Newish Enchanter seeking tips/tricks!

Discussion in 'Casters' started by Marfyre, Apr 26, 2018.

  1. Marfyre New Member

    So I made a post in the starter section looking for general EQ advice but for now I'm focusing on my enchanter until I decide if I want to continue with something else.

    My situation and background: I'm a high end raid enchanter on the p99 server (I'm aware this doesn't translate well to modern EQ but bear with me) and I'm looking to expand my knowledge and learn more about the enchanter class in today's EQ. I took a pretty long break and last played seriously around 2014. I understand the concept of enchanting and fundamentally what the class is / does. However there are lots of new spells, auras, and AA's that I am not familiar with. I grabbed a handful that seemed like they would be of use and added them to my keybinds. My enchanter is currently level 83 and what I figure is level appropriate gear (abstruse is the majority of it) and I mostly got where I'm at by boxing a 78 mage with a healer merc in the background. I am a gold member on both accounts now and am simply auto granting all the AA's with each level.

    My question:
    -what are pro enchanters doing these days that separate the men from the boys?
    -What are the deep dark secrets that will turn me into a god over night (jk)?
    -What are some things you wish you had known about / to do earlier and only found after the fact?
    -What separates a good enchanter from the bad in 2018 everquest?
    -What abilities / spells are the best to use soloing?
    - Which spells will allow me to chat with hot singles in my area ????

    Anyways, jokes aside, I appreciate any and all help and merely wish to become a good player rather for bumble around norrath killing groups and wiping raids. Thanks in advance!
    IblisTheMage likes this.
  2. IblisTheMage Augur

    *listens in*
  3. ptah Augur

    hmm ok I attempt to answer in general terms as I only a chanter at 110 if fellowship lets me drop bard.

    Cast X spell that will proc any dps to others.. active.. must be casting at all times.. 100% do something.
    AE mezz or AE stun.. I like the ring loc style casting as I don't need target a target.. its an area spell.

    Key 1.. average group
    tash
    dot to return mana to others
    dot for damge
    DD
    DD
    stun/dot/nuke based on what is going on..

    Alliance if we got more chanters around.
    Dicho if I remember.. and I should.

    Rot Haze,insanty, IoG.. like 1 then 2 then 3
    2nd spire or 3rd.. based on what is going on.

    Choice of stun or mez.. is defined by the group and content.

    wish I would mezz another target to force more twin action. but I forget often.

    if I find myself alone.. its mix of charm or pet w/mage weaps and merc healing. if I need TS AA

    I don't tank often.. but if I think that is needed is multi runes.. and DD line up that support proc based runes.

    Only buff if they ask nicely.. I'm more of caster than buffer.. but if proc based adps is a buff.. its cold in here with no cloth on. buff buff buff buff buff buff
  4. High Voltage Augur

    There's a
    The good ones will not post honest/useful advice here anymore to not give ammunition to haters and nerf crusaders.

    There are some strong raiding guilds that have a casual wing. If you are serious about EQ, go there and work your way up.
    Cailen and daimx like this.
  5. Dreadmore Augur


    Hello, crappy enchanter alt here!

    Your first four questions, at least to me, are all asking the same thing, to which my main answers is: Always be casting!!!
    • Don't be afraid of using high mana-cost spells. Always keep dichotomic on cooldown
    • You are respectable DPS compared to what your class was in earlier eras
    • Your DPS is a significant component of the ADPS you give to your group
    But I've found this to be rather true of most classes on live now. Back then, I may have been a crappy player, but I found that just turning on auto attack or sitting to meditate after every nuke still got plenty of stuff done. Now, the game is much more physically demanding in order for you to be effective. This is true of wizards nuking, shadow knights lifetapping, rogues using a discipline, etc. What has changed? It's a lot harder to steal agro now even when you are on full burn, and it's a lot harder to go out of mana or endurance now, too. This affords enchanters, and most classes really, the luxury (sometimes necessity) of always casting something and always contributing.


    I dunno, charm? Some of us are beyond help, though :D[/quote][/quote][/quote]
  6. daimx New Member

    Those guilds also usually have forums where they post info regarding enchanters and simple how-to's about playing in a raid environment.
    High Voltage likes this.
  7. EnchFWO Augur

    So! What you do is
    ...[REDACTED]...
    You should be an awesome Ench with this info!
    Cailen likes this.
  8. Marfyre New Member

    So I attempted to get some of my keybinds ironed out and figure out what kinda strats I wanna use.

