Charm, viable when?

[Smuuglie]

When, to your experience, did charm become a viable spell for your enchanter? I have just gotten the spell at 12, and I know I cant charm anything blue for over 5 seconds...

[Dersk]

I started charming at level 12 in lavastorm, and continued to charm off and on until the 30s when I gave up on groups and just soloed with charm exclusively.

The 2nd time leveling up an enchanter on EQlive, I knew enough to take advantage of some game quirks. Mobs don't automatically get magical melee attacks until a certain level, and willowisps span that level, meaning the higher level wisps can be charmed and sent to attack their lower level variants while remaining immune to damage. I remember white cons at twelve being immune to the blue cons, but allakhazam lists the level range as 9-11, which contradicts those experiences. /shrug. At the very least, they should be able to kill snakes and spiders without trouble.

Somewhere between 14~16 I started charming girffawns in north karana, which I believe are levels 14 to 16. I could solo scythe beetles with them, but the problem is they were so high level I couldn't do so much as one point of damage (all spell resists). The point there being you can easily kill things 6 levels higher than you, that's how effective charm is at that level. It was dangerous, but on EQlive the beetles ran slower than everything else, so I only had to worry about mezzing then charming the griffawn.

[Reiker]

Dersk what's your charisma at?

[Dersk]

Erudites with base 80 cha. I did a lot of jewelry making back then, but I doubt that ever got my cha above 90.

[Malrubius]

I started charming at level 12 in lavastorm, and continued to charm off and on until the 30s when I gave up on groups and just soloed with charm exclusively.

Where? Here or on Live?

[Dersk]

Where? Here or on Live?

I was describing charming on EQlive, though I do see that it may appear as though it didn't apply to everything I said, aaaand that's probably not as helpful. Heh, my enchanter is kinda parked here at level 10 for a few reasons. I won't be charming any time soon.

[SchadenFreude]

This past Sunday, after the server was done patching, Glowstix charmed an LDC in Sol B. Hasted, that thing could do some crazy dps for the group. Charm usually lasted several minutes

[guineapig]

I guess the only real way to answer this question is to give a level 12 enchanter enough charisma gear to get the stat up above 200 and see if you can keep the pet charmed for anything remotely close to the max duration of the spell.

If you can then the answer is 12 (with heavy twinking).
OR
and any level at which you can afford the gear you will need (without heavy twinking).

Do we have any level 12 super twinked (and by twinked I mean with charisma gear) chanter available for testing?

[Striiker]

In my experiences, this server's charm is not really that close to how it was on live back in early 2000. On live I decided to give an enchanter a try after playing my wizard (because I was addicted to clarity). What worked exceptionally well for me was charming griffawns in North Karana and sending them after Borer and Scythe beatles. I did this at lvl 14ish. I had no issues keeping charm on anything. I had an identical enchanter then as I do now.. (an Erudite Enchanter with the same stat points spent). When I hit 12 on P99 and headed to North Karana, I got my ass handed to me. I tried charming beetles instead and had the same bad failures. Added to this is that the beetles run faster than they should (this was brought up in a previous bug report). I used to be able to jump / run to gain some good distance but can't now.
This is exactly as Dersk stated.
So, I decided to skip on charm for now as it is most certainly not what it was on classic. IT's a shame really because I REALLY loved the charm aspect of playing an enchanter.

[Landis]

In my experiences, this server's charm is not really that close to how it was on live back in early 2000. On live I decided to give an enchanter a try after playing my wizard (because I was addicted to clarity). What worked exceptionally well for me was charming griffawns in North Karana and sending them after Borer and Scythe beatles. I did this at lvl 14ish. I had no issues keeping charm on anything. I had an identical enchanter then as I do now.. (an Erudite Enchanter with the same stat points spent). When I hit 12 on P99 and headed to North Karana, I got my ass handed to me. I tried charming beetles instead and had the same bad failures. Added to this is that the beetles run faster than they should (this was brought up in a previous bug report). I used to be able to jump / run to gain some good distance but can't now.
This is exactly as Dersk stated.
So, I decided to skip on charm for now as it is most certainly not what it was on classic. IT's a shame really because I REALLY loved the charm aspect of playing an enchanter.

agreed charm is much more unreliable on P99 than it was on live with low charisma. it's basically unusable for an untwinked enchanter. the problem seems to be i either have an extremely long charm, or an extremely short charm, no in between. on live, increasing charisma seemed to increase the average length of the charm, but having low charisma did not mean all your charms lasted < 1 minute.

[astarothel]

Do we have any level 12 super twinked (and by twinked I mean with charisma gear) chanter available for testing?

mmm I will have one to this point in maybe a week or so, buying/farming the gear atm.

[guineapig]

If I were to participate in the experiment I could in theory load out some items for testing. If I can trust the person I'm loaning them to of course.

[Soft]

In my experience, using your pet and other spells has provided me with faster and less risky experience. I tried several times around each new charm spell to use it to level the first 10 times i charmed a green frog (tashed) in Qeynos sewers (110cha highelf) i got the durations 2seconds 8 seconds 9 seconds 5seconds and so on, on a green frog. This may have just been a nasty streak, but i did not get a single charm over 10 seconds in duration. Use your illusion they are much stronger than people give them credit for. Tash/slow/debuff/dot keep the mob rooted works perfectly.

[Dersk]

In my experience, using your pet and other spells has provided me with faster and less risky experience.

Given the unusually good performance of pets here compared to live, and the unusually short durations reported of charm here compared to live, this may very well be true.

edit: what frog in Qeynos sewers?

[Ropethunder]

I tried this the other day when my enchanter reached level 12. With 201 charisma, tashing first, the first dark blue I charmed held for 5 minutes.

After that it seemed completely random of charms breaking < 1 minute, ~1 minute, 2 minutes, a few seconds (on greens). It was so ridiculously inconsistent that I just gave up.

Very disappointing.

[nicemace]

wait till you fellas have a lvl 46 pet running round smashing guards and charm dosent break for 15 mins.

insaneee exp :P

[Thoughtseize]

I was looking forward to working with charm and was disappointed. I heard I needed cha > 200 so I accumulated pp and got enough gear to push the cha of Thoughtseize to 203:

Stein 15
Rod 12
Veil 9
Rings 14
Bracers 14
Hood 13
Medallion 9
Drake Legs 5
Nobles 5

Even with all this gear charm was useless. Quite disappointing.

[Adso]

I was looking forward to working with charm and was disappointed. I heard I needed cha > 200 so I accumulated pp and got enough gear to push the cha of Thoughtseize to 203:

Stein 15
Rod 12
Veil 9
Rings 14
Bracers 14
Hood 13
Medallion 9
Drake Legs 5
Nobles 5

Even with all this gear charm was useless. Quite disappointing.

This is depressing if true.

[Omnimorph]

Charm works reliably enough for me, and did so at level 35-50 depending on what i was charming.

[astarothel]

I think it is more the lower level charms that have issues with duration/breaks.

[Malrubius]

Yeah, from the results above, it sounds like the lower level charms are bugged in that they almost immediately break.

The higher level charms may be okay (if anything, a bit too reliable?).


And if we're following what was in classic, Charisma should only have a slight effect on durations (around 10% based on near-classic-era logs).

[Striiker]

I just wanted to point out that I submitted this under the Bugs section in the hopes of getting some attention to the issue.

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=9883