Enchanter charm isn't classic, we all know this

[Rooj]

I'm not a coding expert, but I assume most if not all of what is on P99 is based on some sort of source coding. So, if you think Charm is overpowered compared to what it was on live at launch, then it's probably based on EQ code from a time when Charm was that powerful. If that code is from later in the timeline, then presumably there would be some sort of patch note or evidence at some point saying that they had upgraded the effectiveness of Charm.

If evidence of the claims can't be presented, then it has to be presumed that the current coding is accurate for the classic era. For every person who says that they're 100% sure that something worked X way, there's another person who says they're 100% sure it worked Y way. Personal memories or anecdotes are insufficient to change something. That's just the way it is.

Erm, how would the staff have access to the source code? The entire point of creating an emulator is that you DON'T have access to the source code so you must write it all yourself. There's no way to get the source code without being given it or stealing it. I'm pretty sure neither of those have ever happened.

While formulas are normally a part of said code, things like mob's stats and resists are kept in a database, which I doubt the staff has access to either. Developers generally want the server to send the client as little data as possible (since it makes it easier to manipulate/hack), although since EQ is an old game, there's no telling what was obtainable from the packets being sent.

Also any developer (I'm sure even the staff here will attest to this) will tell you that NOT everything is listed in the patch notes. There's too many things to keep up with and frankly patch notes are a courtesy, not a requirement.

Anyway, the charm code that the staff is using isn't BASED on anything. It's written from scratch, that's what an emulator is. It isn't impossible to get more concrete data but I can almost guarantee you the staff 100% winged it when it came to charm effectiveness.

You guys should start parsing when in parties and show some parses of charmed mobs against your group or raid, and then afterwards remember what a large amount of damage comes from Haste and Clarity on top of that. I've already done this in the past so I already know what to expect. Be sure to include your party level and camp.

One final note, from https://web.archive.org/web/19991127232241/http://eq.castersrealm.com/
"Small question and answer from a chat I had with GZ yesterday:

Q: Does a spell's level have any affect on resists. Ie: A level 50 casting the level 4 mesmerise v. the level 49 dazzle. Generally speaking do higher spells have less chance of being resisted or more? What pattern, if any, is there in relation to this.

A: Some spells have a built in harder resist - for example, a higher level of fear spell is harder to save against than a lower level of fear spell (meaning that the higher level version is more likely to work). Some do other things - for example, the different types of roots all save the same (ie: have the same chance to be resisted), but have different effects as to duration, or chance of breaking once they have succeeded."

Whether or not this is implemented on P99, I have no idea, but it's possible that lower level charm spells are just not scaled properly. And Charm might not be the only spell-line culprit.

[Tecmos Deception]

Oh man, I remember seeing it ages ago and having referenced it a lot since, but I never had the post specifically to wave at people. Yay!

[Buellen]

@Rooj

Well said sir Well said. <salute>

[Rooj]

And making such a massive change for a "classic experience" simply because people didn't know the strategies back then would kind of be a dumb decision; not only because it's simply a dumb rationale, but also because it would then open up a HUGE can of worms to say we need to start nerfing all kinds of other things because people have perfected knowledge and strategy and therefore it's not reflective of classic. And then, at that point, after all those changes it no longer becomes classic Everquest.

But that's just it, lol.

No one here seems to remember Enchanter armies taking literal control of the world because it didn't happen. Therefore it is not a classic experience. All of these excuses like "people didn't know better" are horse shit. If anyone can confirm this is the actual original manual (it looks familiar, but surprised to see Iksar/Cabilis/Thurgadin stuff in there I guess), it states in the ORIGINAL GAME MANUAL that Enchanters use Charisma (https://naroggsplace.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/eq_manual.pdf). Then in November of 1999 there was an Enchanter guide on Castersrealm that talked about putting all of your points into Charisma at character creation, and that's just the earliest reference I found while BARELY looking - doesn't mean there weren't others even earlier. So it was known on DAY ONE that CHA affected Enchanter. I'm sure it didn't take players long to start thinking hey, these lines of spells that reduce magic resistance might help with charm too! Having someone Snare a mob when charm breaks isn't a new concept either. Combining all of this with the fact that CHA is one of the easiest and cheapest stats to raise, along with ENC's having their own CHA buff line, I really don't see how people can continue to make up excuses and not see that SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE, needs an edit.

And it's not "simple." Again, people need to see the parses. The amount of damage a charmed pet does is not simple.

[Rooj]

You guys should start parsing when in parties and show some parses of charmed mobs against your group or raid, and then afterwards remember what a large amount of damage comes from Haste and Clarity on top of that. I've already done this in the past so I already know what to expect. Be sure to include your party level and camp.

Quoting myself to add: also be sure to include the mob that was charmed, the items you gave it if any, any buffs it was receiving, and how efficient your positioning was if it could backstab. :)

[cd288]

But that's just it, lol.

No one here seems to remember Enchanter armies taking literal control of the world because it didn't happen. Therefore it is not a classic experience. All of these excuses like "people didn't know better" are horse shit. If anyone can confirm this is the actual original manual (it looks familiar, but surprised to see Iksar/Cabilis/Thurgadin stuff in there I guess), it states in the ORIGINAL GAME MANUAL that Enchanters use Charisma (https://naroggsplace.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/eq_manual.pdf). Then in November of 1999 there was an Enchanter guide on Castersrealm that talked about putting all of your points into Charisma at character creation, and that's just the earliest reference I found while BARELY looking - doesn't mean there weren't others even earlier. So it was known on DAY ONE that CHA affected Enchanter. I'm sure it didn't take players long to start thinking hey, these lines of spells that reduce magic resistance might help with charm too! Having someone Snare a mob when charm breaks isn't a new concept either. Combining all of this with the fact that CHA is one of the easiest and cheapest stats to raise, along with ENC's having their own CHA buff line, I really don't see how people can continue to make up excuses and not see that SOMETHING, SOMEWHERE, needs an edit.

And it's not "simple." Again, people need to see the parses. The amount of damage a charmed pet does is not simple.

Erm I think you missed my point. I never said people didn’t know charisma was important for an enchanter. I said people hadn’t perfected the absolute min/max strategy for how to charm the best. They just didn’t have the whole step by step charm strategy perfected in the way we do today, thereby making charm much more dangerous. You would think they would, but it simply wasn’t common knowledge back in the day. By Kunark I remember people had really figured out some solid strategies, but it took a couple months at least.

As for your other comment, there are old guides that say to use the lowest level charm available. So with respect to charm it seems that it didn’t operate in the same way in terms of chance of effectiveness as say a Fear spell did based on spell level.

[Bazia]

Erm I think you missed my point. I never said people didn’t know charisma was important for an enchanter. I said people hadn’t perfected the absolute min/max strategy for how to charm the best. They just didn’t have the whole step by step charm strategy perfected in the way we do today, thereby making charm much more dangerous. You would think they would, but it simply wasn’t common knowledge back in the day. By Kunark I remember people had really figured out some solid strategies, but it took a couple months at least.

As for your other comment, there are old guides that say to use the lowest level charm available. So with respect to charm it seems that it didn’t operate in the same way in terms of chance of effectiveness as say a Fear spell did based on spell level.

"step by step process" you make it seem complicated

you mean mez the mob tash it then charm it

yeah we really "perfected" the use of 3 spells

[Khorza]

Half of P99 code base is from random old sites like that.

And there it is, the admission on an old classic site that Charm isn't worth it even in groups most of the time.

I've had people on P99 tell me that charm sucks and isn't worth using in groups.

That doesn't mean that it's true.

[Bazia]

I've had people on P99 tell me that charm sucks and isn't worth using in groups.

That doesn't mean that it's true.

yeah I'm sure people are telling you not to abuse charm in groups :rolleyes:

[Madbad]

I've had people on P99 tell me that charm sucks and isn't worth using in groups.

That doesn't mean that it's true.

The only time that is true is when your group has tons of DPS and is just shredding mobs.

Then you might want the XP from the spawn you are holding up.

Say your camp has 10 mobs and you have one charmed. That's 10% less XP over the course of a session, provided your group is killing fast enough to have down time waiting for pops.

The only times I have been asked not to charm were because of this.

[Tecmos Deception]

"step by step process" you make it seem complicated

you mean mez the mob tash it then charm it

yeah we really "perfected" the use of 3 spells

Lol. Stop being obtuse.

[Bazia]

Lol. Stop being obtuse.

he made it sound like charming a mob is some complicated elaborate thing that took 20 years to be "perfected", he's the one being obtuse

[Tecmos Deception]

he made it sound like charming a mob is some complicated elaborate thing that took 20 years to be "perfected", he's the one being obtuse

I mean, I guess maybe we're envisioning different things. Yeah, charming something is just casting a tash and a charm. But managing a charm well over an extended session takes some more "complexity" in the form of managing charm breaks without neglecting other duties in groups or dying when solo, carrying and not losing pet gear, coordinating with mages or shams for debuffs maybe druids for snare sometimes, healers and stunners knowing when and how to help on a split second's notice, etc. Charming at the high end where it means more than just getting through some levels faster exp requires a lot more to avoid horrible deaths on a regular basis in locations that can be hard to CR and may be taken by another player or group before you can recover.

It isn't some impossible task, but there is a lot that goes into doing it properly that most people don't have the interest in nor the patience for these days, let alone 20 years ago when we thought ingame weddings and roleplaying with different languages were cool things to spend our time on. It's stuff that wasn't known initially, only was slowly figured out over time by a variety of different people who weren't all in contact with each other to share their tricks, was being done on generally crappy connections on the short, classic timeline where players had more to worry about than figuring out how to solo X camp with charm or how to minmax their average charm duration using parsing tools and tests. Etc.


Enchanter charming on P99 has basically been all of this, even though we basically were starting out miles ahead of the 1999 enchanters in terms of EQ and general MMO knowledge and experience.

[Tecmos Deception]

You guys like to say "there were good players back then, they'd have figured it out."

THEY DID. There just isn't fantastic evidence of it. And while there were some top notch players, there were a lot more shitty ones. Just like now (except even worse then because of the 20 fewer years of internet hardware, wikis, and MMO experience they had then, plus different overall priorities like "i think I'll go check out that ingame wedding in the temple of life instead of parsing my logs for average charm duration info at various charisma levels") So big surprise you read a lot more comments about how shitty enchanters didn't know wtf to do with charm than you do about good enchanters soloing like beasts.

[cd288]

"step by step process" you make it seem complicated

you mean mez the mob tash it then charm it

yeah we really "perfected" the use of 3 spells

Bottom line is if you think Charm is inaccurate on P99 versus live launch then provide evidence. Otherwise it’s kind of a pointless discussion.

For every person who remembers something on way, there’s someone who remembers it being a different way. Stupid to have all these debates unless you can provide concrete evidence.

[bwe]

That argument's not great because it's just as easy to go the other way. Provide evidence that the current state of charm is the same as it was on live.

[Tecmos Deception]

That argument's not great because it's just as easy to go the other way. Provide evidence that the current state of charm is the same as it was on live.

That's not how it works. To change something you prove it should be changed. Stuff is the way it is because the staff who have already spent years on this figured it out as best they could already. You don't get to upend that just because nobody can prove it is correct.


That aside, I submit xornns enchanter guide as supporting similar charm and mr here as in classic era.

I mean, the guide is pretty damn similar to guides on p99 or to the play of good chanters on here. He calls charm the chanters strongest and most versatile tool. He praises root as cc, aoe mez as great. He only keeps 1 stun on his bar for charm breaks suggesting he doesn't get it resisted enough to consider a second one as a backup. He talks about charisma and the buff line being important for charms and mezzes. His solo exp charming is solid. He even talks about engaging multiple mobs with a charm and using them for more dps in groups.

That doesn't sound like a guy who can't rely on charm, who can't handle charm breaks, who gets a ton of resists on stuns and roots, etc. It sounds about like someone playing on p99.

He doesn't even address summoning mobs, kunark 51+ spells, etc. So he wasn't even out of classic spells and 1-50 zones but he was already comfortable using charm and the other spells people in here have called op on p99.

Imagine how much more he'd like charm if he hadn't disliked berserker strength line because the strength component fades (oh noes) when the rune is eaten up, or if he'd though of having the resistance debuff he mentions shams having put on his pets, or if he had a gcd clicky and 2 wands of allure, or if he had a modern computer and internet connection and the p99 wiki and dozens of streamers to watch for tips and tricks. Why gee, he'd probably have been managing charm like a pro while outdpsing whole groups and farming cash camps solo! Go figure.


The dudes roleplay-y intro to chanting even sounds like what I keep saying about why not many people figured out chanters before and why still not too many have it mastered now:

the enchanter gives the least room for error, the least understanding for mistakes, and the most expectations from your fellow adventurers.

[Tecmos Deception]

Charm needs to be nerfed. There is a ton of evidence now it isn't working as in classic. Even ignoring the evidence this thread is enough proof that people don't consider it classic and want it nerfed. Enchanters not included.

Your evidence is indirect and conflicting. There's no parses, no data. It's just anecdotes from a bunch of different enchanters of unknown skill level, with unknown methods, in unknown situations making different, general claims about charm. For all you know, the comments you're seeing of chanters who didn't think charm should be used in groups were trying to charm yellow cons at 150 charisma with no malaise, no stuns loaded, sitting 3 feet from their pet, running lom because he likes to nuke stuff, and playing with a shitty 28.8 modem. Of course someone like that is going to have a bad time with charm, talk about how awful it is, and scare 5 group mates away from ever letting a chanter charm with them in the future.

Show me 1, just ONE enchanter who was charming a low blue con with tash, malaise, and -mr gear on their pet, who properly set up spell gems and positioning to handle charm breaks, who had 200+ charisma, and who still claimed charm was too dangerous to use for DPS in groups.

You won't be able to, because either 1) nobody was doing all of even half of that stuff back in the day and/or 2) the people who did it were few in number and not talking about it much.


Explain away the indirect evidence I pointed to in favor of charm being similar on live to how it is here, if you can. It's a more thorough, more detailed, more well-written source that chanters relied on enough that it still exists today that is written very much like modern guides written by p99 enchanters.

[Tecmos Deception]

http://www.angelfire.com/rpg/whitewind/gtxt/guides/UChantGuide.htm

Charm - Here it is. The big dog. The secret to uber-soloing. When you cast this, the target mob (max level 25) becomes your pet to command. NPC mobs hit much harder, have more hitpoints, and basically outweigh all PC pets in every way. If two mobs fight (one as your pet) and you nuke the enemy once, your pet should win the fight, though almost dead. Then you kill your pet for full experience. No class can touch our ability to solo with this method. Dropping double-yellow mobs with two bubbles of mana is basically mind-blowing, and double-blues can be great xp still. It's also extremely hazardous. I really don't feel we have the ability to charm solo until the Fifth Circle, when you have our entire spell-line available. If you insist on trying it now, you'll just have to skip ahead and find a work-around to not having Mesmerization, which I feel is critical to be successful. Also, you need a massive Charisma. I'm talking about 170+

Another extensive, classic-era enchanter guide that describes charm like it functions on p99. Read the rest of the guide to see that the author wasn't an idiot, but still had a lot of things "wrong" compared to modern knowledge of how to use certain spells and handle certain situations.


Better than any of the "nerf charm" comments I've come across here and I've found two of them with like 10 minutes of total searching. This dude actually recommends using charm on stuff that is TOO STRONG to kill with the "kamikaze" method (i.e. using an animation and supporting spells/damage to solo exp). Lots of similarities and even some identical sections to Xornn's guide, but with significant differences as well. Compare and contrast Xornn's definition of the Charm spell in his elaboration of the "4th circle" to the guide I'm linking to here:

Charm - Here it is. The big dog. When you cast this, the target mob (max level 25) becomes your pet to command. NPC mobs hit much harder, have more hitpoints, and basically outweigh all PC pets in every way. If two mobs fight (one as your pet) and you slow the enemy, your pet should win the fight, though almost dead. Then you kill your pet for full experience. No class can touch our adaptiveness in soloing with this method, and few will encounter the excitement. Dropping double-blues with little mana use and your full attention requires is a real rush. It's also extremely hazardous. 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.


Edit - Whoop! That actually IS Xornn writing that also, just apparently when he was lower level. He refined his guide and changes wordings but the fact that his recommendations for how to use charm and stuns and such doesn't change much over the course of many levels of classic-era enchanting is telling, imo.

[rabids]

I played a mage on live for a long time. During pop i really started using pet canni a lot. I crunched numbers and built all my aa's around it. I got up to around 200 mana per tick while actively cannying. I could chaincast dd's on all mobs, even with cain pulls. It was glorious!

But me and the other mages that I spoke to went a long way towards keeping this a secret. The times someone posted guides on the boards they sometimes got pressured to delete it. The nerf-bat was real. I have tried to find evidence of pet canni today, and havent found any. Not that i'm good at searching...

My point is that the nerf-bat was real for chanters too. I have no doubt lots of chanters were charming their asses off, but why would they share it outside their guild? Things were nerfed all the time.

[Tecmos Deception]

https://www.oocities.org/xymarra/Strategy/EnchanterStrategy.html#charm

I just was reading through that guide. I notice you cherry-picked the hell out of this quote in an attempt to argue for a charm nerf, because the sentence immediately after he warns about not using charm in groups, he also says that charm is a great way to improve the damage of your group or raid. That's far from the first thing I'd point at in a thread where I'm trying to get charm nerfed.

More of that guide only echos Xornn's guide, p99 guides, and what I've been saying in here. Talks about the power of charm, the use of root and stun and aoe mez, etc etc.


It also provides evidence supporting why charm wasn't MORE heavily used, even though the enchanters writing these guides specifically talk about how powerful charm is.

Chanters back in the day had it in their heads that they were primarily for support. The game manual said so. Classic RPG knowledge of a spellcaster whose spells were buffs and debuffs and whose nukes were less effective says so. Their group mates said so when the warrior was awed at his 25 dps with haste and when the cleric didn't have to help root CC because the chanter could handle ALL of it. They didn't understand the opportunity cost though.

Old chanter guides talk about slowing every mob (even guides written for level 20 and under characters). About chain stunning to help the healers. About using cripple line of spells to make tanks take less damage. No wonder they didn't have the time or mana to keep a low blue or even a high green con charmed for extra dps.

They NEVER say "don't charm in groups because it breaks too often and you can't get it back under control due to stun and mez resists and you'll oom trying to handle charming while doing even minimal buffing and CC in addition." They say stuff more like "don't charm in groups because it uses up healer mana" or "don't charm in groups because you should focus on CC and buffs/debuffs" or "I like to nuke stuff sometimes" or whatnot.

[Dolalin]

Edit: nevermind, fake post

[Tecmos Deception]

That test has to be fabricated.

Approximately 3000 charms at an average duration of 200 seconds? That's 166 hours of sitting there waiting for charm to break. That's weapons-grade autism we don't even have on the p99 forums.

And only a fucking retard would claim that 3000 charms isn't an enormous sample size.

[Dolalin]

Errr... actually maybe he's bullshitted that. I didn't read far enough down the thread. :D

[Dolalin]

Okay I found a more realistic one:


Topic: CHA and Charm - A numerical study at last
posted April 21, 2001 11:01 PM

Ok, first off I don't know anything about statistics. About the only thing I do know is that the larger the sample size the more accurate the results. So maybe if we band together on this some we can all help contribute to a large sample size.

First off, the specifics. I am a 58th level Enchanter. The tests were run on a Seafury Cyclops in the Ocean of Tears. Both tests where run on the same Cyclops. The Cyclops conned green to me, but at the end of the test I killed it and it did give me experience so it was probably 1 level below blue. The tests where run without using Tashanian so as to only see the benefits of Charisma. And each test includes a total of 25 charms. Yes, I know this is WAY too low to have a completely accurate result set, but damn, I can only sit it one place for so long charming the same mob.

Test 1
Charisma = 75
Total Resists = 2
Lowest Duration Charm = 5 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 428 seconds (7:08)
Average Duration = 156 seconds (2:36)

Test 2
Charisma = 205
Total Resists = 2
Lowest Duration Charm = 7 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 426 seconds (7:06)
Average Duration = 161 seconds (2:41)

Specific Charm Durations:

Test 1: 164, 310, 352, 47, 185, 169, 115, 102, 390, 178, 65, 108, 34, 375, 5, 20, 22, 213, 11, 428, 22, 70, 90, 426.

Test 2: 260, 111, 26, 426, 80, 426, 56, 143, 226, 112, 10, 103, 185, 280, 7, 343, 42, 9, 212, 308, 132, 27, 51, 425, 31.

Conclusion: Well, I don't even know if I should be making one as this is far too small of a sample set. And feel free to tear me a new one for doing so, or even better yet contribute your own hard data to give a better understanding.

