start to drop. I don't feel like I need any more evidence than that.

I think survivability is better served by not having charm drop as often.

I keep alternate gear sets w/ me always anway. I can go max int or max hp in a few clicks if the need arises.

[Splorf22]

I hate to be a blunt ass, but yes Virginia, you do need more evidence. Your 'gut feeling' is the same reason that people used to burn witches at stake and that George Washington died from leeches.

Here is the problem. Lets say Charisma has a high effect on charm durations, and it effects them linearly. Everyone will get 200 charisma without trying; the question is whether to go for 255 at the cost of HP gear. We know the softcap is 200. So lets say cha after the softcap counts 50%. That means 255 is effectively 227.5; 227.5/200 = 13% extra. Now charm has a huge variance (anywhere between 1 tick and 15 minutes) and worse than that it has a long tail. I don't feel like trying to do some math but you're going to need probably 50 samples @200 and 50 more @255 to have statistically significant results. In addition, you're going to have to account for the level of the mobs, whether they were charmed or maloed, and so on, so the only really good way to handle this is to sit there for 5 hours charming the same mob 100 times. And even the effect of Charisma may be more prevalent with higher-level mobs, so you'd have to do two tests with mobs of a different level. So who knows.

At least for my int-build guy, increasing charisma isn't that easy. I could swap the granite bracer 5AC/15hp for a 7CHA bracer, and the BS electrum earring 2AC/35HP for the 6AC/4CHA one. But beyond that, do you really want to swap a 5ac/55hp ring for 7 charisma?

P.S. Sollanix: I remember that. It was on my warrior twink too, only he wasn't very twinked as I had just reactivated him. We should try again sometime, Sakuragi is 58 now and in addition he has a fungi/bloodpoints so basically he can tank slowed mobs forever without heals :D

[Slave]

Think about how much damage a hasted, charmed pet does in one round. In some areas this is a damage potential of over 800 points.

In less than two seconds.

Therefore, any HP, AC, or Resist (defensive) items are going to pale in comparison to absolutely any increment of time that your Charisma is going to add to your Charm. Even if it's ONE PERCENT (also, true AC gain from items is finite and very low for Enchanter).

Let's say that the average charm time is 10 minutes.

1% of 10 minutes = .10 minutes = 6 seconds.

6 seconds is over 3 rounds of combat per Charm cycle IF MAXING CHARISMA ADDED ONLY ONE PERCENT TO CHARM DURATION.

That could be over 2400 damage.

AT ONE PERCENT DIFFERENCE.

Each 1% change in a 10 minute charm cycle can be over 2400 damage. And most people have (intuited?) a rate of 10% duration difference by maxing Charisma. A potential of TWENTY FOUR THOUSAND DAMAGE difference for 55-100 Charisma? Each point of Charisma could be worth worth 240-436 HPs. These numbers totally preclude gearing for anything but Charisma first.

Therefore, there is basically not a chance in hell that you would want even 1 point less than 255 Charisma while charming. And if you're not charming, why are you playing an Enchanter? This is not even including decrease in actual Charm resists, only duration.

[Splorf22]

Think about how much damage a hasted, charmed pet does in one round. In some areas this is a damage potential of over 800 points.

In less than two seconds.

Therefore, any HP, AC, or Resist (defensive) items are going to pale in comparison to absolutely any increment of time that your Charisma is going to add to your Charm. Even if it's ONE PERCENT (also, true AC gain from items is finite and very low for Enchanter).

Let's say that the average charm time is 10 minutes.

1% of 10 minutes = .10 minutes = 6 seconds.

6 seconds is over 3 rounds of combat per Charm cycle IF MAXING CHARISMA ADDED ONLY ONE PERCENT TO CHARM DURATION.

That could be over 2400 damage.

AT ONE PERCENT DIFFERENCE.

