I had a discussion with two players in general chat over the mechanics of spell casting and we all three disagreed somewhere. I stated that I believe when a spell is cast, the skill (e.g. alteration) affects ONLY fizzle rate, the skill (e.g. specialized alteration) affects ONLY mana consumption. When a spell landed (e.g. Savage Roots) the victim's magic resist, my adventure level, and their respective level were the only 3 data points that affected whether or not this spell was resisted. I stated that when root broke early without any actions taken (no spells or melee against rooted victim) it was because a once a tick random roll of the dice calculating my level vs victims level. Among my points of proclamation, one of the other players disagreed with me stating that spell skill and spell spec skill additionally affected whether or not the spell resisted, and how well it performed throughout its duration. In addition they were stating that casting lvl 1 root would work better on same level victim than max level root for my casting level. These points they made under the assumption that it was sound logic that spell skill and spell spec skill were not so simply used as fizzle and mana check before cast timer, in addition to resist and premature break checks. Would a developer please chime in and clarify for me if I am wrong or right? 13 yr old druid here at level 91... Thanks.
The devs are rather busy at the moment. But you are right and your opponent is wrong. Skill level only affects the fizzle chance. And specialization is just mana preservation. Nothing else.
The only thing I've ever heard about being different to this is Encs, charm/mez/lull and CHA. There is some sort of CHA based check with enc but it is completely irrelevant these days as even the most basic of gear will put you above the level of CHA where it matters.
Rout and charm function somewhat similarly in their early break mechanics. Every tick (6s) the game should calculate the mobs magic resist, and level differential and roll a dice on an early break. Charm is different in that CHA plays a role, I thought up to 200. Root in that direct damage spells have a percent chance to break root also. I seem to recall hearing that the Enchanter AA total domination made the check longer, like every 2-3 ticks or something. But I was never sure and you'd have to be a dev to know for certain. Base casting skills affect your chance to fizzle only - Yes Specialization skills affect mana preservation (something to the tune of 1% pres for every 18-20 skill points) - Yes Resists are based off mob resistance, and level differential - Yes (there are other things like belly caster and reflects that can come into play) You seem to be right on all the points you brought up.
To the best of my knowledge CHA only comes into play with lulls that are resisted by the target and it doesn't just affect enchanter lulls but all lulls. If a mob is immune to lulls either because they are flagged as immune or are of two high a level, the spell isn't even cast. There are no checks other than the failed immunity check. If a mob is not immune, then normal normal checks will apply to determine if the mob resists the spell. CHA is not involved in these checks. If the mob resists the lull, then a check is made to see if the mob will agro the caster. This is the Charisma check and the higher the caster's CHA the less likely the mob will attack. Most players in todays game (except very low level players) have a CHA that is high enough to ensure the mob almost never will agro.
Gcubed, what you said about Lull makes sense, though that's the first I've heard about that in 13 years. Regarding charisma on lull only I will disagree. I've experienced charm at lower levels pre-defiant and at present levels with aa's (druid) and I can attest that charisma is almost definitely part of the "charm break" calculations. Thank you guys for helping clear up the information I posted earlier.
Druid lulls (harmony line) are resisted so infrequently by design, us Druids would probably never be able to tell the difference with high CHA or not.