But what I see from this is that CHA makes no difference at all. The reason could be the mob was green. I can't test on an even con as Boltran's doesn't work on a 58th level mob.

Each test had a total of 2 resists. The lowest and highest durations between each test only had a difference of 2 seconds each, oddly with worst lowest on low CHA and worst highest with high CHA. And the average duration between the tests was only 5 seconds yet there was a difference of 130 Charisma.

What this means is that I will stick with my gut feel of 160 played days and go with another stat besides CHA. I didn't believe in it's value before, and I won't change my mind unless I can see some good hard numbers that show me otherwise.

Wandatin Dai'Noga

http://web.archive.org/web/20010501121237/http://forums.castersrealm.com/cgi-bin/eq/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=9&t=004395


Edit: Another in the same thread:


Xenti, you said there have been studies done on both mes and charm. I don't ever remember data being posted on charm. That was the whole reason I did this test was to provide hard numbers. Can you give me a link to the previous test?
With that said, in my insanity today I decided to run more tests. This time I ran them on Ssolet Dnaas, an Iksar in Warslick's Woods that is for part of the Veeshan's Peak key quest. He is 50th level and cons blue to a 60th level player. This means that he is most likely in the level range that most people with Boltran's will be engaging. And to test on an even con mob with Boltran's would require doing the tests at 53rd level as after that you can only charm blue cons.

I also decided to extend my tests further this time. I did the first 2 tests again of 75 cha and 205 cha each with a sample size of 25. Then I ran 2 more tests of 25 samples at 75 and 205 cha, but this time I also buffed the Iksar with Resist Magic. Here are the results.

Test 1
Charisma = 75
Mob Buffed = No
Total Resists = 3
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 424 seconds (7:04)
Average Duration Charm = 204 seconds (3:24)

Test 2
Charisma = 205
Mob Buffed = No
Total Resists = 1
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 425 seconds (7:05)
Average Duration Charm = 119 seconds (1:59)

Test 3
Charisma = 75
Mob Buffed = Yes
Total Resists = 11
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 231 seconds (3:51)
Average Duration Charm = 71 seconds (1:11)

Test 4
Charisma = 205
Mob Buffed = Yes
Total Resists = 10
Lowest Duration Charm = 4 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 143 seconds (2:23)
Average Duration Charm = 36 seconds

Conclusions

The tests without buffing show some strange occurences. With 75 CHA the average duration went up by almost a full minute, and with 205 CHA it went down almost a full minute from my previous test. My guess is that this means there simply aren't enough samples taken yet.

Now it is very obvious that MR has a very large impact. Not only did it cut the max duration charm for both CHA settings in half, it also cut the average durations in half. And on top of that resists went up significantly.

And the most interesting thing with this new set of tests is that all of the tests performed better when run with 75 CHA than they did with 205 CHA. The average durations at 75 CHA where almost twice as long as those at 205 CHA.

So what does this mean to me? After running 150 tests I still see no data showing that high CHA gives any benefit at all. In fact it might be just the opposite. The only thing that does stick out to me is that charm is much more successful when magic resist is lower. So I will continue to keep my CHA wherever it ends up when focusing on other gear, and will use Tash while charming.

Wandatin Dai'Noga


From what I can see, P99 might use the same charm code as the EQEmu charm code (Haynar / Nilbog / Rogean would know) and which factors Charisma into charm duration. Maybe it shouldn't.


Actually that's incorrect according to the eqemu code. Each tick, there is a fixed 25/100 (25%) chance of triggering a charm break check. The code then basically says each 10 points of charisma count for 1/200 reduction in charm break chance (after taking into account level and MR). The effects of Level, MR, and Charisma all add up to a total out of 200. Charisma is 25.5 (assuming 255 max CHA) points out of the total 200. Please fact check me though since its been a few months since I looked at the code.

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=806283&postcount=26

[derpcake2]

kul69 is mad, bad and sad

move to resolved

[Tecmos Deception]

Okay I found a more realistic one:

This one probably supports charm being close to right on p99. Several-minute charms, 2+ minute averages, while on a mob that was green but not by much, but with no tash, no malaise, no -mr gear. It doesn't seem a stretch at all to end up with 3-minute or 4-minute average charms on a low blue when you are bringing a shitload of MR debuff into play, or to have an ocassional 7+ minute charm even on a higher blue con. Etc.

Good finds though. I'm awful at digging up posts if I have to use wayback to find them :(


Going down that thread he tests against a level 50 mob:


posted April 22, 2001 09:21 PM Profile for Wandatin Author's Homepage Send New Private Message Edit/Delete Post Reply With Quote Xenti, you said there have been studies done on both mes and charm. I don't ever remember data being posted on charm. That was the whole reason I did this test was to provide hard numbers. Can you give me a link to the previous test?

With that said, in my insanity today I decided to run more tests. This time I ran them on Ssolet Dnaas, an Iksar in Warslick's Woods that is for part of the Veeshan's Peak key quest. He is 50th level and cons blue to a 60th level player. This means that he is most likely in the level range that most people with Boltran's will be engaging. And to test on an even con mob with Boltran's would require doing the tests at 53rd level as after that you can only charm blue cons.

I also decided to extend my tests further this time. I did the first 2 tests again of 75 cha and 205 cha each with a sample size of 25. Then I ran 2 more tests of 25 samples at 75 and 205 cha, but this time I also buffed the Iksar with Resist Magic. Here are the results.

Test 1
Charisma = 75
Mob Buffed = No
Total Resists = 3
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 424 seconds (7:04)
Average Duration Charm = 204 seconds (3:24)

Test 2
Charisma = 205
Mob Buffed = No
Total Resists = 1
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 425 seconds (7:05)
Average Duration Charm = 119 seconds (1:59)

Test 3
Charisma = 75
Mob Buffed = Yes
Total Resists = 11
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 231 seconds (3:51)
Average Duration Charm = 71 seconds (1:11)

Test 4
Charisma = 205
Mob Buffed = Yes
Total Resists = 10
Lowest Duration Charm = 4 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 143 seconds (2:23)
Average Duration Charm = 36 seconds

7-minute max durations, with 2-3ish-minute average durations, of a level 50 mob by a level 58 enchanter without using tash, malaise, -mr gear. chArM diDNt LaST lOnG oN LivE!1

Note how HUGELY +40 magic resist affected charm durations. Now, charm naysayers, imagine if you can that was a -33 (highest classic tash) or -93 (highest classic tash+malaise) instead of a +40 and take a wild guess how well the charms would have stuck on live, from a 58 enchanter to a 50 mob, in classic era, without even using -mr pet gear (which could be another -30 in classic or even -50 in kunark/velious if you're serious enough about it).

[derpcake2]

I played in classic.

People thought being in the "spawn radius" would stop nameds from spawning, there was a secret banker in befallen that would let you change copper in plat, and we were casting harmony on casters because it improved their manaregen.

One day I went with a friend to Rathe Mountains, to see if we could take hill giants to take falling damage.

We still played better then kul69.

[Mushman]

I really don't understand the obsession with data for charm. Is it not clear that it's so incredibly strong that it has had a large and negative impact on the community for a long time now? Should be a common sense change under the "Vision of classic" clause.

Don't care if values are 100% accurate, it's destructive and wouldn't have been allowed to have the impact that it has now in era 1999.

[A1551]

Wow great find dolalin and fascinating. Actually very close to charm durations here based on testing done in past given he wasnt tashing and such. And wow, shocking that charisma there basically did nothing in either test. Opens up some questions about charisma here but also pretty much took the already abused remains of kuls arguments to the slaughterhouse

[Tecmos Deception]

I really don't understand the obsession with data for charm. Is it not clear that it's so incredibly strong that it has had a large and negative impact on the community for a long time now? Should be a common sense change under the "Vision of classic" clause.

Don't care if values are 100% accurate, it's destructive and wouldn't have been allowed to have the impact that it has now in era 1999.

I'll keep making classic changes when I can, regardless if people threaten to quit. I'm here to recreate classic eq; not to make people happy.

[Dolalin]

To be fair, charisma has such a low effect if it works how I think it does in eqemu source (100cha would only be a 9% resist decrease per tick?), it's probably within the margin of error for those tests.

[Tecmos Deception]

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=92423

It was quite a while ago, but Loraen tested that even at 200->250 there was a noticable change in charm durations, and suspected that it would be twice as big a change up to the 200 suspected softcap.


I'd like to again draw the charm naysayers' attention to Loraen's results compared to the results of this 58 enchanter on live. Loraen only has 2-minute and under averages WITH tash against a level 53 mob. -7 mob, with tash, shorter durations than the 58 guy on a -8 mob without tash. It was only when fighting a VERY low blue (it was the minimum blue con for a level 60, -14 levels!), with tash, that Loraen had a big average charm duration.


Believe it or not, I'd even be willing to concede, with just a little more data from here about low-blue/high-green charm durations, that those need a nerf. But a level 50 keeping an imp charmed for a whole naggy on here is definitely not out of line with the data we were just seeing from live, classic-era charm tests. I mean, Loraen was seeing 7-minute average durations on a -14 with tash only, compared to Wandatin at 58 charming a high-green seafury and no tash but only having 2-3 minute average. But still. That's not really conclusive even then without more info from p99 imo.

[Mushman]

Exactly my point Tecmos, thank you. Seems like a common sense classic change to me.

If in 1999 so much content was consumed by so few on the back of charm it wouldn't have been allowed to exist. It goes against what EQ is at it's core.

Not sure if it's code, experience, bandwidth or what but the power that charm gives isn't "classic" no matter what.

[Tecmos Deception]

Exactly my point Tecmos, thank you. Seems like a common sense classic change to me.

If in 1999 so much content was consumed by so few on the back of charm it wouldn't have been allowed to exist. It goes against what EQ is at it's core.

Not sure if it's code, experience, bandwidth or what but the power that charm gives isn't "classic" no matter what.

You're getting it backwards.

There's "the classic experience" and there's "classic mechanics." The former is what the game "felt" like, which varies from person to person, and involved things like being excited about ingame weddings, dying in kithicor and losing your corpse because you didnt have a wiki map, thinking agi and dex were good stat choices for a rogue, mispelling everything on purpose when playing an ogre/trolll, etc. The latter means how the mechanics function, regardless of whether people knew how they functioned and therefore were able to take full advantage of them.

The staff here generally have been pursuing "classic mechanics" more than "the classic experience." Nilbog definitely was talking about it in this way given the context of the quote I gave you.

[Mushman]

I understand lots of people enjoy the powerful, high risk-reward style of it. Put me on that list as well, it's a lot of fun. That said, it isn't classic. It's a "win button" condition you can execute with some knowledge and practice that nothing else comes close to. Do you really think it's in the vision of classic to have that kind of power behind charm?

[Tecmos Deception]

I understand lots of people enjoy the powerful, high risk-reward style of it. Put me on that list as well, it's a lot of fun. That said, it isn't classic. It's a "win button" condition you can execute with some knowledge and practice that nothing else comes close to. Do you really think it's in the vision of classic to have that kind of power behind charm?

Is it what the original devs envisioned? No. But what you think "the vision of classic" means isn't what p99 is pursuing. Neither is what the original eq devs pictured in their heads during development. So it's pretty irrelevant.

[derpcake2]

Is it not clear that it's so incredibly strong that it has had a large and negative impact on the community for a long time now?

no

[A1551]

I really don't understand the obsession with data for charm. Is it not clear that it's so incredibly strong that it has had a large and negative impact on the community for a long time now? Should be a common sense change under the "Vision of classic" clause.

Don't care if values are 100% accurate, it's destructive and wouldn't have been allowed to have the impact that it has now in era 1999.

This is roughly the best argument against charm as it currently stands. I actually agree with it to an extent, if i were in charge i might increase the risk of charming to compensate for how much better and more reliable internet connections are these days. But i aint lol, and evidence would seem to point to it likely being a non classic change. And you could start making that argument about a lot of things. Again, p99 aint trying to fix eq, just recreate it as it was.

The obsession with evidence is that if it existed showing charm was op here in a not classic way its get fixed. That evidence does not seem to exist (in fact what we do have seems to point to the opposite). Theres plenty of eqemus out there that tried to fix eq in various ways if thats your thing.

So, what exactly is the large and negative impact on the community of charm? That isnt rhetorical, i clearly see charm is an issue, but i think if you wanted a non classic change in the name of “classic vision” youd have to make a reallly strong case that it is community destroying in a large and impactful way that didnt exist in classic. I see myself eyerolling at enchanters and being annoyed at them for farming items and having camps and such alone or with a partner, but i dont think that raises to the level of community destroying youd probably need to persuade the staff. That just sounds like a frustratingly classic aspect of eq to me.

[Mushman]

I'm not that knowledgeable about it but I thought historically they have made some changes for the sake of playability that steered away from classic mechanical values. If it's a case by case basis i just think they would be making everyone's experience more enjoyable and "classic" with reconsidering how charm performs currently.

[derpcake2]

This is roughly the best argument against charm as it currently stands. I actually agree with it to an extent, if i were in charge i might increase the risk of charming to compensate for how much better and more reliable internet connections are these days. But i aint lol, and evidence would seem to point to it likely being a non classic change. And you could start making that argument about a lot of things. Again, p99 aint trying to fix eq, just recreate it as it was.

The obsession with evidence is that if it existed showing charm was op here in a not classic way its get fixed. That evidence does not seem to exist (in fact what we do have seems to point to the opposite). Theres plenty of eqemus out there that tried to fix eq in various ways if thats your thing.

So, what exactly is the large and negative impact on the community of charm? That isnt rhetorical, i clearly see charm is an issue, but i think if you wanted a non classic change in the name of “classic vision” youd have to make a reallly strong case that it is community destroying in a large and impactful way that didnt exist in classic. I see myself eyerolling at enchanters and being annoyed at them for farming items and having camps and such alone or with a partner, but i dont think that raises to the level of community destroying youd probably need to persuade the staff. That just sounds like a frustratingly classic aspect of eq to me.

just like you are annoyed by enchanters, you are annoying other classes that can't solo as well as necros

this is thread should be renamed "the salty crab bucket", because it is mostly salty kids trying to drag others down

[cd288]

I'm not that knowledgeable about it but I thought historically they have made some changes for the sake of playability that steered away from classic mechanical values. If it's a case by case basis i just think they would be making everyone's experience more enjoyable and "classic" with reconsidering how charm performs currently.

That's not the point of the server. It's to re-create classic EQ on the EQ timeline. Not to make arbitrary decisions that because people are better at using a strategy today than they were back then we're going to nerf something. With what you're proposing, they'd also need to get rid of the wiki, eliminate the ability to alt+tab/play windowed, eliminate single IP restrictions, not allow anyone to connect with anything other than a dial up modem, etc. if the goal is to force people to be exactly like they were in 1999. Get over it dude.

[kjs86z]

30+ pages of people arguing about enchanter strength on p99.

To those complaining: its only going to get worse when you hit Kunark and then on to Velious. We're the strongest class in the game, deal with it.

Consider Blue today!

[Jimjam]

I'm not that knowledgeable about it but I thought historically they have made some changes for the sake of playability that steered away from classic mechanical values. If it's a case by case basis i just think they would be making everyone's experience more enjoyable and "classic" with reconsidering how charm performs currently.

Generally unclassic adjustments seem to be made for cases where the change substantially decreases CSR load.

The 25 aoe limit, /list, there aren't a huge numbers of intentional departures from previously classic mechanics.

The only big non-csr departure from classic is where entire raids worth of lifetap earrings would be used to instagib dragons on spawn. That and titanium client features like /rewind and pet window.

[cd288]

Generally unclassic adjustments seem to be made for cases where the change substantially decreases CSR load.

The 25 aoe limit, /list, there aren't a huge numbers of intentional departures from previously classic mechanics.

The only big non-csr departure from classic is where entire raids worth of lifetap earrings would be used to instagib dragons on spawn. That and titanium client features like /rewind and pet window.

I'd imagine they could probably disable /rewind if they wanted to, but that falls within the bucket of reducing CSR load.

The amount of times I had to summon stuck people back in the day...lol

[A1551]

just like you are annoyed by enchanters, you are annoying other classes that can't solo as well as necros

this is thread should be renamed "the salty crab bucket", because it is mostly salty kids trying to drag others down

No arguments from me 😝

[Vexenu]

It is now clear that only a Teams PvP server can save us from the plague of Enchanters charm soloing everything.

[Tecmos Deception]

It is now clear that only a Teams PvP server can save us from the plague of Enchanters charm soloing everything.

Doubtful. They're still just as good at PVE and a charmed pet in PVP, with some setup, can still be a problem depending on the situation. Plus chanters have the best dispels, great buffs including GRM, unresistable mez later on, etc.

My red chanter solod in dungeons all over and hardly anyone came to say hi because they weren't chanters who could get to where I was to say hi.


I guess maybe in classic with hundreds of players online it'd be too busy for solo chanters to do much during primetime. But even blue and green pops dip low on off hours, and of course a teams pvp wouldnt end up with 1500 players in prime.

[enjchanter]

It is clear that you all fear my power and I have become too strong for my own good

[Wurl]

I want to make sure everyone saw two EXTREMELY important posts on earlier pages.. these both align with my memories of classic, and thoroughly explain why charming was not used back then.

1. CHARMED PETS COULD NOT BE CONTROLLED
https://web.archive.org/web/20000510211728/http://www.everlore.com/races_classes/classes.asp?CID=3&mode=details&type=races

--Submited by: Anatsia On: 07/08/1999 10:51:37 AM
I am what one would call a newbie? Nahh... level 19 ehchanter
charm is a great spell fighting orcs anywhere in Norrath.
For example go to a camp where there are three orcs or even two.
Charm the orc that is the closet to you and run to the orc and let him
hit you just once. Since you can not control your pet the pet or charmed
enemy is just there to protect you. He will have no choice but to help you fight.
Make sure you tell your party your charming because if you at charm and your party does not know
they will try to kill him and he wont die. The enemy is now your pet you can not have two pets so whatch out
do not charm when you have a pet already.
Then sit back and watch eachother fight until he is dead from the other enemy or when he breaks the spell
this is the so cool when ur are in a train or have more than u can handle

2. INVIS DID NOT BREAK CHARM
In official patch notes why does it say "Charm is immediately removed from charmed NPC's when the character that charmed them casts invisibility"

Were enchanter not able to break charm with invis prior to this time?

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2002-1.html

[loramin]

Generally unclassic adjustments seem to be made for cases where the change substantially decreases CSR load.

The 25 aoe limit, /list, there aren't a huge numbers of intentional departures from previously classic mechanics.

The only big non-csr departure from classic is where entire raids worth of lifetap earrings would be used to instagib dragons on spawn. That and titanium client features like /rewind and pet window.

And this is EXACTLY my point. The staff policy seems (and for the most part is) extremely reasonable: "we only fix exploits and things that use up our time". That completely makes sense for a 100% volunteer operation!

But again, you can't design by making one-off bug decisions in isolation. And whether he likes it or not, Nilbog is designing a game: there's just too much unknown about the exact details of classic mechanics, and it's just the nature of emulators that the people making them have to make countless judgement calls.

The problem is, Nilbog has made tons of such isolated decisions, which all made perfect sense and were perfectly logical in isolation ... but he wasn't paying attention to the bigger picture in the process. He hasn't noticed that all those decisions in isolation were design choices, and the game he's designing has made Enchanters:

the strongest class in the game, deal with it.

to a degree that vastly exceeds what they were on live.

Yes the staff has extremely limited resources to make all of this happen. Yes nerfing exploits and allowing other frustrating (but non-exploit) mechanics makes sense. Yes making things unclassic as necessary (eg. lists, AoE mob limits) is a good thing when it makes the server overall more classic (eg. because it without them the GMs would have no time to assist us).

But that last one, and the motivation behind it, is critical. The staff didn't make a classic /list implementation: instead they took a step back, put on their game designer hat, and said "how can we make this situation the best and most classic it can be even if we have to break the literal classic mechanics?"

That question is exactly what needs to be asked with Enchanters, because by making completely logical and rational decision in isolation, the staff has made their server unclassic, in the same way Bards doing 50+ mobs and not letting anyone else XP in the Overthere was unclassic (even though countless logical and rational individual decisions, about Bards and what their classic mechanics were, had been what created that very situation).

Ultimately P99 is about classic Everquest. I truly think that anyone taking a step back, and doing their best to make an honest comparison of P99 to live, would see that Enchanters are not classic here. That should be fixed ... either with a 100% classic (as far as anyone can prove) resist increase, or even through an "unclassic but makes things more classic" change.

[Tecmos Deception]

Eh. That charmed pets couldn't be controlled thing isn't too convincing imo without corroboration. The way that post is worded makes me wonder if this guy is just mixing up how animations and charms function. Maybe he didn't even have keys made or try to use the pet control commands since the animation he was used to before he ever had charm didn't respond to them.

