Charm and balance

[Makata]

Originally posted by Nanyea
Reroll? or www.shadowbane.com

Sorry no sympathy for you either, Some classes like enchanter and warrior have been dogged around for years, soe keeps feeding our group desireability to every other class (excluding pure melees) to make them more desireable and us less so, now a charm that allows more reliability in soloing comes along and you would choose to decide how our class is to be played. Druids are outstanding members of a group, yet you dont bash their solo abilities into the ground.

You have got to either be one of the most ignorant players in existance, or simply not care for any class other than your own.

The solution to balance issues is not, "Don't like it? Reroll as the class you want." Or we'd all be dru / enc soloing away in planes. Every single class needs to be balanced. Is this truly a difficult concept for you? This does not mean every class should be able to do the same thing, obviously. What this does mean is that no class is at a complete loss for some of the fundamental aspects of the game.

For instance, ease of travel. Every class has access to port stones. Every class has access to invis potions (or the spell itself). Every class has access to soul binders. Etc. Simple, trivial stuff that makes up some of the now fundamental aspects of ease of travel.

It's hard to say if soloing should be part of this list, as giving warriors a method of efficient soloing would either be a) impossible or b) make them sickly overpowered. However, it is not unreasonable that all pure casting classes should be in the same ballpark of soloability. Enchanters provide just as valuable a service to groups as I do.

For instance, there are 3 viable healers in most pop zones, clerics, druids, and shamans. Clerics are obviously the best. Druids are the second best, and shamans make the third. Because of the very definition of "better," there are some areas only druids and clerics can efficiently heal, and others where only clerics can. This is fair, and can be balanced elsewhere in the grand scheme of balance.

There are 3 viable slowing classes (IMHO bards function as viably as paladins do healers, so add both to lists if you want), enchanters, shamans, and beastlords w/ their 65 spell. Shamans are the best, followed by enchanters, followed by beast lords. Again, some areas are above a BST's ability, and others above an enchanter's.

What does this mean? We both provide a valuable service to our group, even casting aside haste and voq versus hp buffs and spell casting buff. So why is it you feel you deserve to solo like a god, while I, a cleric, must patiently wait for a group to invite me? Because you've been:

dogged around for years, soe keeps feeding our group desireability to every other class (excluding pure melees) to make them more desireable and us less so

First off, piss off. Every class has had it's fair share of "dogging." Every single class can probably mention at least 5 major nerfs to their class since the dawn of time, you are not the scapegoat of everquest.

Secondly, how again has your group desirability been given to other classes? I'm sorry, is there a 70%+ hasting class? BST can do 50%, and as single target, shamans have always had haste, as have bards. BST have a much weaker version of kei/voq, and a much weaker form of slow. So, unless you are shooting down the bst class, I can't understand how your abilities have been whored out.

Grow up. You have a horribly overpowered ability. Only a minority of triple digit IQ players actually want charm nerfed to oblivion, the vast majority of us want it to be balanced. For a quick dictionary, balance is NOT defined as:
- Casting one spell and having hundred of dps at your disposal
- Being able to do any type of encounter solo (even as defined as exp group) even remotely as efficiently as a full group.
- Reaping rewards even remotely close to as efficiently as a full group while soloing.

Many suggestions have been given. My personal favorite would be to include a fairly large and scaled slow component on the spell, so the pet has only 100-150 dps tops, but at the same time making the duration dramatically longer, even predictable.

In this way, enchanters, druids, mages, and necromancers all have access to reasonable dps, and make it fairly dependable, not be able to solo mindlessly with it. Druid friend of mine solos an entire camp of stalkers at 61, and dinged 62 after about 7, maybe 8 hours. This included about 4 hours he was grouped w/ my gimp to pseudo-PL me. So he could have done it in 6 hours or less. Took my cleric bout 2 weeks. THAT IS NOT BALANCED. There is no possible way you can construe that as balanced, I'm sorry. And considering enc's have access to their own mana regen buff, rune, hastes, stuns, and slows.. I'd think it obvious you could do it even better than he.

[Veneficus_LoS]

My personal favorite would be to include a fairly large and scaled slow component on the spell, so the pet has only 100-150 dps tops, but at the same time making the duration dramatically longer, even predictable.

