Question for higher level Enchanters

[TheFishyOne]

Is it normal to keep both a set of INT gear and a set of CHA gear? If so, when should one start working on the INT set? Many thanks in advance!

[goshozal]

I never did. There's contention over how useful charisma really is, and int frankly doesn't make much difference until higher levels, like 50+. You'll get more mileage out of hp/ac/mana gear early on, and by the time you're high enough level for int to make a good difference in your mana pool you'll be able to farm/buy all the int you want.

I used to sweat a lot over trying to make sure my int/cha were both as high as I could manage, and it seems pretty silly now.

[Tecmos Deception]

I don't think enchanters ever really need an "int set."

If you ever lose a fight because you went from 100m to 0m and still needed more mana, you were either 1) really pushing your limits fighting something very tough for your group/level, 2) doing something dumb like starting a new pull when at 25m, or 3) having terrible luck with resists.

I prefer charisma gear to date (level 57) because I believe that it helps me get the most out of my charms, which have been what I used to make 99% of my experience. When I start swapping out charisma gear because I'm over 255 with buffs or because I'm afraid of a summoner pulling me into a melee and getting me killed before I can get off a stun, I swap in stuff like 5/55 rings or black sapphire ears/neck, not int gear.

If I were going to swap in int gear just cause, though, I'd be careful to do it efficiently. For example, wearing a 4-int ring instead of a 7-charisma ring is not great. But wearing a robe with 10 int and 50 mana instead of a robe with 5 charisma and 50 mana would be very good.


Don't forget that charisma is a big (huge, imo) factor in lulling. Unless you spend most of your time in groups or outdoors, you will probably be making heavy use of calm and pacify. And the last thing you want when you're working your way through the depths of a dungeon solo or with a buddy is to aggro 2 rooms of mobs onto yourselves because your calm got crit resisted.

[pasi]

Int Sets are nice for AE Groups, but you really aren't going to be AE'n all that much until 57.

[Splorf22]

Mana is nice at the very high level when dealing with 56+ mobs that require rapture. 450/pop adds up fast. Other than that I almost never have mana problems. Generally I my enchanter gearing advice is after 200 int/cha to go full HP.

[-Catherin-]

go for 200 int, then start increasing your cha while keeping your int at 200+ at the same time. the only real noticeable difference i see with a higher cha is lulling, which can in some situations be very useful. CHA tends to lag at the bottom of my prioreties though, and i focus mostly on hp/mana/ac/resists. if i can get cha at the same time on that armor then for sure ill go for it. Those kind of armors tend to be best in slot though and will cost a ton of money

[Swish]

Propo recently posted up some interesting findings about charm durations and CHA. Its on the forums somewhere anyway (user: A1550)

In essence, if you do a lot of charming you'll want your CHA above 200 as soon as possible.

[Vermicelli]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Propo Fol

Ballin effort for sure!