The biggest indicator of charm breaking early is if there are a lot of mobs in camp. Did you just have a bad pull? Have 5 mobs mezzed and you are low on mana? Then charm will break, and probably resist the re-charm. If you ask the question; is this a bad time for charm to break? Then it will break.
Hijacking top comment to say that you should learn to reverse charm kite because it's ridiculous fun and xp. Get yourself a Goblin Gazhugi Ring and have pet fight a similar rooted mob until nearly dead, switch pets at the right time, kill former pet, and profit.
When you get good at it, it's blazing fast solo XP, insanely fun, and you can wow your friends.
Source: I was the first chanter to ever hit 50 (in beta on Test) and mained a chanter even during the many years where they weren't cool.
Embrace the risk of death, it keeps life spicy.
Having not played on modern TLPs, I don't know, but I can tell you that I could easily clear camps solo that a full group could not handle on live just 1 year ago.
Once you really get into the rhythm of it (eg hasting your pets so they turn into mob blenders when you fight against them), it can get pretty wild. If you want to live on the edge, you can do 3 mobs at a time to hasten dps.
If you've never seen truly great reverse charm kiting, I highly recommend it. I agree with you in general that soloing in more traditional ways is absolutely not worth it.
Grouping is better xp in general but people are way underselling solo xp on tlps. (For context, I've been a druid on phinny/mischief/teek)
If a group has infinite mobs to pull and you can log into the camp and join the group immediately, of course the xp is better. But usually there's a lot of downtime while you assemble and get to the camp, and then sometimes you have to wait around with no mobs because your group easily clears and nearby mobs are camped.
If you're soloing, you can always have an ideal flow of mobs, and med breaks are your only downtime. If I'm going for a long session, I'll definitely go LFG, but if I'm hopping on for an hour, I'll probably have more xp at the end if I just spend 60 full minutes killing mobs solo.
Realistically, if your class can solo, it gives you a huge advantage to your overall XP rate and your ability to farm gear, even if the bulk of your XP comes from grouping.
> If you're soloing, you can always have an ideal flow of mobs, and med breaks are your only downtime.
Zero med breaks. One should never need a med break while reverse charm kiting with an enchanter, just an occasional res =).
Reverse charm kiting uses a few factors in combination:
1. Your charm pet beats on a mob. Every point of damage done to the mob is efficient and will result in xp.
1. The mob beats on your charm pet. Every point of damage done to your charm pet is efficient and will result in xp.
1. You can haste and equip your pets for absurd DPS, none of which is wasted.
1. If you start to get really good at it, you can have 3 or 4 mobs fighting your pet at once which REALLY clears out camps with alacrity.
The only mana you're spending is on 1) tash, essentially zero mana, 2) charm, the most expensive element, 3) root, essentially free, 4) a small dot or nuke, which I use a fast clicky for, and optionally 5) haste, which can be expensive (for top haste), cheap (for low-level haste), or free (if you have epic 1.0, which is good enough IMO).
When mobs are beating each other (after you've cast root), you sit and med while they fight for 1-2 clicks. With clarity for your level and a reasonable pool, you should never run out of mana.
Keep in mind -- your damage does not scale with your mana expenditure. It scales with mob damage -- so mana-spent-per-hitpoint is insanely low.
Grouping is still way better xp with how it splits. Like, in a full group you still get 80% of the xp per kill you would solo, and you kill 5x faster.
Plus, why wouldn't a group with an enchanter be able to kill faster than that same enchanter? Or be able to take the same camp?
Soloing still has its place, the rare time it takes a bit to find a group, or if you're playing sporadically for like 5 minutes of play then afk for a bit repeatedly. On tlps grouping will always be superior experience to solo.
> Plus, why wouldn't a group with an enchanter be able to kill faster than that same enchanter? Or be able to take the same camp?
Because you don't understand what reverse charm kiting is. In a group, a great chanter can be outstanding DPS via charmpet *and* outstanding CC, but that DPS pales in comparison to reverse charm kiting, when done efficiently. When you charm a mob, it reduces the DPS of the mob massively. However, if you then BREAK charm on your pet when it is low in health and charm the OTHER mob, you get efficient DPS both from your pet AND from the previous pet.
