Charm is too strong

This is so true. I haven't played an enchanter much, but I distinctly remember the terror of running out to grab a glass of water praying that charm wouldn't. Had to take off my socks specifically while playing an enchanter so I wouldn't slip on the hardwood floors while running to grab something.

Can we get some parses up in here? I think some data would really tell the story of just how OP charm is. I'm thinking about creating an enc on Miragul or something and running to zones with the most OP pets like Velks to do a quick parse.

It's far past time, but it needs to come with other changes to enchanters as well. Without charm enchanters will basically be bards in raids early era, which is pretty sad. Even more ideally, it should come with other balance changes/fixes, like changes to rogues for example.

I love charm, it's a cool mechanic. It's also massively busted.

No one said remove charm, how do you get enchanters won't have charm from "nerf charm." Charm is excessively overpowered with very little risk. Like people have said, enchanter pets in Chardok quad for 200+ a hit...it is not even fair.

Yeah it’s pretty busted. With faction in chardok I was able to solo charm and camp pretty much anything in the zone. Within 1 week into Kunark I could successfully duo box chardok royals with my cleric. I remember one day another enchanter and my cleric were down at royals and a GUILD picked over (about 15-16 players). We dps raced them and won rofl. They didn’t have an enchanter. When 3 players can out dps 2+ groups you know something is not working as intended lol.

I’ve decided to play a Necro this go round, I want to try EQ on a slightly higher difficulty level this time.
Who am I kidding- I’ll still make an enchanter box .

asking for nerfs is still not allowed in here,could you just quit it already, it gets tiring fast...

I remember once on Phinny I died charming.
Ever since then I still wake up in a cold sweat hoping it'll never happen again.

You know what I find tiring? People trying to censor others that they don't agree with. I talked to dreamweaver directly about this. We are allowed to discuss balance issues and how we would fix them as long as the word 'nerf' is not used.

If we adopt the mentality that we should never discuss balance changes then we would be back to a time when mitigation of the mighty didn't exist and Ntov dragons were dieing in seconds. Mage box armies would still be running rampant with their broken fire pets and monks would still be hitting for outrageous numbers due to out of era fist tables.

Personally i think charm falls into the aforementioned camp, especially when it comes to lvl 40+ EXP dungeon groups like chardok or lower guk. Charm pets are out tanking the group tanks and often times doing more damage than 2-3 DPS classes. The low risk of the spell breaking makes it fairly safe to use. Anyone who played an enchanter knows this isn't how the spell worked on early live versions of the game. Even with very high charisma it wasn't nearly as reliable.

Some tweaks to resist checks would bring the spell back in line with how it was originally and i think it would be a good solution.

well said

Charm is completely broken in the early expansions and I'm surprised they've let it be in this state for so many servers.

They do more damage than a whole group of normal dps. There's probably some zones where it would take like 8 rogues to do the damage of a charm pet.

Their ridiculous damage also leads to ridiculous threat generation. The second the pet is sent in on a mob, that mob is locked onto the pet. The only way someone will pull threat off of the pet is with taunt.

They have too much hp. This lets clerics basically afk and only complete heal the charm pet every minute or two.

There is basically no risk in charming. You have a 1.5 sec cast time stun and the pet is completely under control after that. There is almost no situation where you should die to a charm pet, even with it fully geared. If you have runes up, the charm pet will barely make it through your runes on a charm break, if it even does manage to make it through the runes.

Starting in Omens of War, charm actually becomes balanced. Instead of doing more damage than a whole group, the charm pet does around the same damage as a normal group member. This still makes charm really strong and worth using whenever you can. This is exactly how it should work in the early expansions.

I not play past 70 lv, but I don't understand if your pet do 50% of damage if charmed isn't it still very good? Lvl 50 mobs in Classic can hit for 130+ dmg very fast, no other melee can do it for sure. If, for example, pet will do 70 dmg after nerf (but still with double/triple attack and hasted) why it will be terrible? All other pets, mage or necro do how much at this lvl not sure, around 40-50? But still charmed pet have BIG hp compared to tank classes (Allizeaurus or how it name in OOT have about 12k HP), if even nerf reduce HP too it still VERY good for Classic?

No one is asking for them to be "nerfed to death" and no one is asking about future expacs....

Even if charm is made less reliable, or if charmed pets dps is cut in half (for example) they will still be the most sought after class in every group, they just wont be as broken as they are now.

A small change could balance the class w/o ruining this mechanic. Just reduce NPC DPS by 10-15% when charmed. Charm will still be great, in fact it will probably still be the top DPS in most group but it will be a bit closer to other top end DPS during the appropriate eras.

If, we want to talk balance we need to buff something too. I nominate bard charm to be buffed.

What's annoying is how people like you repeatedly suggest that gutting a weak class on is somehow good for the game. How is charm in VP, NTOV, VT, PoTime, LDoN Raids, Tacvi, Txveu, Anguish? There is what two fights in 5+ expansions where Enchanters are more then just weak bards and you wanna nerf them because they're above avg in XP groups that also have a Cleric for CHeal?

EQ is one of the few games with such archaic balance considerations where arguments of "It's OK that enchanters can out DPS entire groups in the group game because enchanters aren't super useful in these raids that will release a year from now on this server" isn't totally untenable.

Charm is over tuned. Very few were abusing charm back 20 years ago because it just wasn't reliable like it is now. You also needed gear and Charisma to charm. If you didnt have the mana pool or gear to support charming it just wasn't a thing without you going OOM or your healer going OOM. It was high risk high reward. Right now it's no risk, high reward . It's a broken mechanic and many people will say it's fine so they can abuse it to level quick and farm gear by themselves.

I'm not talking about enchanters specifically, charm as a mechanic is over-tuned. Enchanters just do it best because they have all the tools to support it. That being said I feel that Enchanters are insanely good in groups even without charm. Mana regen and haste alone is a good enough reason to have an Enchanter in your group. Then you also get mez, nukes, tash, stuns. They are strong. They don't need to be top DPS and tanks for your group. That's just broken. Enchanters also have a better low level experience then most the other classes.

On raids, sure enchanter is a little lack luster (so are a bunch of classes), you only realistically need a few of them.

Talking about charm as a mechanic for a grouping experience. Sorry I don't think it's fun playing my Warrior and not tanking and just sitting there with my hands in my pants because I have a person that can charm carrying me

woops

Shaman slows are over tuned
Complete heal is over tuned
Ogre frontal melee stun immunity is over tuned

Back in the day I routinely charmed with my bard and equipped the pet with two gnoll hide lariats. Enchanter charm has nothing on bards.

I don’t know what the real problem is but there is more to these nerd calls than just charm

When ogre shaman tanked stuff in Velious that was definitely inintended game play. Charm is not a problem

OP sayd nothing about any "Nerf"

we are only discussing the strength of charm.

IMO charm has too high a reward considering how easy it is to use it succesfully.

also I find it boring to play an enchanter as everyone expect you to charm all the time, thats not how i see the enchanter, I would much rather have enchanters be more mezz/buff focused but that's part a of bigger issue.