Each 1% change in a 10 minute charm cycle can be over 2400 damage. And most people have (intuited?) a rate of 10% duration difference by maxing Charisma. A potential of TWENTY FOUR THOUSAND DAMAGE difference for 55-100 Charisma? Each point of Charisma could be worth worth 240-436 HPs. These numbers totally preclude gearing for anything but Charisma first.

Therefore, there is basically not a chance in hell that you would want even 1 point less than 255 Charisma while charming. And if you're not charming, why are you playing an Enchanter? This is not even including decrease in actual Charm resists, only duration.

Your math is totally off here. Even if we take your (very wrong in my experience) 10 minutes/charm and 2400 damage/break, you'll get 2400 damage/600s from charm breaks = 4 dps normally, or with 10% increase 2400 damage/ 660 seconds = 3.65 dps with more charisma, or (hey) 10% less, which actually makes sense.

Not only is this math wrong, but you are computing the wrong thing. There are two relevant points here: hp/ac gear will cause more frequent recharms, costing more mana on rune/cc/recharm, and whether or not you'll survive the resulting charm break. In other words, lets make more terrible assumptions and say I'll take U(0,3500) damage on each charm break. With my 1750hp and 1100 from rune/bedlam, that gives me a 81% chance of survival. Suppose you sacrifice HP/AC for 255 cha. You take U(0, 3750) damage on each charm break. With 1500hp and 1100 from rune/bedlam, that gives you a 70% chance of survival. I survive an average of 5 breaks at 10 minutes/break, for 50 minutes between deaths. You survive an average of 3 breaks at 11 minutes for an average of 35 minutes.

Obviously the numbers in the previous paragraph come directly from my bunghole. But it does illustrate the right kind of math.

[Slave]

Slave, I'm sure if you think about this some more you'll realize its totally wrong.

That is some powerful evidence you give.

[Slave]

Your math is totally off here. Even if we take your (very wrong in my experience) 10 minutes/charm and 2400 damage/break, you'll get 2400 damage/600s from charm breaks = 4 dps normally, or with 10% increase 2400 damage/ 660 seconds = 3.65 dps with more charisma, or (hey) 10% less, which actually makes sense.

Not only is this math wrong, but you are computing the wrong thing. There are two relevant points here: hp/ac gear will cause more frequent recharms, costing more mana on rune/cc/recharm, and whether or not you'll survive the resulting charm break. In other words, lets make more terrible assumptions and say I'll take U(0,3500) damage on each charm break. With my 1750hp and 1100 from rune/bedlam, that gives me a 81% chance of survival. Suppose you sacrifice HP/AC for 255 cha. You take U(0, 3750) damage on each charm break. With 1500hp and 1100 from rune/bedlam, that gives you a 70% chance of survival. I survive an average of 5 breaks at 10 minutes/break, for 50 minutes between deaths. You survive an average of 3 breaks at 11 minutes for an average of 35 minutes.

Obviously the numbers in the previous paragraph come directly from my bunghole. But it does illustrate the right kind of math.

I figured 10 mins per charm to be more or less in line. What is wrong about the math here? 200 damage per hit, 4 attacks per round. 3 seconds normally, hasted over 50% = less than 2 seconds. 200 x 4 = 800 damage potential every LESS THAN TWO seconds. The math is completely correct.

Your "U damage per break" formula would be correct if mobs did a random amount of damage within their range. They don't. It is generally a very reliable mechanic to compute any given mob's DPS on any given target. Therefore your admittedly clever deaths per hour ratio is founded on a bad premise.

Also, I will take the same damage per break as you, because my AC will be the same. Because Enchanter AC tops off extremely quickly due to gear. Something that has already been explained.

[Splorf22]

Slave your problem is that your math is leading you to crazy places and rather than activating your common sense and going back and checking your assumptions you are continuing to believe in it.

I think your 10 minutes/2400 damage are both wrong (charmed pets hit for 140, not 200, they don't always DW/DA, they don't always hit for max damage, I stun and take an average of 2 rounds, etc. Of course, sometimes you get interrupted or bashed and then things get ugly).