Going with that would limit dmg below that of a DCable pet in the Elemental Planes. Realistically I could see a reduction to about 60% dmg output for it to remain a useful tool.

The hardest hitting mob an enchanter can charm hits for 900 (Servant of Saryn in PoTorment) effectively would hit for 540. That makes its dmg output roughly double than a DCed pet which is considered "risk free". That doesn't solve the issue over pet tanking better than a warrior which stirs those classes into an uproar. For that, I refer back to the original idea I posted over a charm breaking I posted here:

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/showt...0&pagenumber=6

[Morphyous]

Makata, there's plenty of fucking danger in using charm. I only wish people would see that. Even with arcane rune, when pet breaks, there are two mobs beating on you. The time spent begging for buffs in preparation for a solo and doing corpse retrieval balances the reward of killing a mob. Don't give me shit that an enchanter has an easy time with charm soloing. We don't have instant evac, or feign death like necros do.

Did you know that the enchanter class didn't originally have clarity to begin with? We were a crap class, and Verant is throwing us something to make us a playable class. Otherwise we are poor wizards and poor shaman buffing whores.

[Makata]

Originally posted by Veneficus_LoS
Going with that would limit dmg below that of a DCable pet in the Elemental Planes. Realistically I could see a reduction to about 60% dmg output for it to remain a useful tool.

Then DC could have a similar scalar to bring charm into balance.

But how are you defining useful? Does a charm have to do over 300 dps for it to be useful? The entire purpose (or at least one of the main ones) of charm adjustments is to limit or even eliminate the power in solo situations. With 60% damage, a common PoV mob would still be well over 240 dps, more than enough to solo with. If your pet is 40% slowed, but your opponent is 70% slowed.. you still have killed your opponent with little to no effort.

And also, it isn't a flat % reduction. IIRC, the suit of armor in PoV is DC'able, but it's dps is fairly reasonable, somewhere between 50 to 100 I believe. That is very balanced; the enc becomes a part of the offensive force, a position that can makes sense RP wise, while still being an essential defensive piece of the pie.

Again, the idea is to scale the slow component so that the pet is somewhere between 100-150 dps, or whatever a fairly well equipped damage based class can do. The point is to have a slightly higher and consistant source of damage, but requiring attention with recharming, although drastically reducing or eliminating the chance of early breaking.

But as long as trivial soloing ability remains, its not balanced. Yes, this would require the charm to be used in groups, and yes, it's still an effective grouping tool.

That or finally let the rest of the casting classes (er.. clr / shm) solo for charm level exp.

[Makata]

Originally posted by Morphyous
Makata, there's plenty of fucking danger in using charm. I only wish people would see that. Even with arcane rune, when pet breaks, there are two mobs beating on you. The time spent begging for buffs in preparation for a solo and doing corpse retrieval balances the reward of killing a mob. Don't give me shit that an enchanter has an easy time with charm soloing. We don't have instant evac, or feign death like necros do.

Don't play the danger card. I'd gladly take that risk for access to that kind of dps. Gladly. And this isn't just enchanters. I've seen first hand a druid pull 5, yes 5 mobs, all of which could easly destroy him if given 10 uninterrupted seconds, and kill them all in maybe 9-10 minutes, and have lost almost no mana. That is not balanced.

Did you know that the enchanter class didn't originally have clarity to begin with? We were a crap class, and Verant is throwing us something to make us a playable class. Otherwise we are poor wizards and poor shaman buffing whores.

Boo hoo. All my class is is a one-trick pony who mindlessly hits either CH on tanks or SR on casters, as appropriate. Besides that, I'm just a poor wizard with an hp buff that can be replaced far easier than KEI / VoQ. Every single class can be dumbed down to one or 2 key spells or abilities, and a couple other smaller ones. Monks are just Feign Death + Flying Kick + autoattack. Rogues are just Backstabb + Sneak/Hide + Autoattack. Wizards are just Nuke + Concussion + I dunno.. evac?

Enchanters still provide a vital service to groups. No, one is not required for a group. But either an enc, a sham, a bst w/ their 65 slow, or a very dedicated bard is, in the same way that a cleric, a druid, a shaman w/ their upgraded heal, or a very dedicated paladin is.

