Enchanter charm isn't classic, we all know this

[Tecmos Deception]

http://www.angelfire.com/rpg/whitewi...ChantGuide.htm

Charm - Here it is. The big dog. The secret to uber-soloing. When you cast this, the target mob (max level 25) becomes your pet to command. NPC mobs hit much harder, have more hitpoints, and basically outweigh all PC pets in every way. If two mobs fight (one as your pet) and you nuke the enemy once, your pet should win the fight, though almost dead. Then you kill your pet for full experience. No class can touch our ability to solo with this method. Dropping double-yellow mobs with two bubbles of mana is basically mind-blowing, and double-blues can be great xp still. It's also extremely hazardous. I really don't feel we have the ability to charm solo until the Fifth Circle, when you have our entire spell-line available. If you insist on trying it now, you'll just have to skip ahead and find a work-around to not having Mesmerization, which I feel is critical to be successful. Also, you need a massive Charisma. I'm talking about 170+

Another extensive, classic-era enchanter guide that describes charm like it functions on p99. Read the rest of the guide to see that the author wasn't an idiot, but still had a lot of things "wrong" compared to modern knowledge of how to use certain spells and handle certain situations.


Better than any of the "nerf charm" comments I've come across here and I've found two of them with like 10 minutes of total searching. This dude actually recommends using charm on stuff that is TOO STRONG to kill with the "kamikaze" method (i.e. using an animation and supporting spells/damage to solo exp). Lots of similarities and even some identical sections to Xornn's guide, but with significant differences as well. Compare and contrast Xornn's definition of the Charm spell in his elaboration of the "4th circle" to the guide I'm linking to here:

Charm - Here it is. The big dog. When you cast this, the target mob (max level 25) becomes your pet to command. NPC mobs hit much harder, have more hitpoints, and basically outweigh all PC pets in every way. If two mobs fight (one as your pet) and you slow the enemy, your pet should win the fight, though almost dead. Then you kill your pet for full experience. No class can touch our adaptiveness in soloing with this method, and few will encounter the excitement. Dropping double-blues with little mana use and your full attention requires is a real rush. It's also extremely hazardous. While at a point and time I felt that Charisma was the end all be all of charming, my ways have changed, and Drekaar solos charm style with 85 Charisma.

Edit - Whoop! That actually IS Xornn writing that also, just apparently when he was lower level. He refined his guide and changes wordings but the fact that his recommendations for how to use charm and stuns and such doesn't change much over the course of many levels of classic-era enchanting is telling, imo.

[rabids]

I played a mage on live for a long time. During pop i really started using pet canni a lot. I crunched numbers and built all my aa's around it. I got up to around 200 mana per tick while actively cannying. I could chaincast dd's on all mobs, even with cain pulls. It was glorious!

But me and the other mages that I spoke to went a long way towards keeping this a secret. The times someone posted guides on the boards they sometimes got pressured to delete it. The nerf-bat was real. I have tried to find evidence of pet canni today, and havent found any. Not that i'm good at searching...

My point is that the nerf-bat was real for chanters too. I have no doubt lots of chanters were charming their asses off, but why would they share it outside their guild? Things were nerfed all the time.

[Dolalin]

Edit: nevermind, fake post

[Tecmos Deception]

That test has to be fabricated.

Approximately 3000 charms at an average duration of 200 seconds? That's 166 hours of sitting there waiting for charm to break. That's weapons-grade autism we don't even have on the p99 forums.

And only a fucking retard would claim that 3000 charms isn't an enormous sample size.

[Dolalin]

Okay I found a more realistic one:

Topic: CHA and Charm - A numerical study at last
posted April 21, 2001 11:01 PM

Ok, first off I don't know anything about statistics. About the only thing I do know is that the larger the sample size the more accurate the results. So maybe if we band together on this some we can all help contribute to a large sample size.

First off, the specifics. I am a 58th level Enchanter. The tests were run on a Seafury Cyclops in the Ocean of Tears. Both tests where run on the same Cyclops. The Cyclops conned green to me, but at the end of the test I killed it and it did give me experience so it was probably 1 level below blue. The tests where run without using Tashanian so as to only see the benefits of Charisma. And each test includes a total of 25 charms. Yes, I know this is WAY too low to have a completely accurate result set, but damn, I can only sit it one place for so long charming the same mob.