But anyway the specific numbers you picked aren't the problem, your problem is that your reasoning itself is wrong, starting here:


Each 1% change in a 10 minute charm cycle can be over 2400 damage. And most people have (intuited?) a rate of 10% duration difference by maxing Charisma. A potential of TWENTY FOUR THOUSAND DAMAGE difference for 55-100 Charisma? Each point of Charisma could be worth worth 240-436 HPs. These numbers totally preclude gearing for anything but Charisma first.

Under your assumptions you'll take 2400 damage per break, which will happen 1% less often. So you'll take 2400 damage every 10.1 minutes rather than 10 minutes. This is hardly a huge win, and certainly does not imply "A potential of TWENTY FOUR THOUSAND DAMAGE".

[Slave]

Slave your problem is that your math is leading you to crazy places and rather than activating your common sense and going back and checking your assumptions you are continuing to believe in it.

I think your 10 minutes/2400 damage are both wrong (charmed pets hit for 140, not 200, they don't always DW/DA, they don't always hit for max damage, I stun and take an average of 2 rounds, etc. Of course, sometimes you get interrupted or bashed and then things get ugly).

But anyway the specific numbers you picked aren't the problem, your problem is that your reasoning itself is wrong, starting here:



Under your assumptions you'll take 2400 damage per break, which will happen 1% less often. So you'll take 2400 damage every 10.1 minutes rather than 10 minutes. This is hardly a huge win, and certainly does not imply "A potential of TWENTY FOUR THOUSAND DAMAGE".

2400 damage per break, no. That is not what the 2400 damage comes from.

2400 damage is the damage you save in 6 seconds, the time that you (would have, if mobs did 200 per swing, sorry) gain(ed) every 10-minute charm session PER ONE PERCENT DIFFERENCE.

It's still over a 1,600 damage potential for every 1% difference in duration if the maximum that a charmed mob can hit for is 140.


edit: changed 16,000 to 1,600 in final sentence

[Slave]

Those shocking numbers are NOT EVEN CONSIDERING the following:

1) The longer you have something charmed, the more damage it will do and the less damage your party will take from mobs.

2) Initial Charm/Mez/Lull resist rates will be lower with higher Charisma

3) If the Enchanter is being attacked more over time, he's doing less CC, causing the group to endure more dps or regaining less mana.

[A1551]

Here is the problem. Lets say Charisma has a high effect on charm durations, and it effects them linearly. Everyone will get 200 charisma without trying; the question is whether to go for 255 at the cost of HP gear. We know the softcap is 200. So lets say cha after the softcap counts 50%. That means 255 is effectively 227.5; 227.5/200 = 13% extra. Now charm has a huge variance (anywhere between 1 tick and 15 minutes) and worse than that it has a long tail. I don't feel like trying to do some math but you're going to need probably 50 samples @200 and 50 more @255 to have statistically significant results. In addition, you're going to have to account for the level of the mobs, whether they were charmed or maloed, and so on, so the only really good way to handle this is to sit there for 5 hours charming the same mob 100 times. And even the effect of Charisma may be more prevalent with higher-level mobs, so you'd have to do two tests with mobs of a different level. So who knows.


There are plenty of enchanters running around the server without CHA of 200, especially in the sub-50 level crowd. I'm leveling up an alt atm and i've bumped into many enchanters who have ints close to 200 and charisma in the 120-140 range. I think a lot of this information is more geared to them (ie new chanters), yes, obviously anyone 50+ is probably going to have hit cha 200+. The benefits of over 200 is certainly a separate question, is is it all linear, are there diminishing returns, etc. I'd love to know all that, but I really don't think that's the question here.

And that's why i disagree with how complicated your proposed testing would have to be. Yes, that would all be great, but as you pointed out what we have right now is experienced based opinions (worth a lot more than nothing but not much vs. actual measured data). We don't even have a rough order of magnitude on the effect of charisma on charm duration right now. And this isn't rocket science, its a (pretty stupid) game. Data at the level of that post you linked to would be more than adequate for our needs.

