Charm soloing; any tips out there?

[Yoite]

avoid mobs that cast, not only do they do crappy dps b/c they are trying to cast, the cleric and wizard type mobs will have higher MR due to them buffing themselves

[guineapig]

Start super easy and gradually work your way up.
Don't be embarassed to start by killing greens with your charmed pet to get an idea of how long your charm lasts, how strong the pet is, etc.

Find outdoor areas, close to a zoneline. Know the pathing of anything that might aggro before you start. Tons of good places to practice all over the world.

Once you get the hang of greens, do light blues, then blues.

Stuns are your freind!

The aoe short duration stuns combined with the whirl till you hurl line will help you reestablish control. Have a minumum of 2 of these up at all times. get in the habit of retashing before you recharm.

Use troll form to regen if you are soloing. carry bandages and skill up at bind wound.

Don't be cheap, use your AC buff, your lower level rune and even berzerker strength until you feel comfortable enough without them. You have these damage absorbers for a reason.

rooting the mob that your pet is attacking is a good habit so you only have to deal with 1 mob trying to interrupt you when recasting charm instead of 2.

Best way to start charming is to get your gear squared away first then find a group that wont mind you messing with it. The additional DPS can be huge and if the group has a backup healer then keeping you alive should not be an issue.

[Malrubius]

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

I'm not the best person to ask. General consensus is that people back in '99 did not know as much about game mechanics as they do now and usually gave up on charm as a reliable play method until the advent of Dire Charm (PoP era).

I sadly fall into this category, I never attempted to max out my charisma on live before I hit level 65 and by then I had dire charm.



I can vouch for this but I cannot say how much less. It used to be that if your charisma was 201 you could have a charm last full duration without much worry. Recently I had Lava Beetles breaking charm occasionally after a minute or two (at around 232 charisma) , but sometimes lasting as much as ten.
(I don't charm unless I have to so I have not been keeping notes on this stuff.)



I can definitely see a big impact on the magic resistance of mobs. Trying to charm a white con mob in the planes, even after landing tash = pain.

Certain blue con mobs in the planes will also break charm after only a minute or two even with both tash and malo.

I recall 2 of us having Clerics of Innoruk charmed during a Maestro raid recently where both chanters had well over 200 charisma but still had to recharm our pets a couple times before we engaged as well as during the fight.
On the other hand I could charm a kobold in solb and probably not worry about it for a good 12-13 minutes.



Hope I'm helping more than confusing...

No, that helps a lot. One thing I noticed though...

Ten minutes? 12-13 minutes!?!? This surprises me since in classic the max was about 7:30. Hopefully that's bugged (I'll bug it myself once I'm high enough level to start noticing it [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] ).

[Landis]

charm definitely lasted for 10+ minutes at level 60 in live, kunark era.

[guineapig]

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

No, that helps a lot. One thing I noticed though...

Ten minutes? 12-13 minutes!?!? This surprises me since in classic the max was about 7:30. Hopefully that's bugged (I'll bug it myself once I'm high enough level to start noticing it [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.] ).

Sorry I should have added I'm using Dazzle. The lower level spells have lower max durations.