Test 1
Charisma = 75
Total Resists = 2
Lowest Duration Charm = 5 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 428 seconds (7:08)
Average Duration = 156 seconds (2:36)

Test 2
Charisma = 205
Total Resists = 2
Lowest Duration Charm = 7 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 426 seconds (7:06)
Average Duration = 161 seconds (2:41)

Specific Charm Durations:

Test 1: 164, 310, 352, 47, 185, 169, 115, 102, 390, 178, 65, 108, 34, 375, 5, 20, 22, 213, 11, 428, 22, 70, 90, 426.

Test 2: 260, 111, 26, 426, 80, 426, 56, 143, 226, 112, 10, 103, 185, 280, 7, 343, 42, 9, 212, 308, 132, 27, 51, 425, 31.

Conclusion: Well, I don't even know if I should be making one as this is far too small of a sample set. And feel free to tear me a new one for doing so, or even better yet contribute your own hard data to give a better understanding.

But what I see from this is that CHA makes no difference at all. The reason could be the mob was green. I can't test on an even con as Boltran's doesn't work on a 58th level mob.

Each test had a total of 2 resists. The lowest and highest durations between each test only had a difference of 2 seconds each, oddly with worst lowest on low CHA and worst highest with high CHA. And the average duration between the tests was only 5 seconds yet there was a difference of 130 Charisma.

What this means is that I will stick with my gut feel of 160 played days and go with another stat besides CHA. I didn't believe in it's value before, and I won't change my mind unless I can see some good hard numbers that show me otherwise.

Wandatin Dai'Noga

http://web.archive.org/web/200105011...c&f=9&t=004395

Edit: Another in the same thread:

Xenti, you said there have been studies done on both mes and charm. I don't ever remember data being posted on charm. That was the whole reason I did this test was to provide hard numbers. Can you give me a link to the previous test?
With that said, in my insanity today I decided to run more tests. This time I ran them on Ssolet Dnaas, an Iksar in Warslick's Woods that is for part of the Veeshan's Peak key quest. He is 50th level and cons blue to a 60th level player. This means that he is most likely in the level range that most people with Boltran's will be engaging. And to test on an even con mob with Boltran's would require doing the tests at 53rd level as after that you can only charm blue cons.

I also decided to extend my tests further this time. I did the first 2 tests again of 75 cha and 205 cha each with a sample size of 25. Then I ran 2 more tests of 25 samples at 75 and 205 cha, but this time I also buffed the Iksar with Resist Magic. Here are the results.

Test 1
Charisma = 75
Mob Buffed = No
Total Resists = 3
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 424 seconds (7:04)
Average Duration Charm = 204 seconds (3:24)

Test 2
Charisma = 205
Mob Buffed = No
Total Resists = 1
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 425 seconds (7:05)
Average Duration Charm = 119 seconds (1:59)

Test 3
Charisma = 75
Mob Buffed = Yes
Total Resists = 11
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 231 seconds (3:51)
Average Duration Charm = 71 seconds (1:11)

Test 4
Charisma = 205
Mob Buffed = Yes
Total Resists = 10
Lowest Duration Charm = 4 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 143 seconds (2:23)
Average Duration Charm = 36 seconds

Conclusions

The tests without buffing show some strange occurences. With 75 CHA the average duration went up by almost a full minute, and with 205 CHA it went down almost a full minute from my previous test. My guess is that this means there simply aren't enough samples taken yet.

Now it is very obvious that MR has a very large impact. Not only did it cut the max duration charm for both CHA settings in half, it also cut the average durations in half. And on top of that resists went up significantly.

And the most interesting thing with this new set of tests is that all of the tests performed better when run with 75 CHA than they did with 205 CHA. The average durations at 75 CHA where almost twice as long as those at 205 CHA.

So what does this mean to me? After running 150 tests I still see no data showing that high CHA gives any benefit at all. In fact it might be just the opposite. The only thing that does stick out to me is that charm is much more successful when magic resist is lower. So I will continue to keep my CHA wherever it ends up when focusing on other gear, and will use Tash while charming.

Wandatin Dai'Noga

From what I can see, P99 might use the same charm code as the EQEmu charm code (Haynar / Nilbog / Rogean would know) and which factors Charisma into charm duration. Maybe it shouldn't.

