Game Mechanics: Mez/Charm immunity is not classic

[Splorf22]

After another frustrating run-in with the horribly unclassic Plane of Sky mobs I thought I'd try this again.

Originally Posted by Patch Notes 2001/10/08

The level-based spell resistance bonus inherent in super-high level NPCs has been reduced significantly.
Several NPCs have had their resistances reduced. Each of them was examined carefully, and resistances changed as seemed appropriate. For some of these NPCs other things were changed as well to compensate for their increased susceptibility to spells, such as armor improvements or perhaps greater hit points, if needed for that NPC.
NPCs that were highly magic resistant in order to make them immune to certain spells can now be given specific immunity to those spells. This means that they can be made immune to critical spells, as intended, and still be generally less resistant to magic. Players will receive a message similar to the one that is already given for Mesmerization spells when they cast a spell on an NPC that it is specifically immune to.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It is very important to note that we have not made any NPCs immune to spells that they were not already immune to. Many NPCs that were previously immune to spells due to their high innate resistance to magic have had that resistance reduced and specific immunities added. So if you see an immunity message after attempting to cast a spell on an NPC that you hadn't seen such a message from before, understand that the NPC was already immune to that spell before due to high resistances, and the only difference is that it now has lower resistances in general and specific spell immunity (which is why you are seeing the message).

The way I read this is that there should be no specific immunities. There are MR immune mobs (like spite golems or boss mobs), but everything else should be mezzable/charmable/nukeable/slowable/debuffable. The only exception should be racial/level based immunities, e.g. giants being stun immune. Other than this there should not be any mobs where you can land slow but not mez, or winged death but not slow, or lifetap but not charm, etc etc. For example, see this quote about spite golems:

http://www.therunes.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2198

Originally Posted by Random Enchanter

The reason for the PoH mixup is the timeline. PoH has had 3 incarnations. During PoH v1 (single floor hate) and begining of PoH v2 there was stuff that was basically immune to magic. This included the golems in Hate, Phinny's 2 (or 3) guards, Black Reavers in CoM. This included *immune to rapture*. You would get a flat out resist. In addition you simply could not land any spells on mobs that were 6 levels higher than yourself.

Enter the resist change. Gone were the MR immune mobs. The aforementioned mobs could now be mezzed with rapture. They were still very highly resistant to other MR based spells though. Also gone was the "6 levels" rule. This happened while Hate was in version 2. Therefore you will have som who swear you could mez golems, and some who swear that you couldn't...

Enter Hate revamp. Now Hate is v3. I havent played around there much, but it sounds like the spites are now flagged using the unmezzable flag.

Since the resist revamp, I have yet to get a resist on Rapture (not counting mez-immune flag).

Now, we know that if a mob is immune to slow after the resist changes that it was immune to slow before (there could be other mobs that were MR immune and lost slow immunity, but its a good start I think) and we have lists of mobs that are MR slow immune.

http://eqdiary.tripod.com/quests/slows.htm
http://eqdiary.tripod.com/quests/velious_slow.htm
http://eqdiary.tripod.com/quests/plane_slows.htm

This list includes: pretty much all Dragons including Trakanon, most epic mobs including the Tangrin (currently slowable), all the bosses in CoM (Rak is currently stunnable making that fight much easier than on live), Gorgalosk and Gwan in Sky (but not anything else, which goes with the other stuff I'm about to post).

http://thornoohaha.guildportal.com/G...opicID=2080508

I found out he is mezzable by Rapture, which is our unresistable mez and is limited to level 61 mobs or less. Guardian is 60.

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/zones.html?zstrat=70

Level 67 enchanter . .defiant gear. Total Domination 3 - Dire charm - summon companion

Island 1:

Thunder Spirit: Hits for 147. Can dual wield with graphics. Gave 2 blood daggers and they showed up.
Thunder spirit Princess: Hits for 250. Can dual wield. VERY MR. Charm never lasted more than 3 min.

Island 2.

Brought the thunder spirit princess from island one. Summon companion AA works here.
Azaracks are able to be chain stunn with Color slant and skew. Same with princess. While chain stunning, i had to recast BA quite a few times. Cleared island (Along with protector of sky) and sirran popped. Turned in key and moved on.

Island 3.

Initially brought over princess and had a bad pull and had to drop off the island. Lost princess pet. No matter. Gate to pok to pot and back up to sky. Back on the 3rd island there are air pet looking mobs that are invis. Awesome pets. TD3 had almost every full duration charms. Still charmable with Boltans Anigrace(SP? - max level 53 for that spell) Gave 2 more blood daggers and pet equipped them. max hit was 250 ish so I assume same level as princess (53). Cleared the front of the boss hut (for lack of better words) and had to pacify pull the main boss out. It is surrounded by 2 named inside and 3 trash outside that will all come if you pull any in the hut with out pacify. Ranger harmony line does not work here. Ended up having to charm "a heart harpie" (level 59) with command of druzzil. Hits for 367 and dual wields as well. Only issue is the mob procs a word of morrel type stun that mezez the mob and then the charmed pet stops fighting .. once the stun wears off it starts fighting ... rinse and repeat.

