Game Mechanics: Mez/Charm immunity is not classic

[Nirgon]

Charm and channeling skill here... go compare them at equal values over at EQ Mac.

I think you'll be f'ing startled.

Note that I don't play on EQMac, so you can say that "how would I know".

Well.. I know much hasn't changed when it comes to charming a froglok dar knight in Sebilis with 255 CHA as a 55 enchanter between Velious and PoP. Go try it out, see what you think. Once that's settled for you... go try charming mobs in plane of fear and hate. Heh.

Then try having a mob beat on you while you try to cast. [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[koros]

It's possible my memory is off but I don't think so. There was a massive resist system change in late Luclin (Sept 2002), around this timeframe we found charming while grinding AAs became much much easier. This carried over to POP where it was common to be using level 61-63 NPCs as pets while xping without much issue.

Edit: EQMac is using that system.

[Nirgon]

I'm aware of the resist change, trust me.. It's being pointed to as a reason to not fix the necro heal, which is nuts.

If its easier, than take that into account... go try charming something in plane of fear on a 60 enchanter with 255 cha.. again, taking into account it "should be even easier". [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Treats]

Sorry I just skimmed the resist quote, wrong one.

It was meant to reflect my other post about charm and level, just disregard it.

Resistance Changes:

We've made some fairly drastic changes to the way the spell resistance system works. Previously, there was only the smallest benefit to having resists over a certain value. We've reworked resistance in its entirety, completely replacing the old system with one that is more logical.

The idea behind the changes is pretty simple: Resists should matter in a way that makes sense.

Important things to note about the new resistance system:
Resists matter more for PCs. There are now tangible differences between having 50, 150, and 250 in a given resistance, for example. Resistance buffs, bard songs, and resist gear have actual value, all the way up the line.
Conversely, resistances also matter more for NPCs. Some NPCs became more vulnerable to things they have always been vulnerable to, other NPCs became more resistant to things that they were inclined to be somewhat resistant to.
Resistance debuffs should also have more value, all the way up the line. For the first time, resistance debuffs now have the ability to bring NPCs that were lure-style only down into the range of being hit by normal spells.
The hard level limit involving players casting on NPCs has been removed. This used to be referred to in EQ folklore as the "Six Level Limit" (It was actually 1.25 times the caster's level, but more people likely thought about it the other way.) This means that in the vast majority of cases, there is at least a small chance that a person will be able to connect a spell with an NPC, even if they are out of that NPC's traditional level range.
Overall, against NPCs that have medium-to-high resistances of a given type, expect to see more full hits, fewer partials, but more full resists in the new system. Taken over time, the damage done by PC casters to semi-high resistance NPCs should be approximately the same, but will definitely improve when the proper debuffs are applied (we wanted to make sure that this did not turn into a universal nerf of casters).

We look forward to seeing how these changes play out in front of a larger audience.

This is how it was.

[Splorf22]

Treats: At least I read that as being mostly relevant to high level encounters?

Koros: what level was your friend in sebilis? If he was 55 then obviously he wouldn't be able to control a bok; you couldn't do that here either.

Nirgon: You were just told that charming is easier on eqmac [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

And back to my original point. I found this on the Alla page for Prince Selrach

Originally Posted by Nov 2001

As 60 shaman i sent Malo on it, ok, but tried about 5-6 times then to slow it, and it resisted.

Guess it's a 100% slow resist like the Giant in the bugged WW ya have to kill for Scout charisa's quest.

Akabah - Heritage Guild on Karana

Originally Posted by 2002

He's slowable, I got him first shot for the last 3 times I've killed him.

Malo/tash/Malosini = toasted sarnak

Now the date on the first post is 1 month after the resist changes, but if the guy fought the prince 1 month before he made the post then this makes a great deal of sense. Remember that the prince is only L61: if he wasn't MR immune you could rapture him for god's sake. Basically I think the most reasonable thing to do is: every raid mob should be 100% magic immune to everything except unresistable spellls (tash/malo/mana taps/mana drains etc but NOT rapture which is not actually flagged unresistable, it just has a -1000 check, lifetaps etc). There should also be a few MR immune mobs (spite golems, city of mist stuff, sebilite protector, phinny's guardians, golems in fear) which have the same rules. Nothing else should be flagged immune to anything with the exception of racial/level based immunities as discussed before.

[Dullah]

CHA doesn't mean crap for charming though I know this legend has been debated since the beginning of EQ. Tested it with max and absolute minimum, its 100% level based from everything I've seen.

Can't say how its supposed to be, but thats how it is here.

[Tecmos Deception]

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

CHA doesn't mean crap for charming though I know this legend has been debated since the beginning of EQ. Tested it with max and absolute minimum, its 100% level based from everything I've seen.

Can't say how its supposed to be, but thats how it is here.

Please do share these tests.

[Splorf22]

http://web.archive.org/web/200101231...ML/000930.html
http://web.archive.org/web/200101271...ML/001495.html

Have some relevant information (they talk about enchanters soloing the king room in guk at L49 and charming in hate/fear and also about necro taps getting resisted by all dragons (but not, interesting, Cazic/Inny! I also remember there was a bard on my server who charmed both of them so that would explain a lot)

Also Dullah Propo did the following test:

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 I expect the differences will not be nearly as stark, meaning much longer sample times to see a meaningful pattern.

-Propo Fol

Which seems pretty strong evidence that charisma does work.

[Nirgon]

No, I'm told by someone very credible that charming things and channeling are WAY harder on EQ Mac. What I'm saying is I'm not there myself to give my word on it.

[koros]

Level 60, raid gear at the time. We farmed things often, and it became WAY easier in late Luclin. We were all about min-maxing, and I was just as big a math nerd then as I am now (probably moreso even)

We always used dire-charm until late Luclin, because during early Luclin, a 46 Seb Golem with weapons would put out more dps over time (when you factor in breaks), than a level 50 which we needed to constantly re-charm.