new patch ench charm

[Daldaen]

http://eq2.thedruidsgrove.org/archive/eq/t-2545.html


Charming dogs in Chardok was a nice shot in the arm for my bank account from 58-60 too. Easily got 30k worth of loot at the exit.

I'm with Geddine. I let my charmed dog fight a few Sarnaks and when he's almost dead, invis and kill him with a root.

My personal experience with charming dogs there makes me "think" that charisma +100 definitely made a difference. With 110-ish cha, I rarely had charm wear before the dog's demise.


Post from a few months before PoP release.

[Coril]

Let's turn this question around.

Where is the evidence from pre-2002 that justifies charm being in the state it is today?

I ask this question I see two arguments being made in this thread. First, that enchanter charm was overpowered. That might be true. But it seems to be irrelevant to the mission of the server; game balance is a historical concern. Or as Uthgaard said, go argue with Verant devs in your time machine.

So, if the concern isn't game balance, then it's to approach more historical accuracy with the break of charm. Where is the historical evidence to support that charm should break so quickly, often instantly, with this sort of frequency?

[casdegere]

I played an Enchanter on Live up to nearly 65. I did not Solo much. It did not offer the XP or the safety of a good group. It was difficult and mana intensive. I did use Charm at the earlier levels though.

The Enchanter was primarily Mez/Haste/Crack/Debuff. Charming in a group was just not happening.

[Popt]

Quick question- charmed pets are not dual wielding like they did pre-patch. Is this intended or was it a mistake after the change to player pets? It doesn't seem logical that a pet would stop dual wielding just because it becomes charmed

[kanras]

NPCs don't naturally dual wield. They shouldn't have been naturally dual wielding because they were charmed. Give them weapons if you want them to dual wield.

[Popt]

Gotcha, thanks

[Caravelle1]

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

If you're going to nerf enchanters in the name of classic then change the hate value on mez, AE stun. Mez DID NOT have this high of a hate value in classic. And AE stun did very little to almost no hate in classic.

I'm positive you guys had no idea what the hate values were and just guessed but they're way off. I can't prove this (I've tried searching numerous times) since hate values unlike patch notes aren't easy to find but I played an enchanter since release and very rarely in the high levels did I have to chain root with people taunting to get a mez'd mob off of me when warriors taunted before breaking. It's sort of ridiculous here!

Tash = extremely high hate. higher than on here
Mez = medium hate (much lower than on here)
AE color stun line = low hate
Slow = medium hate
Charm = high hate (not sure but about right on here)

I agree with the agro part, I was in a crypt group, I was testing to see when I could tash. at 70% if I tashed, the mob would run at me, stay agroed on me till about 60%, then I couldnt sit or cast a DD on the mob or it came back at me, this was with a level 54 warrior tanking

[Glitch]

Here's a post from PoP era, where they apparently decided to nerf DPS on charmed mobs in new zones because of how disgustingly OP charm was. Important parts bolded.

From FoH forums,
http://www.fohguild.org/forums/90145-post124.html

03-28-2003, 10:45 AM #124 (permalink)
Goshan
Registered User

Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 6
-1 Internets
charm itsself is NOT broken. Charm is the victim of a changing environment and thusly needs to be modified to keep pace with that environment. I have been using charm for many years in much the same way I use it now. Before any expansions were released, enchanters were soloing the ghoul lord and fire giants area with charmed pets. When kunark was released, we kept pets in groups in Sebilis that doubled the entire groups experience over a 4 or 5 hour experience grind. During Velious, we could charm giants in Kael that easily netted twice the exp normally recieved in an experience group. Velious is where the environments started to change and become much more favorable to charming. Once equipment and player stats started reaching the proportions they did in velious, the risk of charm became trivial. The only problem with Velious and Luclin was that there were not many areas where charm soloing was much more effecient then grouping. So most enchanters ignored the ability.

Now we have Planes of Power. There are quite a few things in this expansion that make charming too good to ignore.

- Zones typically have wide open spaces where you can outrun mobs
- Mobs are spaced farther apart making solo pulling trivial.
- Mobs dont summon
- Mobs have generally low hit points and defense.(This would seem to be the charm equalizer. But doesnt work)
- Mobs have extremely high ATK and max hits.

Because of these factors, the risk vs. reward is out of whack. When an enchanter can get an aa in 17mins by 2boxing a cleric outside of the group vs grouping and getting an aa every 1-2 hours, there is a problem with risk vs reward.(yes its possible. I have done it at a sustained rate).

Back before kunark, we would go solo fire giants for the thrill. IT was damn scary because a charm break at the wrong time meant about an 80% chance of death. With POP, a charm break at the wrong time means you cast the following spells: wom, run til spell gems refresh, mez your pet, retarget the prey, cast root. If it knocks your rune off, pop eldritch rune and root. ZERO risk. none, nada. You have to be a complete and utter idiot to die to a situation like that.

But bringing back the idea of summnoing mobs makes my skin crawl. It was a cheesy tactic. It would make charm mostly useless and not worth the time because it will only take 1 charm break to kill an enchanter. Granted, you may escape if charm breaks when no prey is in camp, but if there is prey in camp, you are dead. One wom resist on either your prey or the pet and your dead. Even if you do manage to get wom off, by the time you do, your hp will be so low, the prey will bloodlust onto you and you will be toast before you can do anything about it. If mobs were to summon again, to make charm useful, we would have to be compenstated with an instant low resist root or something.

