Druid Charm Soloing

[Kevlar]

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

Then charming raptors is great. Bring plenty of rusty daggers or w/e you can find for pet weaps, snare the pet first for safety sake and root the mob u r fighting for added safety and so you do some damage and get the kill. I find it worth my time to DS/haste my pets and then break charm with invis v animal before they die so i can get a new pet to kill em (this part is much like charming for any class, so a chanter guide is basically the same, just with different spells).

That is a lot of unnecessary mana use.

The best thing about charm is the tiny amount of mana you use. Sitting for a couple tics per kill is all you need to stay at full mana.

Here are some tips I have learned from charming, and you can start at 14 and charm all the way to 60+

Always keep a backpack full of vendor bought daggers. Trying to look for rusty daggers would be mind numbing. Go to a weapon merchant and buy a backpack full of 'dagger'. Like 2pp each.

Always haste your pet. The extra dps combined with dual wielding will make him shred even cons without losing more than a bubble of health.

If you are pulling to your pet, have him sit between pulls. If you have a "good" pet that doesn't break charm often then toss him a chloro too.

Fear is awesome combined with charm, if there are lots of animal mobs in an area then always pull them first, even though they have crap loot. Your hasted dual wielding pet can kill an even con long before the first fear wears off. Use the level 19 fear, it costs 3x as much, but lasts 3x as long and doesn't have a recast cooldown in case you get a resist.

Pull multiples to kill. If you have a hasted sabertooth tiger or trakasaur or similar pet quadding for 100+ dmg with 70% haste then you are going to rip through some stuff quickly. Ensnare 4 or 5 mobs, and train them around killing them off 1 at a time.

Pet control - You have sow. Do Not! snare your pet. Not until the lvl 39 charm do you even need more distance to cast than what the spell takes to get off. So just run to max range, and recharm. After you get to 39 or whatever and you can't cast without being hit then you just use lvl 1 root on your pet. Run, root, charm. When the target mobs catch up just strafe around your pet til root breaks and then kite away.

Mob control - Ensnare, flame lick. That combo is enough aggro to give your pet a chance to rip off a huge chunk of the target's life. At least for equal or lower con stuff. For higher level monsters you have to root them, then dot them, then when root breaks snare them, flame lick, sic pet and he should be fine. The trick there is working multiples at a time, don't send your pet on a rooted mob, its inefficient. He can do a lot more dmg from behind where he isn't dealing with dodge, riposte, etc, and he isn't getting hit back.

When you get snare gloves and ES arms charming becomes a joke. For some reason the item clickers don't give very much aggro, but for fear kiting aggro doesn't matter. For regular kiting I still use ensnare + flamelick, and click on the arms for a little extra dmg. You are literally using 2 tics worth of mana per kill.

The ultimate way to get no aggro on your pet? Break charm. It totally resets pet aggro, but you retain 100 percent of your aggro. If you are kiting multiple mobs you can't fear, have your pet knock a couple bubbles of health off each one, but not enough to pull aggro. Then break charm! Remember, your pet is balling a lot faster than the snared mobs, get some distance first. Give yourself enough room so that you can land root and recharm before the mobs show up.

My usual spell lineup is:

ensnare
charm, and you really never need your highest one
terrorize animal
regen/chloro
invis to animals (to break charm)
flame lick
grasping roots
pet haste

[aresprophet]

If you really want to maximize your charm solo efficiency there are 2 things you can do:

-Make your pet deal more damage
-Make your pet take more damage

Fear kiting is counterproductive: you could have 2 mobs killed for the mana and time it takes to kill 1, as long as you can control mob HP. This is easier somewhere like TD raptors or Perma bear pits (my experience is mostly those 2 places) where mobs are close to each other in damage and HP. At lower levels in OT or TT you might need to adjust your style, I quadded pre-Kunark through those levels.

So, a rundown of the best way to maximize your charm soloing exp:

-You want to kill as many mobs as possible in the time it takes for a repop, without using an unsustainable amount of mana. Given the vagaries of charm breaks and resists, this is going to require you to med out a pop on some cycles. This is OK as long as you aren't doing it too often (once every 3-4 cycles tops). Just try to never sit at full mana unless your pet is buffed and killing something.

