TLP balancing and why it's not happening?

The most broken aspect of an enchanter is their damage. The most important aspect of a group is damage.

Comparing druid/shaman healing to cleric....and enchanter charm dps to any other dps, is a bad comparison.

You can still chain pull without a cleric, but if you're without an enchanter your groups dps is comparatively ****, and thus your exp per hour is much worse.

Stop denying enchanters are horrendously op. It's blatently obvious. If you want to argue about not changing that, fine. But can we stop with denying simple reality at least?

Well, if you want to go down that route...if you're outside, druids can do the same thing and in almost every dungeon there's an undead or two for necromancers. Matter of fact, let's nerf druids then because they can charm and heal, doggone it. Just because something's the flavor of the month isn't a good reason to nerf something. How about maybe take a different approach? Buff some other classes that need some love. I'm sure rogues would love some buffage for classic. They could also give some ZEMs for outside zones like the Karanas to cut down on some of the bottlenecks in UR/Guk and lead to Paw for a different look in leveling. Give rangers maybe a bit more tank-ability up through PoP so they have an easier time getting groups. Buff the mage pet a bit. Give warriors some actual freaking threat in Classic. Buff the necro pet. It's not like the PVE balance really matters. The strats are all there. The content is paint by numbers (although the fun is the nostalgia, not the challenge) and raids are really just an attention and gear check, right?

Nerf, nerf, nerf. Always too much hate. I prefer solutions that make people happier. Buffing other classes for playability is a much better solution imo.

now that I've had my fun playing this awesome class on several TLPs and do not plan to play the new servers, I say nerf the piss out of enchanters. Would also like to see the stupid power of complete heal and slow addressed finally. It might make raid content actually challenging. This will for sure make the game more fun for everyone

You have misunderstood my intent, despite my clearly saying what that was.

I am not saying that there isn't a problem with low level enchanters (below level 75), I literally said that the post I responded to was using a very flawed logic to argue the point & proceeded to show another example using the exact same flawed logic as a way to show that.

You pointing out the Wizard example that I gave was flawed was the the whole point of that example and you missed it entirely, you literally proved my argument albeit unintentionally.

Previously I have said lets see some numbers, and nobody has been posting any so far in this thread to back up these assertions, what is a rational person to make of that?
Am I, or anyone else not given to hearsay, simply expected to take everything at face value, sorry not my style, if there are parses to back up this "belief" and there are multiple examples showing the numbers I may well be willing to support the nerf call, until then I will continue to believe the problem is being exaggerated.

So my position is clear, I am not saying there is no problem, but until there is some factual information to work off I shall remain unconvinced it is as bad as people are making out it out to be.

I specifically posted some hard numbers in a response to your post. They were taken specifically in PoP on my Mage since that is where Mangler is right now and since my Mage tends to stay in one place (vs my bard who is pulling all the time and so has bad data), but they showed that on average charm pet damage in Plane of Fire and BoT is 150-200% that of a dedicated DPS class (my mage) based on gamparse. You can claim its a fairly small sample size (only 150 mobs or so across two different zones), but going over my other parses, they roughly line up with the data I provided, and they match or somewhat under-report the damage I have seen in countless live parses since (i.e. data gamparse is providing me in the moment when I parse group damage vs Charm pets) since I started using gamparse in Velious. And of course, in all these scenarios the charm pet is acting as a very efficient main tank, furthering their value considerably.

If you have your doubts, I'd encourage you to check out gamparse and see for yourself. It's very apparent in live parses how powerful charm pets are in zones like Plane of Fire, BoT, and Tactics, as you'll often see the Charm pet doing 400-500+ DPS and putting everyone else to shame. Occasionally you'll see someone nuke hard and hit close to that level, but never consistently.

I should note the problem here is with CHARM pets in general. Enchanters are so powerful because they have the power to charm in virtually any zone, but yes, in specific zones Druids, Necromancers, and even Mages (in that one zone in PoP) feel super OP as well. Though even in those situations enchanters are generally the best equipped to deal with charm breaks and offer more unique abilities above and beyond their insane DPS.

I will admit I had missed that data, so thank you for posting it.

And you do acknowledge the issue of powerful charm pets is applicable to all of the classes who can charm, the fact that Enchanters gain the most from charm due to the wider range of NPC that they can use for it is what appears to be one issue. The power of ALL charmed pets appears to be the other.

This brings up a lot of questions and I think people would be wise to not simply jump to a conclusion without weighing up the bigger picture of how Enchanter play works out.

Yes Enchanters can charm more types of NPC - should that be reduced in types in much the same way Necromancer can only charm Undead type, Magician can only charm Elemental type & Shaman & Druid may only charm Animals? If so what type would you propose & would you make the type that other players with restrictions can charm not allowed for Enchanters? (i.e. that Undead, Elemental & Animal would be types an Enchanter cannot charm).

