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.

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

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/Guild.aspx?GuildID=38896&ForumID=180047&TabID=344682&Replies=5&TopicID=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/eqjonze/guides/planes/planeofsky1/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]

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 :D

[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]

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? ;)


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]

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]

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/20021231051812/www.everlore.com/magic/Magic.asp?ID=81&mode=details&spname=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]

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.

[Nirgon]

Charm and channeling skill here... go compare them at equal values over at EQ Mac.

I think you'll be f'ing startled.

Note that I don't play on EQMac, so you can say that "how would I know".

Well.. I know much hasn't changed when it comes to charming a froglok dar knight in Sebilis with 255 CHA as a 55 enchanter between Velious and PoP. Go try it out, see what you think. Once that's settled for you... go try charming mobs in plane of fear and hate. Heh.

Then try having a mob beat on you while you try to cast. :)

[koros]

It's possible my memory is off but I don't think so. There was a massive resist system change in late Luclin (Sept 2002), around this timeframe we found charming while grinding AAs became much much easier. This carried over to POP where it was common to be using level 61-63 NPCs as pets while xping without much issue.

Edit: EQMac is using that system.

[Nirgon]

I'm aware of the resist change, trust me.. It's being pointed to as a reason to not fix the necro heal, which is nuts.

If its easier, than take that into account... go try charming something in plane of fear on a 60 enchanter with 255 cha.. again, taking into account it "should be even easier". :)

[Treats]

Sorry I just skimmed the resist quote, wrong one.

It was meant to reflect my other post about charm and level, just disregard it.

Resistance Changes:

We've made some fairly drastic changes to the way the spell resistance system works. Previously, there was only the smallest benefit to having resists over a certain value. We've reworked resistance in its entirety, completely replacing the old system with one that is more logical.

The idea behind the changes is pretty simple: Resists should matter in a way that makes sense.

Important things to note about the new resistance system:
Resists matter more for PCs. There are now tangible differences between having 50, 150, and 250 in a given resistance, for example. Resistance buffs, bard songs, and resist gear have actual value, all the way up the line.
Conversely, resistances also matter more for NPCs. Some NPCs became more vulnerable to things they have always been vulnerable to, other NPCs became more resistant to things that they were inclined to be somewhat resistant to.
Resistance debuffs should also have more value, all the way up the line. For the first time, resistance debuffs now have the ability to bring NPCs that were lure-style only down into the range of being hit by normal spells.
The hard level limit involving players casting on NPCs has been removed. This used to be referred to in EQ folklore as the "Six Level Limit" (It was actually 1.25 times the caster's level, but more people likely thought about it the other way.) This means that in the vast majority of cases, there is at least a small chance that a person will be able to connect a spell with an NPC, even if they are out of that NPC's traditional level range.
Overall, against NPCs that have medium-to-high resistances of a given type, expect to see more full hits, fewer partials, but more full resists in the new system. Taken over time, the damage done by PC casters to semi-high resistance NPCs should be approximately the same, but will definitely improve when the proper debuffs are applied (we wanted to make sure that this did not turn into a universal nerf of casters).

We look forward to seeing how these changes play out in front of a larger audience.

This is how it was.

[Splorf22]

Treats: At least I read that as being mostly relevant to high level encounters?

Koros: what level was your friend in sebilis? If he was 55 then obviously he wouldn't be able to control a bok; you couldn't do that here either.

Nirgon: You were just told that charming is easier on eqmac :D

And back to my original point. I found this on the Alla page for Prince Selrach


As 60 shaman i sent Malo on it, ok, but tried about 5-6 times then to slow it, and it resisted.

Guess it's a 100% slow resist like the Giant in the bugged WW ya have to kill for Scout charisa's quest.

Akabah - Heritage Guild on Karana

He's slowable, I got him first shot for the last 3 times I've killed him.