A fairly simple test I am considering that could be done while exping -- grab a cleric buddy, go exp for a few hours with the same charmed pet. Spend hour with all cha gear off, spend an hour with it all on. Tally the breaks in each scenario. Easy enough to do, just need to keep the pet alive, record start and end times of when the gear goes on/ comes off, and count breaks in the log. See what it spits out after one cycle, then do it again, etc. If charisma has any significant impact on charm duration it should emerge from the data fairly quickly (and repeatably). Obviously if there is no big difference there's not much point in checking again with 200 vs 255 :D

-Propo Fol

[Splorf22]

2400 damage per break, no. That is not what the 2400 damage comes from.

2400 damage is the damage you save in 6 seconds, the time that you (would have, if mobs did 200 per swing, sorry) gain(ed) every 10-minute charm session PER ONE PERCENT DIFFERENCE.

It's still over a 1,600 damage potential for every 1% difference in duration if the maximum that a charmed mob can hit for is 140.


edit: changed 16,000 to 1,600 in final sentence

Slave what you are saying just does not make sense. Let me try an example and see if this works for you. Lets use your numbers: 2400 damage in 6 seconds, 10 minutes of charm, 10.1 minutes for the guy with 255cha.

Our timeline:

0 seconds: Enchanter A (200 cha) and Enchanter B (255) both charm a mob
600 seconds: Enchanter A's charm breaks
606 seconds: Enchanter A has taken 2400 damage but has the pet under control again.
606 seconds: Enchanter B's charm breaks
612 seconds: Enchanter B has taken 2400 damage but has the pet under control again

So at this point A and B have taken exactly the same amount of damage. By the time B has suffered 100 breaks, A will have suffered 101, thus taking exactly 1% more damage.

Your math only makes sense if A sits around getting beat on until B's charm breaks. I don't think I can explain this any better than I am now, so if you still think your math is correct we'll have to agree to disagree.

[Splorf22]

A fairly simple test I am considering that could be done while exping -- grab a cleric buddy, go exp for a few hours with the same charmed pet. Spend hour with all cha gear off, spend an hour with it all on. Tally the breaks in each scenario. Easy enough to do, just need to keep the pet alive, record start and end times of when the gear goes on/ comes off, and count breaks in the log. See what it spits out after one cycle, then do it again, etc. If charisma has any significant impact on charm duration it should emerge from the data fairly quickly (and repeatably). Obviously if there is no big difference there's not much point in checking again with 200 vs 255 :D

-Propo Fol

If you do this test and report the results I love you long time!

I can only say that an hour won't be enough. If we assume you're charming something with an average duration of 5 minutes, you'll need 3-4 hours under each set of conditions.

[Slave]

Slave what you are saying just does not make sense. Let me try an example and see if this works for you. Lets use your numbers: 2400 damage in 6 seconds, 10 minutes of charm, 10.1 minutes for the guy with 255cha.

Our timeline:

0 seconds: Enchanter A (200 cha) and Enchanter B (255) both charm a mob
600 seconds: Enchanter A's charm breaks
606 seconds: Enchanter A has taken 2400 damage but has the pet under control again.
606 seconds: Enchanter B's charm breaks
612 seconds: Enchanter B has taken 2400 damage but has the pet under control again

So at this point A and B have taken exactly the same amount of damage. By the time B has suffered 100 breaks, A will have suffered 101, thus taking exactly 1% more damage.

Your math only makes sense if A sits around getting beat on until B's charm breaks. I don't think I can explain this any better than I am now, so if you still think your math is correct we'll have to agree to disagree.

What you just said is that for each 1% less that charm time you have, you will take 1% more damage. In this case, many have (unscientifically) reported experiencing a 10% (or more) difference in charm time when maximizing Charisma.

Even in your example, Charisma is directly correlated with taking less damage over time. When you say "A and B have taken exactly the same amount of damage," that's true. What you left out is that the timetable is different. Your phrase "at this point" is inaccurate. At no time have Enchanter A and Enchanter B taken the same amount of damage. Enchanter B has taken less damage over time due to his Charisma.