But yeah for sure there are issues with enchanter spells where they didn't work in earlier classic like they do on green. Unsure which of those if any staff have interest in changing. I thought most of them have been brought up, but maybe not through the proper bug-report channels. Stuff like runes and chanter AC buffs not stacking in the early days, tash being resistable, etc.


Lor - what exactly do you think has been done to make enchanters stronger than they were on live? The most recent evidence (and pretty solid evidence, imo, which it sounds like you didn't look at because it's legit testing done not random zam anecdotes or cherry-picked lines about charm being dangerous) about charm durations in this thread suggest p99 charm strength is pretty close excepting perhaps charming MUCH lower-level mobs (which isn't what makes charm OP anyways).

And in a general "OP chanters are bad" sense, as someone else mentioned, the main changes towards unclassic mechanics have been done to ease CSR problems (raid timers and rotations, bards monopolizing zones, etc), not to address overall game balance (charm numba 1, class exp penalties ahead of timeline changes, monks in late velious, etc).

[Dolalin]

I want to make sure everyone saw two EXTREMELY important posts on earlier pages.. these both align with my memories of classic, and thoroughly explain why charming was not used back then.

1. CHARMED PETS COULD NOT BE CONTROLLED
https://web.archive.org/web/20000510211728/http://www.everlore.com/races_classes/classes.asp?CID=3&mode=details&type=races


2. INVIS DID NOT BREAK CHARM

There seems to have been a bug around Enchanter charmed pets and /pet commands, sometimes they just wouldn't obey. But usually they did.


12/8/99

Charmed beings are SUPPOSED to act like other caster pets and follow the
same commands. I've noticed most of the time they work properly but
occasionally you'll charm something that aspires to be an Enchanter Pet
(ie.. they won't attack unless you're attacked first)

The majority of my charms worked fine but I would occasionally have this
charmed nasty following me around like a lost puppy dog. Of course once
the charm broke it was more than willing to attack something =)

Antheus

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/Wq0n3A1n7xw/MUjBZ_tfTdEJ

[Dolalin]

There was another bug where charmed pets would sometimes attack your group members:


9/10/99

Furthermore, the charmed creatures will attack your party members
and they won't be able to hit back. You have to watch it like a hawk.
You will be able to stop the pet from attacking your buddies, but it
won't be like your normal animation pet in that you will have to keep
track of it.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.games.everquest/90fAH8Xlvlo/22VTCapUpg0J


Some of these things may go a way towards explaining why enchanters in early EQ didn't charm as much as they did later on.

[Bazia]

nerf encs im sick of seeing them everywhere, they also kinda make other pet classes look like a wet dog turd

stronger pet dps than a mage and 100x the utility

[Tecmos Deception]

nerf encs im sick of seeing them everywhere

:rolleyes:

[enjchanter]

Oh no they're gunna kill all of p99's ng bugs

[Tecmos Deception]

Oh no they're gunna kill all of p99's ng bugs

Lol.

I'm still curious to see just how many of these enchanters making up like 10-13% of the server are actually going to be the sort who can hold down stuff like freeti or am or whatever solo :)

Cause it was one thing, imo, to hold these camps on blue during classic. But it'll be something else with a few times as many players looking for exp and an smr or geb or fbss drop. Die once, and you lose the camp for hours and hours. It is one thing to hold these camps at 60 on blue currently. But it'll be something else to do it at 50 in classic gear. Etc.

[enjchanter]

Lol.

I'm still curious to see just how many of these enchanters making up like 10-13% of the server are actually going to be the sort who can hold down stuff like freeti or am or whatever solo :)

Cause it was one thing, imo, to hold these camps on blue during classic. But it'll be something else with a few times as many players looking for exp and an smr or geb or fbss drop. Die once, and you lose the camp for hours and hours. It is one thing to hold these camps at 60 on blue currently. But it'll be something else to do it at 50 in classic gear. Etc.

Yeah , that was honestly the main reason I wanted to play green, to see what would be possible without gear and level 60. But ultimately decided i dont have as much fun on EQ as i used to after a couple levels sadly.

[Mushman]

Generally unclassic adjustments seem to be made for cases where the change substantially decreases CSR load.

The 25 aoe limit, /list, there aren't a huge numbers of intentional departures from previously classic mechanics.

The only big non-csr departure from classic is where entire raids worth of lifetap earrings would be used to instagib dragons on spawn. That and titanium client features like /rewind and pet window.

Thanks for the info!

So if I understand correctly, the staff made the change to lifetap clickies, knowingly going against classic data for the sake of improving the game?

Just wanted to know if the whole fortress argument of "It is proven classic so it stays" even holds water. It really doesn't though if they've used their judgement in the past.

[Ligma]

Yes, because everyone on the raid could click an earring for instant 1k damage then go and recharge it cheap. This made 32k hp raiding very, very dumb. And would actually gimp zland, kland and sont too.

[Mushman]

Yes, because everyone on the raid could click an earring for instant 1k damage then go and recharge it cheap. This made 32k hp raiding very, very dumb.

Totally get it, sounds like a wise change. One could argue the same point as I'm seeing in this thread however, "It's classic deal with it.". It's not that simple though and judgement should and has been used in the past.

The way out of whack power of enchanter because of charm isn't classic and has a negative impact on the game the same way nuking a raid mob with clickies has a bad impact.

[loramin]

Lor - what exactly do you think has been done to make enchanters stronger than they were on live? The most recent evidence (and pretty solid evidence, imo, which it sounds like you didn't look at because it's legit testing done not random zam anecdotes or cherry-picked lines about charm being dangerous) about charm durations in this thread suggest p99 charm strength is pretty close excepting perhaps charming MUCH lower-level mobs (which isn't what makes charm OP anyways).

And in a general "OP chanters are bad" sense, as someone else mentioned, the main changes towards unclassic mechanics have been done to ease CSR problems (raid timers and rotations, bards monopolizing zones, etc), not to address overall game balance (charm numba 1, class exp penalties ahead of timeline changes, monks in late velious, etc).

I think you're missing my point: what has been done to make Enchanters stronger than on live? In a sense, everything ;)

What I mean by that is, there's no one thing I can point to. I don't know (and even with what limited evidence we have, let's be honest: you don't either) exactly how charm resists worked. No one has the formula. Nilbog had to make a judgement call, and pick some numbers, based on the limited evidence we have.

But then there's also the Mages not having spells thing. What does that have to do with Enchanter charming you ask? This game isn't "Enchanter SoloQuest": it's a MMOG. A world with twelve different classes of players all playing together.

Even if Nilbog got every last subjective decision about Enchanters 110% correct ... if he nerfs every other class on the server, then Enchanters will be unclassically powerful (while still being "100% classic"). Not because he got the Enchanter decisions wrong, and not even because he go the other decisions "wrong" either. Again, I think every decision he made was likely "right" by some very reasonable criteria.

But the net result is a server that doesn't look like live, and I think if anyone, even an Enchanter fan like yourself, takes a step back and looks at the situation honestly ... it's clearly apparent that something (probably many things, many totally reasonable and rational decisions) have resulted in Enchanters being clearly unclassic here. Again, not in an "X is wrong" way, but in a "if you played on live and are honest, you KNOW something isn't right" way.

[Wurl]

I feel like what it's coming down to is that charm pets were glitchy and unreliable in classic:

1. Charmed pets didn't reliably follow /pet commands
2. You couldn't break charm reliably with invis until 2002
3. Pets would sometimes attack group mates or wander or continue other parts of their script
4. Charm breaks may have been more frequent

[Ligma]

I don't believe the thing about invis not breaking charm. Keep in mind that would also mean you can have a charm pet and be invis, which adds another powerful ability.

[Wurl]

I don't believe the thing about invis not breaking charm. Keep in mind that would also mean you can have a charm pet and be invis, which adds another powerful ability.
You're arguing against patch notes, not me.


In official patch notes why does it say "Charm is immediately removed from charmed NPC's when the character that charmed them casts invisibility"

Were enchanter not able to break charm with invis prior to this time?

http://everquest.allakhazam.com/history/patches-2002-1.html

[strawman]

2. You couldn't break charm reliably with invis until 2002

If the operative word in that patch note is "immediately", it's also possible that there was a delay between invis landing and charm break occurring which was fixed in that patch.

But even if invis didn't break charm until 2002, that means enchanters were simply using cancel magic (same mana cost as invis) or nullify magic (20 more mana) until then.

[Izmael]

Despite the OP being obnoxious at promoting his thesis, he actually has a point. We didn't run around soloing Efreeti back in classic. We shouldn't do it on Green/Teal either.

I think we might as well just disable charm on Green/Teal. It IS a powerful spell and back then wasn't used nearly as much (for technological reasons, but that's not important).

To further match Grean/Teal's experience with the one people had back then, simply taking charm out of the picture, until the final patch hits, might be the way to go. Unclassic change for a classic'er experience - P99 has done it before (and rightly so. Examples are Chardok AE, Epic item min level 46, etc).

This will promote grouping as opposed to solo / duo, and that's definitely IS a good thing for the progression servers.

[Nirgon]

People had max CHA and reliably charmed Blizzardwalker and other giants against AOW.

CHA is doing what it is supposed to.

If you're not good enough at Enchanter and mad other people are, and resorting to this... whew.

[Wurl]

If the operative word in that patch note is "immediately", it's also possible that there was a delay between invis landing and charm break occurring which was fixed in that patch.
Fair enough. Any implementation of invisibility not consistently, instantly breaking charm would be a step in the right direction of making charm not as reliable as it is currently on P99.

[Wurl]

If you're not good enough at Enchanter and mad other people are, and resorting to this... whew.
Actually, we're just trying to make the server more classic.

[Nirgon]

Thanks for the info!

So if I understand correctly, the staff made the change to lifetap clickies, knowingly going against classic data for the sake of improving the game?

Just wanted to know if the whole fortress argument of "It is proven classic so it stays" even holds water. It really doesn't though if they've used their judgement in the past.

Once the item recharge bug was discovered, it was quickly fixed. One of the stupidest arguments ever is keeping it in for months or saying it's selectively classic. It should last for a week or two at the end of Velious if you want the "classic experience".

[Nirgon]

Actually, we're just trying to make the server more classic.

Go read about the history of AOW being killed for the first time with charmed mobs. Charm itself wasn't even changed as a result.

Frozen Jesus is frowning hard as hell right now at the whining.

[derpcake2]

Again, not in an "X is wrong" way, but in a "if you played on live and are honest, you KNOW something isn't right" way.

The logs that were posted from classic resemble p1999 as much as possible.

I wish people would get infractions for posting this kind of pseudo-feedback. It is disruptive and needlessly takes time from staff.

Nilbog isn't here to please your "feels".

[loramin]

Nilbog isn't here to please your "feels".

No, Nilbog is here to re-create classic EverQuest. And anyone being honest who played back then knows Enchanters here are nothing like they were on live: Nilbog is failing in some sense at re-creating classic EverQuest (and in all fairness, the guy has succeeded at umpteen million other decisions, so this is in no way a personal attack, just a "he's human" point).

It's exactly the same thing with Bards AoEing every mob in The Overthere. Every step, every last decision that Nilbog made which enabled it was absolutely 100% classic and correct ... but a single Bard making it impossible for anyone to get XP in the zone absolutely was not classic.

Even though Nilbog knew he'd made every decision about Bards correctly, he still took a step back and saw that something wasn't right. And that must have been incredibly difficult for him: no one is good at seeing their own mistakes, and if it wasn't for the massive CSR problem the Bards created, I'm not sure he even would have.

But he did! He realized something was missing, and it wasn't any individual game mechanic that he'd gotten wrong: it was that he hadn't considered how significant an "X factor" (1999 latency) was in making an emulated EverQuest server feel like a real EverQuest server.

Once he did, he emulated better. Even though he literally added an unclassic mechanic, the server felt far more classic as a result. Other than Bards who want to XP faster, I don't think anyone can argue the server would be more classic with AoE monopolies in OT.

Similarly, I don't think anyone can honestly argue that P99 really feels like 1999 when NO ONE remembers Enchanter charming being so prevalent, and basic logic dictates that it couldn't have been purely player ignorance.

[strawman]

Nilbog isn't here to please your "feels".

No, Nilbog is here to re-create classic EverQuest.

BUT I FEEL LIKE ENCHANTERS ARE WRONG WAAAAA

[Bazia]

nothing classic about being in HHK and theres two charming enchanters in gob basement 2 charming enchanters clearing first floor guards a high level charm enchanter soloing second floor guards
another charming enchanter soloing nobles and yes even another charming enchanter and mage duo clearing third and fourth floor

shits getting stupid real quick

[strawman]

>it's silly to argue the "classic" angle
>argues the classic angle three sentences later

[Mushman]

The logs that were posted from classic resemble p1999 as much as possible.

I wish people would get infractions for posting this kind of pseudo-feedback. It is disruptive and needlessly takes time from staff.

Nilbog isn't here to please your "feels".

People don't agree with me, they should be silenced?

Noone is being disruptive in sharing their opinion that power charm centric EQ isn't classic and takes away from the classic EQ experience.

Taking away time from staff something something Nilbog? It's like you'd say anything to make people speaking honestly go away. The staff is great and we're lucky to have them! Doesn't make charmed state of game classic.

[Danth]

I (still) can't lifetap raid bosses. Your classic arguments are invalid. Non-classic changes are made when the project admins deem it necessary. For folks who dislike current Enchanter power, continuing to visibly and loudy complain is the best way to eventually bring the admins around to such a change (ie, keep it up). As the recent experience with the pet window demonstrated, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Danth

[Frostback]

Playing the enchanter is by far no easy task, but reaps the greatest benefits, and definitely earns the title of being the 'best' pure caster.

Careful when charming a creature. Only do it when your CHA is high and the target has been Tashaned. Once the creature is out of the charm, it will attack you. It is not possible to Charm something that is out of your spell range cap, however you can still Charm beings that may be red to you (I charmed by first griffin at 31). A good charm with the lowest charm spell may last up to about 5 minutes, and the duration increases with a better charm spell.

https://web.archive.org/web/20000621221742/http://eq.stratics.com/classes/enchanter/classes_enc_ruri.shtml

[Dolalin]

All the speculation about CHA in these chanter charming guides is basically useless, nobody was doing any objective testing until people started doing it in those links I posted earlier. It's all feels and old wives tales and people believing their own superstitious nonsense. The effect on charm was tiny and got lost in the noise.

(There was good evidence for an effect on mez, but that's not the issue here.)

Tashan always had a big impact though and it's plain to see in the testing done back then. The effect of MR on charm breaks was massive.

I'd love to swing the nerf bat at chanters but so far I haven't seen classic evidence to justify it, or where you would even swing it. The mechanics on p99 are pretty faithful to classic it seems?

[Nirgon]

I (still) can't lifetap raid bosses. Your classic arguments are invalid. Non-classic changes are made when the project admins deem it necessary. For folks who dislike current Enchanter power, continuing to visibly and loudy complain is the best way to eventually bring the admins around to such a change (ie, keep it up). As the recent experience with the pet window demonstrated, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Danth


Why don't they just make spirit tap the one that gets resisted Mr Danth

Anyone got ahhh much better in their dragonslaying logs of old? Torven maybe?

[cd288]

No, Nilbog is here to re-create classic EverQuest. And anyone being honest who played back then knows Enchanters here are nothing like they were on live: Nilbog is failing in some sense at re-creating classic EverQuest (and in all fairness, the guy has succeeded at umpteen million other decisions, so this is in no way a personal attack, just a "he's human" point).

It's exactly the same thing with Bards AoEing every mob in The Overthere. Every step, every last decision that Nilbog made which enabled it was absolutely 100% classic and correct ... but a single Bard making it impossible for anyone to get XP in the zone absolutely was not classic.

Even though Nilbog knew he'd made every decision about Bards correctly, he still took a step back and saw that something wasn't right. And that must have been incredibly difficult for him: no one is good at seeing their own mistakes, and if it wasn't for the massive CSR problem the Bards created, I'm not sure he even would have.

But he did! He realized something was missing, and it wasn't any individual game mechanic that he'd gotten wrong: it was that he hadn't considered how significant an "X factor" (1999 latency) was in making an emulated EverQuest server feel like a real EverQuest server.

Once he did, he emulated better. Even though he literally added an unclassic mechanic, the server felt far more classic as a result. Other than Bards who want to XP faster, I don't think anyone can argue the server would be more classic with AoE monopolies in OT.

Similarly, I don't think anyone can honestly argue that P99 really feels like 1999 when NO ONE remembers Enchanter charming being so prevalent, and basic logic dictates that it couldn't have been purely player ignorance.

Respectfully, I'm somewhat amazed at how many gigantic lengthy replies you've written in this thread without actually presenting any evidence for anything. If the answer is evidence can't be found, then that's the end of the discussion.

[cd288]

Silly to argue the "classic" angle. A lot of changes were already made to nerf classic things that are OP. Enchanter charm is obviously one of these things at least at lower levels. Charm at high levels isn't even that bad, it's the ridiculous chanter in every group with everyone supporting their pet from level 1-30 that I've seen. This is nowhere near a classic EQ experience.

I love how your original argument got totally wrecked so you're now reverting to the "well there weren't this many Enchanters on live because people didn't realize how powerful they were and therefore they should be nerfed" argument lol

At this point, we might as well start putting limits on the amount of people who can be playing a class on the server. Oh and also force some people to play other classes; for example, there were more Wizards, Rogues, and Warriors on live at launch, so people need to be forced to play those so that we can truly recreate the classic experience. Gimme a break lmao.

[Wurl]

If the answer is evidence can't be found, then that's the end of the discussion.
The thing is, evidence can't be found to justify the way charm works CURRENTLY on P99. Should what the EQEmu developers wrote 10+ years ago really just be accepted as infallible truth?

[loramin]

Respectfully, I'm somewhat amazed at how many gigantic lengthy replies you've written in this thread without actually presenting any evidence for anything. If the answer is evidence can't be found, then that's the end of the discussion.

Respectfully, you completely ignored what I wrote.

I gave the example of Bard's AoEing, and how there was similarly no evidence that there was anything unclassic whatsoever about the mechanics. So if your argument is "there must be classic mechanic proof to fix anything", then you're essentially arguing for Bards to still take every mob in OT, and I reject your argument.

My argument is, EVEN THOUGH there was no classic mechanic, a simple "gut check" could tell anyone who played on live that P99 had something wrong. Bards on live did not monopoilze The Overthere, and it was very much NOT just because "players were dumb in '99". When the staff fixed that, using an unclassic mechanic, it made the server overall more classic.

I honestly don't know whether the charm resists here are right or not, and again no one truly does. But what I do know is that no one remembers Enchanter charm being like this on live: regardless of classic evidence, it fails the "gut check".

When something like that is massively different here, anyone who wants things to be "like 1999" has to honestly ask themself: could this difference truly be explained with just player ignorance? And I think anyone being honest has to answer "no", which implies that a correction (classic or unclassic) is needed to make this place more classic.

[cd288]

The thing is, evidence can't be found to justify the way charm works CURRENTLY on P99. Should what the EQEmu developers wrote 10+ years ago really just be accepted as infallible truth?

It's sort of an interesting argument to point at something and say "that's wrong you need to change it even though I can't provide any evidence that it's wrong" and then put the burden of proof on the other party. That's not how change requests work.

Go put in some research time, see if you can find actual legitimate evidence, and then post it. You don't get to come demand a change and shift your burden of proof to someone else lol

[Wurl]

demand a change
Actually, I've presented some interesting arguments and links in this thread and made no demands. You're demanding that things stay the same.

[strawman]

The thing is, evidence can't be found to justify the way charm works CURRENTLY on P99. Should what the EQEmu developers wrote 10+ years ago really just be accepted as infallible truth?

P99 isn't using the stock eqemu charm code

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?t=339224

[strawman]

no evidence

[cd288]

Actually, I've presented some interesting arguments and links in this thread and made no demands. You're demanding that things stay the same.

It seems like your comments relate to invis and whether or not you can control charmed pets (the latter post reading more like someone who simply had no clue how to control a pet (no pet window remember?) and assumed it operated like a regular Enchanter pet).

Maybe I missed a post where you provided evidence that Charm broke way more frequently on live than it does on P99? Which was the general argument that people were having on this thread.

[Bazia]

nothing classic about being in HHK and theres two charming enchanters in gob basement 2 charming enchanters clearing first floor guards a high level charm enchanter soloing second floor guards
another charming enchanter soloing nobles and yes even another charming enchanter and mage duo clearing third and fourth floor

shits getting stupid real quick

[DMN]

I already posted in this thread and gave my 2 cents, I think a lot of the magic system is more forgiving in P99. Tis issue is not unique for enchanters, but all casters benefit from it. Mages being the only ones kinda of out of the loop, with no CC whatsoever.