Malo/tash/Malosini = toasted sarnak

Now the date on the first post is 1 month after the resist changes, but if the guy fought the prince 1 month before he made the post then this makes a great deal of sense. Remember that the prince is only L61: if he wasn't MR immune you could rapture him for god's sake. Basically I think the most reasonable thing to do is: every raid mob should be 100% magic immune to everything except unresistable spellls (tash/malo/mana taps/mana drains etc but NOT rapture which is not actually flagged unresistable, it just has a -1000 check, lifetaps etc). There should also be a few MR immune mobs (spite golems, city of mist stuff, sebilite protector, phinny's guardians, golems in fear) which have the same rules. Nothing else should be flagged immune to anything with the exception of racial/level based immunities as discussed before.

[Dullah]

CHA doesn't mean crap for charming though I know this legend has been debated since the beginning of EQ. Tested it with max and absolute minimum, its 100% level based from everything I've seen.

Can't say how its supposed to be, but thats how it is here.

[Tecmos Deception]

CHA doesn't mean crap for charming though I know this legend has been debated since the beginning of EQ. Tested it with max and absolute minimum, its 100% level based from everything I've seen.

Can't say how its supposed to be, but thats how it is here.

Please do share these tests.

[Splorf22]

http://web.archive.org/web/200101231906/http://forums.castersrealm.com/eq/Forum8/HTML/000930.html
http://web.archive.org/web/200101271415/http://forums.castersrealm.com/eq/Forum8/HTML/001495.html

Have some relevant information (they talk about enchanters soloing the king room in guk at L49 and charming in hate/fear and also about necro taps getting resisted by all dragons (but not, interesting, Cazic/Inny! I also remember there was a bard on my server who charmed both of them so that would explain a lot)

Also Dullah Propo did the following test:

Ok so I grabbed a cleric (thanks Kriven) and charmed goos in COM, and the results were very striking.

First, I found a pet who was just on the cusp of charming viability. At level 52 I grabbed a goo hitting for 116. Prior to this we tried a goo hitting for 120 but even with full charisma gear could not keep it charmed with duration good enough to exp reliably. This choice was intentional, because what I really care about is keeping the best mob I can for as long as I can. I'm sure results would be very different for a light blue mob. On every break the mob was tashed and re-charmed. I just pulled all the data out of my log file after our session and crunched it all using excel. results are as follows:

High Charisma dataset (CHA = 224)
Time of trial: 0:40:18 (or 0.672 hours)
Breaks: 7
Breaks per hour(extrapolated): 10.42
Avg Duration: 5.76 minutes
Median Duration: 3 minutes 10 seconds

Low Charisma dataset (CHA = 95)
Time of trial: 0:58:04 (0.968 hours)
Breaks: 25
Breaks per hour(extrapolated): 25.83
Avg Duration: 2.32 minutes
Median Duration: 1 minute 4 seconds

So conclusion -- charisma has a massive effect on charm duration when charming mobs at the high end of the "viable pet level" spectrum at level 52 in this dataset. In this case, I had almost 2.5 times more breaks per hour (10 to 25) with 95 charisma vs. my normal charisma of 224. This translated into more than doubling my charm durations on average (2.32 minutes with low charisma boosted up to 5.76 minutes with 224 cha). Even with a few caveats discussed below, I'd say the numbers speak for themselves. The cleric I worked with (who didn't specifically know which data set was which) pretty much figured out within three minutes when I had pulled off my charisma gear, and didn't even want to keep going as it was so clear cut. I forced him to deal with my lower charisma for another 55 minutes.

As to the caveats -- first, I have no qualms whatsoever about the one hour duration of the low charisma set. Breaks came so fast and so consistently I am confident to say I could repeat that set a million times and get pretty similar results. However, my high charisma set was probably too short, which is compounded by the much less frequent breaks meaning there's less data to look at. We were working on a very short time window before he had to go. I think the high charisma set durations are fairly accurate overall but I could see the numbers changing there more significantly if the test was repeated. Regardless, it is extremely unlikely they would shift enough to call the conclusion into question.

