Charm is too strong

I never had a problem chain pulling when I was playing only a monk and my wife was playing only a cleric.

A lot of scrub mentality in this game.

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win

Yeah I think at this point it's been established by the vast majority that charm is OP and is unhealthy for the game. We need some ideas for potential fixes to make for a more healthy leveling experience. I think charm can maintain it's power but the resist checks and charm breaks have to be changed. It has to be a pain to charm if it's power level is going to stay the same.

In previous posts I also mentions a slow component to charm. After thinking about it I feel that it's too much of a change. Charm can still be strong but the risk vs reward aspect of it has to be adjusted.

Uh, no. Not even close. If that's your takeaway from this thread, well, I feel sorry for you.

If you don't think it's OP you are lying to yourself at this point. It's fine to not want it changed. But i actually feel bad for you, guy.

If your takeaway is to deny reality, I feel sorry for you.

Charm out damages groups right now. How can you possibly think that a spell that is used by the best support class in the game should be able to out damage an entire group with very little danger? You have to be not looking at the comp to die to a charm. The class literally has super fast cast aoe stuns that do not need a target to stun them how do you die? The current duration and ease of holding a charm warps the original design of the risk vs reward style of the spell. In classic and p99 charming is dangerous and only the best are able to do it without harming their group.

On TLP's you are kicked out of the group if you don't have a charm pet. You use to only be able to hold a charm pet when you were full mana since it would break fairly often and by holding a charm pet you would lose mana just from controlling it and recasting charm. But on TLP's and cha not affecting the break checks you get full duration charms almost all the time and it becomes almost a non factor.

Now this is coming from somebody who is about to play his 3rd enchanter on TLP's.

I understand people currently rely on it to level fast but I feel if anything they should nerf xp required a little if they did go through with any charm change because it would slow the entire player base down leveling because pretty much every group uses charm.

Once again I will have to call shenanigans on claims that "no one charmed through Velious" or whatever. Playing a bard usually in group with a druid we'd charm all the time. Sure it was dangerous but that didn't stop us from doing it and having a blast. Pet giants dual wielding gnoll hide lariats were just awesome. I was shocked the first time I encountered an enchanter who was afraid to charm.

Heck, we didn't even have an Ogre tank with the almighty "stun immunity". I suppose that I've played over 20 years and never ever knew what I was doing

An argument could be made that for TLP's.
Charm in early expansions is Everquest's -Akuma.

Chanter/Cleric box is the cheapest and easiest way to be able to do basically all non-raid content by yourself for (at the very least) 9 months, so I understand why some people resist changes to charm. Aradune's 2 box limit is probably making people extra defensive because, if that duo ceased to exist, they would be forced to group in certain situations.

I'm conflicted about the whole thing because I've had fun playing enc/clr box on previous TLPs and plan on playing it again on Aradune, but I can't pretend that charm is balanced or that the risk justifies the reward. There's really no way to deny that charmed pets in their current state are incredibly overpowered without it sounding self-serving at this point.

That being said, this has been a known issue since the beginning of the TLPs and nothing has been done about it, so I'm pretty sure that the charm defenders can relax.

So what, would your own "sympathetic fix" suggestion be to be make Enchanter charm undead/animal/elemtental only?

For the most part people taking exception to situational super OP'ness isn't at the core of the vast majority of the call for change here, and enchanter charm is getting that bulk of the ire due to the fact it's everyday use in the game world just continually grows to be anything but situational. Again, it's CharmQuest basically taking over as "the" focal point to a lot of what exp and content grinding goes on for people outside of raiding for a long time after these TLP release that people are seeing as the issue. Which happens regardless if you are the one rolling that enchanter or not.