Enchanters didn't get played often in the charming capacity at least until kunark, A big part of the reason was lack of mobs. You'd often be only holding on top 3-4 mobs as your "camp". Everything was overcamped, even stuff hat had garbage drops mostly.

One thing you learned in vanilla EQ after you have figured the basics of the game out pretty much, a "veteran" so to speak, was that the thing most likely to kill you was an unlikely series of events. This meant that players and groups heavily used often times less efficient strategies but safer. more consistent strategies. They preferred mez to root because mez was 100% for sure duration. They preferred snare to root because again 100% duration when it lands. Charming and certainly weaponizing/hasting the charm would throw a giant risk that could tip the scales out of most players comfort zones.

When kunark arrived and enchanters had more elbow room, then it become quite obvious how effectively they could solo, though this solo capability had a decent amount of risk attached to it. It's not just like they had god mode or something.

Additionally people wanting an uber solo class back then all went to play necros, not enchanters which tended to attract people more interested in group play.

Bu like i said, i still think the magic system is little too rigged in players favor. as a recent example, I've been messing around with my enchanter on green. On original EQ if I cast an enchanter DD spell on myself I'd flat out resist it at least 50% of the time. I've now cast it at least 100 times on green and not once has it been resisted, partially or fully.

[Onadan]

I have no evidence but chiming in that, in general, the random chance of spell breaking before its time seems too low. Invis lasts forever, root lasts forever, and it sounds like charm lasts forever as well.

[Rooj]

I have no evidence but chiming in that, in general, the random chance of spell breaking before its time seems too low. Invis lasts forever, root lasts forever, and it sounds like charm lasts forever as well.

Once I learned invis I ran my Enchanter from Akanon to Qeynos, and recently from Qeynos to Highkeep to buy some Enchanter spells. Was pretty baffled by the duration of invis. Definitely didn't feel right.

Also, still waiting on some parses. :) Don't be afraid!

[Vexenu]

I (still) can't lifetap raid bosses. Your classic arguments are invalid. Non-classic changes are made when the project admins deem it necessary. For folks who dislike current Enchanter power, continuing to visibly and loudy complain is the best way to eventually bring the admins around to such a change (ie, keep it up). As the recent experience with the pet window demonstrated, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Danth

The Ivandyr's Hoop nerf still baffles me: rather than simply removing the lifetap effect from the item (which is otherwise just a middling piece of stat gear) the devs entirely removed the ability of all lifetaps to land on raid mobs. Enormous unclassic nerf to Necros and SKs rather than simply removing the effect from the earring. I never understood that one.

More generally, I think that all impartial observers and players (meaning anyone who doesn't main an Enchanter and even many who do) can at this point agree that Charm is producing an extremely unclassic effect on the server. Even if we grant that the mechanics of charm are actually approximating their classic state (which is far from certain), the widespread adoption of charm soloing has resulted in a player experience that is far from what most people remember from classic EQ. Boxing was classic, Bard swarming was classic and Chardok AOE was classic. The former was banned from the get-go on this project because the devs recognized that boxing, while classic, would result in thoroughly unclassic gameplay on an emulated server with free accounts and easy two-boxing. Over time, the devs recognized the same was true about Bard swarming and Chardok AOE. Both possible with classic mechanics, both producing wildly unclassic server effects when exploited by many players.

I hope they will recognize that the current state of Charm is in a similar position. It is being exploited to trivialize the content of the game in every level range. Playing an Enchanter after playing any other class literally feels like switching on God mode, and that's entirely due to Charm. Because the fact is that even WITHOUT Charm, Enchanters would STILL arguably be the most powerful class in the game, due to the strength of their buffs, debuffs and surprisingly powerful animations. When you combine that with the ability to charm mobs that allow Enchanters to out-tank and out DPS (and even heal, with memblur) every other class, it simply becomes absurd. People want to play EverQuest, not EnchanterQuest.

[winter888]

Respectfully, you completely ignored what I wrote.

I gave the example of Bard's AoEing, and how there was similarly no evidence that there was anything unclassic whatsoever about the mechanics. So if your argument is "there must be classic mechanic proof to fix anything", then you're essentially arguing for Bards to still take every mob in OT, and I reject your argument.

My argument is, EVEN THOUGH there was no classic mechanic, a simple "gut check" could tell anyone who played on live that P99 had something wrong. Bards on live did not monopoilze The Overthere, and it was very much NOT just because "players were dumb in '99". When the staff fixed that, using an unclassic mechanic, it made the server overall more classic.

I honestly don't know whether the charm resists here are right or not, and again no one truly does. But what I do know is that no one remembers Enchanter charm being like this on live: regardless of classic evidence, it fails the "gut check".

When something like that is massively different here, anyone who wants things to be "like 1999" has to honestly ask themself: could this difference truly be explained with just player ignorance? And I think anyone being honest has to answer "no", which implies that a correction (classic or unclassic) is needed to make this place more classic.

For the reason of EXP panalty and DPS/HEAL ability, every exp group's composition will be prefered of war/clr/rog/monk etc. That's classic, but not classic feeling. And from your point ,shall devs nerf rog/monk's dps? cleric's heal ability? war's tankbility? of whose ability are already been exploited and trivialized our classic feeling by most P99 players. You guys surely remmembered the classic group and raid composition of classic EQ was kaleidoscopic,DONT U?

Every one on this server has a Monk alt,dont we?
Every one on this server has a Cleric alt,dont we?
Every one on this server has a Rog alt,dont we? (at least you know the way how to do dps/corpse works ,when being needed ,you can PH a guild 60 rog).

So let's nerf them with enchanter TOGETHER. Those all are not classic feeling.

[Dolalin]

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=738889&postcount=52

This is, I think, a much larger impact for CHA on charm duration than was shown in the classic tests I linked earlier, isn't it?

Compare that with the classic tests: https://www.project1999.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3029654&postcount=295

It's not even close, CHA shouldn't be having that much of an impact here.

[Nirgon]

AoW was killed twice mid-to-late Velious by the joint forces of Legacy of Steel and Shock of Swords on the Nameless. This was accomplished by charming "Frozen Moses" aka Fjokar Frozenshard.


if charm wasn't reliable, how did this happen?

good day to you sirs

[Bazia]

it was reliable with velious gear / velious tier debuffs

not nude high elves with crude steins

[Dolalin]

I think I have enough evidence now for a proper bug thread that CHA is impacting charm duration on P99 significantly more than it did in classic.

[bwe]

I think I have enough evidence now for a proper bug thread that CHA is impacting charm duration on P99 significantly more than it did in classic.

My hero

[strawman]

I think I have enough evidence now for a proper bug thread that CHA is impacting charm duration on P99 significantly more than it did in classic.

I can't wait to vendor all my charisma gear and reroll Erudite

[Dolalin]

Bug report created, feel free to add or refute. Only after the truth here.

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3030562#post3030562

[strawman]

My hero

This means we're going to get all the benefits of max charisma without having to gimp our mana pool anymore. This will absolutely come out as a buff to charm soloing if it happens

[Dolalin]

This means we're going to get all the benefits of max charisma without having to gimp our mana pool anymore. This will absolutely come out as a buff to charm soloing if it happens

Maybe. But we're after the truth of classic, not a specific outcome.

[strawman]

Bug report created, feel free to add or refute. Only after the truth here.

https://www.project1999.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3030562#post3030562

I posted this in your bug thread too but it will get more attention here

That data clearly demonstrates that lower charisma correlates with higher average charm duration

I'm optimistic about the coming gnome/dark elf enchanter meta

[Dolalin]

I posted this in your bug thread too but it will get more attention here

That data clearly demonstrates that lower charisma correlates with higher average charm duration

I'm optimistic about the coming gnome/dark elf enchanter meta

See my reply in the bug thread but I don't think the evidence shows that.

[Tecmos Deception]

I don't believe the thing about invis not breaking charm. Keep in mind that would also mean you can have a charm pet and be invis, which adds another powerful ability.

Yeah I mean, I would probably prefer invis not breaking charm. I can dispel my pet easily, but the ability to invis your pet and yourself (or even double invis your pet and yourself with a partner? lol) would be... Hah. That'd be something else.

[Tecmos Deception]

it was reliable with velious gear / velious tier debuffs

not nude high elves with crude steins

Classic tash+malo is only 7 points lower than velious tash+malo.

Classic evidence is suggesting charm didn't affect charm durations.

You're awful at this.

nothing classic about being in HHK and theres two charming enchanters in gob basement 2 charming enchanters clearing first floor guards a high level charm enchanter soloing second floor guards
another charming enchanter soloing nobles and yes even another charming enchanter and mage duo clearing third and fourth floor

shits getting stupid real quick

I'll keep making classic changes when I can, regardless if people threaten to quit. I'm here to recreate classic eq; not to make people happy.

Barking up the wrong tree man.

Go put in bug reports to change other things, that are actually classic mechanics, that would make life harder for enchanters. Charm isn't gonna get changed because at best the evidence is conflicting, and more likely charm is pretty darn close.

[Frug]

Classic evidence is suggesting charm didn't affect charm durations.

[Tecmos Deception]

But just to make it clear, since I'm not sure exactly why Frug is quoting that, charisma may not have been affecting durations on live, but durations were still similar to how they are here (except perhaps charms against stuff much lower-level than the chanter).

I kinda assume most people still continuing this discussion didn't see the tests done by a classic-era chanter that we were posting yesterday morning.

[cd288]

I posted this in your bug thread too but it will get more attention here

That data clearly demonstrates that lower charisma correlates with higher average charm duration

I'm optimistic about the coming gnome/dark elf enchanter meta

Doesn't seem to clearly demonstrate that

[mystiek]

enchanters are supposed to do CC and buff. period.
charming was not this powerful.
you are not DPS and never was.

[bum3]

It's so bad right now that my wife who played ench in classic for years doesn't charm... she got told she was useless because enchanters are charm dps and not for cc/buffs... wtf has p99 done to EQ?

[Tecmos Deception]

P99 didn't do anything. 20 years of gaming and accumulating EQ knowledge and new internet connections happened though.

There are dozens of reasons why people didn't charm in groups then like they do now that are NOT "charm is mechanically too strong on p99 relative to classic." The little actual data posted in this thread generally backs up p99 charm durations. The people wanting charm nerfed want it nerfed not because they found any solid evidence that it was weaker in classic, but because they don't like enchanters being different than the developers intended, than they remember, than they like.

There's nothing more (meaningful) to discuss unless someone finds more data.


edit - Want some examples of why charm didn't happen in groups from my own personal experiences on live? I charm solod a ton back in the day. I sometimes used a green-con charm in groups for DPS. When I didn't charm in groups, it was for a variety of reasons like
1) "you're not supposed to be a DPS class, you're supposed to be a support/CC class,"
2) I liked focusing on CC,
3) I liked to use mana on nukes for pretty particle effects and the idea of blasting stuff which left me with less to deal with charm breaks in addition to the mandatory CC and buff/debuff roles,
4) I liked to use mana on cripple line of spells because it seemed like those debuffs should help a lot,
5) everyone was bad so trains were more common and CC assistance from rooters was less common so CC required more effort and time back then than now,
6) shitty internet connections caused problems with charms we didn't have back in the day - group mates didn't like babysitting a broken charm until I came back from LD to reclaim it,
7) shit was crowded a lot of the time and groups didn't like a potential exp kill to be tied up as a pet,
8) I never used berserker str line of spells to help protect myself from death on charm breaks because I disliked the short duration that often didn't help and I didn't know how to stack it properly with rune and I thought it was mostly just nice to carry more loot if I didn't have someone else around to str buff to stack with the earth elemental illusion I'd often use for +10 strength,
9) i never used runes above 3 because peridots were "expensive" to me back then,
10) i didn't know what a GCD clicky was,
11) I had spell gems full of stupid spells like cripple, boon, a nuke, multiple durations of mezzes, leaving too little room for the proper charming setup (which I didn't even know about back then anyway),
12) I didn't think to have malaise line cast on charms,
13) I didn't know about -mr gear for pets,
14) I made a chanter back then based on the concept of controlling battles, not doing massive charm dps,

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Any small number of those things was enough to be incompatible with charming a blue con in groups back then, even if charm were stronger on live than it is here. It is ENTIRELY reasonable that p99 charm is very accurate given this line of reasoning + actual data we have in this thread about charm durations.

If you think that it would be possible to play like 99% of us did back in the day while maintaining a high-blue-con charm pet in groups, demonstrate it on a video on p99. I guarantee if you're not getting malaise or -mr gear, not using berserker str and highest-tier runes, LDing once or more per hour randomly, and nuking once per fight, you'll find charm to be a lot different than when you play with ALL the perks we have because it is 2019 instead of 1999.

[Ligma]

Should we start a new server that requires lobotomies?

[Lojik]

Prior to this thread I had a feeling that somehow, maybe, p99's mechanics were somehow different in regards to charm than they were on live. For the most part with the evidence posted I'm pretty comfortable saying that p99's mechanics seem to, for the most part match how it was on live pre luclin, and all the small factors like bad internet, more trains, crowded camps, probably lead to people playing it safer on enchanters.

Maybe in the early days it was more buggy-
1) Posts of people saying charmed pets attacked players. I'd wager a decent probability that this was due to people not differentiating the actions of multiple npcs of same name, maybe people failing to notice charm had broken, or buggy mechanics where dotted, charmed npcs would attack whoever cast the spell on them?

2) Invis not breaking charm right away- Maybe people would cast invis and not notice that it was interrupted, or that it would break charm on server ticks thus causing a delay?

3) Pets not responding to commands- this one i'd wager a decent probability of people typing the commands wrong

Even it was truly buggy like this, I don't think it's something the devs would implement.

Maybe charm is affected too much by charisma? Still dont know about the reverse charm method being viable on live this era? Maybe summon and hate mechanics different? But for the most part I'd think any nerf to charm would fall into the category of unclassic mechanics/input with the goal of more classic feel/output.

[bum3]

P99 didn't do anything. 20 years of gaming and accumulating EQ knowledge and new internet connections happened though.

There are dozens of reasons why people didn't charm in groups then like they do now that are NOT "charm is mechanically too strong on p99 relative to classic." The little actual data posted in this thread generally backs up p99 charm durations. The people wanting charm nerfed want it nerfed not because they found any solid evidence that it was weaker in classic, but because they don't like enchanters being different than the developers intended, than they remember, than they like.

There's nothing more (meaningful) to discuss unless someone finds more data.


edit - Want some examples of why charm didn't happen in groups from my own personal experiences on live? I charm solod a ton back in the day. I sometimes used a green-con charm in groups for DPS. When I didn't charm in groups, it was for a variety of reasons like
1) "you're not supposed to be a DPS class, you're supposed to be a support/CC class,"
2) I liked focusing on CC,
3) I liked to use mana on nukes for pretty particle effects and the idea of blasting stuff which left me with less to deal with charm breaks in addition to the mandatory CC and buff/debuff roles,
4) I liked to use mana on cripple line of spells because it seemed like those debuffs should help a lot,
5) everyone was bad so trains were more common and CC assistance from rooters was less common so CC required more effort and time back then than now,
6) shitty internet connections caused problems with charms we didn't have back in the day - group mates didn't like babysitting a broken charm until I came back from LD to reclaim it,
7) shit was crowded a lot of the time and groups didn't like a potential exp kill to be tied up as a pet,
8) I never used berserker str line of spells to help protect myself from death on charm breaks because I disliked the short duration that often didn't help and I didn't know how to stack it properly with rune and I thought it was mostly just nice to carry more loot if I didn't have someone else around to str buff to stack with the earth elemental illusion I'd often use for +10 strength,
9) i never used runes above 3 because peridots were "expensive" to me back then,
10) i didn't know what a GCD clicky was,
11) I had spell gems full of stupid spells like cripple, boon, a nuke, multiple durations of mezzes, leaving too little room for the proper charming setup (which I didn't even know about back then anyway),
12) I didn't think to have malaise line cast on charms,
13) I didn't know about -mr gear for pets,
14) I made a chanter back then based on the concept of controlling battles, not doing massive charm dps,

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Any small number of those things was enough to be incompatible with charming a blue con in groups back then, even if charm were stronger on live than it is here. It is ENTIRELY reasonable that p99 charm is very accurate given this line of reasoning + actual data we have in this thread about charm durations.

If you think that it would be possible to play like 99% of us did back in the day while maintaining a high-blue-con charm pet in groups, demonstrate it on a video on p99. I guarantee if you're not getting malaise or -mr gear, not using berserker str and highest-tier runes, LDing once or more per hour randomly, and nuking once per fight, you'll find charm to be a lot different than when you play with ALL the perks we have because it is 2019 instead of 1999.

I read a lot of excuses that make no sense. Sounds like you were a really uniformed player back then. Isn't the point to play like back then? Not to play like you're using cheat codes? My friends thought it was great to put in cheat codes and use bugs to get ahead. I always thought they were unskilled. What p99 did do was let players get stuck in time and give rule benders and non-intended loopholes to be used to trivialize content. Everyone on live moved on. Where as p99 players stayed to "perfect" these ideals to where they became the norm. What I find funny is back then.. people had legitimate excuses for trains... shitty netz, LDs... today people train just as much without as many legitimate reasons. Might be less trains if enchanters had CC up instead of a full line of spells solely for pet charming. Cause those caster groups in lguk last night that trained 4x in a hour is pretty common.

[bum3]

Maybe charm is affected too much by charisma? Still dont know about the reverse charm method being viable on live this era? Maybe summon and hate mechanics different? But for the most part I'd think any nerf to charm would fall into the category of unclassic mechanics/input with the goal of more classic feel/output.

I never thought cha effected charm. I mained necro and had - cha and undead charm worked great. Someone once told me +cha made ench charm better and necros was coded for -cha to do the same... but a friend who worked at SOE said they were idiots and that's all he would tell me.

[Tecmos Deception]

Isn't the point to play like back then?

No.

If you were at a old-time baseball game that some folks like to do, would you go around telling them that they're not doing it right because some of them are on modern fitness routines and diets the rest of the week? Of course not. The point of an old-time baseball game is to have fun while swinging an old bat, playing by old rules, wearing old uniforms, and apologizing to the fans when you slide and kick up dust on them. It's not about literally going back in time in every way. Nobody sane wants to change the rules just because modern players are different than players in 1860 were.

How is it possible that I have to explain this?

[kjs86z]

I read a lot of excuses that make no sense. Sounds like you were a really uniformed player back then. Isn't the point to play like back then? Not to play like you're using cheat codes? My friends thought it was great to put in cheat codes and use bugs to get ahead. I always thought they were unskilled. What p99 did do was let players get stuck in time and give rule benders and non-intended loopholes to be used to trivialize content. Everyone on live moved on. Where as p99 players stayed to "perfect" these ideals to where they became the norm. What I find funny is back then.. people had legitimate excuses for trains... shitty netz, LDs... today people train just as much without as many legitimate reasons. Might be less trains if enchanters had CC up instead of a full line of spells solely for pet charming. Cause those caster groups in lguk last night that trained 4x in a hour is pretty common.

holy sh*t get a grip man - laughing / cringing at that bold part

filed under bad / sad / mad

40 pages and counting...y'all need to go outside and get some fresh air.

[cd288]

I read a lot of excuses that make no sense. Sounds like you were a really uniformed player back then. Isn't the point to play like back then? Not to play like you're using cheat codes? My friends thought it was great to put in cheat codes and use bugs to get ahead. I always thought they were unskilled. What p99 did do was let players get stuck in time and give rule benders and non-intended loopholes to be used to trivialize content. Everyone on live moved on. Where as p99 players stayed to "perfect" these ideals to where they became the norm. What I find funny is back then.. people had legitimate excuses for trains... shitty netz, LDs... today people train just as much without as many legitimate reasons. Might be less trains if enchanters had CC up instead of a full line of spells solely for pet charming. Cause those caster groups in lguk last night that trained 4x in a hour is pretty common.

If you want to play like we did back then:

- Go create your main character and put your starting points into stats that really don't matter for your character. No one was smart enough to min/max and made all kinds of stupid decisions back then.
- Randomly disconnect your internet in the middle of playing to simulate shitty dial up internet.
- Don't do many turn in quests since they weren't broadly known about at the time.
- Don't use any maps on the Wiki unless you manually print them out and keep them in a binder. Don't use the Wiki at all while playing for that matter...most information wasn't broadly known for at least a few months post-launch, so you can't use it to look up NPCs, quests, loot, leveling or class guides, etc.
- You can't Alt+Tab while playing, or otherwise play in Windowed mode, because that wasn't feasible back on classic era Live.
- No Netflix or other video or music streaming services allowed to entertain yourself while grinding. Standard cable or reading books only.
- Don't follow the traditional high ZEM EXP path since those didn't exist at the time.
- If you want to play a Tank, play a Warrior since many people didn't know how much better the hybrid tanks were. So you need to simulate that lack of knowledge.
- Play a Wizard and a Rogue as well, since they were much more popular during the Classic era.
- Don't use Splitpaw in your higher levels since original Splitpaw was a much lower level dungeon.
- Don't use a pet (if you have one) in a group because many groups thought pets stole EXP in a group (if a group asks you to summon a pet, refuse).
- Don't join the HHK Goblins group because it's unclassic in terms of how fast the EXP is (back in the day it was 3 or 4 different camps). Since it's only 1 camp on P99, you can't join because it would be an unclassic experience for you.
- Look up all the mistaken knowledge about buff effects from back in the day and play as though that knowledge is true. People thinking STR buffs increased haste, Harmony could increase mana regeneration, etc. etc. etc.
- That and so many other things you need to do in order to truly play like you're having a classic experience.