Second, a few goofs in the experiment. During the low charisma set higher level enchanters came by and twice tash'ed my pet w/ their better tash (they saw how often I was breaking and wanted to help!). This means that for a significant portion of the "low" test my pet actually had lower MR (and assumedly a reduced break chance) vs. my high test. Fortunately this really has no relevance on the conclusions.

Finally, something else I found interesting. Based on each charms individual duration breaks are definitely weighted to the early side of the spectrum. The median duration for both sets was significantly lower vs. the average (Median was 3:10 for high and 1:04 for low). So it is not just our imagination that pets seem to behave forever and then suddenly break repeatedly. Charms tend to break early and often, but once they've lasted a few minutes tend to keep lasting (ie become more stable).

I'd like to repeat this with longer durations, and CHA 200 vs 255 to determine how charisma over 200 helps, but no promises I'll have the motivation I expect the differences will not be nearly as stark, meaning much longer sample times to see a meaningful pattern.

-Propo Fol

Which seems pretty strong evidence that charisma does work.

[Nirgon]

No, I'm told by someone very credible that charming things and channeling are WAY harder on EQ Mac. What I'm saying is I'm not there myself to give my word on it.

[koros]

Level 60, raid gear at the time. We farmed things often, and it became WAY easier in late Luclin. We were all about min-maxing, and I was just as big a math nerd then as I am now (probably moreso even)

We always used dire-charm until late Luclin, because during early Luclin, a 46 Seb Golem with weapons would put out more dps over time (when you factor in breaks), than a level 50 which we needed to constantly re-charm.

[koros]

Lifetaps used to have their own resist rules, Mobs were basically flagged immune or not with some other calculation going out on the side. In fact, lifetap was one of the few spells that would work on the Clockwork EXG, although he would occasionally have a full resist (which almost never happened otherwise).

Back in May 99' I got together a group of level 16-20 necromancers and we took out Sand Giants by chaining lifetaps and swarming pets, because they ignored hard coded spell casting limits. It was amazingly fun.

[Splorf22]

Hehe I heard about the SGs. If anyone has some friends on EQ mac I would love to see some tests. It's not perfect but its the closest thing to a live server that we have.

My strong suspicious is that charm durations here are about the same as live, again basing it mostly on Xornn's guide. Stuff simply wouldn't have worked well there. However, there is something very interesting:

Hasting the pet is an awesome edge, but also the most risky. The mob will kill much faster, equating to less damage during the fight, and less time in the fight itself--that means you don't need charm to hold as long, which is very important. With a 60% haste buff on the pet, it will kill a mob in 66% of the time it takes it without haste. That means it will also only take 66% of the damage it would have been dealt. Unfortunately most mobs just just about kill each other around the same level, so you end up with a pet in the 40% range on health after the first fight. Now that fight ended about 30 seconds faster than normal, which is good, but will most likely need help to finish the next fight. Also bad is the charm break, as a mob swinging 1.2 seconds faster (with SLtW) rushes you. If root breaks also, you're in for some heavy trouble.

I can say for a fact on P1999 one hasted non-dual-wielding ex enchanter pet is trivial to recharm with stun/mez (edit: xornn seems also to not have been that worried, only if root broke as well. Which still isn't that bad on 1999 tbh). I mean not hard at all. Now granted Xornn was kinda skimpy on the peridots but even naked this was not hard at all. So it would make a lot more sense to me if channelling was harder on live + mobs hit harder. Did you happen to keep any logs Koros? How much do mobs in Sebilis hit for on EQ Mac?

[Avon Barksdale]

Hi, pal, few pieces of advice here:

Enjoy the shit out of Plane of Sky, it's nice to do nothing but cast Clarity and Haste on request for a few hours while you semi-afk and get yer DKP.

Try being the only Enchanter on a nice Plane of Fear break-in. If you thought you were bored in Sky, you'll be sick of the constant attentiveness you need to provide over a 5-6 hour period to your pet, and all the mezzing you have to do.

