Game Mechanics: Charmed npcs do too much damage

[Splorf22]

Nirgon you rely too much on your memory. Just because you talked to an enchanter who liked to charm green/lb cons is not proof that charm sucked. In fact if you talk to most enchanters here they will only charm lb pets. It's mostly those of us that learned with the (insanely OP) Pre-Kunark charm and then couldn't quite give it up that charm higher-level stuff and figure out ways to make it work. Like when The A-Team charms those splits in Sky, recharming by yourself is basically impossible. You get to run around screaming for help while someone else mezzes them.

http://web.archive.org/web/200101231...ML/000930.html

Heh tell that to a enchanter friend of mine who soloed the king room in guk. It's not easy but they have the power of a necromancer. Err oh yah this was pre expansion at 49 too.

enchanters are nearly useless too (except for the occasional charm against something like Venril Sathir's guards which RARELY works).

Well I've played both, my enchanter I only took to 40, but my necro went to 50th pre-kunark. From what I saw in my many trips to POF/POH is that the enchanters did a very good job, of charming things (as long as they weren't scarelings ) and I did alright on my necro up there. There were times when I didn't feel I was that useful, but we all contributed to the end result.

So as always some people can do it and some people can't, but the mechanics make it possible.

[TarukShmaruk]

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

Koros def one of my fave posters and totally agree here



Charm was certainly a powerful spell and it should be here. But the risk/reward isn't quite in line. I'll read through this Xorn posting but I did group with enchanters who had all their sky/hate gear, buffed their CHA and had their epic. The advice of them that I succinctly recall during the time was "find a good green and charm it".

Having a dar knight charmed, even at 255 CHA for more than 4 minutes is crazy. I think its more to do with the resists than with the CHA duration.

IE: Huggie I think it was came by the necro guardian house and saw me with said charmed dar knight and was like seriously how the hell do you have that thing charmed that long. To which I responded, yes this is not classic.

However! I think with high CHA the values are rather close but again, full duration charms for druids in plane of fear are just crazy. Highly resistant mobs should be just that and break charm very easily.

In seb on a 60 wizard I can spam root without resist really ever on a krup or illis knight here. On live, bok and above would definitely get fairly regular resists on root. At 57 I solo'd seb entrance with my wizard epic on live and based on my experience here on a 60 wizard, I noticed 2 things:

1. I didn't regularly resist force shock type spells NEARLY enough (140+ magic from a blue con source, it should literally not land once) and cold nukes from shamans and fire nukes from wizards even at 180ish range were hitting for quite a bit (even back to back to back full damage hits) whereas at that resist range from a blue con caster on me should rarely if actually ever land one of those spells on me.
2. Root landed every single time I casted it on blue cons.

I stand by this as something I do exactly remember as I did it for many hours, across many weeks in my playing and have in fact tested it here.

I further stand by my assertions on Sirran being dictated here and that mage sword procs need to go away in this time line based on the facts that we should be at END (last day) of Kunark on our time line and SK bash for epic and mage sword proc on unsummoned from pets fix was in in the same patch.

That's all for today~

PS: Shit is getting classic from the recent wave of fixes I saw which does indeed include Sirran. Let's tie up mage sword procs + necro heal retro being dispellable.

The only spells that would reliably resist against lower con mobs were those with secondary effects attached to them - Force Shock against 150 MR would basically never ever ever ever land because of the stun, but a regular nuke would land all the time for full damage or at least partial damage.

[Splorf22]

Originally Posted by Xornn on charming

Then my preferred method is still the attack slow. Using Shiftless Deeds a 49th, a mob changes from a 3 second attack tic to 6.5 seconds! Instead of taking 66% of the damage it normally would by using haste, the mob takes 46% percent of the damage it would take. This pretty much means the mob will have just over 50% health for the second pull, and be nearly dead when it's time to kill the pet off. Plus, when charm and root break together, the enemy mob swings so slow you can almost ignore it while resetting your charm, making the worst case scenario so much less dangerous. So where's the downside to this? Mana cost for one... Feedback is 70 mana for the fight. Haste is 250 mana for two fights. Shiftless Deeds will be 400 mana total, and has a chance to resist, where buffs don't. The fight also isn't sped up in any way. Even with a damage shield the fight ends faster--but with attack slows the pet just swings like normal--but in a game of control that normal speed swing is what I'm interested in. Honestly I get about two fights per charm in easily using the attack slow for "the edge".