Do all that stuff, and then you can come here and tell us that things need to be made unclassic via a nerf because they are creating an "unclassic atmosphere"

[bum3]

Haha i started as a SK... i play in full screen... I don't need maps cause I remember the zones. I don't do zones because of ZEM I do zones where I can group and have fun. Spent a few lvls in gorge, terrible exp but fun as hell. I always invite hybrids because I know it's tough for them. Groups had no problems with pets. I don't do HHK groups. kjs is mad because he regularly trains. Some of us have jobs where we have downtime.. like me. When I PDF a government plan set it can take up to 3 hours on a 200 plan sheet set. So I have 3 hours to surf netz while my pc is tied up. Unfortunately they don't allow me to watch stuff or play games. Actually.. old time baseball games do happen. And yes they can only use wood bats and yes they wear historical uniforms. Same as civil war reenactments... they aren't using rpgs, AR-15s, and tanks. There is adjusting for time frame.. and then there is breaking the line of "Verant/SOE" intent. But this isn't their game. So the frustration is between the p99 hardcore players vs the 1000 people flocking here for nostalgia and/or the people who want to do p99 but can't stand how blue is. That's why the drama ensues and doesn't stop. People don't want green/teal to become like blue. Most people. Not the people who love how blue is obviously.

[bum3]

Was printing maps a thing in the past? Did people have binders of them? Interesting. I guess if I couldn't remember them I might have. But i'm one of those people who can just go somewhere once and remember it forever.

[Frug]

But just to make it clear, since I'm not sure exactly why Frug is quoting that

Read what you said, very carefully.

[Tecmos Deception]

Read what you said, very carefully.

Gimme a :p or ;) next time so the joke comes through text better. I've been mistyping charisma as charm nonstop in these threads and have managed to notice and fix most of them before my edit timer expires! Lol.

[Nirgon]

it was reliable with velious gear / velious tier debuffs

not nude high elves with crude steins

I'm 210 CHA and have fast charm breaks here and there, even on mobs 4 levels lower. 255 Cha is 255 Cha, whether it has 100hp and 15sv all Velious stuff on top of it.

You will have to erase the history of Frozen Moses for a leg to stand on bros. This one's over.

I think as people mentioned, the random LDs and connections back in the day had more to do with not using charm. The 50% damage dealt rule also probably applied to groups. That might be the fix you're looking for to this situation. It will not prevent me from being a filthy charm burner using invis tho, only slow things down.... which sounds right and fair.

[Mushman]

holy sh*t get a grip man - laughing / cringing at that bold part

filed under bad / sad / mad

40 pages and counting...y'all need to go outside and get some fresh air.

Thanks for the great contribution to the conversation.

I think it's gone 40 pages because people are passionate about it. Not anger from trains and other nonsense. Although it's been fun watching the rookie enchanters learning how to stomp the game with enchanter, wiping out everyone between them and the ZL while they practice.

I think the core issue is that having enchanter as powerful as it just isn't classic. Not sure if it's code, connection, knowledge or what. Having this go on with charm in classic era EQ really shrinks the world and goes against the values that make classic EQ a beautiful game.

Change for more classic experience seems like common sense to many. I'd like to hear any feedback on how getting the incomparable power of charm in line could have any negative impact in the world or player base or make the game less classic.

[Nirgon]

Stable connections today are a big factor. The possible lack of 50% reduction to group xp might be the equalizer here and what's required. Some of that was proven, I think by big Dolalin.

[bum3]

Thanks for the great contribution to the conversation.

I think it's gone 40 pages because people are passionate about it. Not anger from trains and other nonsense. Although it's been fun watching the rookie enchanters learning how to stomp the game with enchanter, wiping out everyone between them and the ZL while they practice.

I think the core issue is that having enchanter as powerful as it just isn't classic. Not sure if it's code, connection, knowledge or what. Having this go on with charm in classic era EQ really shrinks the world and goes against the values that make classic EQ a beautiful game.

Change for more classic experience seems like common sense to many. I'd like to hear any feedback on how getting the incomparable power of charm in line could have any negative impact in the world or player base or make the game less classic.

Boom. Nailed it.

[bum3]

Stable connections today are a big factor. The possible lack of 50% reduction to group xp might be the equalizer here and what's required. Some of that was proven, I think by big Dolalin.

Easy fix and doesn't change enough to bother anyone.

[cd288]

Stable connections today are a big factor. The possible lack of 50% reduction to group xp might be the equalizer here and what's required. Some of that was proven, I think by big Dolalin.

Where do you see the pets eating group EXP evidence? Just curious.

As far as I recall, that's something people frequently thought was the case back on live but did not realize that pets actually didn't take group EXP. There are forum posts of people claiming that pets take EXP, but without actual evidence, so a lot of those are more of just mistaken people unintentionally spreading false information and leading groups to tell people to de-summon pets. Unless there's a patch note about it?

[Dolalin]

Where do you see the pets eating group EXP evidence? Just curious.

As far as I recall, that's something people frequently thought was the case back on live but did not realize that pets actually didn't take group EXP. There are forum posts of people claiming that pets take EXP, but without actual evidence, so a lot of those are more of just mistaken people unintentionally spreading false information and leading groups to tell people to de-summon pets. Unless there's a patch note about it?

I have an inconclusive bug thread open about it. I am still in the gathering evidence phase on that.

I need to see the ShowEQ tests mentioned in the newsgroup posts I cite there before I can tell more.

[Wurl]

You will have to erase the history of Frozen Moses for a leg to stand on bros. This one's over.
You've posted "someone charmed a mob one time you guys!!!!" dozens of times in this thread now mate. Maybe that's enough posting?

[cd288]

I have an inconclusive bug thread open about it. I am still in the gathering evidence phase on that.

I need to see the ShowEQ tests mentioned in the newsgroup posts I cite there before I can tell more.

Yeah I'd be interested to see if there's evidence because as far as I remember back in the day this was a big common misconception about pets. People just assumed that the pets took EXP in a group because they supposedly did while solo.

[strawman]

I think the core issue is that having enchanter as powerful as it just isn't classic.

No - the core issue in this thread is that a lot of people want enchanters nerfed. It has nothing to do with whether or not it's true to classic.

[cd288]

No - the core issue in this thread is that a lot of people want enchanters nerfed. It has nothing to do with whether or not it's true to classic.

Yeah exactly. It's not that Enchanters weren't as powerful at launch, it's that people at launch of Live didn't realize how powerful they were/how best to maximize their abilities. People have since been able to min/max each class over two decades and have been able to take a powerful class to the far ends of the power spectrum. People simply want this nerfed under some vague argument of "classic atmosphere", which not only is it dumb on its face but is also somewhat pointless because people began figuring out how powerful Enchanters could be over the first two expansions. So, what are you gonna do? Nerf Enchanters to some extent for some arbitrary BS reason just to un-nerf it when like Kunark launches? People need to get lives lol

[Cuktus]

I think I understand where folks are coming from. Charm is indeed a powerful ability. So lets just remove it from the game, right? Mobs just scale faster then PCs can, so clearly, having the ability to charm is game breaking.
While we at it, I always thought mend was a bit.. over tuned. And FD for that matter. There, chanters and monks are now in line. But without FD and mend, Backstab and hide/sneak need to be scaled down to fit. And honestly, here in the classic era, pallies and SKs are just so much stronger then warriors, so maybe just nerf their spells? And sense they ain't got no spells no more, lets remove the xp penalty. And if you made it this far, congrats. Nerfing the one unique thing about a class because some folks seem to think its OP is silly. There is no balance in this game. Never was. Some classes can solo well, some can't. That, at least to me, is part of the charm of EQ.
Just my 2cp

[Ligma]

You're not wrong. Monks were nerfed in luclin long before charm pets damage was scaled down in GoD. Nerf monks! Devs acknowledged they were OP first

[Bazia]

the problem wasnt this obnoxious when it was only a handful of encs doing it now its half the server

[Tecmos Deception]

the problem wasnt this obnoxious when it was only a handful of encs doing it now its half the server

First of all, blue has had this many enchanters (proportionally) for at least a few years.

Secondly, you and some others finding this obnoxious isn't relevant.

[cd288]

First of all, blue has had this many enchanters (proportionally) for at least a few years.

Secondly, you and some others finding this obnoxious isn't relevant.

Bazia seems to generally have an inflated view of the importance of his opinion. Probably best to just /smile and /nod...kind of like you do when a 13 year old starts spouting off

[Tecmos Deception]

Bazia seems to generally have an inflated view of the importance of his opinion. Probably best to just /smile and /nod...kind of like you do when a 13 year old starts spouting off

Lol.

To be fair, I certainly do as well :)

[Not_Mikeo]

Bazia is Loramin's burner account for those that didn't know.

[loramin]

Bazia is Loramin's burner account for those that didn't know.

LOL, I'm a forum addict, I'll admit that much, but if you think I'm as ... "engaged" as Lulz, and have time to create extra forum accounts ... you must not have been paying attention to how much time I waste on the wiki :)

But really this whole conversation is so frustrating to me. You have two sides absolutely refusing to honestly communicate. On the anti-Enchanter side, lots of people are ignoring how important classic-ness, and classic evidence is. This place is not about "feels", it's about 1999.

On the other side ... yes, Enchanter lovers, I get it: your class is powerful, and you like that. Also, lots of classic evidence suggests that it should be powerful. Just because a bunch of haters don't like that the most powerful class is powerful, is absolutely, 100%, not a reason to change that class.

BUT ... again, this is a place for classic EverQuest. And EVERYONE who played on live, including all you passionate Enchanter defenders (whether you played an Enchanter there or not) ... you all know Enchanters weren't like this on live.

Sure people were ignorant back then, but that doesn't explain the game being completely different. A class that wasn't even a DPS class in classic is the best DPS class here.

Whatever your passions, whatever your tribe, if you truly respect the mission of classic EverQuest, you HAVE to admit ... there's something hollow about claiming you can wave away the huge unclassic nature of all this with "people were dumb back then".

[Rooj]

If players didn't realize how overpowered Charm was on Live, then perhaps the developers didn't either. I've seen it before, developers design something to be a certain way in their minds but players end up using the feature in a completely different way. It has caused classes to be redesigned to better suit the way the players play, rather than the way the developers intended in some games. Game designers are human beings who are capable of mistakes and not being able to predict the future. We shouldn't expect them to foretell every single outcome of a feature they add. And what often happens when a miscalculation happens, and a new feature or item or ability gives players a bit too much power, sometimes to the point of trivializing content? The dreaded nerf bat.

I honestly don't think that P99 Charm is that far off from Live era Charm. Charm was dangerous then, and it is dangerous now. Do I believe that we have a 100% Live era Charm here? No, but I do think it's close enough.

Here's the thing though. Sometimes developers balance things not by what the top 5% or whatever of players are doing, but by what the majority of players are doing. Think for a moment about all of the changes made to P99 that served to balance things that did exist during Classic, but didn't receive widespread use, for example the Ivandyr's Hoop. If Classic's community was the same as P99's today, and Hoops and Charms and whatever else was so common, do you honestly think that there wouldn't have been changes made? That the devs wouldn't have taken a look at the state of the gameplay, the type of impact a single class or item was making on grouping and farming and raiding?

I really don't see any difference between the Hoop and Charm, or other things that shouldn't be happening like SoulFire. They are all things that if P99 existed in 1999 I believe would've absolutely been altered. We can't go back and change or fix Classic, but we can P99.

So while I do think there could still be some purpose in trying to make sure Charm is working as intended - and again, I think it pretty much is - I think we should also be considering a reasonable and appropriate change that fits P99 and Classic.

Lastly, I still haven't seen any parses posted. I'd love to do it myself but I'm not appropriate level yet. :) (remind me what level the fireplace camp is in Unrest?)

[Not_Mikeo]

Enchanters were like this on live as I recall. People were just younger/dumber/worse at the game. But there were a few enchanters that could manage a charmed mob.

[Lojik]

What does "you all know enchanters weren't like this on live" mean Loramin? I'm confused. You just posted about evidence against the anti-enchanter crew...this part I got. But in what way were Enchanters "not" like this, and what evidence has been posted to go along with this statement? Besides being more scared to charm in general?

[Mushman]

Yeah exactly. It's not that Enchanters weren't as powerful at launch, it's that people at launch of Live didn't realize how powerful they were/how best to maximize their abilities. People have since been able to min/max each class over two decades and have been able to take a powerful class to the far ends of the power spectrum. People simply want this nerfed under some vague argument of "classic atmosphere", which not only is it dumb on its face but is also somewhat pointless because people began figuring out how powerful Enchanters could be over the first two expansions. So, what are you gonna do? Nerf Enchanters to some extent for some arbitrary BS reason just to un-nerf it when like Kunark launches? People need to get lives lol

It may very well be true they are exactly as they were in 1999. Maybe not, noone knows for certain. And you're right about every class being min-maxed over 20 years. The issue that I see is that when ENC is min maxed here it is so amazingly strong that charm trivializes, controls and steers so much of the game. It was nothing like that in live and if it was possible, there's no way it would have been allowed to go on. It undermines what EQ is.

IF the numbers and functionality of charm are exactly the same as they were and the only change has been connectivity and practice it still clearly hurts the ecosystem greatly.

On the topic of balance, I don't think anyone is suggesting that. I only bother to speak up about this situation specifically because it's been hurting the game for a long time and has only gotten worse. I don't care for lots of design choices but we aren't redesigning EQ I only raise my voice in the hope it gets preserved in a better and more realistic state.

Having chanterquest=1 hurts the game terribly both directly and indirectly. IF values are 100% accurate and that's the goal of the project, 100% data accuracy (which it has shown not to be) I guess it's just very sad for EQ.

[Tecmos Deception]

You've posted "someone charmed a mob one time you guys!!!!" dozens of times in this thread now mate. Maybe that's enough posting?

The people asking for charm nerfs could hardly stop posting about the imp used on naggy, claiming that was somehow proof that charm is more powerful here than on classic. It's only fair for Nirgon to point to a classic example of a harder-to-charm mob being used on a longer fight as evidence that charm is correct here.

[Vexenu]

It's completely obnoxious to see people defending charm under the guise of classic purity when it's obviously nothing but naked self-interest from Enchanter players. It's even more obnoxious when these players have this laughable "git gud" attitude, as if their ability to faceroll the game when playing an absurdly overpowered class has more to do with their skill than the ridiculous class itself.

Reminder, the Enchanter is a class that has:

- The BEST CC in the game
- The BEST haste in the game
- The BEST mana regen in the game
- Slows, arguably the 2nd most OP spell in the game behind charm
- Self-runes to absorb damage
- An extremely powerful and underrated animation pet
- An unresistable MR debuff
- The ONLY class with Invis, IVU, memblur and Calm spells to get around dungeons

Does this sound like a weak class? Like a class that needs help? Sure, so let's go ahead and add charm! Now they also have:

- The BEST DPS in the game via charm pet
- The BEST tanking in the game via charm pet
- The ability to HEAL their charm pet out of combat via memblur

The class is overpowered before you even add charm into the equation. With charm as well, this is simply a faceroll class. I literally laugh when playing an Enchanter because it's so ridiculously easy and overpowered. I honestly don't even understand how anyone enjoys it. It trivializes the game completely. I suppose a certain type of player is attracted to that. But when you have a huge percentage of the server playing Enchanters and abusing charm the game is basically unrecognizable and feels nothing like classic.

[Tecmos Deception]

It's completely obnoxious to see people defending charm under the guise of classic purity when it's obviously nothing but naked self-interest from Enchanter players.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have had quite my fill of enchanting over the last like 7 years. I don't have a horse in this race besides "shit's classic."

[Ligma]

Yeah, I haven't played P99 in years and can't join in on green because of a broken PC. I've just always forumquested.

[Mushman]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have had quite my fill of enchanting over the last like 7 years. I don't have a horse in this race besides "shit's classic."

The "Shit's classic." Doesn't seem genuine either.

Life tap clickies melting raid mobs "Shit's classic." Gone

Necro life taps not getting resisted "Shit's classic" Gone

Am I wrong?

[bwe]

Unnerf pet daggers

[Rooj]

The class is overpowered before you even add charm into the equation.

This is what I've never understood about it in the first place. :\ They can do way too much of the best stuff. Maybe it's just because of the way Enchanters were at launch (people were disappointed and they were underpowered supposedly), so they got some major changes and additions, but those changes were too far overboard and perhaps Verant just figured to keep them in to get more people to play Enchanter? I really don't know.

However, reading through dialogue from devs back then they clearly wanted to and had every intention of balancing the classes to the best of their ability. So what happened with Enchanter? Did they actually perceive it as balanced, or did they just not "know how good it was" like people claim about the players? I just have a hard time believing that many of the things we experience on P99, while Classic, would've stuck if we had the same circumstances we have today back then.

[DMN]

You know the great thing about this thread is how "classic" it actually feels. Hordes of forum warriors trying to nerf class X.

[d-tron]

No one was using OT hammers back in the day either, should probably nerf those as well.

[bum3]

No one was using OT hammers back in the day either, should probably nerf those as well.

Amen brother... i remember our guild tank.. wacked mobs for over 5 minutes trying to get it to proc. By the time it went off the named was dead. He had to pay for ports from then out cause brother had ogre dex.

[Nirgon]

You've posted "someone charmed a mob one time you guys!!!!" dozens of times in this thread now mate. Maybe that's enough posting?

Dozens huh :mad:

Get to work on evidence (got mine) not feels

[kjs86z]

This is starting to feel like the WoW class forums.

Stern cringe.

[Tecmos Deception]

The "Shit's classic." Doesn't seem genuine either.

Life tap clickies melting raid mobs "Shit's classic." Gone

Necro life taps not getting resisted "Shit's classic" Gone

Am I wrong?

What are you telling me for? I never advocated for those changes.

[cd288]

This is what I've never understood about it in the first place. :\ They can do way too much of the best stuff. Maybe it's just because of the way Enchanters were at launch (people were disappointed and they were underpowered supposedly), so they got some major changes and additions, but those changes were too far overboard and perhaps Verant just figured to keep them in to get more people to play Enchanter? I really don't know.

However, reading through dialogue from devs back then they clearly wanted to and had every intention of balancing the classes to the best of their ability. So what happened with Enchanter? Did they actually perceive it as balanced, or did they just not "know how good it was" like people claim about the players? I just have a hard time believing that many of the things we experience on P99, while Classic, would've stuck if we had the same circumstances we have today back then.

We can talk about how OP Enchanters are or not all we want. The point is, they reflect what the class was on live. The goal of the server is to try and reflect how each class and mechanic was on live during the classic era. The point of the server is not to say "Wellllll achhhtually Enchanters were OP and they were never balanced but in my opinion they should have been so we should arbitrarily nerf them here because of that!"

If we want to make that the standard, then I guess we better open up like a million other things for peoples' personal opinions to be used to modify. For example, I think hybrids having snap aggro is cheesey and cheap and holding aggro as a tank should be more difficult, so nerf that please. What about Shamans and Canni; that's essentially a manastone-like ability and the devs stopped that from dropping and limited it to old world only, so Canni should either be removed or limited to old world only please. What about Rangers; AAs were implemented in later expansions to make them much better because the devs thought they were too weak from a balance perspective in the classic era, so add those changes to Rangers please since the standard is now what the devs did later on or what we think they would have done. What about Iksar regen and AC boost; back in the day there weren't nearly as many Iksars but sooo many people roll Iksar now to min/max for the relevant classes, so nerf Iksars please to create more of a "classic atmosphere."

It's just the dumbest argument I've seen on these forums in a long time and the only reason people are making it is because they're mad they can't find any legitimate evidence to try and force a change.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

holy sh*t get a grip man - laughing / cringing at that bold part

filed under bad / sad / mad

40 pages and counting...y'all need to go outside and get some fresh air.

Says the hardcore-raid-guild Chanter who plays the most absurdly overpowered Class in the game so he can monopolize content from entire groups of players.

[loramin]

We can talk about how OP Enchanters are or not all we want. The point is, they reflect what the class was on live.