You keep bringing up class balance, as if chanters would be left hurting with mana regen and the best CC in the game in the event charmed pets stopping being the equivalent of a mostly full group replacement that can be applied at almost every camp out there. A change here would be a lot more about addressing gameplay balance and nerfing "a_charmed_pet_X" out of being the most influential "class" in the game then nerfing the enchanter. Which then would hopefully spider web itself down into contributing positively to other less the ideal grouping game world problems such as the ones being discussed in this thread - https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...t-lfg-for-hours-youre-wrong-heres-why.266142/

Where ya know, best case scenario that ragtag group of adventurers you convince to form up rather then sit lfg hoping to get that much much more optimal grouping spot latter just gets mostly rolled over by any nearby group with a pet out dps'ing your entire party by itself. Or worse case scenario you pick around and mostly just find every decent camp with either a full charmed pet group already there, or on the upcoming server like Aradune an all time high amount of chanter/healer krono farmers locking them down.

So you agree that this thread has proven charm is OP and is unhealthy for the game.

I have always said charm in early expansions is close to OP. Is it unhealthy for the game? Don't be ridiculous.

So which part of my post(s) do you disagree with specifically?

You guys are a bunch of whiners. Give me a few minutes, I warming you up a bottle of formula to help calm you down.

Which guys?

For reference the first 60 on Phinny was a monk and his static group didn't have an enchanter in it. This whole notion that Enchanters are necessary for good XP is complete nonsense. Frankly in Classic having you group stacked with Mages, Necros and Wizards is much more important to fast EXP then having a Enchanter.

My takeaway is we need to ban parses because at some point people stopped playing characters they care about and only look at spreadsheets to gauge their level of enjoyment.

No.

I don't think there is anything wrong with Charm myself, but if it was me "fixing" it then I may start with by restricting Enchanter Charm so it only applies to a certain "type" - in line with the charms of other classes this may necessitate reviewing various types of content/zones & adding this type of npc to some content & alongside that I would review the other charm classes having some npcs they can charm distributed where the team would agree they want them so as well as reducing the superior range of charmable NPC Enchanters have access too I would increase the number of places the other classes who can charm can do so to create a better normalisation of charming overall.

My rational is as follows:

Necromancers require mastery over death magic to animate the skeletons or corpses of dead beings, that mastery over death also allows them the ability to overpower risen dead (Charm vs Undead) that have become animated though curses, death magic or other occult practises.

Shaman has a connection to the animal spirits of Norrath so has the power to control animals via a command of their own spiritual strength & a domination of the spririt of a living animal but extend that to also include the spirits/ghosts of animals.

Druids have a connection to nature & doesn't so much dominate an animals will as it coerces/compels the animal's instinct to survive & causing that animal to fight to protect itself from the threat that the druid is making it hyper-aware of at an instinctual level, I would extend that to some control over plants or plant-based life forms too.

Magicians have a mastery over elemental forces, that kinship with the elemental forces allows their magic to bind an elemental to its own will for a time, I would extend that to be able to dominate the wills of some golem types too.

So following the logic of the above

Enchanters would not be able to command any animal, elemental or undead as their magic relies on the control of a living mind through the power of hallucination & illusion, something those prior beings are not vulnerable to.
The manipulating of a person's perception so that they believe the Enchanter is a person that they need to protect (like their child or another loved one) & the Enchanter's foes as a threat to the Enchanter or themselves, so their charm would be restricted to charming sentient living humanoids, aka the higher races.

Having done that, I would then also review their damage potential compared to the other classes who charm & weigh that up against the benefits they bring as a support class, giving them some tweaks to damage possibly to compensate for that reduction in their Charm capacities.

That's an interesting take however that would break stuff on live so rewriting to limit targets is probably a no go. It is interesting that Shaman never receive an upgrade after they share with Druids only at higher levels in original.

Maybe. They seem to do a good job of clearing large areas of zones with very little effort though.

I thought wizards sucked for groups?

Agreed it was an interesting approach, but one that would likely take too much of re-writing effort. Adding a non-removable slow and threat reduction buff to any player charmed mob just makes a lot more simplistic balancing sense to me.

Mark buff them down to the point they aren't dramatically out dps'ing or out agro'ing those extra actual dps/tank players of equal level to the enchanter sitting LFG at zoneline, label it the "Return of the PC" grouping patch, and call it a day