I found myself begging for Fear after a Sky raid, and begging for Sky after a Fear raid. It's just game mechanics, brew.

Be happy you're not a Mage or Necro. All they do is send pets (that never "break" and come back after them) while being your mana/rod dumping slave (as long as you're not in buffbot status, aka Sky)

[Splorf22]

The point is to make things classic friend.

[Splorf22]

I'd really like to see something from Nilbog here, even if its just 'I'd rather work on Velious' or 'need more evidence' or even if he just takes me to classic school again hehe :D

[Nizzarr]

I was chanter during classic--> velious era and never charmed due to too many breaks and unreliability.

Also dictating ANY mobs over lvl 58 is extremely overpowered and should be fixed before anything else is done here.

[heartbrand]

Bro, Bro, dictate on level 65 mobs is classic don't ruin my immersion

[Nirgon]

I was chanter during classic--> velious era and never charmed due to too many breaks and unreliability.

Also dictating ANY mobs over lvl 58 is extremely overpowered and should be fixed before anything else is done here.



Thank you brother

Confirmed btw saw General in Kith dictated. Woke up in ER with immersion IV bag, released after stabilized.

[Splorf22]

Yeah among the mobs that can currently be dictated are Stanos Herkanor and General V'ghera. It's just ridiculous (Stanos in particular is not not slowable and therefore should be immune to magic period). I don't know if dictate on Sirran is classic or not, but its such a huge gaping balance flaw that I would like to see it eliminated. But the charm immunity of the normal trash mobs in Sky is not a balance issue at all.

I still say based on Xornn's enchanter guide our current charm durations for normal xp mobs are quite reasonable. OP, but it's clear that charm soloing (even with hasted pets) is viable in classic and should be viable here. Just because you didn't do it personally doesn't make it impossible - in fact after Kanras' nerf quite a few people (including me hehe) were seriously bitching about the new charm. Most of the people that still charm solo are the ones who rolled our toons before the nerf and just gradually got used to it; i notice a lot of new enchanters who only charm LB pets in a group.

I'm much more suspicious of mob damage and channeling skill - if channeling percentage was reduced by 20-30% that would make a huge difference in charm soloing. I also know mobs in general used to hit for more. Get some of your friends on EQ Mac to test stuff out!

[Nirgon]

I've linked guides that tell you to dictate/charm all kinds of mobs. Sirran is obviously never mentioned.. don't you think they woulda tried it? :P

[Handull]

Sirran is such a huge gaping balance flaw that I would like to see it eliminated.

I've linked guides that tell you to dictate/charm all kinds of mobs. Sirran is obviously never mentioned.. don't you think they woulda tried it? :P

lets agree to agree

[Splorf22]

http://www.therunes.net/g-charm.htm


Many Enchanters wonder about the why the fixed duration Dictate spell was even added. While the situations for its use are very limited, there are a few places this spell can be useful. The most noteworthy is Kael. The high level giants (55+) there are immune to all forms of Mez, but are still flagged as charmable. Dictate can be used in this situation as a 48 second crowd control spell. However, this spell outlived its usefulness back during Scars of Velious, and with the addition of the newer high level charms it has gone the way of the Dodo bird. Though, “Frozen Moses” and Sirran the Lunatic owned many a mob for the resourceful and daring back in the days of Velious. Ahhhh the memories of solo farming Shields' of the Void! But I digress, back to the guide. /wave Salidor


So there is at least one guy who claims Sirran is charmable. Personally as stated before I think that he is just so imbalancing that he should be immune, kind of like how rogues got a working backstab from day one even though it wasn't classic. As long as the boss mobs are MR immune (and therefore to dictate) I don't really see the issue with the level cap - even something like Tolapumj isn't crazy OP to charm for 30 seconds. The spell should mostly be useful for charming high level stuff like the bizzts or sebilite juggernauts or such.

Speaking of which, when did it get changed to 48 seconds from 30?