Originally Posted by Xornn on charming at L55

You gain a new animation, but this isn't really enough to solo--the only chance you really have to maintain a solo with the animation involves frivolous usage of Rune V, and a lot of Dementia casting. If you have the bucks for this, I invite you to continue the practice, but this will hurt your pocket boot fast, and approaches the danger of charm soloing at this point. Your animation is so fragile, trying to solo with it is almost like trying to fight just wizard style. I recommend saving the animation for farming equipment for your twink. Charm soloing is very dangerous now, and if you do choose to fight this way, it's important to consider this factor--if the average charm is 2.5 minutes (reasonable with my experience), can your pet finish the fight with your pull in that time? At one point in charm soloing, about 40 to 50, mobs you charmed could kill two other mobs before charm broke. You will find with the colossal increases in total hit points of the mobs, even the heavy hitting charmed pets have trouble finishing a fight in under three minutes. Dealing with a charm break is practically expected at this point, unless you are able to locate a set of low hit point mobs that will carve each other up quickly. I no longer recommend using slow on the enemy mob, as you will rarely hold a pet that can survive two fights in a row, and losing your pet can often mean zoning because you don't have the mana to nuke finish a mob. Successful charm soloing usually involves a pair of mobs spawning together, rooting one, charming the other and letting them battle it out, doing your best to make sure your pet barely wins, allowing you to break charm and have a fleeing mob left to finish off with nukes. You may even consider hasting your pet, to make for a reliable kill time. If you choose this route, then I suggest slowing the enemy, and going for a two mob kill before charm breaks. A strong haste is often enough to pull this off, but you can go from full health with Rune V up to very dead in seconds in this situation.

So obviously some people were charming more than greens. And remember:

Originally Posted by Xornn

While at a point and time I felt that Charisma was the end all be all of charming, my ways have changed, and Drekaar solos charm style with 85 Charisma.

I'm sorry if you don't like it Nirgon, but when you have a game where the mobs are stronger than the PCs, a skill like charm is going to be OP as fuck. If it were up to me a spell like Allure would cost 800 mana. But it doesn't. Based on what Xornn wrote if anything I think charm is too weak here.

[Nirgon]

I'd invite you to consider my noticings on having 180 range of resists and getting hit for full by the lower end blue con frogs in seb as a 60 wizard here, and root landing on them every time vs somewhat rarely (I realize this is without tash but it should give some idea of scale).

Sometimes I rely on my memory, and make what appear to be the prophecies of an insane person. But then things out of literally nowhere like an earth pet dual wielding scythes turns up from someone's hard drive.

I'm not saying patch this immediately based on how I say it should be.. I'm saying this is definitely something to look into (read: not just a wild goose chase waste of time) and you should test charming an npc in seb and having it beat on another on eqmac.

I don't want things easier or harder, or favor one class or another. I just want to play on a server classic enough that its almost impossible to tell. Charm feels OP for numerous reasons.

[koros]

Look, it's a lot of fun playing enc with super strong pets. But charm doesn't break enough. I played a rogue and my perma partner was one of our servers top enchanters. I made him charm in seb, even tho it broke all the time. I made him haste it and i'd give it proc weapons and the whole 9 yards. I kept -mr gear to give pets, etc. Nirgon is 100% right, resists are out of whack. A level 60 should basically resist almost all spells from npcs in seb, especially ones with a double resist check, while simultaneously having very few resists on your own spells. Myconid resist is too high btw (slow wasn't that hard to land at 60).

We *loved* dire charm, because it kept him from running lom charming all the time. My level 28 enchanter can keep a level 26 perma charmed without issue, that is not at all classic.

Charm like other check by tick spells should not last nearly as long as it does. Maybe one of the reasons is that on live, npcs and pcs had an innate 5% chance to resist/land any spell as long as the target wasn't immune. Perhaps that's why charm durations average out so high here.

[Splorf22]

I'm sorry guys but I don't believe your memories are capable of telling the difference between a 2 minute average charm and a 3 minute average charm. The human brain is just not capable of estimating that kind of thing so precisely in the presence of huge variance. Xornn's guide gives us way more concrete information about what he was able to do with charm.

The biggest difference between here and live? The WC cap. If i had to eat a death for every time that thing has saved me Loraen would be level 0.

[pasi]

Originally Posted by Splorf22 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The biggest difference between here and live? The WC cap. If i had to eat a death for every time that thing has saved me Loraen would be level 0.

Concur with this. Although, I would argue that complete knowledge of the game and stable connections make a larger difference than the WC cap.

[cyryllis]

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

Although, I would argue that complete knowledge of the game and stable connections make a larger difference than the WC cap.

Exactly.

I mained an enchanter on live for many years and I never remember charming greens. I charmed less during my early levels, due to not having good cha gear, but when I did charm it was always DB cons. It was risky back then and it is still risky now, but we know so much more. We attempt harder things today also because it seems everyone has access to a pocket epic cleric now and has WC caps- so the downtime for fucking something up is far less severe.

[Nirgon]

I'm going to cross reference the Sirran charm thread with the people in here refuting my posts before casting down judgement on their claims.

Then I will cast down judgement.