Figured I'd pop in here, since I was the one you were arguing with. First off, the original question was about nukes, not roots. We kinda veered off into a discussion of roots after the fact, but I'd rather not muddy the mechanics issue by talking about roots, given that there are additional break rules to roots that obviously don't apply to direct damage spells. If you recall, the original question was from a druid who was complaining that his nukes got resisted a lot and he was asking if wizards had the same issue. My response was that wizard nukes get resisted less often, even for spells with the same resists adjustment because their familiars grant them higher effective casting level and they're more likely to have full specialization in evocation. My argument was that when casting a spell, the casters level and appropriate spell skill is compared to the base level of the spell being cast (the lowest level it's gained at by any class which can cast it). Specialization adds to the base skill for this purpose (although I can't say for sure that it's a direct 1 to 1 weight). A random roll is added in and the resulting check determines if the spell succeeds or fizzles. We all presumably agree on this point. Where the disagreement came in is that I argued that the numerical result of that comparison is carried over to the effect calculation. So the better you succeed at casting the spell, the more likely you are to affect the mob (ie: less likely to be resisted). For spells where a partial resist is possible generating a range of outcomes (not the same as a spell with an inherent random range of damage btw), it therefore will also affect the likelihood of doing more or less damage from zero (full resist) to max damage. The reason I believe this is because years and years ago I, when my wizard was in his teens and 20s (back when it took some time to go through those levels), I did a whole series of tests on this. One of the most common factors when using those older/lower level spells was that casters would tend to stick with older spells for a level or two after getting a new set, not just because of the increased fizzle chance, but because you were less likely to get full damage. I can't stress that back then, this was common practice, not questioned at all, and something that I personally did a lot of number crunching on to confirm. It was that noticeable that even though my new nuke could do 20% more damage, I'd actually do less damage per hit than the old one (even ignoring fizzles). The proposed reason for this is that since an older spell was "easier" relative to your current level and skill, more of that calculation would carry over to the resist check, thus resulting in fewer resists and more average damage per hit. Certainly, if the only thing that affected resists was my level and the level/resist of the mob, I would never have noticed newer spells being resisted so much more often that I'd use older spells in preference to them. One of the things I also noticed directly was that upon training specialization:evocation, not only did the fizzle rate decrease, but the damage average increased. Which was why it was really obvious to me that not only does spell skill carry over in some way to resist chance, but that specialization does add in some way to this as well. I'll also point out that the reason why many players today are likely not aware of this is precisely because specialization so much "overloads" the skill level factor that it's harder to see this effect. Only if you spend some time with a character in their teens and pay attention to your damage based on which spell you're using will you see this. And no one does that today. It does, however, nicely explain why a druid might experience more resists than a wizard. Assuming the wizard has spec:evocation and the druid does not, the druid is relying on the base specialization, which may not be sufficient to minimize the rate of resists. It's possible I'm wrong. It's possible that somewhere along the line, they completely changed the spell mechanics in EQ. It's also possible that they implemented more gradual change with newer spells with regards to resistance checks such that this isn't a noticeable factor anymore (although I really do suspect that the specialization stuff is what's masking that most of the time). As I stated at the time though, if you really really don't believe me, you can always test this: Create a wizard. Level him to say 20, but just use a merc to kill everything (or box, or whatever). Now, grab a nice comfy area with level appropriate mobs and start nuking with the same spell over and over. Ignore fizzles, since we're not looking at them. Only parse successful casts with regard to resists and average damage done. Separate the data into ranges of evocation skill (cause your skill will rise while you're doing this). Then look at the results. Unless they have changed something over time, you should see that when you skill is "low", you'll get more resists and lower average damage, then when it's "high". You can then go train spec:evocation and watch the same exact effect again. I know that when I first trained this way back in the day, I absolutely noticed a significant difference in my resist rate. It was so noticeable, in fact, that it was after learning this skill that I no longer needed to think about continuing to use older spells for awhile after a new one was gained. Today, this is something most players wont notice, because you blow past those levels and spells so fast. But back in the day, this effect was noticed and people (like myself) made assumptions about how the spell mechanics worked based on it.
CHA up to 255 plays a *small* part in Mez, Charm, and Lull resist checks/breaks. Anything after that does not matter. Heroic CHA does not affect any of those (or really anything in general). Like someone else said, hitting the point where CHA matters is trivial in today's game.
“Filatal said: "Charisma affects resists against Mez, Lull, Charm. Outside of a dev coming in and saying they have changed things, this is a fact and can not be assailed. Now, the cap is so low and so easily passed that in today's game it is relatively pointless to gear for Charisma. Lowering magic resists will still give you better bang for your buck on these spells." This is an extremely accurate statement for the high level game.” — Piestro, SOE Community Relations
