Charm and balance

[Liz]

Originally posted by grandbean
Dumbfucks who report test changes are, well, dumbfucks.

The cunt poster made it seem as if those changes were permanent when the fact is, it is NOT like that on test right now. It was for a day or two, but it was obviously bugged.

Jesus Christ you fucking faggots, there's a reason it's called... TEST.

And if people don't talk about the changes on test before they go live they are a lot more likely to actually go live regardless of whether they make sense or not.

[Veneficus_LoS]

Eyston said: It's all a matter of scale. A wizard quadding an AA in 90 minutes versus a warrior grouping an AA in 120 minutes.

Please try to put better rough estimates for those statistics before posting them in support of your own statements. This "30 min an AA" you attribute to enchanter is based on a best case scenarios when solo'n. If you're going to say that then also mentioned the best case for Wizards who quad 4 level 68 mobs for 64%+ of an AA in one quad in roughly 10 min?

[Taelnayael]

The one thing I must say is that there is too little risk associated with CoD + Tash + TD3. Factor in Snare, Malo etc and pets become downright docile in their ease of control.

I think if enchanters would quit using the crutch that because of the added risk CoD is a viable RvR option people wouldn't dismiss our arguments as whiny complaints. The risk only exists in solo situations and is negligible even there with Root.

Lowering the DPS doesn't solve the problem namely because its probably way too hard to code in a lower DPS code because there is no spell that actively lowers DPS other than slow. And while CoD does need some sort of fix I'm not sure the designers of the high end content where charmed pets have become a defacto tool, want to take away the impressive burst DPS that charmed pets can put out.

No.... the cure for CoD lies in making soloing undesirable for high end content. Alas the proposed changes do not fix this, it only makes enchanters not want to group at all.

I maintain that the vast majority of players who do not have penis envy over our pets' DPS, welcome the increased speed with which a CoD pet can help people gain experience. It is in our ability to solo and the choice that enchanters make to solo over group that has left many classes crying foul because they aren't able to benifit from this wonderful spell. If only VI would realize that again bringing back the codependency is beneficial to all in the long run we could all be one happy family again.

One option to consider would be to make CoD proc a zero length root that overwrites any other root. Couple this with zero to little aggro generation by the pet on itself and a tank is yet again required to maintain aggro.

If you need a tank you need a cleric. By needing a cleric you are up to three people at which point the group needs to make the active decision wether to try and increase the group to the full size and kill even faster. The added members effect on the exp gain is negligible at best and you are satisfying the exp starved classes by providing them aaxp at a rate which is close to the mean enchanter AA after you factor in death, unluckiness, and boneheaded mistakes that everyone eventually makes.

Taelnayael Srroth
65 Ench

[Goshan]

charm itsself is NOT broken. Charm is the victim of a changing environment and thusly needs to be modified to keep pace with that environment. I have been using charm for many years in much the same way I use it now. Before any expansions were released, enchanters were soloing the ghoul lord and fire giants area with charmed pets. When kunark was released, we kept pets in groups in Sebilis that doubled the entire groups experience over a 4 or 5 hour experience grind. During Velious, we could charm giants in Kael that easily netted twice the exp normally recieved in an experience group. Velious is where the environments started to change and become much more favorable to charming. Once equipment and player stats started reaching the proportions they did in velious, the risk of charm became trivial. The only problem with Velious and Luclin was that there were not many areas where charm soloing was much more effecient then grouping. So most enchanters ignored the ability.

Now we have Planes of Power. There are quite a few things in this expansion that make charming too good to ignore.

- Zones typically have wide open spaces where you can outrun mobs
- Mobs are spaced farther apart making solo pulling trivial.
- Mobs dont summon
- Mobs have generally low hit points and defense.(This would seem to be the charm equalizer. But doesnt work)
- Mobs have extremely high ATK and max hits.

Because of these factors, the risk vs. reward is out of whack. When an enchanter can get an aa in 17mins by 2boxing a cleric outside of the group vs grouping and getting an aa every 1-2 hours, there is a problem with risk vs reward.(yes its possible. I have done it at a sustained rate).

Back before kunark, we would go solo fire giants for the thrill. IT was damn scary because a charm break at the wrong time meant about an 80% chance of death. With POP, a charm break at the wrong time means you cast the following spells: wom, run til spell gems refresh, mez your pet, retarget the prey, cast root. If it knocks your rune off, pop eldritch rune and root. ZERO risk. none, nada. You have to be a complete and utter idiot to die to a situation like that.

But bringing back the idea of summnoing mobs makes my skin crawl. It was a cheesy tactic. It would make charm mostly useless and not worth the time because it will only take 1 charm break to kill an enchanter. Granted, you may escape if charm breaks when no prey is in camp, but if there is prey in camp, you are dead. One wom resist on either your prey or the pet and your dead. Even if you do manage to get wom off, by the time you do, your hp will be so low, the prey will bloodlust onto you and you will be toast before you can do anything about it. If mobs were to summon again, to make charm useful, we would have to be compenstated with an instant low resist root or something.