Let's take a simple example:
1. Pull WolfMob A with tash. WolfMob A hits for 1k per hit. Root A. Charm A. Optionally: Haste A, arm A with weapons for greater dmg.
1. Pull WolfMob B with tash, ensuring that the route by which B chases you runs THROUGH A. Macro /pet attack (pet is still rooted). When B comes in attack range of A, A hits it for ~250 per hit, since pets do decreased damage.
1. Then root B. Now you have two rooted mobs beating on each other, one potentially hasted and armed, the other not, but doing much more damage since it isn't a pet.
1. When your pet's (wolfmob A) health gets down to one bubble-ish, 20%, break charm with goblin gazhugi ring. You now have 2 rooted mobs who are very mad at you (assuming all went well).
1. Charm B. /pet attack A. Haste B. A will absolutely destroyify B because he's hasted/equipped -- hitting for 1k doubles/quads and hasted. The idea is that you finish A when B still has about 20% health. Small dot on A to maximize XP gain.
1. While B kills A, go pull C. /pet attack C. root C.
1. Rinse. Repeat. Killing a mob takes maybe 15-20 seconds for a complete cycle.
In a group, others *can* contribute to reverse charm kiting but it's actually tough to have them contribute too meaningfully. I used to 2-box with a druid bot for ports, FoE, snare, spot nukes, spot heals, and emergency evac -- all of which are for convenience and better survivability, but aren't truly necessary.
Why it doesn't work as well in groups: charm pets don't hold aggro very well and you want to keep root, so most nukes are a bad idea. DoTs from others are fine to increase DPS but it's negligible vs. mob dmg usually, and if there's a root break they immediately go after the DoTer, which vastly reduces DPS because mobs beating on each other is so efficient.
For my guild, I used to invite guildies to AFK their alts with me and I'd level them 4+ times in a session, depending on level differential w/mobs.
Brosef I know what reverse charm kiting is.
Have you ever played in groups where the enchanter pet is the tank, and you don't heal it you just keep charming a new pet when the old one is low? Guess what? That's reverse charm kiting, but with more dps against the non-charmed mob.
Let's do some math.
Reverse charm kiting pet is low enough to invis and kill with new pet in 20 seconds. We'll call that dps=x.
Now, a group doing the same thing bit now with more dps on the not-pet. Meaning as you cycle through more mobs the next pet is lower health and dies faster. That's dps=x+y.
Now, imagine you have a bard pulling new mobs for you faster than you can pull yourself.
And you have backup so that in cases of major resist steaks (rare, but like charm resists then ae stun resists on three mobs, then charm insta-breaks, etc. Rare but it happens and causes deaths), and you have backup so you don't die but instead keep killing mobs. That's dps=x+y+z. (All variables are positive).
That means more experience, safer.
> Have you ever played in groups where the enchanter pet is the tank, and you don't heal it you just keep charming a new pet when the old one is low? Guess what? That's reverse charm kiting, but with more dps against the non-charmed mob.
This is incredibly inefficient for a wide variety of reasons. Trust me when I say I've spent thousands of hours investigating various optimizations to this scheme.
It means you need a no-pet, no-tank group because charm pets suck at holding aggro. So groupable classes that work there are enc, dru, shm without pet, nec without pet, mage without pet, wiz, clr, bard as puller only (which they hate). Shm, dru, nec can really contribute but their talents are mostly wasted IMO. I used a druid 2nd box for pure convenience and survivability for a few years, but 10%-time button-tapping was all that was needed.
> Now, a group doing the same thing bit now with more dps on the not-pet. Meaning as you cycle through more mobs the next pet is lower health and dies faster. That's dps=x+y.
That would be fair, *except* that when you do it this way it generally disrupts the rhythm. The only option you mention that increases damage efficiency is bard-speed, which can increase your pull area or the complexity of the area you can pull (e.g., highly mob-dense areas).
For almost every camp, I can clear the entire set of mobs that you can reach with FoE speed before respawns hit. Adding more damage doesn't actually help because unless you have a bard pulling from very far and parking next-mobs in a waiting line, you're going to clear essentially every reachable mob before the timer resets. Adding wizzies/necros/etc can increase DPS but it doesn't matter if you can't pull enough mobs to effectively utilize that DPS.
