Testing Charmed Pet -MR Gear
 

In my mid 50's, my enchanter collected up some negative magic resist gear for charming. The first time I tried it was in Howling Stones. I lost everything by botching a pull and feeding my pet two rooms and a hallway worth of harm touchies.

Sour-graping my loss, I've held off on getting more but I honestly wanted to know how effective it is. So in the name of science, I put together a -50 MR suit using the following:

• Adamantite Band
• Adamantite Band
• Rusty Spiked Shoulderpads
• Riptide Spear
• Tome of the Eternal
• Astral Cloak of the Titans
• Astral Leggings of the Titans

Next, I went looking for some blue-to-60 mobs to test on. There were a few things I wanted; minimal risk of killing me or forcing me to gate, to be able to get my items back, someplace quiet where other players wouldn't unintentionally interfere, and mobs that would be unbuffed with both hands free to hold items.

There's a tunnel in the back of the giant fort in Frontier Mountains with two level 50 warrior giants; Eldak Howlingbear and Mentrax Mountainbone. They are non-aggro, non-social to each other (or anything else), and drop nothing. WARNING: Mentrax is a quest npc for the warrior epic and his corpse will not return items when killed. I almost learned this the hard way but thankfully tested getting a torch back from both giants before I started.

The first test was the control. Level 60 enchanter, 255 charisma at all times, Tashanian (-39 magic resist) on the pet at all times. Since Tashinian lasts 13 minutes at 60 and Allure lasts 19 minutes I decided to break charm when Tash ended and recharm. I would not count these as early breaks. I ran this test for one hour, counting down. All I did was sit there with Eldak charmed ready to root, tash, and re-Allure. I had early breaks at:

59:28
48:16
42:58
31:52
28:39
22:03
20:26
1:37

With a deliberate break to re-tash at 7:27.

For phase two, I used the same spawn of Eldak and gave him the seven -MR items and kept him charmed for another hour. I had early breaks at:

46:02
25:49
17:29

With deliberate breaks to re-tash at 48:03, 31:56, and 4:24.

I have to concede that two hours of testing is REALLY SMALL to draw definitive conclusions but it did appear to be effective.

Small data set, but does coincide with findings of previous testers.

-MR works. I never bother w/ the Astral Cloak and Leggings due to cost.

Typically prefer to use a Swarmcaller + Tome of the Eternal as I find free slows on every mob makes for an easier life than an extra -5 MR. If I'm doing something like C/E or HS South, the pet is getting a Staff of Undead Legion + Tome. I haven't found a place yet where Riptide Spear made sense, but I suppose any non-undead target / area that requires big boy slow it would be worth it.

Once I get a good pet and in a good spot, you can betcha bippy its getting rings and shoulderpads. There was some argument a while back about whether or not pets equip 2 rings, but I do it anyway.

Upvoted.

Apologies, my math was wrong. This gear list is -55 MR, not -50.

Gauntlets of Mortality for an additional -5 MR.

Keep in mind not all pets wear all items

My anecdotal approximations say that charm duration is 80% level disparity , 10% mr, 10% charisma. I have no math to support this so dont take this as law but after hundreds upon hundreds of hours of enchanting this is the conclusion I draw. I rarely tash or -MR gear a pet.

Level disparity is a big point. But if you really want to get a higher level pet, then the other factors become much more important.

The way it works is level disparity check. If that fails:
-MR check....if that fails
CHA check....

Now, Mykayla of ROI did substantial testing on the effect that CHA has on charming, and essentially came back with the formula that for every 10CHA up to 200 CHA = 1% chance of passing the charisma check in the event where levelcheck and MRCheck fails. CHA from 201-255 has diminishing returns, but its approximated that 255 CHA is equivelent to 25% chance to successfully keep a charm when it would otherwise break. With base CHA hovering around 100 to 120 at the base level for any race combination of chanter, this means that the efficacy of gearing up to 255 will see an increased "resistance to charmbreak" of approximately 225 to 250%, when looking at the equation from the bottom up, considering the completely disregarding 100-120CHA chanter.

Conversely, the difference between 89% chance to break charm on MR and Level fail at 110 CHA, vs the 75% chance to break charm on a MR and Level Fail at 255 CHA = 18.67% increased efficacy in maintaining charms if CHA is maxed vs gearing entirely for HP and INT with gear that does not have CHA on it at all. I wont go into the details of LevelCheck and MRCheck and how that plays into the charmbreak formula because those are static values and they're irrelevant to the formula since the CHA check is a save that is rolled on 100% of the time where MR and LevelDelta fails.

I always use 2 band, shoulders, and a tomb just for good measure and sometimes I feel like the whole -MR thing is a lie lol. There are times when I'll have a mob break charm before my lv.4 mez even wears off of them... multiple time! (how insane right!?).