-If you use Savage Spirit and Shield of Thorns you should be able to buff a pet just enough to have it kill 2 identical mobs (in the case of TD, buff a Vicious and use it against regular Raptors) with under 5% left at the end. Gauge the two mobs' HP as the fight progresses and use ES Vambs or a Lumi Staff to get the target mob lower if necessary due to randomness of melee; you want the first mob to die when your pet is between 50% and 55%. Keep Ensnare on your charmed pet as a safety (lets you med more and run around less, pays for itself) and pull targets to it using Flame Lick or Glamour of Tunare, then root when the target is close. That's all you should need to get a kill.

-Use Hide, a Gazughi Ring (if you're rich) or Camo to break charm when your pet falls below 5%. If you root the target mob (which you should) you can use the Pet Back button to get it out of range just before it dies; judicious use of the Pet Guard and Pet Back button can also let the target mob hurt your pet a little more if it's going to survive with >10% hp when the target dies. Use ES Vambs or Lumi to finish off the target and the pet. You can usually begin your next pull as the ES Vambs dot is finishing off the previous mobs, speeding up your overall killing. I keep Breath of Ro up to finish off pets that survive with >10%, it's more effective than having a hasted mob take a chunk out of the next mob you charm.

-In situations where a 2v1 is not possible you can use a charmed pet 1v1 without Savage Spirit or Thorns and med back a little mana, but since this lowers the overall DPS being done by both mobs you want to avoid it. There are a few pulls in Perma you can't help but do 1v1 due to pathing bugs, and if you're sharing raptors you may have to do a 1v1 now and then.

-You could use the dagger method mentioned above to push DPS higher but I can't imagine doing that for any sustainable amount of time before it drove me crazy. It might let you take a single buffed pet through 3 mobs in one go, though.

This charm-tank method is far more efficient than charm-fear kiting because it effectively increases the DPS you do by 50%, allowing you to fit more kills into a pop cycle. Once you have the method down you can clear 9 pops on the big raptor isle in the ~15 minutes it takes for one to repop and die again. Prior to the big nerf to charm breaks a few months ago I was only getting 6 per cycle tops using fear and a single buffed Vicious pet.

[Kevlar]

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

-You could use the dagger method mentioned above to push DPS higher but I can't imagine doing that for any sustainable amount of time before it drove me crazy. It might let you take a single buffed pet through 3 mobs in one go, though.

This charm-tank method is far more efficient than charm-fear kiting because it effectively increases the DPS you do by 50%, allowing you to fit more kills into a pop cycle. Once you have the method down you can clear 9 pops on the big raptor isle in the ~15 minutes it takes for one to repop and die again. Prior to the big nerf to charm breaks a few months ago I was only getting 6 per cycle tops using fear and a single buffed Vicious pet.

Fear kite is way faster. Not even close, if there are a lot of animal mobs around. A charmed, 70% hasted, dual dagger wielding tiger or raptor will mow down 10 mobs before the charm breaks easy, he kills feared mobs in litterally seconds. And even with the odd break you only lose him for a couple seconds. Any caster who isn't an idiot doesn't need root to med, I never miss a med tick while kiting. It ain't hard to count to 5 mississippi.

[aresprophet]

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

Fear kite is way faster. Not even close, if there are a lot of animal mobs around. A charmed, 70% hasted, dual dagger wielding tiger or raptor will mow down 10 mobs before the charm breaks easy, he kills feared mobs in litterally seconds. And even with the odd break you only lose him for a couple seconds. Any caster who isn't an idiot doesn't need root to med, I never miss a med tick while kiting. It ain't hard to count to 5 mississippi.

TD raptors have up to 4k hp (Vicious even more), it takes far, far longer for them to die using fear. I can sustainably kill a lot more mobs in a cycle letting the pet tank than by fearing. I did levels 50 through 55 at raptors and tried both methods extensively. Charm durations being what they are, it doesn't work very well to rely on the same mob for too long.