So the real problem is not charm. We have been using charm exactly how it was designed since inception. The real problem is the environment.

Of the points listed above:

- Wide open spaces: Changing zone designs is out the the question
- mob spacing: Might be possible but would have unforseen consequences
- Summoning: Think I have covered this one
- Low hit points and defense: cant really do anything here. It would unbalance every other class.
- Extreme ATK: ding ding ding! We have a winner.


Typically enchanters haste their pets. Given a dual wielding pet with haste and a 2boxed druid for heal/snare, charming is the only way to experience!(Hello all you tactics people! And you know who you are :P). So Verants first idea with the 1% slow was a pretty good one but didnt go far enough. These mobs even without haste and dual wield, can tear through their brethren pretty easy. Especially with a botted druid or cleric to heal it. Dire Charm was limited in level for a reason. If you could of dire charmed an Illis and dual wielded and hasted it, a single enchanter could of cleared jugs in Sebilis and given the protector a run for his money. So Verant level limited Dire Charm to 47. The reason they did that was because mobs of that level and lower didnt have enough ATK to do amazing feats.

The reason I use Dire Charm as an example is simple. The risk vs reward of a high level pet that was perma charmed was deemed out of whack by Verant. Basically, given the environmental variables mentioned above, you have the same situation. Mobs that are permacharmed with very little risk. Even thoguh they do break, a broken pet in wide open pop zones is pretty trivial to recharm.

Given this logic, the reasonable thing to do would be to add an effect to charm that lowered a mobs melee level to a much lower level(I am thinking 57). Kind of like those ae's in the spell database that lower a characters spell casting level. This would greatly reduce their attack and defense. It would still allow us to dual wield and haste where it was allowed, but their average hit would be for much less. When charm broke, because the effect was part of the charm it would wear off and the mob would go back to its normal level. This doesnt increase the risk of charm but it lowers its overall effectiveness which is really the problem anyway. This would still allow enchanters that like to solo, to be able to solo. But you wont be able to earn AA at astronomical rates. I still think it should be faster then a group but only slighly so. MAybe 50mins or so per aa. It also addresses melee issues that an enchanter makes them somewhat worthless in groups.

In conclusion,

Charm does need to be modified so that a charmed pet cannot melee for many multpiles of what the best equipped melee can do. I dont see the problem with charm being in its duration or utility. Its another tool in the enchanters toolbox they can use for crowd control. I dont want it removed.

The only problem I see with this are the tier 2 and 3 raid level events that take cod into account. For those tiers cod is an extremely useful tool against Agnarr, Upper cod, Bertox, Rydda, Upper Bot mini's, Mithaniel Marr, and of course Rallos Zek. Some of those encounters would need to be toned down very slightly in their intensity.

[Caravelle1]

As a chanter who use charm from level 30 until level 56 let me share some stats on charm before and after patch.

Level 30-40 with around 215 CHA charms held rediculously well, I remember charming a yellow con minotaur in guk, and it held nearly the full duration. I could charm even/yellow pets no problem.

level 40-45 things started to even out, I would say even con and 2 levels below me were very diffucult to charm, lasted on average 2-3 minutes with malo. At 45 I would try and charm Zol knights because they were level 40 and would hold better than dar.

level 45-50 even con mobs became harder to charm. I had 255 CHA at this point. the only exception to holding lvl 47-50 mobs at level 50 was with malo.

at 50 holding a level 43 or below mob I would have considered safe and lasted full duration 80%. level 44-47 was risky, they would hold full duration about 50%. level 47-50 was probably 0-10% full duration. WITH malo, however, it raised the hold to 80% or so I would guess.


50+ charming actually seems to get easier at this point, I can understand the frustration of people. at level 55 I was able to, without malo hold a level 50 mob charmed for full duration probably 50% of the time. As an enchanter who used charm whenever possible I can admit that it was overpowered at the 50+ level.

After the patch, I can hold light blue mobs on average 0% full duration, at level 56, level 39 mobs are lasting an average of 2 minutes.

I think that a chanter nerf was needed, however, charm as a utility tool has been not nerfed, but effectively removed from the game. It seems like there is a lot of chanter hate because we had it so easy, and that warrants a complete obliteration of our most powerful ability. Charm was not as good on live during this era than it was on P99,
however,
it was NOT this bad. at level 56 I should be able to hold a mob that is 15 levels below me for more than one minute IMO, and THAT is me talking from a classic standpoint.

[Coril]

Originally Posted by Caravelle1 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I agree with the agro part, I was in a crypt group, I was testing to see when I could tash. at 70% if I tashed, the mob would run at me, stay agroed on me till about 60%, then I couldnt sit or cast a DD on the mob or it came back at me, this was with a level 54 warrior tanking

True.

The reason that charm felt more "okay" to me in terms of sheer enchanter balance was because Spell Aggro in general on p99 is much, much worse than it was in live.

Mez agro, tash agro, and aoe stun aggro is so high that to use them is just to abandon the hopes of tank regetting aggro for significant time. God help you if you tash, mezz, and slow a mob. That was my habit during live, and during kunark era I remember I would get hit a little for the trouble, but tanks would grab aggro pretty quick. Now? It's rather a joke.

I think that if spell aggro in general were reduced, the frustration of the non-charming enchanter group role would be greatly improved. For both the enchanter and the tank.