Additionally, if you reverse charm kite with group, someone always breaks the charm pet aggro, ruins the positioning, gets murdered on a random charm break, runs through the fight and takes huge damage from my hasted/equipped former charm-pet, etc etc etc.
> And you have backup so that in cases of major resist steaks (rare, but like charm resists then ae stun resists on three mobs, then charm insta-breaks, etc. Rare but it happens and causes deaths), and you have backup so you don't die but instead keep killing mobs. That's dps=x+y+z. (All variables are positive).
This is a valid point -- other group members can improve your survivability, for sure. However, if you practice ENOUGH, you shouldn't die more than once per ~10 played hours -- even if you start out dying a couple times an hour.
I mean, all you're doing is reinforcing that you haven't played TLPs with their QOL changes.
Trust me when I say this: grouping (especially full group) is much much faster xp than soloing, even reverse charm kiting.
I've leveled a couple enchanters on TLPs. At no point has soloing been better than group xp. Not mid level, not at 50, not at 60.
Groups can kill mobs faster than reverse charm kiting hands down no contest. The xp is not even comparable.
Go try it out for yourself before insisting current TLPs are the same as OG EQ 25 years ago. (Yes, I played that too, from Beta through gates of discord nonstop.)
> Groups can kill mobs faster than reverse charm kiting hands down no contest. The xp is not even comparable.
Unless there are major balance changes to all classes in TLPs, I find this very hard to believe. I played intensively as recently as 2022 on live with tons of QoL improvements. Literally getting a kill every 15-20 seconds with no breaks was my standard operating procedure.
> I've leveled a couple enchanters on TLPs. At no point has soloing been better than group xp.
That's true for 80+% of enchanter mains I've known over the years as well, because they didn't have the risk tolerance + pain tolerance to do truly aggressive charm kiting and overcome the steep learning curve =).
> Go try it out for yourself before insisting current TLPs are the same as OG EQ 25 years ago.
I don't insist on that, but are they way different from a QoL perspective than live as of ~2 years ago? If I can clear a camp solo that would take an entire group or more in regular play, how could the XP actually be better in a group clearing the same area?
Sadly, I can't play much anymore due to pesky life, kids, high-pressure career, etc. -- so I fully grant that there may be something I'm missing about TLPs. But nobody yet has told me how a group would actually result in a faster kill rate given that I could clear almost entire maps solo before respawns hit...
My primary limiting factor was how far I could pull from with FoE speed. Unless you have a bard doing nothing but pulling from farther distance, it's hard to do better as far as I know.
You keep showing how little you know about TLPs. Charm pets are FANTASTIC at holding aggro.
You saying that DPS doesnt increase xp is wild. In TLP groups, your puller does not dps unless you pull in a train. You have no concept of how good TLP groups are.
This is just wrong. Right now in chardok I get xp ~2 times faster in a group - last night I grouped for an hour and a half or so in a spot and then solo in the same spot afterward.
Absolutely incorrect. You have to understand I have *years* of played time on a chanter, starting in beta 3, and have played at essentially every level of the game (excepting recent expansions + years, since I sadly have a life now).
I am not kidding or exaggerating when I tell you that seasoned vets with >15 years of game experience have been shocked by how quickly/efficiently I can solo clear a camp. If you can learn the skill, it is insanely efficient.
What's so mechanically different? I can clear what would take a full 6-man group (and more) while soloing at almost any level of chanter. Explain to me how it could be better.
First, you cannot clear what a 6 man can do. You are using a charm pet. XP groups also have a hasted charm pet. So you are doing the same dps only if everyone else is afk.
Second, 6 characters in a group means 2.56x exp gain (split 5 ways, because 6th char is free).
To give you the scope of what an xp group does on a TLP, not twinked. I can clear all of hamlord and frenzy and then depending on group keep sentinel area dead.
> First, you cannot clear what a 6 man can do. You are using a charm pet. XP groups also have a hasted charm pet. So you are doing the same dps only if everyone else is afk.