Would you & the classes who currently can charm, be happy to see ALL charm pets have their damage reduced? This would be a nerf to all classes who can charm in order to bring Enchanters down a peg.

IF you are going to nerf ALL Charm pets, what risk vs reward are you thinking of & what is the damage output you would expect to see from a charmed pet with the current level of risk involved to the charmer? - I myself would expect harder to control charm pets along with the standard damage the class can put out to be more than "safer" dps types that do not have to manage a dangerous charm pet, how much more is the debatable point.

There are a bunch of other questions you could get into around charm but these are the ones that come to mind for me, targeting Enchanters alone if all charm pets are too powerful is not a good or fair solution, you would leave situational power in the other charmers hands.

You also should bear in mind what playing an Enchanter is like, Charm for that class is a big part of their offensive arsenal and the most major part of what makes them fun to play not merely a situational toy, take Enchanter charm away and they are reduced to being weak support class alongside crowd control & both of those things don't always make them attractive to a group, a good puller can eradicate the need for CC in many situations.

I would like to see more parses, and from a range of classes for comparison but I think this Power of Enchanters nerf call is still misguided and motivated by jealousy rather than a concern for what is good for the game. The problem largely gets dealt with later in the game, play beyond PoP and there is a long level 70 stretch where Enchanters are really awful to play & they just do not feel valuable until the 80+ era, there is a bit of a swing too far in the opposite direction, then & I think too many don't even care about that.

Players may be calling for nerfs to Enchanters 50-65, but at level 70 you will be calling for them to get help - just as they were on live servers, because so many Enchanters quit playing in the 70 era as it was so bad for them. IF you are going to call for nerfs in the 50-65 range add in some calls to help them out in the level 70 range or you risk having few or no Enchanters playing when you reach that content when you will really need them.
80-105 at least Enchanters are in a pretty decent spot without being over powered, I can't speak to how they are beyond that.

I don't think people are arguing that enchanters aren't OP in group xp settings. Sure they are... But my point is so what? If it was a huge issue everyone would play enchanters, warriors, clerics, and maybe bards for pulling and that's it. But we see all classes are played. Why? Because people like playing rogues, druids, whatever.

Why does it matter that a group with 2 enc charm pets is gonna triple the xp earned by a group without 2 enc charm pets? Clap to the group that has enchanters. If you care about min maxing or just grinding the most xp possible, play a chanters or recruit chanters to your group. Most players don't care about this.

Also to people who think there's no risk in charming... You're vastly overrating the skill of people in this game. I've met plenty of bad players who don't even want to charm or can't handle charm breaks. Not everyone is some super tryhard who's been playing EQ nonstop for 20 years and knows all the tricks. A lot of these forums skew to more experienced players and therefore project their own skill and experience onto others.

Most people likely don't care that enchanters are too strong, most people are just happy to be playing the game. Plus: the huge disparity in group power is really not that relevant for most of EQ as far as I understand. Ya if I'm racing to be a server first lvl 50 on a new TLP I'm gonna cherry pick chanters for my group, but a small % of a server pop is trying to do that.

There's literally a forum post right now about a guy who just wants to start a new server and run from Halas to Commons just because it's fun. Most players in this game are casuals and like random stuff like that, whether they have charm pets in their group doesn't hinder their experience at all...

Enchanters are an unbearably unfun class to play on raids and stack terribly, we need to extend that design paradigm to the rest of the game. To make it more fun, you see

My Sarcasm detector is going crazy!

It's funny you mention BoT and mage considering that Mage charm DPS is just straight up better in BoT. Really good argument for chanters being OP IMO.

Yeah, but if you look at the actual argument and not one you made up, it's that chanters are the best at too many roles. There is no need to use these comparisons that do not apply. Clerics are the best healers absolutely but other healers come close enough and clerics arent also the best dps and CC too. Nobody really comes close to what an enchanter brings in its totality in terms of being the strongest in several areas and the utility they also bring.

Except my argument is that charm pets are overpowered in general. So yeah, in BoT, mages feel pretty OP. When there is a level appropriate undead or animal charm target, Necromancers and Druids feel OP as well. It just so happens Enchanters get to be OP in pretty much every zone, so they are principle offenders. Charm Pets are the problem.

Additionally, they are the masters of CC and bring a host of other utility to groups, so they'd be highly valued in most groups even if they weren't the top dps, so that adds insult to injury, but I really do think it's secondary to the OP nature of charm.

If this were a modern mmo, I'd be surprised if we were seriously having this conversation. Charm pets would be aggressively nerfed right out of the gate.

As I've stated before, I actually don't care that much whether they nerf charm or not since in a lot of ways the progression servers are trying to recreate the feeling of original everquest over time. At the same time, if they nerfed charm so that it gives, say, a 5% slow, this preventing pets from being hasted, I would totally get it and I expect charm pets would still be pretty valuable.

Not optimal, for sure. I could list the reasons a bard can't compete with enchanters on charm but I'm sure you know them. Not least of which is Tash.

Reported!