Also note that a ton of Sky stuff is flagged stun immune, which also seems not to be classic.

http://www.angelfire.com/freak/eqjon...planeofair.htm

Debuffed, the roaming horses make good pets for the Boss or Overseer of Air. Be warned that it will assist if the enchanter dies. If killing the Keeper, and the horse agros on you after Sirran pops, then Sirran will assist it. Hopefully just your enchanter will get killed. After Sirran spawns you should move the charmed mob out of Sirran's agro range.

If you have balls, there are some other options. Either kill the middle (and boss) first or second, and use one or two charmed bzzazzts as pets. If you don't quite have the strength for the boss, this could save the day (or ruin it). If you have a couple enchanters on the ball supplied with wands of allure (3 charges of level 49 charm, instant cast, drops from Worry Wraiths in Fear), then you may want to try this. If you do this, then you will need to keep Sirran hailed and away from the fights if you want the 16 keys from the 2 remaining Bzzazzt. I have used one bzzazzt pet to kill boss twice. Both times the boss died. Once worked sweet, once the Bzzazzt lost charm at the end and Sirran wiped the whole raid out. We were able to recover from the wipeout just fine though (/cheer camped out invis cleric). I generally don't recommend this approach if you have the manpower to kill him normal.

A common mistake is to agro the princess early. If this happens, then you have a problem. You don't won't to kill her unless all the faeries have already been killed. Also, she is difficult to mez with only tash on her. If this happens, you're best off getting somebody to train her around while people camp out.

Currently sky is loaded with mobs that resist dictate and rapture.

conclusion: everything other than a very small set of mobs need to have all of their mez/slow immunities removed. I understand that you flagged sky as charm immune due to IB killing shit with the OP classic charm. But most guilds can legitimately clear sky anyway now. Meanwhile Sirran the Lunatic is still being used by everyone (including us) to blow up 32khp bosses in 15 seconds.

[Treats]

Honestly, charm probably needs to be looked at and redone again whenever the 255 cap with resists is addressed.

Level difference should be the most important factor -- not Charisma or Magic Resistance.

Charm should have way more short duration breaks when the level disparity between the NPC and the Enchanter become smaller.

[Splorf22]

Originally Posted by Xornn

Solo - 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 Xornn offers four estimates for charm duration:
1. 2.5 minute personal estimate (I actually put the least value on the human memory, especially since early breaks will stick in the mind more)
2. "at L45 your charmed pet could kill two opponents before charm broke". If we assume he was charming L35 mobs with 1500 hp and doing 20 dps that equates to 150 seconds of fighting time and 30 seconds of finding a new target, for an average charm of 3 minutes
3. At 55 charming L45 mobs with 6000 hp and 30 dps that equates to 200 seconds, or just over 3 minutes
4. At 55 charming a hasted L45 pet against two opponents 6000 hp and 45 dps that equates to 266 seconds of combat plus say 30 seconds between fights that is 6.5 minutes.

Of course its possible that mobs did a bit more damage, but basically it seems pretty likely that during classic an enchanter could hold a low-mid dark blue for 3-4 minutes on average and 5+ minutes semi-regularly. In fact current P1999 durations (something like a 90% chance for a 0-8 minute charm and a 10% chance for a 8-15 minute charm) would match Xornn's account quite well. I agree that charm is simply OP right now, and mindnumblingly OP before, but I think it is classic. No one ever accused Verant of being game balance geniuses.

We can debate the relative effect of level and charisma, but I'd rather do that in another thread [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Splorf22]

Also I'd like to add Ploktor pointed out that most mobs in sky are immune to Snare. The guide I linked to specifically mentions snaring stuff. Again, before this patch Verant simply didn't have the means to give mobs specific immunities.

[Treats]

Xornn's post was made after the resistance changes sometime between November 14, 2001 and February 12, 2002.

Wednesday, November 14, 2001 - 17th Circle (55) is almost finished, I just hit 56th level today so I've been kind of busy running around buying spells and talking to a recruiting guild.

I agree specific immunities should be removed, but not at the cost of trivializing Plane of Sky or other high end encounters.

[Tecmos Deception]

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

I agree specific immunities should be removed, but not at the cost of trivializing Plane of Sky or other high end encounters.

What does farming Stanos with 4 count as? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]


My point is that classic EQ had a TON of situations where certain abilities or classes could do things that probably weren't intended or expected, but figuring that stuff out and pulling it off was a ton of fun.

If the staff here is going to concern themselves with unclassic balance issues, such as leaving a bunch of sky stuff immune to mez/charm for the sake of not trivializing the zone, then they might as well be revamping class balance and removing xp penalties and nerfing donals bp/puppet strings/etc right now instead of waiting on some arbitrary-ish timeline (or just never adjusting at all).