Originally Posted by M.Bison

and wtf is with all this talk about Invis to animal rings...youre a druid use hide, its free and instant.

And it doesn't work every time. I use Hide myself but I could see how the invis ring would make life easier, you can go 8-9 clicks in a row and not break charm some times. If 10k is nothing to you I'd recommend the ring.

[aresprophet]

Just to be clear, even pre-nerf when charm was outlasting the 14 minute duration of Ensnare on most casts I was still killing Raptors slower by fear-kiting them than by having the pet tank. I spent most of that charm duration sitting on my ass at full mana wishing I could do something other than cast Breath of Ro every so often to speed things up. Utilizing twice the mana to get a 50% increase in DPS, I can kill far more mobs in the same period of time without having to take breaks; my "med break" consists of leaving up 3 mobs I would have otherwise killed in one cycle out of 4 or 5.

[Zapatos]

The amount of bad information in this thread is making me cringe...

I'll do this assuming you're at raptors:

First. Forget charisma. That does nothing for you druids, read the patch notes.

Letting your pet tank? That's a huge waste of mana with all the thorns, heals, re-charms you have to do with each pet.. especially a waste if you're giving your raptor weapons.. and seriously, rusty daggers? Have some dignity, go get yourself stun whips!

To the comment about never snaring your pet? Terrible! Keep your pet esnared, or you certaintly won't be able to re-charm without being wrecked by your full run speed, hasted, stunning, w/e pet. Re-ensare (and glamour if you have it) after every time charm breaks.

Your clicky snare is awesome for pulling your next raptor.. do it. That, a cast of your level 1 nuke, and panick animal is all you need..when fear wears of, thats only 10 more mana, not a big deal... and clicking your ES vams is otherwise just a waste of a big cast bar for damage your pet can do for free in a few seconds, take the time to med. You'll need that mana when you find charm breaking randomly and often. If you have extra mana, awesome, throw in a dot if you want, but otherwise focus on your pet.

[aresprophet]

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

Letting your pet tank? That's a huge waste of mana with all the thorns, heals, re-charms you have to do with each pet.. especially a waste if you're giving your raptor weapons.. and seriously, rusty daggers? Have some dignity, go get yourself stun whips!

It's obvious you didn't read my post on how to make your pet tank efficiently. You never heal it.

Shield of Thorns does 24 damage every hit; killing 2 mobs with one hasted/DSed pet, it gets hit about 70 times total on average. 1700ish damage for 120 mana? Yes please. Add your haste spell and you're spending as much mana as you would on another charm (220) in order to make your pet kill twice as fast. As long as you can med enough to make up the mana you're going to kill more mobs in the same amount of time.

Fear kiting is slower than letting your pet take the damage and then killing it. Period.

[Kevlar]

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

To the comment about never snaring your pet? Terrible! Keep your pet esnared, or you certaintly won't be able to re-charm without being wrecked by your full run speed, hasted, stunning, w/e pet. Re-ensare (and glamour if you have it) after every time charm breaks.

The problem with snaring your pet is it makes aggro kiting impossibe. I have yet to find a mob that I can't get enough distance from to get off a grasping root unmolested. Plenty of time to recharm, then he is back to full speed in a minute or less.

If all you are doing is fear kiting snare will work, but for more difficult zones where there are lots of non-animals to deal with, aggro kiting is the way to go. Ensnare 4 or 5 victims and let your pet rape them from behind.

Pet tanking is a lot slower in the long run. Yes, you are going to kill two mobs, but if you just keep a single pet and aggro or fear kite your mana will never run dry. I waste about 500 mana on charm, haste, and chloro. Plus 4pp per pet for daggers. Then I don't use any more mana for 10-20 mins depending on how nice of a pet I have.

Your pet dps goes up possible 100 percent from dual wield, and an additional 70 pct from haste. Then you add in the fact that fear or aggro kiting takes away all of the target's mitigation, which is fairly significant since most of these mobs are high level warriors/tanks.