Just think of the other useless druid spells.

Invisibility to Animals,
Lull animal,
Calm animal,
Sense animal,

These spells are of course useless because druids also get spells that encompass multiple NPC types. I have never found a reason to use calm animal instead of harmony for example.

In the case of charm however, there is no substitute for druid animal charms. It was meant to be a viable option for druids or else they wouldn't have bothered to add 2 more druid charm spells in Kunark (level 53 and 55).

The only utility spell I've seen to help druid charm is this:

Level: 53
Glamour of Tunare Decrease Magic resistance of Animals

If high charisma isn't the key to making druid charm work then what is? Charming green mobs as an added dot when kiting a mob? Seems like an awful lot of work and wasted spell slot.

All that being said it seems to me like fear kiting animals is a better idea than charming them. It's a shame that most animals in Norrath are social for whatever reason so fear kiting can also get a little sketchy.

Not sure what my original point was now.... oh well.

Glad to see a good showing of support here. I do remember charm-killing rats in PoD for AA's at level 54. Like said before, the charm at least lasted long enough for the mob to usually beat up my target to near-death. No charisma gear ever - I know that for sure.

From the vague memories I had of classic EQ, druid charm was NOT this worthless - literally never lasting for more than 15 seconds in dozens of tries on blue mobs. I just find it strange that my chanter buddy 9 levels lower than me can charm mobs better than I can with almost a slightly higher base CHA.

You can argue that there are better levelling techniques in classic, but I've found MUCH better results charm-killing post-50 than quadding, root-rotting, or duoing. I'd love to hear some dev feedback before Kunark/Velious.

And for some poster above me - Lull Animal =/= useless. Indoor zones.

chanters dont get charm till lvl 12... they have tash wish decreases -mr wich is what charm is based off. Mage resist checks. Bards have been known to charm crazy crap in kunark with tash orbs, sticks, songs, weapons etc.

Druids dont have any way to decrease mr, unless you get some 1hb with an effect.

Chanters also have spells to boost to the soft cap very easily and more so than any other class in all of eq. Druid and necro charm in class was based off mr checks and charsima checks. Ive posted it, developers here like the way they have it. Necro charm wich i play a 50 here. Has had a charm nerf to an extent and a buff. Necro charm no longer checks with charisma checks its on its own random number generator. And im charming undead in lower guk. Im an erudite and i min/maxed my charism with a starting based of 90!

Yes mad. Yes over it. Yes rerolled.

Bards are the King of Kunark.

First point. Why is siinge even posting? or talking? christ.

Second point, guinea pig is right. Druid charm worked fairly well in Kunark and Velious (WW, OT, LOIO, EW were all druid hotspots because of... charm). Its not foolproof, and the MR debuffs are helpful, but they don't make or break it. Charm still lasted 2-3 minutes average on blue con expable mobs.

this

Was wondering the same thing. Punctuation ftl.

That's my recollection also. CHA had almost no effect for Druid charm (sorry siinge, but it's true). As you said above, they could charm blue mobs reasonably well regardless of CHA. MR debuffs would definitely help though.

Data gathered around PoP era (another thread) shows that the CHA effect on Charm duration might have been about 10% (between a crazy-high CHA and a decent CHA) *FOR ENCHANTERS*.

It was also stated by Verant that the impact was different for different classes (i.e. the biggest effect would be for Enchanters who are masters of CHA). So we are probably talking ~5% impact for Druids, if that.

I can get over 200 cha with shaman/ench cha buffs, and I can charm monkeys in fear. Usually blues hold close to the full duration. I stopped because im playing like a chanter that cant mez/anything. So yeah