    I brought my 83 ench , my 78 mage and a j1 healer merc to field of scale ( I used almers guide to try and find a place to xp and the zone was really cool).

    I set up in a relatively clear area and buffed up with my best group clarity spell, guard of druzzil, hastes (built in dex for channeling iirc), and I tried to use mana reiterate on my mage but I'm kinda confused on what it does, as well as all the runes I could stack on myself. I would re-apply runes as they broke.

    Standard tactic that was working well enough was to charm an iksar and tash. And then I would grab singles and bring them to camp and immediately slow , dot , cripple , root and begin nuking on both characters. First thing I noticed is that the above was correct and it is VERY hard to pull aggro even off my charm pet. So I was pretty liberal with the nukes and dots. I found my nuke damage was fairly low however but I'm just using the highest level nuke I have against these blue con mobs.

    I did manage to kill a named mob named Battleguard guaros or something like that and got a nice shield upgrade for my mage! So that was interesting.

    Stop me here if I missed anything I should be doing.

    Some issues I found:
    -I was charming mobs that were fairly close in level but almost every single time, even with a healer merc, my charm pet would get mostly stomped even with the entire box's support with dps, slows, cripples and heals. Why is this ? I'm used to mobs being at least close to each other's strength but it was very one sided.
    -Does sitting during combat still hold importance? I noticed that I regen super fast after combat but I have a stat called "combat mana regen", is this exactly how it implies or is there more to it?
    -xp seemed pretty slow despite what felt like fast kills even for the mage which most mobs conned yellow / red to him. I'm not sure if I'm losing xp because of pets or something but tmk when grouped that shouldn't affect anything. (I may be misremembering xp rates from 2013 when I last played but it seems more similar to xp gains on p99)
    -Would it be worth it to simply use another j1 tank despite letting it cut into the xp ? My animation pet doesn't seem to tank slowed mobs well either and I know the mage pet can't tank for me atm since he is already under leveled himself. I've watched a video on enchanter tanking at 110 but is this viable in the 80-90 range as Well?

    Just a few questions / concerns if anyone feels like answering for me. Im attempting to poke a few people in game to see if I can gain any extra knowledge.

    Thank you all for your comments and tips for an up and coming player

    Edit: also sorry for the text walls, I'm on my phone atm so I can't format as easily and I would rather be thorough than too vague and make it hard to answer my questions.
  9. High Voltage Augur

    I met dozends of those. Max XP, max AA, no clue. Which one are you?
  10. IblisTheMage Augur


    Not max AA/level on my alt yet, but definitely in the clue-challenged camp :).
  11. High Voltage Augur

    signed
  12. Haegar Augur

    Quote: -I was charming mobs that were fairly close in level but almost every single time, even with a healer merc, my charm pet would get mostly stomped even with the entire box's support with dps, slows, cripples and heals. Why is this ?

    Of course that is because of the charm nerf. In short its just some major debuff that hits charmed pets at a certain level.
    And since this is such a huge and handy nerf the obvious answer was reverse charming.

    Which means that you skip the part with "find a perfect pet and equip/buff it" and replace it with "find ANY charmable pet and watch it geting teared apart". Just be sure to release it in time to finish it off.

    Needs a lot of practice but is truly rewarding. Especially if you can handle 2 or more things killing your pet. Obviously you should avoid summoning things and i always had my box druid in group (snare and power to kill the thing)
  13. catcattank Elder

    If you haven't hit 85 yet, do the missions in korascian warrens for sod prehistoric for J5 merc.
  14. Jordis Augur


    My main focus is high level raiding with my enchanter, which I have raided with since Luclin. There is a much different mind set to playing a raid enchanter even compared to a group and very different from what one might do when soloing, moloing or boxing. I have always preferred grouping/raiding to charm soloing or boxing which I found inefficient in terms of generating experience, and generally speaking, boring. I love the complexity that comes with grouping and raiding.

    If you're gearing up and working on AA get the hunter achievements done to boost your Bane damae

    The question you need to ask yourself first is, "What role do I want to focus on? Solo/moloing, boxing, grouping or raiding? They all vary in terms of approach and focus. Regardless of your choice, my first advice to you would be to go through each and every one of your abilities and spells and make sure you understand what they do and where they can be used to advantage and don't assume that because a spell is a lower level than you're currently at that it might not be useful. Join the general enchanter chat channel and ask questions or send a tell to an active enchanter.