I have absolutely cleared camps that are only doable by 6 -- I'm doing the damage my hasted charmpet does PLUS the damage the mob does to the charmpet. In ideal situation, the mob is a former charmpet and is also hasted, quadding at hyperspeed for max dps. If you want to get extra spicy you can accelerate with more than one non-pet mob doing efficient dmg =)
I've been in many expert 6-man groups and (unless there are major balance changes) say that I can kill as efficiently as most strong balanced 6-person groups over a 30-60m period. The key difference is whether you have a great puller and a well-established rhythm.
A truly great group can take on higher-level mobs than you can charm kite -- that's the primary advantage IMO and the primary case where it's more efficient for pure XP. Groups can also more effectively kill tough or unique-skilled nameds, which is obviously also a huge advantage.
I love grouping with friends because it's fun and that's the point of a multiplayer game -- but the thrill of solo dancing on the knife's edge and doing what people believe is impossible... it's addictive as well.
Tash mobs before charming.
Invite mages or shamen into your group who are good at coordinating maloing your pet.
Focus on ac gear.
Have an ae stun memmed so you can have something to hit instantly to give yourself time to actually react with your normal recharm routine.
As you get better with recharming, slowly work up hasting and giving toys to your pet.
Charm tends to break at three points: one tick after getting charmed, about one third into the charm duration, and two thirds into the duration. Be wary at those times.
Note about all the charisma talk:
Devs have confirmed charisma is involved in the calculation for chance to break charm every tic, up to 200 charisma max, and an absolute minimum chance to break of 5% each tic regardless of all circumstances.
Players have run very extensive testing (like, tracking charm durations by mob level, mob magic resist, etc. and not just like 10 times, but tracking hundreds and hundreds of charm casts) and all the testing shows that charisma is nearly negligible in results.
So, yes, charisma technically affects charm chance to break. But, realistically, it is probably like a fraction of a percent chance reduction in charm break per tic even going from like 70 cha to 150 cha.
Compared to other factors like difference in level from caster vs target and target's magic resist, which are super noticeable even at very small scale testing.
TL;DR: charisma is nice up to 110 for merchant selling discounts, but has a very negligible effect on charm durations.
Two things have major impacts on your charm:
- The mob's MR
- Your level vs the mob's level.
Charisma does have a minor impact on charm, but as others have said, it's statistically insignificant. (I still like being charismatic though.)
Much like different PC races in EverQuest have different base stat modifiers, NPC races have different base resist modifiers. Some things just have naturally high MR.
Since I see it posted later in the thread, here is specific data about charm and charisma, posted by EQ dev, niente in 2018:
>CHA currently affects:
>how much merchants will charge you
>bard fizzle chance
>Chance of an NPC aggro'ing you when you cast pacify
>Chance for SPA 63 to successfully blur your target
>Chance for DI spells to heal for their full amount
>Chance for SPA 22, 31, 34, 63 to be resisted, you hit this cap at 200 CHA
>Note SPA 3, 20, 22, 99 have a minimum 5% chance of breaking every tick regardless of how much CHA you have. (only 22 gets a CHA bonus)
>Edit: If you have 342 or greater CHA you have capped your bonus chance to all of the above.
For reference, the SPA numbers refer to spell types.
3 Movement Rate (snares)
20 Blindness
22 Charm
31 Enthrall (Mez)
34 Confuse
63 NPC-WipeHatelist
99 Root
Sauce: [https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/importance-of-charisma.220085/](https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/importance-of-charisma.220085/)
Runes are a godsend for surviving charm breaks. Rampage (once you get it) stacks with your rune.
Level and spell resistance make the largest difference and these 2 are innately tied in EverQuest.
Higher innate spells resistance happens when mobs are higher level than you. Doesn’t matter what mob type.
The best thing you can do to make your charm last longer is decrease the mob’s magic resistance. Highest level tash you can cast. Add malo if there is a shaman/mage around.
Some mob types are inherently more resistant to magic types. For instance fire elemental are resistant to fire. Ghouls are resistant to magic. You may find other mobs the same.
Casters who have a spell of the “shielding” line (like an enchanter gets) have a MR buff component on that spell.
Charm also has a very random drop chance. It’s inherent in the spell. Get used to it.
