New Druid Advice from the experts

[loramin]

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

This is the truth of charm fighting: either break late and sometimes lose mobs pre-break, or break early (with higher HP mobs left).

[bcbrown]

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

This is the contradiction I've been adressing. Your logic goes like this:

1. Breaking late increases the risk of losing the mob (This is correct).
2. Goblin Ring incentivises you to break late (increasing the risk of losing the mob).
3. ???
4. Goblin Ring decreases late charm break risk (no evidence for this claim).

It doesn't make sense to say Goblin Ring somehow makes breaking late safer. You simply break later, increasing the risk of the mob dying.

I'll use the example of the gators in the gator pit. Their max hit does about 60 damage or 5% damage to another gator. Casting IvA takes 3 seconds, or a little over a combat round. I like to give a cushion of 2% plus one max round. Without the ring, I want to cast at about 12%, so that if two max rounds happen back to back while I'm casting, the mob won't die. Since only about a quarter of gator v gator swings are above 40 damage, three quarters of the time without the ring I'll be left with a 10-12% gator. With the ring I can click at 7% and still have a round plus 2% cushion.

Without the ring in the pit I was losing a mob about 10% of the time, and the rest of the time the lower-health gator would be around 10% health. With the ring they'd never be more than 7% and the frequency of lost mobs would drop to something like 1-3%.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

I'll use the example of the gators in the gator pit. Their max hit does about 60 damage or 5% damage to another gator. Casting IvA takes 3 seconds, or a little over a combat round. I like to give a cushion of 2% plus one max round. Without the ring, I want to cast at about 12%, so that if two max rounds happen back to back while I'm casting, the mob won't die. Since only about a quarter of gator v gator swings are above 40 damage, three quarters of the time without the ring I'll be left with a 10-12% gator. With the ring I can click at 7% and still have a round plus 2% cushion.

Without the ring in the pit I was losing a mob about 10% of the time, and the rest of the time the lower-health gator would be around 10% health. With the ring they'd never be more than 7% and the frequency of lost mobs would drop to something like 1-3%.

Correlation does not imply causation. You could have just gotten better at charming or became more familiar with the camp. You can get 100% of your mobs without Goblin Ring.

[Jimjam]

Just spent ages trying to dig up an account with a ggr. Found one eventually!

After a really quick test I found that with the GGR if you break too early you have the time to recharm and then rebreak. This isn't something you can really do with just spell invis.

I also found the ring let me play much more reflexively to react to unexpected circumstances which perhaps I would have been unable to plan for if using an invis spell (on my charmers without ggr I do tend to carry a few cloudy pots as an emergency break, but that is spending 10pp on fixing a single fight).

[bcbrown]

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

People have mentioned that if you're gonna charm, may as well start as early as possible. At level 14 you can't easy remobilise to pick up PoTGs and C2s, and mobs don't last long. The mana spent on casting invis certainly adds up quickly.

Perhaps. I certainly agree that the mana-free IvA is most impactful at lower levels. If charm never broke early, and the pet and target always evenly matched, and you have space to chase down runners, you're only using Befriend Animal at 70 mana and IvA at 30 mana, so the ring would be saving you a huge 30%.

If you're trying to charm at the very earliest at 14, I've personally found there to be too many early charm breaks to be efficient. I've found 18-20 to be a reasonable starting point. But here's someone who found it effective:

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

We're going to have to disagree on the use of Befriend Animal, though. I have been having a decent amount of success using it to charm a high green or blue mob and then use that as a pet to attack an even con. I usually have to assist my pet win, and it ends up at 25% to half health when the fight ends. Then I hit hide, break the charm, and root-rot my (former pet). Gets me two xp kills pretty easily.

I'm not sure if this way of killing two mobs at once would be more mana-efficient than just rooting both of them and dotting though. I have to test that still.