    There are very few active high end raid enchanters and most guilds are looking to recruit good enchanters, raiding as an enchanter is a much different proposition than soloing/moloing, boxing or even grouping.

    Almar's Guides are great if you're boxing a crew, and are a good source of information on some of the spells and abilities. It is not so helpful in other respects if you're playing with groups with varying skill levels and classes that don't quite "match up" which is where an enchanter can really shine. I suggest you start by doing pick-up groups. I still do them from time to time even though I have an active fellowship. Often it's lower level groups that actually need CC and can't tank a couple of mobs at a time that banishing/rooting won't help with.

    The reason I suggest it is that it gives you a chance to evaluate your abilities in a different way than with people that you regularly group with. The tank can't keep aggro over the mage pet(s)? Put an aggro rune on the main tank, throw a glamour buff on the main mage pet (after checking to make sure they're not using rage weapons). If you have a mixed group that will be using dots and DD, use your reiteration type aura rather than the focus. If you're pulling, use the targeted version that will leave the reiteration aura with the group. Use the animation and gear it up. Night's Endless Terror (a life-tap proc) can be used on melee for additional DPS. Your Phantasmal pet is an aggro magnet that is meant to pet tank a mob that can't be CC'd in any other way, the Doppleganger AA pets can do some significant damage (and occasionally amusing things).

    In raiding you're looking at and interacting with a lot of different circumstances and sometimes adjusting on the fly. On raids we're doing Assisted Damage Per Second (ADPS) which can boost our own and our group DPS. In some of the recent raids we're expected to do bane damage as well as crowd control, debuffing mobs and rebuffing players, along with damage mitigation in terms of runes (to reduce incoming melee damage), spell guards (to reduce damage from DD, Dot and damage shields) and auras appropriate to an encounter and arising problems. People are low on mana, use a mana regeneration aura, and the DD that returns mana to the group. Our DPS can be significant and it's not unheard of for enchanters to show up in the top parses. However, our role in raids is not to out DPS other players but to maximize the group/raid DPS. That generally means if you're doing your job you are not going to out parse the casters in your group. If you want to top the parse as a caster go with magician, wizard or necro.

    I generally view charm as CC. Going back to pre-mercenary days it wasn't unusual to gear up a charmed pet and keep it around for hours while soloing which still works fairly well but can become pretty expensive if you're gearing the pet with dropped, tradeable armor Groups aren't particularly happy with charmed pets going back to the change where charm can't be recast before it's worn off, and the change to a charmed "tank" mob not being able to hold aggro if there are more than 3 on the hate list (which still appears to be true). Charming mobs is used in various ways in high end raids, for cc and bane damage. Learning to target, charm and break charm as quickly as possible is something that would be well worth practicing.
  15. Mizterio New Member

    Two things I never seen mentioned early on you need to keep Charisma up for Mezz(something haven't seen mentioned either) so it wont break as fast. You can only charm 1 mob but in some instances you may have to mezz up to 10 mobs at a time thru mid levels if you have a bad pull in group. I played chanter as main for years but also box one currently 92 and still use tinman and mezz in my box group. Charm is a great tool and as mentioned above need to learn when and how to break it cause it can get nasty.
  16. Lockdown Elder

    Tash, Charm, Slow, Cripple, Nuke, DoT, Single-target Mezz, PB AoE Mezz, Targeted AoE Mezz, Self-Rune, Feedback, Single Target Haste. (The last two are for the charmed pet. Also carry weapons to give to the pet.)
  17. Pawtato Augur


    Charisma doesn't impact mez duration. I have no idea, where you got that from. Are you trolling?
  18. Pawtato Augur


    Fixed it for you.
  19. Lockdown Elder

    No, you didn't. You vandalized it.
    If you wish to respond to a question, then submit your own answers, troll. And don't vandalize someone else's.

    And Charisma doesn't affect mezzes at all. Charms, yes. Mezzes, no.
  20. Pawtato Augur

    It's not vandalizing to correct an answer. Please kindly, respect that I'm a Vah Shir not a Troll. We're much more sophisticated.