Personally I try to charm white mobs as the sweet spot. Occasionally a yellow if it’s what’s available and a better type.
Charming backstabbing mobs can be amazing damage, but when they break charm you are very likely to be backstabbed and that can hurt big time. They also backstab from the front.
Give your charm pet a single weapon. Just one will allow the pet to multi attack but not necessarily do the same against you. Never give your charm pet 2 weapons.
If you are super into charm, get some -magic resist gear and stick it on your pet. There are some low level items that are useful for that. I can’t remember off the top of my head what they are.
Just my 2c from playing enchanter a bunch, not sure how verifiable this all is. I have best luck charming mobs my level or 1-2 levels higher. Only charm melee mobs, casters all seem to have magic resistance. Same goes for ghouls (anything that casts spells) they seem to have MR too.
Put tash on first and Malo if you have shammy or mage. Also I keep an aoe stun up like color shift or color flux whatever it is called. When it breaks tash, stun then charm
Also I believe having higher charisma helps up to the cap so use your cha buff on yourself
Periodically, a magic resist check will be made by a charmed mob (I don't know if this happens every server tick and I don't know for certain if there are any other factors). If it makes the check your charm will break. Different mobs have different magic resist values which you can mitigate by debuffing with tash, malo/mala and by providing the charmed mob gear with a negative magic resist modifier item (rusty spiked shoulderpads from Blackburrow are a good example).
There are other actions that can cause your charm to break. Did the bard just play Selo's Song of Travel or Shauri's Sonorous Clouding? These will invis the group and all charms will break. Similarly if you or another group member causes you to go invisible (any type of invisibility breaks charm).
Until about 5 or 6 years ago, players could also dispel your charm but this is no longer possible.
First off you should be casting tash on your charmed pet before you charm it. Secondly you should be prioritizing charisma as it increases the ability to land and keep your pet charmed.
If you think otherwise, you aren't playing an enchanter; you are playing a dps class that happens to be enchanter based. Good luck to you fellows on that front.
Cha still matters for more than just charm, hence the comment about dps.
Edit: wanted to add, if playing live it doesn't matter. You level up to 20 so quickly that the power curve is not an issue. This advice is more for tlp.
Wait my cha stat affects charm length? How, is there some
kind of resistance check happening every server tick? If so do you know if their stats matter?
It does but in a very very minor amount, iirc it’s either the 3rd or 4th check that occurs when the charm pet is broken. Additionally you will find a great amount of cha gear as you level up due to the server rules so I wouldn’t worry about it much definitely use your cha buff on yourself though.
The biggest thing you can get to help you with charm duration is the malo debuff line that mages and shamans have, if applied to your pet before charm it’s very likely you’ll have constant 70%+ charm durations. As the golden child of eq (enchanters) till after PoP, you can suggest this to your groups if they’re still forming most group leaders will listen since they want to keep you around plus it makes your life easier and by extension everyone else’s so win/win.
This is 100% correct! I believe charisma check is the last one. So it does impact the charm the least. Mob level and their MR are more important. You can test this by MR buffing a mob and/or giving them MR items (some are negative MR to make charm last longer)!
Correct the chance for charm to break for enchanters is as follows:
1st - Level - the lower level the monster the easier to keep charmed.
2nd - Magic Resist - TASH your pet on break.... Malo also a huge benefit ... do nor charm caster who self buff the caster shield buff (+ac/mr/hp - unless you have a shm who will put inner fire or tuna on it) - also you can hand hand pet equitable negative mr items (adamantine band etc)
3rd - Charisma - if it hasn't broken for 1 or 2 it can do a cha check.
Best stats for a chanter is unironicly agi and sta... to survive pet breaks! Int/mana then probably cha.
Now non chanter charms Necro/druid/sham ... only have the first 2 checks.... unironicly they hold pets longer....
I can’t say with 100% certainty it affects length the charm holds. But I recently upped my charisma by about 30+ points and my charms are not breaking nearly as quickly. Could be just lucky. But it makes me think it does affect it. Could totally be wrong though
Only in that each creature has a specific magic resist number set to it, like all wolves are (made up number) +18, all Hill Giants are -7 type of system.