This is not even mentioning mana over time, which you will have a lot more of with more Charisma as well. Even when discussing it purely on a defensive level, the Enchanter with the higher Charisma takes less damage.

[fadetree]

Someone is WRONG on the internetz!

[Splorf22]

Not only is this math wrong, but you are computing the wrong thing. There are two relevant points here: hp/ac gear will cause more frequent recharms, costing more mana on rune/cc/recharm, and whether or not you'll survive the resulting charm break.

I'm just going to quote myself and call it a day on this thread.

You're free to gear your enchanter however you want, just know that Save wears a Fingerbone Hoop (-10) and a Helot Skull Helm (-15) which gives him 150 or if he even uses the CHA buff which I'm not sure he does and he manages to solo HS South and East. Of course he also wears a Gem Encrusted Ring so I'm not sure I'd trust his advice on gearing, but the point is low charisma is not the kiss of death.

[Slave]

and whether or not you'll survive the resulting charm break.
Do we have satisfactory answers on the question of Charisma modifying Stun line as well? That would have yet another defensive impact for CHA.

[A1551]

Ok so I grabbed a cleric (thanks Kriven) and charmed goos in COM, and the results were very striking.

First, I found a pet who was just on the cusp of charming viability. At level 52 I grabbed a goo hitting for 116. Prior to this we tried a goo hitting for 120 but even with full charisma gear could not keep it charmed with duration good enough to exp reliably. This choice was intentional, because what I really care about is keeping the best mob I can for as long as I can. I'm sure results would be very different for a light blue mob. On every break the mob was tashed and re-charmed. I just pulled all the data out of my log file after our session and crunched it all using excel. results are as follows:

High Charisma dataset (CHA = 224)
Time of trial: 0:40:18 (or 0.672 hours)
Breaks: 7
Breaks per hour(extrapolated): 10.42
Avg Duration: 5.76 minutes
Median Duration: 3 minutes 10 seconds

Low Charisma dataset (CHA = 95)
Time of trial: 0:58:04 (0.968 hours)
Breaks: 25
Breaks per hour(extrapolated): 25.83
Avg Duration: 2.32 minutes
Median Duration: 1 minute 4 seconds

So conclusion -- charisma has a massive effect on charm duration when charming mobs at the high end of the "viable pet level" spectrum at level 52 in this dataset. In this case, I had almost 2.5 times more breaks per hour (10 to 25) with 95 charisma vs. my normal charisma of 224. This translated into more than doubling my charm durations on average (2.32 minutes with low charisma boosted up to 5.76 minutes with 224 cha). Even with a few caveats discussed below, I'd say the numbers speak for themselves. The cleric I worked with (who didn't specifically know which data set was which) pretty much figured out within three minutes when I had pulled off my charisma gear, and didn't even want to keep going as it was so clear cut. I forced him to deal with my lower charisma for another 55 minutes.

As to the caveats -- first, I have no qualms whatsoever about the one hour duration of the low charisma set. Breaks came so fast and so consistently I am confident to say I could repeat that set a million times and get pretty similar results. However, my high charisma set was probably too short, which is compounded by the much less frequent breaks meaning there's less data to look at. We were working on a very short time window before he had to go. I think the high charisma set durations are fairly accurate overall but I could see the numbers changing there more significantly if the test was repeated. Regardless, it is extremely unlikely they would shift enough to call the conclusion into question.

Second, a few goofs in the experiment. During the low charisma set higher level enchanters came by and twice tash'ed my pet w/ their better tash (they saw how often I was breaking and wanted to help!). This means that for a significant portion of the "low" test my pet actually had lower MR (and assumedly a reduced break chance) vs. my high test. Fortunately this really has no relevance on the conclusions.

