Simple fix for charm that's already coded

Forgive me for not knowing what state of the game every single forum poster wants the game to revert to.

Without me knowing you want certain changes reverted, what I quoted you saying DOES sound like trolling. I know you think you're big **** around here, but keep in mind we don't all live on this forum, and we're not psychic.

Why don't you just play a bard

Because I absolutely suck at it.

That never stopped anyone before.

I've found that the loudest people clamoring for charm nerfs tend to be enchanters who do not want to actually charm. They liked their CC life back before people realized how good their dps could be and want to go back to an easier gameplay without the pressure and need for constant attention.

The problem is that the state of charming or some imaginary difficulty to it was never the reason that you could be a "great enchanter" without ever charming. That was only the case because the general mass of eq players didn't realize just how good charm was and was not used to the experience of having it in their groups. There were plenty of top players at high levels / raiding who were charming and loving it. The difference was that most people were not max or close to it, not raiding, and not researching or metagaming at all really. They just played. They didn't know.

In reality, back in 2001 you SHOULD have been charming if you were a good enchanter and if you didn't you were actually NOT a good one. You were leaving massive dps on the table and playing in an obscenely sub-optimal manner. Nothing about charm has changed. The general perception and awareness changed. If people could go back in time and play eq on those early garbage pcs and modems with pre-god/tss character updates they would still absolutely charm because we all know better now. Faster death if it breaks and actual corpse runs? Perfectly well worth it!

If you are an enchanter and you don't charm you are not playing your enchanter well. Same with many casters and rain spells and god knows how many other "tricks of the trade" that are basic common knowledge now.

Sorry to have to repeat myself but back then most people hated charm because of the risks. Enchanters didn't have near the mitigation back then and a charm break often resulted in a dead enchanter and a wipe. It took a very regular, dedicated group to allow the enchanter to charm.

Good players still charmed. Most people weren't good. Hell, to give it perspective, a ton (maybe even most) raid guilds banned NORMAL pets! You know the ones that were used to petwall and absolutely demolish content on early tlps when people realized how powerful they could be? Nope, their bad pathing + agro was considered a liability, no pets on raids. People weren't good.

Mitigation? Just stand back, use stuns, and have your healer cast proactively before your hps are already dropping. Charm isn't hard and mitigation buffs in tss didn't make it easy. People just weren't experienced with it, or at least MOST people weren't, but the best players were. The various uberguilds constantly referenced charming and I bet if you go back on like foh or afterlife or whoever posts you'll find it.

So it's not about going back to how things were, because things actually haven't really changed. The only way to have enchanters be the way they used to be is to have the general masses of players go back to being inexperienced with it and clueless to how good it is, and maybe be casuals not trying to level or raid either. Good luck with that.

What percentage, do you think? I played an enchanter in those days. I'd say less than 10% charmed. Now, you can continue to make your point and say "lots" but, honestly, what percentage?

In my own experience, the raiding chanters I knew charmed and the casuals I knew didn't...so, say an 80/20 split? Maybe 85/15? This was on Tholluxe Paells around the PoP/LDoN era, fwiw.

Back in the day duoing with a druid friend I as a bard was charming giants in GD. He was uneasy but I gave the giant pets a pair of gnoll hide lariats. Then he realized that he had a charm spell for animals. Sure we had occasional breaks but that's why we had a cleric box tagging along

I'd say that squares with my experience playing on Povar, Luclin and Prexus around the same time period. I saw more charming from enchanters from Classic-Velious than after, I think, but it's been so long that I'm a bit fuzzy. I wouldn't be surprised if Luclin's jump in mob damage turned more casual people and more casual groups off it, though. I know I got lots of pushback using it as a necro in undead-heavy LDoNs when I had to be the main source of CC.

Definitely much less risk with a druid to keep the charmee snared on breaks.

Plus your own runspeed buff when dealing with fast mobs.

Prior to the PoP/LDoN era MOB MR nerfs - just about zero enchanters bothered charming outside of a very safe solo outdoor 2 mob camp.

Sounds about right. 1 in 10, maybe a little less.

How many people back in those days raided end bosses of the current expansion? 1 in 10, maybe less? I'd wager 1 in 10 might be about right for just being max level in the middle of an expansion, let alone any raiding.

Changes to mitigation are not what made everyone today charm, just like they aren't what made everyone today want to raid. The entire attitude that casuals don't get to kill nagafen is gone. Everyone wants to max level. Everyone wants to raid. And everyone knows that charming is the optimal way to get where you want and they expect enchanters to do it.

Stop calling for nerfs, this is literally against the forum rules. Why it's never policed I will never understand.

Charm is fine. Ask for other classes to be buffed. It's disgusting how many people want to take away the most fun and engaging aspect of the Enchanter play style and, in the process, reduce it to the most boring iteration of the class that it eventually becomes.

Charm has been around since the class was envisioned - the animation pet didn't even exist in original concept. On live, Prexus, I relied heavily on charm and sincerely have no idea why people are claiming that it wasn't a thing back then. Shout out to Arghificious, you taught me a lot back then. Nakilos, you were always mean =p

Stop exaggerating. No one wants to "take away" charm. There is a middle ground between outrageous DPS and worthless, you know.

Or they could balance the other classes toward charm.

My main classes in 99 was a cleric and pali (and I played the day EQ went live), I rarely saw charm. When you were doing half hour or longer corpse runs, players were risk adverse. After corpse runs ended, that’s when charming started to get popular. Players who haven’t experienced the original corpse runs have no idea how painful that was. And if someone wiped a group more then once, some players would blacklist them and refuse to play in a group with them. One of my college buds played a chanter and rarely charmed because of this...

This is also true. Charm before convenience and power creep was a different proposition in casual groups, at least.