A Statistical analysis of Charm Duration

[Goregasmic]

From loraen's ench guide:

Of course, we obviously want charm to last as long as possible, and the main determinants of charm duration are Mob Level, Magic Resistance, and Charisma, in that order. Therefore your first choice is what level of pet to charm. At L60, I would guess that a L46 froglok dar knight will stay charmed about five times longer than a L53 froglok ilis knight. If you are getting too many charm breaks, go with lower level mobs. For example, there are two ways to solo the necrosis scarab camp: the fast way is to charm the krup roamer, but there is no shame in bringing one of the lower level frogs over from across the moat. For reasonable charm durations my recommendation is to charm something 0.75-0.85 times your level; at L60 this works out to L45-50; 51 is possible but risky and 52-53 is almost certainly going to be a short trip without malo.

I think this is based on findings in this thread from 2013 where lvl 53 mobs charm time averaged around 90 seconds. Anyone who charmed anything will know that this is pretty short. Spent 56-58 in frenzy and the few times I tried keeping a pet around for as long as possible I've had some hit the max duration of allure which was about 18m30s (I set a gina countdown timer for 18mins when I start casting charms). So mob level absolutely has an impact post 50 it seems. This thread also tries to demonstrate the usefulness of charisma at higher levels but it is hard to get a good sample solo when ilis frogs double for 400. Also, it is important to keep in mind cha has diminishing returns after 200.

Anecdotally I think MR makes a huge difference too because sometimes I go to Lguk or other lesser zones and I'll just pop a charm on a mob without tashing to trash a camp real quick and those charms seem be very short more often than not even though the mobs cap at like level 40.

And yes, cha is vital for lull crit fails and if you do any sort of dungeon crawls, lulls will often be your most casted spell. In some tricky places I've used lull crit fails to pull and stripping down all my +cha only pieces (-50ish) and taking off cha buffs made the process much quicker.

[charleski]

Originally Posted by shovelquest [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Charms should only last 8 minuets (max), mountains of proof:

https://project1999.com/forums/showp...3&postcount=81

I hope OP's science (that is above my pay grade) and this can put a rest to the debate and crush a bunch of people's joy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The fact is, however, that you can expect to see a charm lasting over ten minutes at least once in the course of a night. I don't know if there's a hard limit in the code, but obviously very long charms are quite rare given the exponential distribution.

Originally Posted by kjs86z2 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

the AI is getting pretty good

also thats a lot of words to say (your level vs mob level) > MR > 255 cha...something that has been known for decades now

and to suggest enc start STR is absurd...even if its a trivial difference in charm durations ill still take it to decrease lull crit fails

I'm saying exactly the opposite, didn't you notice? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
The folklore that's built up over charm duration is founded on poor data and faulty analysis.

Originally Posted by Goregasmic [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think this is based on findings in this thread from 2013 where lvl 53 mobs charm time averaged around 90 seconds. Anyone who charmed anything will know that this is pretty short. Spent 56-58 in frenzy and the few times I tried keeping a pet around for as long as possible I've had some hit the max duration of allure which was about 18m30s (I set a gina countdown timer for 18mins when I start casting charms). So mob level absolutely has an impact post 50 it seems. This thread also tries to demonstrate the usefulness of charisma at higher levels but it is hard to get a good sample solo when ilis frogs double for 400. Also, it is important to keep in mind cha has diminishing returns after 200.

Anecdotally I think MR makes a huge difference too because sometimes I go to Lguk or other lesser zones and I'll just pop a charm on a mob without tashing to trash a camp real quick and those charms seem be very short more often than not even though the mobs cap at like level 40.

And yes, cha is vital for lull crit fails and if you do any sort of dungeon crawls, lulls will often be your most casted spell. In some tricky places I've used lull crit fails to pull and stripping down all my +cha only pieces (-50ish) and taking off cha buffs made the process much quicker.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my first post. Average charm duration is completely meaningless. The concept of a mean only works for normally-distributed data. A lot of data does come from a normally-distributed population, but in this case that simply isn't true. For exponential data like this you can use the median instead, but that has very limited utility and generally doesn't allow the application of statistical tests. You really need to perform a deeper analysis of the data and extract an estimate of the core underlying probability.

I'm only looking at charm duration here. Resists on lull spells are obviously a completely different topic, but one that would be worth investigating properly at a later date.

As an aside, ironically I did notice a resist on the initial cast of Cajoling Whispers last night, so it can happen. It does seem very rare though, and I have to wonder if this shares the same 98% success rate that's applied to charm break rolls.