Finally, something else I found interesting. Based on each charms individual duration breaks are definitely weighted to the early side of the spectrum. The median duration for both sets was significantly lower vs. the average (Median was 3:10 for high and 1:04 for low). So it is not just our imagination that pets seem to behave forever and then suddenly break repeatedly. Charms tend to break early and often, but once they've lasted a few minutes tend to keep lasting (ie become more stable).

I'd like to repeat this with longer durations, and CHA 200 vs 255 to determine how charisma over 200 helps, but no promises I'll have the motivation :D I expect the differences will not be nearly as stark, meaning much longer sample times to see a meaningful pattern.

-Propo Fol

[Splorf22]

Nice job propo!

This does look pretty convincing. In fact that scales almost linearly. 2.42x in duration for a 2.35x increase in charisma. So I think this is pretty conclusive evidence that you need to get 200 cha as an enchanter. Now the question is 200 vs 255. Who knows, maybe I'll have to drop my granite bracer :D

Also I can tell you that when I was doing my experiments, I parsed all my charm durations for 2 months or so. As far as I can tell, charm duration on P1999 is piecewise linear. For me it was about an 80% chance of a charm 0-5 minutes, and a 20% of a charm 5-15 minutes or so.

[Slave]

A1551 has got to get a ton of credit here. Well done.

[Swish]

A1551 has got to get a ton of credit here. Well done.

Lets not forget the cleric too! But yeah those numbers are enlightening, and a very good advert for getting CHA to at least 200 as quickly as possible :)

[Tecmos Deception]

CHA slightly affects the initial chance of resistance for mez

I've killed 222 35-39 mobs with my 44-46 enchanter (236 charisma) in the last 24 hours. Every pull starts with me using the level 4 mez on an untashed mob, then tashing it, charming it, and sending him at another mob, that I then root, and then tash.

I have not had a single mez resist, but I've had 19 root resists.

Either mez is harder to resist than average, root is easier to resist than average, charisma affects mez resist chance SIGNIFICANTLY, or my results are ridiculously unlucky.

My bet is on charisma SIGNIFICANTLY reducing the chance of a mez resisting.

[Splorf22]

I've killed 222 35-39 mobs with my 44-46 enchanter (236 charisma) in the last 24 hours. Every pull starts with me using the level 4 mez on an untashed mob, then tashing it, charming it, and sending him at another mob, that I then root, and then tash.

I have not had a single mez resist, but I've had 19 root resists.

Either mez is harder to resist than average, root is easier to resist than average, charisma affects mez resist chance SIGNIFICANTLY, or my results are ridiculously unlucky.

My bet is on charisma SIGNIFICANTLY reducing the chance of a mez resisting.

222 mobs? Thats 1 every 6 minutes for 24 hours. Get some sun.

After that, it should be easy to do a mez resist test. L4 mez is like 20 mana or something, just cast it 100 times with 255, 200, and 100 charisma and we'll see what's up. The other possibility is that root is just a bit more resisty.

[Tecmos Deception]

It's your fault I made an enchanter, Splorf. Damn solo artist stuff tempting me to get a character who can mess around with that stuff.

[Brain]

I'm just going to quote myself and call it a day on this thread.

You're free to gear your enchanter however you want, just know that Save wears a Fingerbone Hoop (-10) and a Helot Skull Helm (-15) which gives him 150 or if he even uses the CHA buff which I'm not sure he does and he manages to solo HS South and East. Of course he also wears a Gem Encrusted Ring so I'm not sure I'd trust his advice on gearing, but the point is low charisma is not the kiss of death.

^^

Does Slave even have a 60 chanter?
lolz

[Slave]

The numbers have more than borne out so not sure why you've gotta hate! :D

[Brain]

Think about how much damage a hasted, charmed pet does in one round. In some areas this is a damage potential of over 800 points.

In less than two seconds.



LOL enough said...

What mob in particular are you talking about here Slave? Which charm spell are you using in this situation?

[Splorf22]

The numbers have more than borne out so not sure why you've gotta hate! :D

No, they really haven't. Every enchanter will get 200 charisma at higher levels without trying; the question is should you sacrifice HP/AC for getting it to 255.