[Morphyous]

Wow, you use a druid as an example killing 10 mobs. Ever heard of swarm kiting? Obviously the druid has power in snaring all of his mobs. With the mezzes in POP, you can't leave 10 mobs and have your one charmed pet kill of them. You will run into problems.

To solve all this bickering, just place all boss mobs with many adds and make pacification not work on the boss. That means multiple adds along with the risk of pet breaking.

Tell me how exciting buffing is compared to healing, where a whole raid/group depends on you. I find that healing is as thrilling as crowd control, which is what charm is.

[Eida]

Well gee, back in my day crowd control didn't mean 400+ DPS.

Would you be happy if CoD was replaced with a mez? No. Shut your fucking mouth.

[Vinen]

yeah id take low resist mez over CoD`

[45th Parallel]

Ditto

[The Insider]

How about this... Add a mana drain component to CoD. The entire time the enchanter has a charmed mob it cuts mana regen and continually sucks mana down to zero if left charmed long enough(balance appropriatly). If your mana is starting to get low,click off the icon that the charm places on you when you cast it which releases the mob(then kill the former charmed mob,then continue to kill without charm till enchanter feels comfortable with mana% again) This would make soloing very mana intensive with long downtimes,but would work nice for group/raid.

[Makata]

Originally posted by Morphyous
To solve all this bickering, just place all boss mobs with many adds and make pacification not work on the boss. That means multiple adds along with the risk of pet breaking.

perhaps this is sarcasm.. but what on earth does that do to stop exp soloing?

Tell me how exciting buffing is compared to healing, where a whole raid/group depends on you. I find that healing is as thrilling as crowd control, which is what charm is.

This really isn't what's being debated. But to answer your question, after 3 years of healing, it gets a tad boring. I want to be offensive. Wrong class? Yep. Already got a bst to 51.

And.. charm is not crowd control. Mez is crowd control. Root is crowd control. In some situations, off-tanking is crowd control. Charm is not crowd control. Charm is offensive power. If charm had a set duration, provided you didn't have it attack, then I'd agree, charm is crowd control.

[Sweetdestiny]

mana drain on charm is not a new idea other games have done it, daoc for example and it really makes the charm useless. Nerf the xp fine, nerf Jopals PLEASE! nerfs bot mobs THX sides that there's nothing wrong with charm imo.

[Eida]

I don't care how long his Charm lasts. If its clocking 400 DPS, its not crowd control.

Hell, if its clocking anything remotely approaching a melee's DPS -- its not crowd control.

[Salt]

People claiming charm is not a form of CC obviously have no clue what they're talking about. You are removing a mob from the situation that would normally be attacking your group. How is that not a form of crowd control? Mob A comes to camp as an add, Mob A is charmed, this means Mob A is not currently a threat to the group.

This little gem here is quite amusing:

If charm had a set duration, provided you didn't have it attack, then I'd agree, charm is crowd control.

Root is crowd control.

So this person claims charm is not a method of crowd control because it has no set duration yet root is a method of crowd control? Must be cool to play a character to level 65 and have all of your roots last the maximum duration every single time, wish I was that lucky.

Offtanking is a method of crowd control? If the offtank loses aggro it seems that you're running into the same 'set duration' issue you raised with charm being a form of CC.

As it stands now we have a 54 second mez spell with a neg 10 resist check for 300 mana and a charm with a neg 50 resist check for 700 mana. Gee which am I going to choose to take care of that add in camp...... a spell with a neg 50 mr check that can last up to 7+ minutes or a spell with a neg 10 resist check that lasts for 54 seconds. You get a single resist on bliss and you've blown 600 mana for 54 seconds. Charm has to last 2 minutes 6 secods before it is as efficient as mezzing. With TD3 a large majority of my charms are a lot longer than that making charm the obviously better choice.

I'm of the personal opinion that charm is not the issue. Zone/mob design is the real issue. Remove the neg mr check if it will make you happy. Bar the neg mr check, CoD is exactly as powerful as Boltrans was when I got that. The bitching wasn't this widespread when I could charm solo an aa point in under 75 minutes during the Luclin expansion

[Mezzdat]

If they are so concerned with Enchs getting exp solo to fast, they only need to nerf the 3-4 mobs we are using. Nerfing the spell when it is totally validated in some encounters is anti-smart.