Two things I notice: first, if you're fighting alongside the pet, the instant invis part of the ring doesn't matter so much. You can wait until the pet's at whatever low % you want to aim for and jump into the fight at that point. Second, the free invis part of the ring also doesn't matter if you're either Halfling or Wood Elf, the two most popular druid classes. Hide only has a 50% success rate but you'll have a couple chances to hit it if you're not terribly concerned with the exact mob health when you break. Sounds like he's using hide after the first mob dies, so then there's no timing impact. Even if you do try to break before the fight ends you can use a macro that first hides and then /targets you, then casts IvA. So if hide succeeds, the /target fails and you can duck out of the IvA.

Another tactic that I've never used, but I bet would be pretty effective, is bring a mob over to the guard by the bridge, letting him beat it down, then charm, take it elsewhere, break charm, and kill. Here again the timing isn't very important so it would be fine to use hide. If you're Human or Half Elf without hide than the free invis part of the ring will be very efficient in this situation.

I like starting to charm around 18-20. A lot of your targets will be Dark Stalkers and Gorge Hounds, each of which are 15-17. At that similar of a level you're going to have a lot of charm breaks. If you get a charm break at like 80% you should probably to re-charm, but around 40% it's probably more efficient not to recharm. At that point I prefer to cast a Thistles and melee it out - this is predicated on having a decent weapon but I think even a Wraith Bone Hammer would be sufficient here.

One reason I like melee here is because of how efficient Treeform is. After somewhere between one and four of this style of fight you'll end up around 20-30% each on health and mana. Now you head back to the bridge, Treeform, bind wounds to 50%, meditate. You'll end up with full health and mana around the same time. Treeform plus a re-sow is 70 mana, which is either three Light Healing for 75 mana and 75-100 hp or a little over one Healing for 60 mana and 85-100 hp. Treeform is 5 hp/tick, so at 20 ticks or 100 hp worth of damage it'll be more efficient than heals.

Even if you don't worry about charm breaking early, it's rare that the two mobs will be perfectly matched. Frequently you'll end up with one mob at 5-10% and the other at 40%. Lets say you root-rot the 40% while chasing the 5-10% down with melee. A gorge hound will have about 450 health, so 40% is around 180 damage. That'll be one or two Grasping Roots and one or two Stinging Swarms, or 100-200 mana. Add in the initial Befriend Animals and you're at 170-270 mana, so now the free IvA would only be 12-15% of the total mana expenditure instead of the ideal-case 30%.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Just spent ages trying to dig up an account with a ggr. Found one eventually!

After a really quick test I found that with the GGR if you break too early you have the time to recharm and then rebreak. This isn't something you can really do with just spell invis.

You can do the same with cast time invis. It's just prediction. In the case of Ring of Stealthy Travel, you are only clicking it one combat round sooner than Goblin Ring. It's less risky because you get the command to the server sooner. The later you wait to break, you have a higher risk of latency causing you to break after the next combat round, rather than before.

Worst case the mob misses, so the charmed mob has more HP when it breaks. You can duck and recast the invis too if you saw the miss. Hit rates are normally well above 50%, so next round will probably be a hit. If you can click Goblin Ring inbetween the two second combat rounds, you can click Ring of Stealthy Travel a combat round sooner.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

[You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It's not impossible. If it was impossible, you couldn't run CH chains. Nobody truly knows if the CH will land in 10 seconds, but it usually does, and the raid continues.

Same with combat. Hit rates are normally between 60-90% from what I've seen, and the mob will do damage on an average. That's how you predict breaks in the first place, you watch the DPS and anticipate when the mob is low enough HP. This is basic stuff.

[loramin]

Again, I posted that for like two seconds, thought it wasn't worth having to read another reply from you, and deleted it. I don't know how you managed to see it during those two seconds, but you seriously need to touch grass.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

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

Again, I posted that for like two seconds, thought it wasn't worth having to read another reply from you, and deleted it. I don't know how you managed to see it during those two seconds, but you seriously need to touch grass.

I can predict your future silly posts before they happen!

Glad to see you agree with me that you can do prediction for charm breaks.

[loramin]

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

Glad to see you agree with me that you can do prediction for charm breaks.

I didn't specifically respond to everything you wrote, so I agree with you? By that (childish) logic, you just conceded that:

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

you seriously need to touch grass.