How can you possibly say that with a straight face? Enchanters weren't even a DPS class on live. They are the best DPS class here.

Under anyone's definition of "reflecting what the class was on live", it's painfully obvious P99 doesn't reflect it ... to anyone who actually played on live back then at least.

Again, it's like saying Bards were AoEing 50+ mobs in OT and not letting anyone else XP on live ... or saying that they would have, if they weren't so stupid back then. They weren't stupid, and they weren't monopolizing OT: whatever classic evidence everyone may have presented to say "Bards can totally AoE 50+ mobs", a critical detail was missing, because it absolutely was not classic.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Stable connections today are a big factor.

That's a horseshit excuse. We had broadband in my house less than a year after EQ launched.

[cd288]

How can you possibly say that with a straight face? Enchanters weren't even a DPS class on live. They are the best DPS class here.

Under anyone's definition of "reflecting what the class was on live", it's painfully obvious P99 doesn't ... to anyone who actually played on live back then at least.

They were able to be, people just weren't familiar enough with the class to use them as such whether due to simple worry about dealing with Charm breaks and/or not realizing truly how good Charm DPS was. Knowledge took longer to spread back then, you didn't have the uber data mining and parsing that goes on today where every single player in the game would know within like a weak how good Charm DPS was.

The ability was there. Saying Enchanters need to be nerfed simply because people didn't use the ability as frequently or as optimally as they have learned to do is just such a stupid argument.

[Wwen42]

That's a horseshit excuse. We had broadband in my house less than a year after EQ launched.

Whoa, check out the Richie Rich over here.

[TheRusty]

It's almost as if twenty years of people working to min-max playing this game has generated levels of efficiency and effectiveness that nobody would have guessed back in 1999.

You know.

Back when people were stacking Wisdom on Warriors to get that magic resist up, 'cause "that's how it works in D&D"

[cd288]

It's almost as if twenty years of people working to min-max playing this game has generated levels of efficiency and effectiveness that nobody would have guessed back in 1999.

You know.

Back when people were stacking Wisdom on Warriors to get that magic resist up, 'cause "that's how it works in D&D"

lmao

[Bazia]

nobody did that you can see your own resist

[bum3]

Again, it's like saying Bards were AoEing 50+ mobs in OT and not letting anyone else XP on live ... or saying that they would have, if they weren't so stupid back then. They weren't stupid, and they weren't monopolizing OT: whatever classic evidence everyone may have presented to say "Bards can totally AoE 50+ mobs", a critical detail was missing, because it absolutely was not classic.

Hahha yeah.. guides stopped that crap fast on Tunare. Anytime it unfairly impeded exp of groups or ran a mob over someone and they died. It was stopped. My father-in-law was warned twice, banned for a week, and was allowed to kite no more than 5 mobs at a time in OT.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

How can you possibly say that with a straight face? Enchanters weren't even a DPS class on live. They are the best DPS class here.

Under anyone's definition of "reflecting what the class was on live", it's painfully obvious P99 doesn't reflect it ... to anyone who actually played on live back then at least.

Again, it's like saying Bards were AoEing 50+ mobs in OT and not letting anyone else XP on live ... or saying that they would have, if they weren't so stupid back then. They weren't stupid, and they weren't monopolizing OT: whatever classic evidence everyone may have presented to say "Bards can totally AoE 50+ mobs", a critical detail was missing, because it absolutely was not classic.

And Bards on P99 DID get nerfed to a 25-mob maximum!

Meanwhile, Enchanters Charm has remained untouched!

[Wurl]

Dozens huh :mad:

Get to work on evidence (got mine) not feels
Do your research, get some evidence, THEN post mate

[loramin]

They were able to be, people just weren't familiar enough with the class to use them as such whether due to simple worry about dealing with Charm breaks and/or not realizing truly how good Charm DPS was. Knowledge took longer to spread back then, you didn't have the uber data mining and parsing that goes on today where every single player in the game would know within like a weak how good Charm DPS was.

Let's put this in context shall we? I played a Shaman. We had the Shaman's Crucible forum, where we discussed things like "cann-dancing". If you're not familiar with the term, it means meditating, waiting for the game to synchronize over the network with the server, then standing, casting, and sitting back down again before another synchronization point.

Now, you're going to try and tell me that Enchanter players, who had their own forum to discuss strategies and tactics, and who were every bit as smart as Shaman ... couldn't figure out that it was a good thing to cast one of their spells?

Again, I completely understand that players today have far greater knowledge today than players back then. But you're stretching the "they were just dumb back then" argument entirely too far: it can't possibly explains the discrepancy.

The ability was there. Saying Enchanters need to be nerfed simply because people didn't use the ability as frequently or as optimally as they have learned to do is just such a stupid argument.

That's not my argument. My argument was that if there was a viable, not overly complex (and also awesome) way for players to solo well and do more damage than any other player in the game ... they wouldn't have just failed to notice that, even though it was 1999.

[azeth]

nobody did that you can see your own resist

People absolutely did that. Also stacking AGI to increase the chance for an enemy to miss

[azeth]

Again, I completely understand that players today have far greater knowledge today than players back then. But you're stretching the "they were just dumb back then" argument entirely too far: it can't possibly explains the discrepancy.

This is ignorant. The demographic of EverQuest players in 1999 was majority likely under 20 years old, additionally exposed to their first jaunt into a D&D based MMO. There is absolutely no comparison to p99s player base.

I'd wager 99/100 EQ players were objectively total fucking morons in terms of game mechanics

[loramin]

This is ignorant. The demographic of EverQuest players in 1999 was majority likely under 20 years old, additionally exposed to their first jaunt into a D&D based MMO. There is absolutely no comparison to p99s player base.

I'd wager 99/100 EQ players were objectively total fucking morons in terms of game mechanics

Did you just completely not read my entire point about all of us Shaman knowing how to Cann-dance back then?

[Mushman]

We can talk about how OP Enchanters are or not all we want. The point is, they reflect what the class was on live. The goal of the server is to try and reflect how each class and mechanic was on live during the classic era. The point of the server is not to say "Wellllll achhhtually Enchanters were OP and they were never balanced but in my opinion they should have been so we should arbitrarily nerf them here because of that!"

If we want to make that the standard, then I guess we better open up like a million other things for peoples' personal opinions to be used to modify. For example, I think hybrids having snap aggro is cheesey and cheap and holding aggro as a tank should be more difficult, so nerf that please. What about Shamans and Canni; that's essentially a manastone-like ability and the devs stopped that from dropping and limited it to old world only, so Canni should either be removed or limited to old world only please. What about Rangers; AAs were implemented in later expansions to make them much better because the devs thought they were too weak from a balance perspective in the classic era, so add those changes to Rangers please since the standard is now what the devs did later on or what we think they would have done. What about Iksar regen and AC boost; back in the day there weren't nearly as many Iksars but sooo many people roll Iksar now to min/max for the relevant classes, so nerf Iksars please to create more of a "classic atmosphere."

It's just the dumbest argument I've seen on these forums in a long time and the only reason people are making it is because they're mad they can't find any legitimate evidence to try and force a change.

Noone is asking for a standard of altering the game. We're talking specifically about how charming as it is right now changes the whole landscape of the game into something that doesn't even resemble classic EQ. A dungeon split into enchanter/ enchanter support camp 1/2/3. It's a charm centric PvE environment in most places of value, which just is not classic. Did not happen = not classic.

If all of your hypothetical proposed nerfs were done, it wouldn't come close to changing the environment the way charmquest negatively affects the game.

[aaezil]

Your shitty memory from 20 years ago isnt evidence

Sorry not sorry

[azeth]

Did you just completely not read my entire point about all of us Shaman knowing how to Cann-dance back then?

What a joke response because you feel insulted. Yes dude, I can't read you fucking nailed it

[bubur]

there have been a few charm guides dug up and posted here suggesting, with various degrees of interpretative nuance, that charm worked pretty much the same way on classic live

it wasn't easy though, and so most people never tried it. or even thought to. yes, the community did get better at sharing information and tactics over decades of emulation and tlp's. that's not an unreasonable assertion. whether people did charm killing (or bard kiting, for another related example) or not on a mass scale in year 1999 or 200x is something we can debate anecdotally, but imo it does not have a significant impact on the debate over MR rates, etc, which I think is the more important topic, and the one demanding numerical evidence that has so far been pretty much out of reach

[Nirgon]

Do your research, get some evidence, THEN post mate

Frozen Moses charm tanking AoW was very reliable on a long, critical fight. I'm sorry. You could get 255 CHA before Velious.


Oh and btw

Who posted:

Tecmos Deception 33
Bazia 25
cd288 23
kul69 22
strawman 22
bwe 18
Dolalin 17
Ligma 16
bum3 14
Buellen 13
nicemace 12
Mushman 12
Nirgon 10
sentinel 10
Wurl 9
loramin 9
bubur 9
Rooj 8
derpcake2 7
Izmael 7
A1551 7
Vexenu 7
Fammaden 6
Vizax_Xaziv 6
Swish 5
DMN 5
byzah 4
Frug 4
jacob54311 4
mycoolrausch 4
Meiva 3
enjchanter 3
keithjinternet 3
kjs86z 3
Not_Mikeo 3
korzax 3
fadetree 3
Mercius 3
azeth 3
Lojik 3
lordpazuzu 3
ArunaGreen 3
Donkey Hotay 3
slowpoke68 2
Danth 2
Videri 2
Obrae 2
Vormotus 2
Frostback 2
Morratiz 2
Zeboim 2
oldhead 2
TheDudeAbides 2
zodium 1
Wwen42 1
Hroth 1
worm4real 1
One Tin Soldier 1
Neric 1
Nomy 1
TripleBoc 1
Man0warr 1
Cen 1
r34m 1
Gatorsmash 1
Lhord99 1
stakka 1
Juntsie 1
turbosilk 1
Onadan 1
Deliverator 1
Aeaolena 1
Zill 1
Polixa 1
Ferahgo 1
Madbad 1
ygagarine 1
Lone Gnome 1
blanks77 1
senna 1
Tist 1
Seungkyu 1
gnomishfirework 1
Tethler 1
Solist 1
Jimjam 1
rabids 1
Khorza 1
TheRusty 1
Cuktus 1
mystiek 1
aaezil 1
gkmarino 1
Tilien 1
Hokojin 1
winter888 1
lesell 1
GnomeCaptain 1
Widan 1
Darkslide632 1
d-tron 1


we about even on posts bud, take ur own advice... ps- its over

[bubur]

yeah it does seem at least by velious, charm is remembered by many in the raid scene. could it have been used for leveling at that time? i bet it was

my main take away from this thread tho is man, how people can get defensive over being told we didn't know a strat in 1999. calm down. i'm not questioning your intelligence directly

it's not totally unrealistic that in the 12 months of classic, it didn't yet come to pass that people meta-gamed to figure out the charm kit, best gear, and easiest charm locations, then share that information to the broader community to be mimicked and repeated en masse. people might have done it and didn't compile and share the strats, because not everyone lived on usenet or everlore

on a related note, couldnt a lv 50 necromancer charm mobs in pofear and kill ct by himself or some crazy shiz? wouldnt that pretty much demonstrate that charm may have been even MORE broken in vanilla?

[TheRusty]

nobody did that you can see your own resist

I promise you that they did.

There was all sorts of stuff that people believed about stats - bolstered in part by very real stat effects that didn't get mentioned in character creation - such as the AC penalty from having below 75 Agility.

Some of those beliefs:
• High Charisma increased faction gains
• Low charisma boosted the effectiveness of Fear and charm undead spells
• Dexterity had an impact on fizzle / missed note chance
• High Intelligence or Wisdom increased chances of hitting max damage nukes on int / wis classes respectively
• Strength affected jump height
• Agility affected run speed
• Intelligence affected experience gain (thus why ogres and trolls leveled so slowly - back before we knew about the racial and class XP penalties!)

Along with other strange urban legends like...
• Light sources increased your aggro radius
• Sitting in water made you regen mana faster
• Food and drink could spoil, and the cheaper the item the faster the spoilage
• Blunt / piercing / slashing damage followed the same damage resistances as in D&D
• There were "secret zones" that only appeared on certain days or after certain quests (but no one knew where, exactly...)

People hadn't sifted through everything in the game yet. There was a lot of stuff that people didn't know (like... how much mana or XP you had) and there was a ton of rumor, make-believe, assumption, and hearsay.

[kul69]

yeah it does seem at least by velious, charm is remembered by many in the raid scene. could it have been used for leveling at that time? i bet it was

my main take away from this thread tho is man, how people can get defensive over being told we didn't know a strat in 1999. calm down. i'm not questioning your intelligence directly

it's not totally unrealistic that in the 12 months of classic, it didn't yet come to pass that people meta-gamed to figure out the charm kit, best gear, and easiest charm locations, then share that information to the broader community to be mimicked and repeated en masse. people might have done it and didn't compile and share the strats, because not everyone lived on usenet or everlore

on a related note, couldnt a lv 50 necromancer charm mobs in pofear and kill ct by himself or some crazy shiz? wouldnt that pretty much demonstrate that charm may have been even MORE broken in vanilla?


Charm was used by Velious because of things like flowing thought and insanely better gear compared to classic. Enchanters didn't die in 3 hits from their charmed mobs anymore, etc. Like I said it comes back to things being "off" in general on P99. Channeling is one of the best examples that I think everyone can admit is broken compared to classic when you're lower level. It was shown earlier that CHA should not be used for Charm break checks past initial cast. Who knows if it's being doing or not for P99. It is a lot of nuance to the game that has been lost on eqemu and has clearly resulted in Enchanter being overpowered.

It has nothing to do with remembering wrong or people learning the game better or anything else. P99 is not 100% accurate and Enchanter charm is still "off" especially from level 1-40. I could see 40+ Enchanters having the kind of charm control we see on P99. The problem is that level of control comes at level 12 on P99 as soon as they get the spell.

There is a thread about the odd behavior of the RNG on P99. This plays into it as well. It's a combination of a ton of tiny inconsistencies that is producing this hoard of Enchanters and it is entirely specific to P99. There is a reason that even during Velious you didn't see 1/4 of the server playing Enchanter. It has gotten absurd here. Everyone knows Enchanter is over powered regardless of if it was like that in classic or not. It's no different than Necro would be if it was left classic. The only difference is Necro actually was that overpowered and Enchanter wasn't but it is on P99.

Doesn't change that both Necro and Enchanter need to be nerfed to not result in an army of Necro/Enchanter alts monopolizing everything. Necro is done. Now it's Enchanters turn. Besids it might also break up the stale P99 raid scene that also heavily abuses charm. We all know as soon as Fear/Hate go in they'll be cleared same day and there will be an army of charmed pets doing the DPS to clear it in an hour or two. Trivialized content. Loot treadmill.

Melees will line up to help clear and sit in a corner crying as charmed pets make their contributions laughable. I already see it all the time in the groups I'm in and I am not playing a melee. Melees feel totally useless in the face of Enchanter pets and are often seen as worse than just not having a melee to get in the way and require healing. Melees are only welcomed if the pet has backstab so that the pet DPS is even more overwhelming overpowered and trivializing.

[Lulz Sect]

p sure charm was always OP
wasn’t charm nerfed for VeliouS encounter mob during live era
i forget, wasn’t much of a raider then

[bubur]

i dono kul, you seem too emotionally invested in this. enc at lv 12 here without gear arent the total babe magnets youre making them out to be

[Polycaster]

Enchs in my guild weren't seen in groups in kunark because they were all solo charming shit, often imps in solb. As several have said, it wasn't that charm broke a lot, its that people didn't understand how to do it. I played an ench on blue and if you have low cha you get beat hard (couldn't charm well until my 30s due to no JCers at the start), if you don't rune yourself and/or time stuns perfectly you drain the healers mana. Charm still breaks a lot, the good enchs just learned how to mitigate it.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Why was Bard swarming nerfed on then? If Chardok was the problem we could make it so only BARD PBAEs have unlimited targets, yea?

[Ligma]

Both were just massive zone disruptions that the staff didn't want to deal with anymore

[Bardp1999]

Bards kiting all of OT is not classic so they put the brakes on it - PRAS

Chardok AoE trivialized the leveling process and, in my opinion, ruined the Blue server - PRAS

A really nice classic fix to me would be Necros can ONLY charm undead, Druids ONLY animal, Enchanters ONLY humanoids - PRAS

[jacob54311]

Enchanters ONLY humanoids - PRAS

That's a "classic" fix?

[bubur]

we passed into the full-on just throwing ideas out there phase by like page 30 in this thread

[Buellen]

just wow man this turned into nerf chanter charming no matter what ! Proof or not does not matter! STRING THEM UP!

Jesus

You know what Sony did nerf enchanters due to all the uproar from people just like you all who want them nerfed here on P1999. I just browsed some of the old forums for Verant guess who was the first class to be crucified by the masses of "haters" DRUIDS followed up by ENCHANTERS.

The Nerf DID NOT HAPPEN TILL 2003 very obviously beyond P1999 quoted mission and timelines.

For thoroughness ill post the nerf they implemented at that time here.

"[from EQ Castersrealm]

<em>These changes are currently on Test but with a patch scheduled for Thurs they may go live, so here's a heads-up so you can consider these changes and feedback your thoughts before it possibly goes live. First I'll list the changes I recognize and then briefly discuss how they've effected my game.

-Well known, the resist modifier of CoD is 0 now.

-The charmer will get 50% of the agro generated by the pet. It was first changed to 100% but that was determined to be too much.

-Charmed pets now take a percentage of the exp. It's apparently on a sliding scale, based on the total percentage of damage the pet does.


How this has effected me:

--Resist change
The resist change is low-moderate. With TD2 my charms are noticeably shorter in places where mobs are naturally MR. Tash before charm is mandatory. In pofire I bounced 4 cod's in a row trying to charm a spider w/o tash. Once tashed, I had maybe a 5-10% bounce rate on the same spiders, which is tolerable. In places where mobs aren't naturally MR, like tactics arena, I had normal charm durations but still tashed before charm every time.

This change is a little harsher on naturally MR mobs. Played in kael and I never had a charm last longer than 2-3 minutes on a lego I charmed in arena and several times had 3 breaks within one minute.

Overall this change has had little effect on me in groups, where we're usually xp'ing off low MR mobs and have a mage/sham who keeps malo up, and only a small effect on me solo. When I solo now I mez then tash the mob before charm where before I would typically just charm.


--Agro change
With 50% of the agro going to the ench, the ench in a group can still be the slower but now has to wait to send in pet. It's a balancing act now though because our pet can out-taunt the tank at any point during the fight. I frequently found myself sending pet at 75% and then having to back it off late in the fight as the mob would start to turn on me. (this is using an unhasted pet so we didn't lose exp)

If you are in melee range the mob is much more likely to turn on the ench, so sitting out of range helps. In another experience I did vindi with some friends. We typically do it small and use a charmed pet to take rampage. If I got within melee range I would take the rampage over the pet.

This change doesn't present a major issue for us. We can learn to control our agro. Something notable that I did experience while soloing was that if I got into a situation where I couldn't outdistance my target to root it off me, I used to run in a circle untill the pet taunted my target off me, but with this change the pet would kite on the mob till it was almost half dead before gaining agro.

--XP change.
This hurts low-dps/small groups some and the solo ench a lot. Solo kills in HoH and PoFire were getting me 3% aaxp per kill with pet doing all the damage (minus blue ceramic band damage). A group would be severly penalized for using a hasted pet. Using a non-hasted pet in a tactics arena group which had good damage without the pet the exp lost to the pet wasn't noticeable, but this was in a good dps group.

My conclusion:
Each of these changes are reasonable on their own. All three of these combined is overkill. Solo xp for an ench is now riskier due to pathing changes and more frequent charm breaks/resists. To reduce the xp they get on top of that is too much.

A grouping charmer has to learn to control their agro some, which is fair considering all other range classes have to as well.

The pet taking xp is a logical way to encourage using reasonable dps/non-hasted pets, but is artificial and hard to control. It isn't possible to tell when your pet is doing too much damage and you need to back it off or lose xp. I prefer the past change with the 1% slow keeping us from hasting pets so we don't get the mad 1k+ dps machines. Now we just don't get xp from them but are still allowed to use them.


Sagal Capoeria - Grandmaster (Retired)
Izmaill - Exiled Troll Luminary
Ayonae Ro</em>"

[Rooj]

We can talk about how OP Enchanters are or not all we want. The point is, they reflect what the class was on live. The goal of the server is to try and reflect how each class and mechanic was on live during the classic era. The point of the server is not to say "Wellllll achhhtually Enchanters were OP and they were never balanced but in my opinion they should have been so we should arbitrarily nerf them here because of that!"