[Slave]

No, they really haven't. Every enchanter will get 200 charisma at higher levels without trying; the question is should you sacrifice HP/AC for getting it to 255.

I think the AC thread might hold part of the key to this. You keep saying to sacrifice for extra AC and it may not even be possible. Every point of AC you have given yourself over what in my opinion is hard-capped per level has been in vain.

[Splorf22]

Did you even read the AC thread? The ac hardcap for enchanters before the Great AC Rebalancing was 385 item AC.

[Splorf22]

BTW because I am an aspergers type I made a spreadsheet with enchanter gear. These are my stat weights:

Int: 1 / Cha: 5 / Sta: 2.4 / Str: 0.5 Agi: 0.8
HP: 1 Mana: 0.15 / AC: 3
MR: 1.5 / CR: 1.5 / FR: 0.8 / PR: 1 / DR: 1

i.e. a piece of gear's 'Loraen Score' is the dot product of that vector with its stat vector.

So for example I wear the Insignia Protector (135) over the Crude Stein (99) and the BS Electrum earring (45) over the opalline earring (31).

Let me add that you can see my gear setup on the magelo: http://wiki.project1999.org/Magelo_Blue:Loraen

Suppose I were to go for 255CHA. Currently my guy has 219 with the buff, so I'd need 36 more. So lets say I swapped out two BS earrings for opalline earrings (+10), the Elliptical Veil for the Incandescent mask (+4), the IP for the Crude Stein (+10), and the Granite Bracer for the 7 Cha bracer (7), and the wedding ring for the 7CHA one (7). Thats a total of 38 which gets me 2 over the cap. Meanwhile I'm losing ~150HP and ~30AC. That's probably almost an entire attack round. And I have the advantage of having pretty good gear; you're going to have to make even bigger sacrifices if your gear is worse. Meanwhile under the most optimistic assumptions I'll be getting 227/210 = 8% longer charms. If Charisma is softcapped at 4 or 5 to 1, its even less.

[Slave]

BTW because I am an aspergers type I made a spreadsheet with enchanter gear. These are my stat weights:

Int: 1 / Cha: 5 / Sta: 2.4 / Str: 0.5 Agi: 0.8
HP: 1 Mana: 0.15 / AC: 3
MR: 1.5 / CR: 1.5 / FR: 0.8 / PR: 1 / DR: 1

i.e. a piece of gear's 'Loraen Score' is the dot product of that vector with its stat vector.



This is some pretty nerdy stuff. I love it!

Still, everything I've heard about softcaps here has led me to believe they tail off at a rate of 2:1 once it's hit.

I have no idea which AC thread you are referring to; it's not like there has only ever been one of them. And if you're so concerned about physical damage I don't know why you wouldn't assign more weight to Agility or HPs. Where are you getting your AC effectiveness statistics?

[Splorf22]

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=48312

I don't think AC is super effective of course. But lets say 30AC means I take 3% less damage. At 1750 self-buffed HP, that's ~50 hp. At 2800 hp equivalent with rune/bedlam, that's 85HP. So even a pretty small change in damage taken can make a big difference.

Anyway I've never done any testing so I have no real justification for that.

[Slave]

Testing for AC with a high-level Enchanter is not easy, especially against exp-bearing opponents.

But no, I don't think we do have any evidence that purposely raising item AC will help an INT caster whatsoever after an easily-reachable goal of say 500 or 550. Or anywhere along the spectrum. Which obviously it must SOMEwhere, we just don't have the data that I'm aware of.

My experience has led me to believe that the effectiveness of item AC is hard-capped by level, and for INT casters, that cap is very low. And yet I gear my shaman for AC and HPs, ever striving for more of both, even using the 12 AC mask. They are potentially wickedly synergistic... I feel a little dissonance there, but ingame, I imagine I can feel the difference in power with nearly 1000 AC on an Ogre Shaman.

[Slave]

And yet I have taken larger max hits than a monk with less AC. So I might be capped there too.