Actually that's incorrect according to the eqemu code. Each tick, there is a fixed 25/100 (25%) chance of triggering a charm break check. The code then basically says each 10 points of charisma count for 1/200 reduction in charm break chance (after taking into account level and MR). The effects of Level, MR, and Charisma all add up to a total out of 200. Charisma is 25.5 (assuming 255 max CHA) points out of the total 200. Please fact check me though since its been a few months since I looked at the code.

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...3&postcount=26

[Tecmos Deception]

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

Okay I found a more realistic one:

This one probably supports charm being close to right on p99. Several-minute charms, 2+ minute averages, while on a mob that was green but not by much, but with no tash, no malaise, no -mr gear. It doesn't seem a stretch at all to end up with 3-minute or 4-minute average charms on a low blue when you are bringing a shitload of MR debuff into play, or to have an ocassional 7+ minute charm even on a higher blue con. Etc.

Good finds though. I'm awful at digging up posts if I have to use wayback to find them [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]


Going down that thread he tests against a level 50 mob:

posted April 22, 2001 09:21 PM Profile for Wandatin Author's Homepage Send New Private Message Edit/Delete Post Reply With Quote Xenti, you said there have been studies done on both mes and charm. I don't ever remember data being posted on charm. That was the whole reason I did this test was to provide hard numbers. Can you give me a link to the previous test?

With that said, in my insanity today I decided to run more tests. This time I ran them on Ssolet Dnaas, an Iksar in Warslick's Woods that is for part of the Veeshan's Peak key quest. He is 50th level and cons blue to a 60th level player. This means that he is most likely in the level range that most people with Boltran's will be engaging. And to test on an even con mob with Boltran's would require doing the tests at 53rd level as after that you can only charm blue cons.

I also decided to extend my tests further this time. I did the first 2 tests again of 75 cha and 205 cha each with a sample size of 25. Then I ran 2 more tests of 25 samples at 75 and 205 cha, but this time I also buffed the Iksar with Resist Magic. Here are the results.

Test 1
Charisma = 75
Mob Buffed = No
Total Resists = 3
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 424 seconds (7:04)
Average Duration Charm = 204 seconds (3:24)

Test 2
Charisma = 205
Mob Buffed = No
Total Resists = 1
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 425 seconds (7:05)
Average Duration Charm = 119 seconds (1:59)

Test 3
Charisma = 75
Mob Buffed = Yes
Total Resists = 11
Lowest Duration Charm = 6 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 231 seconds (3:51)
Average Duration Charm = 71 seconds (1:11)

Test 4
Charisma = 205
Mob Buffed = Yes
Total Resists = 10
Lowest Duration Charm = 4 seconds
Longest Duration Charm = 143 seconds (2:23)
Average Duration Charm = 36 seconds

7-minute max durations, with 2-3ish-minute average durations, of a level 50 mob by a level 58 enchanter without using tash, malaise, -mr gear. chArM diDNt LaST lOnG oN LivE!1

Note how HUGELY +40 magic resist affected charm durations. Now, charm naysayers, imagine if you can that was a -33 (highest classic tash) or -93 (highest classic tash+malaise) instead of a +40 and take a wild guess how well the charms would have stuck on live, from a 58 enchanter to a 50 mob, in classic era, without even using -mr pet gear (which could be another -30 in classic or even -50 in kunark/velious if you're serious enough about it).

[derpcake2]

kul69 is mad, bad and sad

move to resolved

[derpcake2]

I played in classic.

People thought being in the "spawn radius" would stop nameds from spawning, there was a secret banker in befallen that would let you change copper in plat, and we were casting harmony on casters because it improved their manaregen.

One day I went with a friend to Rathe Mountains, to see if we could take hill giants to take falling damage.

We still played better then kul69.

[Mushman]

I really don't understand the obsession with data for charm. Is it not clear that it's so incredibly strong that it has had a large and negative impact on the community for a long time now? Should be a common sense change under the "Vision of classic" clause.

Don't care if values are 100% accurate, it's destructive and wouldn't have been allowed to have the impact that it has now in era 1999.

[Tecmos Deception]

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

I really don't understand the obsession with data for charm. Is it not clear that it's so incredibly strong that it has had a large and negative impact on the community for a long time now? Should be a common sense change under the "Vision of classic" clause.

Don't care if values are 100% accurate, it's destructive and wouldn't have been allowed to have the impact that it has now in era 1999.

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

I'll keep making classic changes when I can, regardless if people threaten to quit. I'm here to recreate classic eq; not to make people happy.