So the real problem is not charm. We have been using charm exactly how it was designed since inception. The real problem is the environment.

Of the points listed above:

- Wide open spaces: Changing zone designs is out the the question
- mob spacing: Might be possible but would have unforseen consequences
- Summoning: Think I have covered this one
- Low hit points and defense: cant really do anything here. It would unbalance every other class.
- Extreme ATK: ding ding ding! We have a winner.


Typically enchanters haste their pets. Given a dual wielding pet with haste and a 2boxed druid for heal/snare, charming is the only way to experience!(Hello all you tactics people! And you know who you are :P). So Verants first idea with the 1% slow was a pretty good one but didnt go far enough. These mobs even without haste and dual wield, can tear through their brethren pretty easy. Especially with a botted druid or cleric to heal it. Dire Charm was limited in level for a reason. If you could of dire charmed an Illis and dual wielded and hasted it, a single enchanter could of cleared jugs in Sebilis and given the protector a run for his money. So Verant level limited Dire Charm to 47. The reason they did that was because mobs of that level and lower didnt have enough ATK to do amazing feats.

The reason I use Dire Charm as an example is simple. The risk vs reward of a high level pet that was perma charmed was deemed out of whack by Verant. Basically, given the environmental variables mentioned above, you have the same situation. Mobs that are permacharmed with very little risk. Even thoguh they do break, a broken pet in wide open pop zones is pretty trivial to recharm.

Given this logic, the reasonable thing to do would be to add an effect to charm that lowered a mobs melee level to a much lower level(I am thinking 57). Kind of like those ae's in the spell database that lower a characters spell casting level. This would greatly reduce their attack and defense. It would still allow us to dual wield and haste where it was allowed, but their average hit would be for much less. When charm broke, because the effect was part of the charm it would wear off and the mob would go back to its normal level. This doesnt increase the risk of charm but it lowers its overall effectiveness which is really the problem anyway. This would still allow enchanters that like to solo, to be able to solo. But you wont be able to earn AA at astronomical rates. I still think it should be faster then a group but only slighly so. MAybe 50mins or so per aa. It also addresses melee issues that an enchanter makes them somewhat worthless in groups.

In conclusion,

Charm does need to be modified so that a charmed pet cannot melee for many multpiles of what the best equipped melee can do. I dont see the problem with charm being in its duration or utility. Its another tool in the enchanters toolbox they can use for crowd control. I dont want it removed.

The only problem I see with this are the tier 2 and 3 raid level events that take cod into account. For those tiers cod is an extremely useful tool against Agnarr, Upper cod, Bertox, Rydda, Upper Bot mini's, Mithaniel Marr, and of course Rallos Zek. Some of those encounters would need to be toned down very slightly in their intensity.

[Searyx]

If mobs were to summon again, to make charm useful, we would have to be compenstated with an instant low resist root or something.

You would have to compensate by, say, GROUPING!?

[Gevarien~SolRo]

Don't forget that we haven't seen the top end of PoP equipment yet though. If you balance enchanter dps via charm against current melee damage, you'll have it underpowered again when time is finished should melee get a big dps boost via Veng items or weapons, and there is currently no type of focus effect that would increase charm dps.

Seeing as there are no ancient type spells in pop, we must assume that CoD is the final charm type spell in pop, and thus needs to be balanced with time-equipped melee in mind. Having a spell lineup balanced against rogues welding Ifir would suck major donkey should they get a 19/19 or whatever poker in time. Seeing as time equip most likely does not exist yet, this will prove a problem for Verant.

Also to the person who said that there are no damage reducing effects in the game except for slow.....ever fought, say, the Creator?

Reducing charm dps goes in the wrong direction though, making charmed mobs more akin to normal pets than to charms. The drawback to the immense damage output of charmed pets, in theory, is their instability, in pratice this doesn't work out for a number of reasons already outlined here in this thread. A thing that might work would be giving charm a sow component that overwrites snare, or adding a 'control period' or 10-15 seconds after each break during which the pet could not be charmed or rooted (to prevent use of low-level roots to get around this), which would make soloing quite a bit more risky and add an incentive to group again, if such a thing really must be done. (I still group plenty when people ask, no idea what kind of Enchanters you guys all play with).

[Thorbadin]

I fully expect that plane of time will allow me to wield the ultimate sword of war, something like a 102/28 weapons that proc a 500stundd + enraging blow. Time will also give new vengeance item that stack up to a total of 1k more atk.

To compensate the fact that this might allow the said warrior to do around 400-500 dps only, the enchanters will be giving a new dire charm type spell that work up to lvl 70 and adds the following effect on the pet mob : 100% haste, proc 75% slow, proc ch on self to compensate. The pet will also flurry.