[shovelquest]

Originally Posted by charleski [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The fact is, however, that you can expect to see a charm lasting over ten minutes at least once in the course of a night. I don't know if there's a hard limit in the code, but obviously very long charms are quite rare given the exponential distribution.

But that same distribution, with actual classic charm durations would mean you should only see a charm last over FOUR minuets at least once in the night.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by charleski [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Maybe I wasn't clear enough in my first post. Average charm duration is completely meaningless.

This is incorrect. Looking at the EQEMU source code (The server code that P99 uses as it's base), it has the following comment for charm duration:

https://github.com/EQEmu/Server/blob...ells.cpp#L5542

//Average charm duration agianst mobs with 0% chance to resist on LIVE is ~ 68 ticks.

I doubt the programmers who coded P99 are wrong about how the results of their code work, and if it can be averaged or not.

The reason why charm duration is still a normal distribition is because each tick simply rolls a dice to see if you succeed or fail the charm resist check. The dice roll success threshold is adjusted based on level difference and MR.

The reason why you see the highest charm rate in the first 30 seconds is probably related to the EQEMU comment for charisma checks. It says Charisma is used for the initial resist check only.

Here is the comment in the EQEMU code for charisma checks on spell resists:

https://github.com/EQEmu/Server/blob...ells.cpp#L5469

/*
Charisma ONLY effects the initial resist check when charm is cast with 10 CHA = -1 Resist mod up to 255 CHA (min ~ 75 cha)
Charisma less than ~ 75 gives a postive modifier to resist checks at approximate ratio of -10 CHA = +6 Resist.
Mez spells do same initial resist check as a above.
Lull spells only check charisma if inital cast is resisted to see if mob will aggro, same modifier/cap as above.
Charisma DOES NOT extend charm durations.
Fear resist chance is given a -20 resist modifier if CHA is < 100, from 100-255 it progressively reduces the negative mod to 0.
Fears verse undead DO NOT apply a charisma modifer. (Note: unknown Base1 values defined in undead fears do not effect duration).
*/

Now P99 does have changes to the EQEMU code that are not in the github repo, so it's certainly possible things work a bit differently on P99. But it's good to see the thought process of the developers who worked on the code.

I did a weapon DPS calculator using the EQEMU codebase recently:

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...0&postcount=41

And the results closely match P99 parses. This shows that the EQEMU code can still closely resemble the P99 code. They don't need to completely rework the EQEMU code for P99. I'd be willing to wager most of the P99 code changes in the P99 codebase are related to adjusting code/variables based on what patch the server is on. They probably don't have sweeping changes to the EQEMU base code.

[Tann]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Here is the comment in the EQEMU code for charisma checks on spell resists:

https://github.com/EQEmu/Server/blob...ells.cpp#L5469

the problem with the above is that this was most likely changed after Torven did his research on how charisma works on LIVE servers with the modern client.

The only tidbit of how it was back in classic era on EQlive is from this post on castersrealm,

October 8, 1999

CHARISMA - THE NATURE OF CHARM

I checked with GZ this morning regardng the effect Charisma has in charming. The answer is that its effect is twofold.
Firstly it effects the chance at resisting the initial charm cast. Secondly, and more importantly, it makes it harder for the charmed NPC's save to successfully roll. This basically means it does effect duration.

Also charm does have a maximum duration. The higher level charm spell you use the longer the maximum duration can be. So there is a good reason to use that Allure spell even though its more mana.

GZ - Geoffrey Zatkin, original spell designer for EQ and collaborator with the dudes running castersrealm. Also did a nice interview with aLovingRobot and talks about creating enchanters.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by Tann [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

the problem with the above is that this was most likely changed after Torven did his research on how charisma works on LIVE servers with the modern client.

The only tidbit of how it was back in classic era on EQlive is from this post on castersrealm,



GZ - Geoffrey Zatkin, original spell designer for EQ and collaborator with the dudes running castersrealm. Also did a nice interview with aLovingRobot and talks about creating enchanters.

The only thing that matters is how it works on P99. P99 uses EQEMU code as the base. From the comment you posted, GZ confirmed CHA is used on the initial resist check. The EQEMU comment says the same. The question is if CHA helps with the future resist checks on tick (charm breaks). OP seems to think CHA does not affect charm breaks based on his data. This would match the EQEMU's implementation and comment if OP is correct.

While I disagree with OP's idea that averages are meaningless in this scenario (they aren't meaningless), that doesn't necessarily mean his findings on whether or not CHA affects charm duration are also incorrect.

[kjs86z2]

Originally Posted by charleski [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Average charm duration is completely meaningless.

ummm...no?