If we want to make that the standard, then I guess we better open up like a million other things for peoples' personal opinions to be used to modify. For example, I think hybrids having snap aggro is cheesey and cheap and holding aggro as a tank should be more difficult, so nerf that please. What about Shamans and Canni; that's essentially a manastone-like ability and the devs stopped that from dropping and limited it to old world only, so Canni should either be removed or limited to old world only please. What about Rangers; AAs were implemented in later expansions to make them much better because the devs thought they were too weak from a balance perspective in the classic era, so add those changes to Rangers please since the standard is now what the devs did later on or what we think they would have done. What about Iksar regen and AC boost; back in the day there weren't nearly as many Iksars but sooo many people roll Iksar now to min/max for the relevant classes, so nerf Iksars please to create more of a "classic atmosphere."


It is now completely clear, considering the things that you have just compared Charm to, that you are either new to P99, oblivious to the effect of Charm, or have a personal agenda.

This has nothing to do with personal opinions, this is about facts. Facts like math. That this is a group centric game, and Enchanters DPS equates up to SEVERAL party members, making grouping a huge loss of EXP/hr for them. That the staff here is trying to create not only Classic Everquest but the Classic Feel, and have made changes in the past that change Classic Everquest into Classic Feel. The things they've changed had major impacts on the spirit of the game, just like Charm is right now. So no, I don't think this is about any personal stuff and is more about the community and game as a whole. I firmly believe a nerf to Charm fits in perfectly with the goal of the staff here.

The thing is that you could do something simple like reduce a charmed pet's damage by 50% and they'd still probably be doing over double the DPS of the highest DPS in the group. This is the nerf I've always thought could probably go through but I really want to see some parses first before making any suggestions. What I'm saying is that even with a 50% damage reduction, people would still Charm and it would still be extremely effective, and therefore doesn't go against the Classic Feel, Enchanter would still be by far the strongest class in the game.

[Ligma]

The Nerf DID NOT HAPPEN TILL 2003

And charm was still very OP after that. Sometime during GoD they changed it so charmed mobs have their damage scaled down. By that point charm pets were doing 2k dps and were required to get you through the 1 group ikkinz trials.

[Buellen]

Ok data and proof has been posted that this is how it was back live but no lets ignore that YEESH!

my Point is that the only nerf should be applied is the ones that existed in era! upto that nerf and the one i bolded (which i never heard off) i dont rem any and i have not found any other and i have looked.

This is the nerf i never heard of " I prefer the past change with the 1% slow keeping us from hasting pets so we don't get the mad 1k+ dps machines" if that was in era for p1999 then by all means apply it Devs!.


PS if there other nerfs to charm in era please feel free to educate me.

[jacob54311]

Ok data and proof has been posted that this is how it was back live but no lets ignore that YEESH!



I haven't seen any hard data either way. Both sides have relied mostly on old posts to forums talking about charming with a chanter.

There does seem to be some gray area here imo. I think they would be justified in toning down chanters a little bit. It's not real healthy when one class is that dominant, out damaging entire groups and shit.

[Rooj]

my Point is that the only nerf should be applied is the ones that existed in era!

That's not how P99 always works though and probably shouldn't anyway. Several things have been nerfed by staff that weren't nerfed during era. Why should Charm be any different?

Gotta say though, I just read through that thread from back then when Charm was nerfed on Live, and some other threads afterwards also. lol, there was soooo much Enchanter QQ and threats of quitting. Enchanters were posting on the Druid forums trying to get the Druids in on the boycott. Hilarious!

But there were a lot more people on the other side (including Enchanters and Druids), explaining how incredibly broken Enchanter Charm was and how the nerf was needed. Lo and behold, nerfs came, and came again the next year too, yet Enchanters and Everquest still exist today!

[Buellen]

@Rooj

Agreed they mostly talked about in that era overpowered with one or two saying it was always overpowered.

BUT that is not how game was IF the devs decide to change sure I wont like it but its not my server i will play by there rules either way.

Anhow the bug report has been submitted lets see what the devs doo.

[winter888]

I think I understand where folks are coming from. Charm is indeed a powerful ability. So lets just remove it from the game, right? Mobs just scale faster then PCs can, so clearly, having the ability to charm is game breaking.
While we at it, I always thought mend was a bit.. over tuned. And FD for that matter. There, chanters and monks are now in line. But without FD and mend, Backstab and hide/sneak need to be scaled down to fit. And honestly, here in the classic era, pallies and SKs are just so much stronger then warriors, so maybe just nerf their spells? And sense they ain't got no spells no more, lets remove the xp penalty. And if you made it this far, congrats. Nerfing the one unique thing about a class because some folks seem to think its OP is silly. There is no balance in this game. Never was. Some classes can solo well, some can't. That, at least to me, is part of the charm of EQ.
Just my 2cp

cant agree anymore :D

[Vormotus]

https://i.imgur.com/o5ixF9H.jpg :D

[jacob54311]

cant agree anymore :D

some people will agree with anything.

Lame attempt at mocking people for pointing out that chanters are doing things like out damaging entire groups.

Chanters will still be chanters even if they were to tone down how powerful charm is. They aren't going to lose their identity or some nonsense like that.

[DMN]

I doubt they are going to nerf a fundamental aspect of a class merely because some babies don't like it.

There are often more clerics on than SK/Pala/Ran combined. That's not very "classic" either. They could have removed hybrid exp penalty to "fix" that, too, but they didn't.

[jacob54311]

I doubt they are going to nerf a fundamental aspect of a class merely because some babies don't like it.

There are often more clerics on than SK/Pala/Ran combined. That's not very "classic" either. They could have removed hybrid exp penalty to "fix" that, too, but they didn't.

I think it's funny how people act like an adjustment to chanters so they are no longer more powerful than entire groups is somehow taking away the identity of the class or something. Who's being a baby?

Charm is fundamental to the class. Being a one man army is not. Class abilities being toned down/changed go back to the early days of the game. If solid evidence that a mistake was indeed made with Chanters' charm ability, of course they should nerf it accordingly.

[Naerron]

when does this get moved to Rnf?

[Izmael]

There will always be a class more powerful than the others. If you remove enchanters, the same babies will cry about shamans being OP "they solo dragons omg".

Nerf shamans and the same crybabies will start bitching about necromancers being too strong "no class should be able to solo PoF !!" Then it will be monks or druids or whatever is left


This is EQ, an imperfect game of imperfect balance, that never pretended otherwise. Learn to deal with it or go play a more balanced game such as chess or something. I'm sure you'll find a way to bitch there as well "I lost cuz whites move first! so unfair omg"


But on Green/Teal, I'd remove charm completely tbh.

[jacob54311]

that never pretended otherwise. .


Really? Seemed like they were always making adjustments to classes when I played, when they thought some ability or spell was overpowered.

[Quinas]

Charm is fun and powerful and all but if you want a chill experience stay away. It's why I decided not roll another Ench on Green/Teal. Granted it's a bit easier in Classic before mobs become blenders, but yeah I like to be able to relax when I play and step away when I need to.

[winter888]

There will always be a class more powerful than the others. If you remove enchanters, the same babies will cry about shamans being OP "they solo dragons omg".

Nerf shamans and the same crybabies will start bitching about necromancers being too strong "no class should be able to solo PoF !!" Then it will be monks or druids or whatever is left


This is EQ, an imperfect game of imperfect balance, that never pretended otherwise. Learn to deal with it or go play a more balanced game such as chess or something. I'm sure you'll find a way to bitch there as well "I lost cuz whites move first! so unfair omg"


But on Green/Teal, I'd remove charm completely tbh.

Cant agree anymore again ,lol.

Yes, bear with class's unbalanced OP or let the server progress to PoP/GOD/OOW etc,when the class balancing is far better.

it's not like bard swarming or chardok aoe, those things make the whole zone being affected. Charm only affect 1 group and or 1 camp point , a charmed mob cant change whole zones gameplay experience.

[sentinel]

How can the argument to keep current charm mechanics in place be that "it is classic" if we don't know if we have the classic charm mechanics in place?

To my knowledge, current mechanics are a best guess and the purpose of this thread is to discuss whether that guess is classic or not.

I honestly don't know. I play a cleric, but the absolute certainty that the mechanics are classic/accurate is interesting. We all agree Chanters weren't played like this on classic/live and some feel that is just due to ignorance/technical limitations, but rest assured mechanics ARE 110% the same as p99. Surely there is more evidence than anecdotal feels and "we couldn't do it reliably bc mom picks up phone d/c me."

[Wurl]

Frozen Moses charm tanking AoW was very reliable on a long, critical fight. I'm sorry. You could get 255 CHA before Velious.
No one cares about your feelings and memories about Frozen Moses dude, try doing some actual research and then get back to me.

[Nirgon]

RNF time

Wurl needs a plastic helmet before we go in too, maybe another lesson on post counts

[cd288]

Let's put this in context shall we? I played a Shaman. We had the Shaman's Crucible forum, where we discussed things like "cann-dancing". If you're not familiar with the term, it means meditating, waiting for the game to synchronize over the network with the server, then standing, casting, and sitting back down again before another synchronization point.

Now, you're going to try and tell me that Enchanter players, who had their own forum to discuss strategies and tactics, and who were every bit as smart as Shaman ... couldn't figure out that it was a good thing to cast one of their spells?

Again, I completely understand that players today have far greater knowledge today than players back then. But you're stretching the "they were just dumb back then" argument entirely too far: it can't possibly explains the discrepancy.



That's not my argument. My argument was that if there was a viable, not overly complex (and also awesome) way for players to solo well and do more damage than any other player in the game ... they wouldn't have just failed to notice that, even though it was 1999.


Okay so let me just try and summarize your overall point within your constantly shifting narrative and long, rambling posts:

There's no actual evidence that Charm is working any differently on P99 than it was back in the day. But because more people do it now than did it back then that must mean that it works differently on P99. Therefore, we should make changes and nerf the class based on this arbitrary theory.


Am I understanding your overall point correctly? Yes? Okay. As we know, no significant change is going to be made based on some strange arbitrary theory that P99's mechanics must be different because more people do something on P99 than did on live. Moved to resolved; take the L and move on.

[Tecmos Deception]

Let's put this in context shall we? I played a Shaman. We had the Shaman's Crucible forum, where we discussed things like "cann-dancing". If you're not familiar with the term, it means meditating, waiting for the game to synchronize over the network with the server, then standing, casting, and sitting back down again before another synchronization point.

Now, you're going to try and tell me that Enchanter players, who had their own forum to discuss strategies and tactics, and who were every bit as smart as Shaman ... couldn't figure out that it was a good thing to cast one of their spells?

Again, I completely understand that players today have far greater knowledge today than players back then. But you're stretching the "they were just dumb back then" argument entirely too far: it can't possibly explains the discrepancy.



That's not my argument. My argument was that if there was a viable, not overly complex (and also awesome) way for players to solo well and do more damage than any other player in the game ... they wouldn't have just failed to notice that, even though it was 1999.

Why wasn't everyone using WC caps? Why wasn't everyone farming root nets? Why wasn't everyone using GCD clickies? Why wasn't everyone a pro charmer?

The answer to all these questions is largely the same, except that being a pro charmer was ALSO hampered by crappy internet connections on top of the other reasons, giving all the more reason for it to not be a widely-done thing back in the day.

[Kohedron]

lol @ the forumquesting people are doing to protect their 20 year old elf pixels

[Ligma]

to PoP/GOD/OOW etc,when the class balancing is far better.

You mean in GoD where parts of progression required a group of warrior, two clerics, 2k dps charm pet, puller, and whoever is being carried?

[loramin]

Why wasn't everyone using WC caps? Why wasn't everyone farming root nets? Why wasn't everyone using GCD clickies? Why wasn't everyone a pro charmer?

The answer to all these questions is largely the same, except that being a pro charmer was ALSO hampered by crappy internet connections on top of the other reasons, giving all the more reason for it to not be a widely-done thing back in the day.

Where's that "straw man" guy, you're making his argument?

Knowing that you can use a spell on your spell list to be the best DPS class in the game is NOT comparable to knowing that some obscure item out of ten trillion exists. It IS comparable to Cann-dancing though.

Again, if Shaman could figure out the mechanics of server ticks and how to optimize medding and casting a spell around them ... Enchanters could master casting a charm, and breaking it. People may have been ignorant back then, but this was an Internet-base game, and we communicated over class message boards. Basic aspects of how to play a class were well-known and widely shared (at least among the forum-reading segment, and their knowledged filtered down to the rest of the server).

Crappy internet connections DO NOT explain why Enchanters wouldn't have figured out "I can charm mob A, and use it to kill mob B". When you make such an argument, you're being intellectually dishonest to me and yourself: you're a smart guy Tecmos, don't be willfully dumb to defend your "tribe".

Again, everyone in this thread can keep talking past each other if they want. But this is not about "wahhh class X is powerful", and this is not about "I disagree with classic evidence". Again, just like with Bards, the classic evidence for AoE kiting every mob in OT was there ... but it wasn't classic, and this place is about classic EverQuest.

[cd288]

Where's that "straw man" guy, you're making his argument?

Knowing that you can use a spell on your spell list to be the best DPS class in the game is NOT comparable to knowing that some obscure item out of ten trillion exists. It IS comparable to Cann-dancing though.

Again, if Shaman could figure out the mechanics of server ticks and how to optimize molding and casting a spell around them ... Enchanters could master casting a charm, and breaking it.

Crappy internet connections DO NOT why Enchanters wouldn't have figured out "I can charm mob A, and use it to kill mob B".

Again, everyone in this thread can keep talking past each other if they want. This is not about "wahhh class X is powerful", and this is not about "I disagree with classic evidence". Again, just like with bards, the classic evidence for AoE kiting every mob in OT was there ... but it wasn't classic, and this place is about classic.

Arbitrary standard should apply to nerf a whole class. We've got it, thanks dude. We also know it's not going to happen because of said arbitrary standard. I think we can all move on.

[loramin]

Arbitrary standard should apply to nerf a whole class. We've got it, thanks dude. We also know it's not going to happen because of said arbitrary standard. I think we can all move on.

Yes: my "arbitrary standard" ... that Project 1999 should do its best to emulate classic EverQuest ... suggests that if any class (Bards, Enchanters, Shaman, whoever) is clearly working differently than how it was in 1999, it should be "nerfed" (in some sense, although really what we're talking about is just getting more accurate/classic mechanics here).

[Tecmos Deception]

Knowing that you can use a spell on your spell list to be the best DPS class in the game is NOT comparable to knowing that some obscure item out of ten trillion exists. It IS comparable to Cann-dancing though.

Lol.

Knowing that cannidancing is a thing is barely better than knowing that sitting down while you're using lich is a thing.

Cannidance is mixing two mechanics, med ticks and a spell, to a greater combined effect. The chanter equivalent is knowing you can stack berserker strength and rune for extra protection, or that you can use an illusion AND alliance for greater faction modification.

Effectively charming requires knowing dozens of different little mechanics, many of which are no less obscure than WC hats or root nets or GCD clickies. I mean, all of those things ARE used by an truly effective charmer. Lol. You just shot down your own argument. You believe those things weren't widely known, but they're literally essential parts of a totally effective charmer.

Comparing knowing how to canni dance to knowing how to effectively manage a high-blue, dual-wielding, hasted pet in a group, or to knowing how to effectively solo a high-end camp in era, is ridiculous.


You guys are acting like all it takes to be level 50 and hold a level 45 pet that does 100 DPS for 7 minutes at a time nonstop for hours is putting tash, a stun or two, mez, and charm on your bar. You're being really disingenuous because I know at least some of you realize that it takes a lot more than that to actually do well enough that it is worth doing. Especially if you're going to do it solo.

[loramin]

Effectively charming requires knowing dozens of different little mechanics, many of which are no less obscure than WC hats or root nets or GCD clickies.

C'mon man, that's patently not true!

Charming requires knowing how to cast charm, and how to break it. Effectively charming just requires understanding how pet XP distribution works (something people did in fact understand back then), and adding that knowledge in.

That's it! You charm mob A, break charm before you kill mob B, and you're off getting decent solo XP. Pretty quickly anyone even trying that would figure out how to optimize it by killing off the charmed pet too.

Goblin Ghazughi Rings and everything else is nice, but the core of an Enchanter charming is Charm + Break Charm. And again, if Shaman could figure out Cann-dancing, Enchanters (AND Druids, Bards, and Necromancers!) could have figured out charming ...

... BUT THEY DIDN'T. So there's only two possibilities. The intellectually dishonest one, "they were dumb", or the honest one, which is "even if we got 99% of the mechanics around Enchanters right, something here isn't classic."

[cd288]

Yes: my "arbitrary standard" ... that Project 1999 should do its best to emulate classic EverQuest ... suggests that if any class (Bards, Enchanters, Shaman, whoever) is clearly working differently than how it was in 1999, it should be "nerfed" (in some sense, although really what we're talking about is just getting more accurate/classic mechanics here).

Except it's not CLEARLY working differently. That's the point. You're applying some arbitrary argument of because fewer people did it back then it must mean that things worked differently.

Way more people played Warriors back then because they didn't realize how much better SKs and Pallys were as group tanks, so that must mean Warriors are operating differently than on P99 right?

Way more people played Wizards back then because people didn't completely realize/appreciate how a high Wizard downtime meant overall DPS went down, thereby making Wizards not as valuable to a group, so that must mean that Wizards operated differently than on P99 where no one wants them in groups that much right?

There were fewer Iksar back then because people didn't truly realize how OP the regen and AC boost were for min/maxing certain classes, so that must mean Iksars operated differently right?

There were more Rogues back then because people didn't realize exactly how gear dependent they were, so Rogues must have operate differently than on P99 right?

There were fewer instances of Shamans tanking back then because people didn't realize that a Shammy in banded could operate as an efficient tank, so Shamans must've operated differently back then than on P99 right?


It's just such a ridiculous argument that I can't believe you've spent so much time and writing repeatedly trying to make it lol

[cd288]

C'mon man, that's patently not true! ... BUT THEY DIDN'T. So there's only two possibilities. The intellectually dishonest one, "they were dumb", or the honest one, which is "even if we got 99% of the mechanics around Enchanters right, something here isn't classic."

Then go find evidence for it and I'm sure the staff will change things. Otherwise it's a pointless discussion.

[Tecmos Deception]

C'mon man! That's patently not true!

Charming requires knowing how to chast charm, and how to break it. Effectively charming just requires understanding how pet XP distribution works (something people did in fact understand back then), and adding that knowledge in.

That's it! You charm mob A, break charm before you kill mob B, and your off getting decent solo XP. Pretty quickly anyone even trying that would figure out how to optimize it by killing off the charmed pet too.

Goblin Ghazughi Rings and everything else is nice, but the core of an Enchanter charming is Charm + Break Charm. And again, if Shaman could figure out Cann-dancing, Enchanters (AND Druids, Bards, and Necromancers!) could have figured out charming ...

... BUT THEY DIDN'T. So there's only two possibilities. The intellectually dishonest one, "they were dumb", or the honest one, which is "even if we got 99% of the mechanics around Enchanters right, something here isn't classic."

If being able to charm solo means you're an effective charmer, then knowing how to sing hymn of restoration makes you an effective bard.

Of course, both those things are untrue. There is a lot more that goes into truly being "an effective charmer" than knowing how to kill 2 mobs at a time with charm in a safe area, just like there's more to being "an effective bard" than knowing how to sing one useful song while you go afk.

You're not being consistent anyways. You're claiming that charm soloing for exp is effective charming, then you're claiming that enchanters didn't figure charm out. What? Obviously chanters were charm soloing for exp on live. It's in era-appropriate guides and in comments and in logs. Either you have to admit that chanters did figure out charm back then, or you have to admit that charm soloing isn't the same as "having figured out charm." Both options support my take on things, not yours.

[loramin]

Except it's not CLEARLY working differently. That's the point. You're applying some arbitrary argument of because fewer people did it back then it must mean that things worked differently.

Way more people played Warriors back then because they didn't realize how much better SKs and Pallys were as group tanks, so that must mean Warriors are operating differently than on P99 right?

Way more people played Wizards back then because people didn't completely realize/appreciate how a high Wizard downtime meant overall DPS went down, thereby making Wizards not as valuable to a group, so that must mean that Wizards operated differently than on P99 where no one wants them in groups that much right?

There were fewer Iksar back then because people didn't truly realize how OP the regen and AC boost were for min/maxing certain classes, so that must mean Iksars operated differently right?

There were more Rogues back then because people didn't realize exactly how gear dependent they were, so Rogues must have operate differently than on P99 right?

There were fewer instances of Shamans tanking back then because people didn't realize that a Shammy in banded could operate as an efficient tank, so Shamans must've operated differently back then than on P99 right?


It's just such a ridiculous argument that I can't believe you've spent so much time and writing repeatedly trying to make it lol

So, we can yell at each other about how we're right, or we can try and walk in another man's moccasins.