[Ele]

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

If the staff here is going to concern themselves with unclassic balance issues, such as leaving a bunch of sky stuff immune to mez/charm for the sake of not trivializing the zone, then they might as well be revamping class balance and removing xp penalties and nerfing donals bp/puppet strings/etc right now instead of waiting on some arbitrary-ish timeline (or just never adjusting at all).

I agree that the "immune (charm/slow/runspeed)" vs. simply "insanely high resists" needs to be further examined and time line correct; however, the GMs have already addressed unclassic balance issues vis-a-vis DA tanking, which was not taken out until later in the server's time line (6-7 months post Velious release).

[koros]

Charm is definitely way more powerful here than live... I'm not sure if it's simply matter of duration (or if that's even the issue at all). Back during Velious my perma groupmate was a very well geared, very skilled enchanter. We would have him charm for DPS as often as possible, but keeping a Bok in Seb perma charmed while 2-3 man farming proved to be a resource drain (although a huge dps boost). For one... lull was much more unreliable. Additionally, mobs just seemed to do more dps to players.

There's some mechanic here that makes it different, but pinpointing it exactly is difficult.

[Splorf22]

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

Xornn's post was made after the resistance changes sometime between November 14, 2001 and February 12, 2002.

I agree specific immunities should be removed, but not at the cost of trivializing Plane of Sky or other high end encounters.

Treats I really don't understand what you are talking about here.

1) Xornn hit 55 1 month after the resistance changes, so presumably he was leveling during velious with the older code
2) I don't see why the resistance code changes would matter as they primarily affect very high level mobs who would not be charmed anyway (clearly Xornn was not charming Lord Nagafen for his XP)
3) What is trivializing plane of sky right now is sirran the lunatic. Of course the queen bee is doing 3x what her classic damage should be anyway.

Anyway I agree that charm here is OP, but I think it was on Live too. Especially there are two huge nerfs to enchanters (the inversion of the bash/kick ratios and the nerf to durations) that brought it down to be much more reasonable than it used to be when Kunark came out.

Charm is definitely way more powerful here than live... I'm not sure if it's simply matter of duration (or if that's even the issue at all). Back during Velious my perma groupmate was a very well geared, very skilled enchanter. We would have him charm for DPS as often as possible, but keeping a Bok in Seb perma charmed while 2-3 man farming proved to be a resource drain (although a huge dps boost). For one... lull was much more unreliable. Additionally, mobs just seemed to do more dps to players.

There's some mechanic here that makes it different, but pinpointing it exactly is difficult.

Do you remember what level your friend was? If he was, say L55 with a L50 bok then it's no surprise he had problems. Do you remember what his charisma was? I know Xornn basically says lull is worthless but he was also running around with 85 charisma. I just spent 10-15 minutes googling and I can't find anything, but Giegue posted:

http://web.archive.org/web/200212310...ame=Lull&type=

Which indicates that Lull did work, and worked better the better your charisma was.

One thing that you might be right on is the damage to players. I don't think the effect of AC on this server is strong enough. I did some AC tests with both of my characters and Sakuragi was mitigating something like 15% more damage per swing at 1050 AC compared to Loraen at 700AC. That really doesn't jive with AC being such a god stat for classic EQ. Also I remember L50 mobs used to hit for 150+5/level rather than 140+4/level. Why was that changed? It would balance charm soloing quite a bit if enchanters were taking 15% more damage per swing from charmed pets; that adds up fast.

http://www.project1999.org/forums/showthread.php?t=6733

Also this test (from PoP era sadly) suggests that charm should be resisted occasionally! This is a big deal because it effectively ups the mana cost, which would jive with your memory. The biggest problem with charm on this server IMO is the very low mana cost which allows enchanters to go all day, not the duration.

As long as you guys are going to hijack my thread to a charm duration thread, i might also point out that currently when charm breaks there is almost no aggro. It should be very large according to Xornn.

[KotBK]

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

Charm is definitely way more powerful here than live... I'm not sure if it's simply matter of duration (or if that's even the issue at all). Back during Velious my perma groupmate was a very well geared, very skilled enchanter. We would have him charm for DPS as often as possible, but keeping a Bok in Seb perma charmed while 2-3 man farming proved to be a resource drain (although a huge dps boost). For one... lull was much more unreliable. Additionally, mobs just seemed to do more dps to players.

There's some mechanic here that makes it different, but pinpointing it exactly is difficult.

This can't be right, if you go on EQmac which it seems is the new thing to do for devs and players here to test things. You will find that even with low end charisma the charms there hold a great deal longer than on here. Without very much gear over there you can contribute with charm far more effective with much less charisma than on this server. Charm is strong here with high charisma, but on EQmac it seems to operate differently than here across the board.