Seriously, sometime people here really make it sound like they are fucking retards.

Balancing melee dmg againts enchanter dps, haha, mcfly? hello?

Thorbadin
Triton

[Gevarien~SolRo]

You have enchanters doing x dps with a charmed pet.

A warrior with a BoW does y dps.

You want x to be z% of y.

In two months warriors get a weapon that does y * 1.3 dps.

The result? The whole balance equation is screwed again, of course this is simplified and reduced to dps only, etc.

Did I ever imply that melee would be doing the amount of damage charmed pets currently do? no.

[Kage Nomad]

There's no way to fix the idiotic soloing problem. You can nerf charm until it's a targetted true north, and it won't change the fact that any class that can solo a mob for 18% a kill is going to rake in far more exp over time than one who can't. Took a quick look at my guild aa per class, with a few exceptions of people who twobox the soloing classes have easily 2 times the AA on average as those that don't. The soloing shit isn't a charm problem it's just a problem with PoP, and the fact that due to con range changes and massive mob dps increases anyone who hs to get hit by a mob to inflict damage upon it is shit out of luck. I can't even solo light blues more often than not. ANYWAY, charm isn't about soloing.

Exp mob DPS increase three fold in PoP. Exp mob hp did not. That's the only reason charm is unbalanced now.

[Morphyous]

The problem is not soloing it's high end encounters. I can't be positive on that statement, but there are many other examples of people soloing via snarekite, dot, quad etc.

Problems with slowing the charmed pet will cause people to charm named that are regarded as unslowable but charmable and then use those named to die by fighting other mobs.

Rune component is gay, as mentioned before it will be a timed Dictate spell then.

If the problem is only high end encounters, then make those encounter's mobs have high resist, and change Bliss into a rapture type spell. This of course makes another problem like the one during a Ssra emp fight, but hey, at least we changed the subject to mez. Most fights with charmed pets are worse than tanks in my opinion because if the pet breaks, then you lose the fight. At least the tank is dependable on that basis.

If they change the resists on charm, that'll be ok. But if they change the exp and aggro? That's fucked up. Exp should not be the point here, it should be high end encounters where the dps of the pet is contributing to the fight.

Though in a roleplay sense, I don't see how charm is overpowered.

[Frodlin7th]

Let's see if I can make this so simple that even people who are intentionally stupid can figure it out.

1. A warrior will never have the hitpoints of charmed mobs.

2. A warrior with 200+ days /played should be more valuable than 700 mana.

3. Currently they're not

4. Your charmed pet can hold aggro if you're not in melee range... a 65 warrior can not anywhere near as reliably.

5. This is fucking wrong

Ask yourself you fucking retards... if there were a 700 mana spell that summonned you a pet that was basically a 65 warrior in VT+ gear, would you use it over one of these fucking charmed monstrosities? The answer is hell fucking no, you wouldn't DREAM of it.

Would you blow 700 mana on a pet that only did current monk damage? No... quit fucking fooling yourself, it would be an incredible waste.

Same with a rogue...

So, when the three major melee classes are basically worth LOTS less than 700 mana, we feel a little fucking pissed off. Do you fucking get it yet?

[ntangent]

Would you agree that the problem is not the spell and warriors in general?

Would you agree that nerfing charm is not the right answer?

If everyone would stfu about "nerf charm!" and bitch about fixing the classes, we wouldn't be having this discussion now would we?

[Destinae]

I'd disagree on all counts, nerf fucking charm. Not that I really care anymore that nothing is balanced, but this isn't a "everyone else broken charm is cool broz" situation, charm is about 25*8/2 times too powerful. Charm being overpowered doesn't remotely relate to any balance issues with any other class, it's just fucking broken...you'd have to be wearing presciption "stupid" sunglasses if you can't see that already.

I'd make an actual point or something but wtf, you actually think charm isn't broken?

[The Insider]

Honestly,what fun would an enchanter have now if they cant charm something that actually helps the raid or group situation?
Buff everyone SoV + Kei and sit in the corner and nuke for 1100 once every 15 secs?

[LISeru]

Rune component is gay, as mentioned before it will be a timed Dictate spell then.

Dictate... because it almost acts the same way? Or not at all...

Because when you have someone tanking the mob the rune has no impact at all on dps? Or the fact that if you use the charmed mob to tank it breaks like it should? Or that enchanters wont be allowed to use 600+ dps pets to solo? Further, it eliminates reverse charming so that the exp disparity is filled even more.

But I'd have to agree, its directly relates to PoP being a fucking zerg expansion where all thats needed is dps and cannon fodder.

Low hp mobs with high dps were just begging to be charmed. Events like RZtW were just begging to have 200 people zerg it.

Its called forethought; SoE doesn't have any.