I've set the scene already. It's 1999: we've got class message boards, and literally hundreds of members of every class is playing the game, casting spells, trying things out, and posting about what they've done so hundreds of other players can do the same.

In this environment every class is figuring out how to use their tools. Rogues are learning what they can pickpocket and how to use sneak cleverly, Shaman are cann-dancing, and so on.

Now, imagine in this environment you play an Enchanter. You have a spell list, and you know every spell on it and what it does (even if you didn't have the manual and Prima guides and such, you had Caster's Realm and other sites back then that listed them all).

So what is your argument?

That Enchanters didn't look at Charm on their list?

That every Enchanter on the server cast it once, and decided, this is crap?

How can you honestly imagine every one of the hundreds of forum-posting Enchanters NOT realizing that they could do more damage than any other class in the entire game?

I'd say, you can't. You can't honestly wave all this away as "every last one of them was" dumb. Something HAD to be different back then.

[cd288]

So, we can yell at each other about how we're right, or we can try and walk in another man's moccasins.

I've set the scene already. It's 1999: we've got class message boards, and literally hundreds of members of every class is playing the game, casting spells, trying things out, and posting about what they've done so hundreds of other players can do the same.

In this environment every class is figuring out how to use their tools. Rogues are learning what they can pickpocket and how to use sneak cleverly, Shaman are cann-dancing, and so on.

Now, imagine in this environment you play an Enchanter. You have a spell list, and you know every spell on it and what it does (even if you didn't have the manual and Prima guides and such, you had Caster's Realm and other sites back then that listed them all).

So what is your argument?

That Enchanters didn't look at Charm on their list?

That every Enchanter on the server cast it once, and decided, this is crap?

How can you honestly imagine every one of the hundreds of forum-posting Enchanters NOT realizing that they could do more damage than any other class in the entire game?

Like I've said, provide evidence instead of arbitrary opinion/explanation and I'm sure the staff will change things. If you feel this strongly about it, you probably should've spent the significant amount of time you've spent in this thread researching to find evidence instead.

[loramin]

Then go find evidence for it and I'm sure the staff will change things. Otherwise it's a pointless discussion.

The evidence is that IT'S NOT LIKE 1999!!! That's all the evidence we need. AGAIN, with Bards every last piece of existing evidence said "Bards can AoE 100 mobs and take all of OT".

But the even more important evidence was "BARDS DIDN'T DO THAT IN 1999!" AoEing every mob in OT was unclassic, and that was all Nilbog needed to go looking for the mechanic he was missing.

The exact same thing is true here. We have mountains of evidence, all correct and arguing Enchanters should be the most powerful DPS class in EverQuest. And then we have even more important evidence that says they weren't even in the top five on any server (out of the many, each with thousands of players, that existed back then). 1 + 1 =2, and shit's not classic.

And the only way you can argue that it should be that way is if you think every Enchanter back then was too stupid to try using their spells. That's not an honest argument, that's a "please don't classically nerf my class because it's my class" argument.

[bwe]

These enchanters just want to continue monopolizing cash camps, don't hurt their source of income

[Tecmos Deception]

So, we can yell at each other about how we're right, or we can try and walk in another man's moccasins.

I've set the scene already. It's 1999: we've got class message boards, and literally hundreds of members of every class is playing the game, casting spells, trying things out, and posting about what they've done so hundreds of other players can do the same.

In this environment every class is figuring out how to use their tools. Rogues are learning what they can pickpocket and how to use sneak cleverly, Shaman are cann-dancing, and so on.

Now, imagine in this environment you play an Enchanter. You have a spell list, and you know every spell on it and what it does (even if you didn't have the manual and Prima guides and such, you had Caster's Realm and other sites back then that listed them all).

So what is your argument?

That Enchanters didn't look at Charm on their list?

That every Enchanter on the server cast it once, and decided, this is crap?

How can you honestly imagine every one of the hundreds of forum-posting Enchanters NOT realizing that they could do more damage than any other class in the entire game?

I'd say, you can't. You can't honestly wave all this away as "every last one of them was" dumb. Something HAD to be different back then.

Chanters did solo with charm for exp on live.

That's not the same thing as having figured out how to use a buffed, dual wielding, malod, -mr geared imp while you have a wc cap and root nets and a wand of allure and a telescope on your hotbar so you can duo freeti in relative safety for hours on end.

Nobody is saying they were dumb back then. There's a difference between being dumb and having enough play time to piece together all the parts of the puzzle. And either nobody did that very quickly, or if anyone did it they didn't talk about it so thoroughly and frequently that became widely known.

[Lojik]

GCD wasn't very widely known on live was it, along with recharging? How much of an effect on enchanters pwning camps would there be if these were removed?

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Both were just massive zone disruptions that the staff didn't want to deal with anymore

I would submit that charm-soloing Enchanters monopolizing content is ALSO "zone disruption."

[Tecmos Deception]

GCD wasn't very widely known on live was it, along with recharging? How much of an effect on enchanters pwning camps would there be if these were removed?

A lot.

When a stun or a mez or anything resists and you have to wait 2.5 extra seconds before you can try again, when you can't refresh your top gem instantly? And then you're eating your monster pet's dps and whatever else you were trying to handle too?

And in context, that's just one of the several things that make an enormous difference on here that were used by almost no one on live.

[loramin]

Chanters did solo with charm for exp on live.

That's not the same thing as having figured out how to use a buffed, dual wielding, malod, -mr geared imp while you have a wc cap and root nets and a wand of allure and a telescope on your hotbar so you can duo freeti in relative safety for hours on end.

Nobody is saying they were dumb back then. There's a difference between being dumb and having enough play time to piece together all the parts of the puzzle. And either nobody did that very quickly, or if anyone did it they didn't talk about it so thoroughly and frequently that became widely known.

Tecmos I give you props. You're actively trying to engage with me, you're giving (small, but reasonable) ground on your argument, and I know that there's probably not a single more "Pro-Enchanter" player on this entire server. I know that if anyone has a reason to be intellectually dishonest in their defense of Enchanters it would be you, but I can feel you trying not to be (and I also know how much you appreciate this place and it's mission), and I genuinely respect you for it.

But look, we've gone from "Enchanters were too stupid to charm" to "Enchanters totally charmed all the time, but they just couldn't optimize it". That's a huge leap from where we started, but I have to try and pick at your rational/logical side some more.

The core of my argument is "Enchanters weren't even a DPS class on live, but they are the best DPS class here; unless that can be explained entirely through player ignorance, the only other explanation is that this emulation of 1999 EverQuest isn't emulating it well enough."

So let's engage with the "explained entirely through player ignorance" part. Just so we're clear, you're arguing that a "nekid" (or at least classically geared) Enchanter on Green can't charm solo effectively? I'm not talking about being the best DPS in the game necessarily, but are you saying they can't even be very effective DPS without -mr gear, an insta-click item, etc.?

I think the evidence suggests they can. So again, what's different between Green and Live, if it's not the knowledge of all those other items (that aren't essential to the core act of using charm), and it's not the server mechanics?

[Ligma]

I would submit you're just mad/bad

[Cuktus]

I would submit that charm-soloing Enchanters monopolizing content is ALSO "zone disruption."

Wholly hell am I doing this wrong. Please tell me how to solo 100 mobs every 10min on a chanter please. I am clearly doing this wrong.

Edit: a word

[Tecmos Deception]

Tecmos I give you props. You're actively trying to engage with me, you're giving (small, but reasonable) ground on your argument, and I know that there's probably not a single more "Pro-Enchanter Class" player on this entire server. I know that if anyone has a reason to be intellectually dishonest in their defense of Enchanters it would be you, but I can feel you trying not to be and I genuinely respect it.

But look, we've gone from "Enchanters were too stupid to charm" to "Enchanters totally charmed all the time, but they just couldn't optimize it". That's a huge leap from where we started, but I have to try and pick at your rational/logical side some more.

The core of my argument is "Enchanters weren't even a DPS class on live, but they are the best DPS class here; unless that can be explained entirely through player ignorance, the only other explanation is that this emulation of 1999 EverQuest isn't emulating it well enough."

So let's engage with the "explained entirely through player ignorance" part. Just so we're clear, you're arguing that a "nekid" (or at least classically geared) Enchanter on Green can't charm solo effectively? I'm not talking about being the best DPS in the game necessarily, but are you saying they can't even be very effective DPS without -mr gear, insta-click item, etc.?

I think the evidence suggests they can. So again, what's different between Green and Live, if it's not the knowledge of all those other items, and it's not the server mechanics?

Well I like to think that I try to be reasonable even about issues close to my heart, lol. Though like I've mentioned lately, I'm not playing a chanter any more and have no plans to!

That aside, I don't think I've argued that players were dumb (unless maybe tongue in cheeck while meaning that they just hadn't had enough playtime to figure it all out yet), nor that everyone was charming on live. Consider me as a chanter. I played on live as my main. I played for years on P99 without doing one. I never ever knew they could do solo artist challenge type stuff until I saw the SAC and started Tecmos to follow in Save and Loraen's footsteps. I never figured out HS south until they showed me. I spent hundreds of hours soloing with Tecmos (blue), Tecmos (red), and Noman, but was still improving on my methods in my final streams I did with Noman after 6 years of nonstop chanting, 95% solo, on p99. I had to learn lev trick, corpsing keys, gnoming through doors, -mr gear for pets, even basic spell gem setup, I had to learn the best way to do all those things from other people. I never figured those things out all on my own. I'm not ever going to claim I'm the best chanter or the best player, but I like to think I'm pretty damn good when I want to be. And in 6 years I never pieced together even 1/4 of the stuff I would have needed to make the videos like I did in HS south/east, seb, etc. Is it a stretch to think that there weren't dozens of chanters who pieced this all together in only 3 years of classic era on live?


Regarding the second half of your post though, just a day or two ago I challenged the people claiming that charm couldn't have worked this well on live to play a chanter on blue like it would have been in classic on p99 and see if charm still feels like it trivializes content and is easy to do.

I would LOVE to see someone playing with randomized 1-2/hr link deaths, no GCD clicky, no -mr gear, no malaise on pet, who ocassionally chain stuns NPCs and nukes, also try to charm one of these DPS monstrosities everyone keeps saying chanters can control here but couldn't on live.

I know what's going to happen.

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Wholly hell am I doing this wrong. Please tell me how to solo 100 mobs every 10min on a chanter please. I am clearly doing this wrong.

Edit: a word

Not individually but collectively. You'll see what I mean a month or two from now when EVERY high value camp on Green/Teal is being solod by a level 50 Enchanters!

[Vizax_Xaziv]

Well I like to think that I try to be reasonable even about issues close to my heart, lol. Though like I've mentioned lately, I'm not playing a chanter any more and have no plans to!

That aside, I don't think I've argued that players were dumb (unless maybe tongue in cheeck while meaning that they just hadn't had enough playtime to figure it all out yet), nor that everyone was charming on live.

Regarding the second half of your post though, just a day or two ago I challenged the people claiming that charm couldn't have worked this well on live to play a chanter on blue like it would have been in classic on p99 and see if charm still feels like it trivializes content and is easy to do.

I would LOVE to see someone playing with randomized 1-2/hr link deaths, no GCD clicky, no -mr gear, no malaise on pet, who ocassionally chain stuns NPCs and nukes, also try to charm one of these DPS monstrosities everyone keeps saying chanters can control here but couldn't on live.

I know what's going to happen.

But you dont NEED any of that. Just charm yourself a high-level greencon (or min level bluecon) and you're all set. Youll still greatly out-DPS any actual player and Charm will last it's full duration virtually every time with only Tash.

[Tecmos Deception]

But you dont NEED any of that. Just charm yourself a high-level greencon (or min level bluecon) and you're all set. Youll still greatly out-DPS any actual player and Charm will last it's full duration virtually every time with only Tash.

A green or minimum blue won't out-dps DPS classes. Charm won't last full duration hardly ever with just tash. I have admitted being very open to low-level mobs charming too easily (pending data that none of the people wanting to see charm nerfed ever go actually looking for).

And you ignored half my post. It's not about using all of today's ironed-out tactics and pointing to how well it works. It's about using CLASSIC'S idea of the "right" way to play while also trying to maintain a pet. That's when you'll see all the stuff I'm saying about why chanters didn't often charm in groups even though the mechanics were present to allow it.

[d-tron]

Here's a cool thread from June 2001 on caster's realm about enchanters discussing charm tactics:

https://web.archive.org/web/20010630090908/http://forums.castersrealm.com/cgi-bin/eq/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=9&t=004889

[loramin]

Though like I've mentioned lately, I'm not playing a chanter any more and have no plans to!

Heh, I actually didn't know that, but on Green/Teal I'm not playing a Shaman either, so I feel you.

That aside, I don't think I've argued that players were dumb (unless maybe tongue in cheeck while meaning that they just hadn't had enough playtime to figure it all out yet),

Yeah, I don't think anyone was truly arguing that, but both sides need to sum up arguments and "players were dumb" was a quick summation. I understood that you (and others) really meant "players were ignorant of specific key details that they couldn't have reasonably figured out on their own in the first three years of play" ... but we both say "players were dumb" because it's shorter :)

I never figured out HS south until they showed me. I spent hundreds of hours soloing with Tecmos (blue), Tecmos (red), and Noman, but was still improving on my methods in my final streams I did with Noman after 6 years of nonstop chanting, 95% solo, on p99. I had to learn lev trick, corpsing keys, gnoming through doors, -mr gear for pets, even basic spell gem setup, I had to learn the best way to do all those things from other people. I never figured those things out all on my own. I'm not ever going to claim I'm the best chanter or the best player, but I like to think I'm pretty damn good when I want to be. And in 6 years I never pieced together even 1/4 of the stuff I would have needed to make the videos like I did in HS south/east, seb, etc. Is it a stretch to think that there weren't dozens of chanters who pieced this all together in only 3 years of classic era on live?

I love and appreciate all this specific evidence for your argument, and while specifics are great, can I abstract things instead?

I feel like I'm saying "Enchanters were a 1 in DPS on live, and they're a 10 here; 1 != 10, P99 != 100% classic yet". And I feel like what you just said was "it's hard to go from a 7 to a 10 as an Enchanter" ... which I 100% agree with.

But what I'm more focused on isn't that live was 1 and pro-Chanters like you on Blue are 10s ... I'm more talking about "why wasn't your average Enchanter on live a 7?" All the stuff you talked about explains why Enchanters on live weren't 10s, but it doesn't explain why they were 1s.

I would LOVE to see someone playing with randomized 1-2/hr link deaths, no GCD clicky, no -mr gear, no malaise on pet, who ocassionally chain stuns NPCs and nukes, also try to charm one of these DPS monstrosities everyone keeps saying chanters can control here but couldn't on live.

I know what's going to happen.

I'm not an Enchanter player, but first off, not every player had randomized 1-2 hour link deaths.

Certainly they didn't have GCD clickies, -MR gear, and (when soloing) a pocket Shaman/Mage for debuffing ... but again, that can only explain why we're 10s, and live was a 7 or maybe 6. But live was a 1! 1 doesn't even equal 6.

Something ain't classic here.

[Tecmos Deception]

Like I said Lor. I'd love to see someone take the widely-disseminated guides and general "it is known, khaleesi" type of knowledge you can find scattered around casters realm and zam forums and stuff, and play a chanter on p99 like that while also trying to maintain a charm.

If they can do that and show me the video of them playing like a classic chanter was told to by everything they could find anywhere while still ripping shit up with a monster charmed pet, I'll walk back all my defense of charm being similar here to on live.

I'm confident I can't play like a classic chanter, even if you permit a perfect internet connection, while charming a group's worth of DPS like people are yelling about, let alone while soloing a high end named camp.

And again, this is still looking past a lot of issues that I believe were roadblocks: camp availability in the first place for classic era chanters to ever get much time trying to solo something like freeti, the number of chanters who reached max level before the next xpac brought new content being far lower than on here (especially on blue during out 5-year kunark, haha), etc.



Maybe I'll motivate to death loop Noman to 50 and strip him of clickies and some of his gear and go try to solo something on blue with classic-era strategies and put the video up. I'm like 50% sure just no GCD clicky by itself will make it difficult enough to not be a reasonable use of time.

Yuck. It'll take me some effort to get motivated for that though cause I'll need to reorganize his spell book besides just binding next to a guard at the nfp/wfp zoneline for a few hours. Lol.

[cd288]

The evidence is that IT'S NOT LIKE 1999!!! That's all the evidence we need. AGAIN, with Bards every last piece of existing evidence said "Bards can AoE 100 mobs and take all of OT".

But the even more important evidence was "BARDS DIDN'T DO THAT IN 1999!" AoEing every mob in OT was unclassic, and that was all Nilbog needed to go looking for the mechanic he was missing.

The exact same thing is true here. We have mountains of evidence, all correct and arguing Enchanters should be the most powerful DPS class in EverQuest. And then we have even more important evidence that says they weren't even in the top five on any server (out of the many, each with thousands of players, that existed back then). 1 + 1 =2, and shit's not classic.

And the only way you can argue that it should be that way is if you think every Enchanter back then was too stupid to try using their spells. That's not an honest argument, that's a "please don't classically nerf my class because it's my class" argument.

And there could be a variety of different reasons why the atmosphere is not like it was in 1999 and Enchanters weren't as popular. It could be that people didn't know as much about Charm killing strategies. It could be that people didn't know how OP Enchanters could be (which is probably part of it, since Enchanters did become very popular in the Classic era, just not right away). It could be that the mechanics are indeed different. If it's the latter, then you need to find evidence for it because the arbitrary standard you're trying to apply to change things isn't sufficient to get something changed. Get some actual evidence about the mechanics themselves rather than your arbitrary "evidence" that could actually have multiple different reasons for why it was the way you allege it was, and then you can post about it and see how the discussion goes/if things get changed on P99.

[loramin]

Like I said Lor. I'd love to see someone take the widely-disseminated guides and general "it is known, khaleesi" type of knowledge you can find scattered around casters realm and zam forums and stuff, and play a chanter on p99 like that while also trying to maintain a charm.

If they can do that and show me the video of them playing like a classic chanter was told to by everything they could find anywhere while still ripping shit up with a monster charmed pet, I'll walk back all my defense of charm being similar here to on live.

So let's try taking Enchanters out of the picture, for a moment, and let's talk about ... Druid charming!

I charmed on my Druid here, just about exclusively until 45. I did twink him out with a Goblin ring at some point, but I also charmed for a level or two without it first. I never used -MR gear or a GCD clickie (well, I got when he was 60 but that's irrelevant).

I absolutely understand what a huge difference that ring makes. But even so, without it, and without -MR gear or an insta-click item, I got a level or two, and it was still significantly faster than root/rotting.

Now look, I get that message boards were a double-edged sword: they shared info, but they also encouraged a certain "herd mentality". This lead to "wisdom" being passed on to newer players, and some very small percentage of the time that "wisdom" may have missed a relevant detail and been wrong.

Case in point: every Shaman (on the forums) knew to Cann-dance. But none knew to use a Shrunken Goblin Ring to spam click Cann once you got Torpor. Relatively few shaman even got to 60 (in classic), only a few of them had Torpor, and relatively few players overall even understood global cooldown resets.

-MR gear, goblin ring, GCD resets ... all of that is equivalent (in the GCD case, directly) to Shaman Cann-dancing when they should have been GCD reset-ing.

But charming a mob, having it fight another mob, and then casting invis on yourself to break it? Without any other item or mechanic, that's a valuable strategy (again, faster than root/rotting, the established approach for Druids). It's widely practiced here, but it wasn't on live.

I can't prove with evidence that it's absolutely, certainly, a sign of a missing mechanic here. And I couldn't have proven it with Bards AoEing in OT: I'm no AoE expert, and every Bard defender said "it's a classic mechanic, people just didn't realize they couldn't do it on live, we're smarter here".

But does the incredibly different amount of even base-level, no tricks charm fighting here vs. live ... does it truly "smell" like just ignorance, and not a sign of any other hard-to-pin-down mechanic being off, which makes the technique more effective here than it was on live?

[jacob54311]

It could be that the mechanics are indeed different. If it's the latter, then you need to find evidence for it because the arbitrary standard you're trying to apply to change things isn't sufficient to get something changed.

I think this is the key. P99 has left a lot of things in that were changed later that most people agreed were for the better, like the unjustified hybrid XP penalty. Yes, they have done some things that weren't quite classic for a variety of reasons, but for the most part keeping it classic has been their guide.

[Tecmos Deception]

But does the incredibly different amount of even base-level charm fighting here vs. live truly, honestly, "smell" like just ignorance, and not possibly the sign of any other hard-to-pin-down mechanic (like charm resists) being off?

Not to me.

But I can't really answer what it smells like with a blank slate because I mained a chanter on live who spent most of his time charm soloing to level, and when in groups also charmed (but at a reduced clip during classic era compared to luclin and pop). Lol.