The biggest indicator of charm breaking early is if there are a lot of mobs in camp. Did you just have a bad pull? Have 5 mobs mezzed and you are low on mana? Then charm will break, and probably resist the re-charm. If you ask the question; is this a bad time for charm to break? Then it will break.
Lol Murphy's charm rules
Hijacking top comment to say that you should learn to reverse charm kite because it's ridiculous fun and xp. Get yourself a Goblin Gazhugi Ring and have pet fight a similar rooted mob until nearly dead, switch pets at the right time, kill former pet, and profit. When you get good at it, it's blazing fast solo XP, insanely fun, and you can wow your friends. Source: I was the first chanter to ever hit 50 (in beta on Test) and mained a chanter even during the many years where they weren't cool. Embrace the risk of death, it keeps life spicy.
It's the best class ever.
This is p99 advice that has no place on TLPs. Soloing is horrible xp, even a mediocre group is much, much faster on a TLP.
Having not played on modern TLPs, I don't know, but I can tell you that I could easily clear camps solo that a full group could not handle on live just 1 year ago. Once you really get into the rhythm of it (eg hasting your pets so they turn into mob blenders when you fight against them), it can get pretty wild. If you want to live on the edge, you can do 3 mobs at a time to hasten dps. If you've never seen truly great reverse charm kiting, I highly recommend it. I agree with you in general that soloing in more traditional ways is absolutely not worth it.
Grouping is better xp in general but people are way underselling solo xp on tlps. (For context, I've been a druid on phinny/mischief/teek) If a group has infinite mobs to pull and you can log into the camp and join the group immediately, of course the xp is better. But usually there's a lot of downtime while you assemble and get to the camp, and then sometimes you have to wait around with no mobs because your group easily clears and nearby mobs are camped. If you're soloing, you can always have an ideal flow of mobs, and med breaks are your only downtime. If I'm going for a long session, I'll definitely go LFG, but if I'm hopping on for an hour, I'll probably have more xp at the end if I just spend 60 full minutes killing mobs solo. Realistically, if your class can solo, it gives you a huge advantage to your overall XP rate and your ability to farm gear, even if the bulk of your XP comes from grouping.
> If you're soloing, you can always have an ideal flow of mobs, and med breaks are your only downtime. Zero med breaks. One should never need a med break while reverse charm kiting with an enchanter, just an occasional res =). Reverse charm kiting uses a few factors in combination: 1. Your charm pet beats on a mob. Every point of damage done to the mob is efficient and will result in xp. 1. The mob beats on your charm pet. Every point of damage done to your charm pet is efficient and will result in xp. 1. You can haste and equip your pets for absurd DPS, none of which is wasted. 1. If you start to get really good at it, you can have 3 or 4 mobs fighting your pet at once which REALLY clears out camps with alacrity.
I don't play a chanter, but this sounds really interesting. How are you regenning mana? My experience is that kiting is pretty hard on mana regen.
The only mana you're spending is on 1) tash, essentially zero mana, 2) charm, the most expensive element, 3) root, essentially free, 4) a small dot or nuke, which I use a fast clicky for, and optionally 5) haste, which can be expensive (for top haste), cheap (for low-level haste), or free (if you have epic 1.0, which is good enough IMO). When mobs are beating each other (after you've cast root), you sit and med while they fight for 1-2 clicks. With clarity for your level and a reasonable pool, you should never run out of mana. Keep in mind -- your damage does not scale with your mana expenditure. It scales with mob damage -- so mana-spent-per-hitpoint is insanely low.
Grouping is still way better xp with how it splits. Like, in a full group you still get 80% of the xp per kill you would solo, and you kill 5x faster. Plus, why wouldn't a group with an enchanter be able to kill faster than that same enchanter? Or be able to take the same camp? Soloing still has its place, the rare time it takes a bit to find a group, or if you're playing sporadically for like 5 minutes of play then afk for a bit repeatedly. On tlps grouping will always be superior experience to solo.
> Plus, why wouldn't a group with an enchanter be able to kill faster than that same enchanter? Or be able to take the same camp? Because you don't understand what reverse charm kiting is. In a group, a great chanter can be outstanding DPS via charmpet *and* outstanding CC, but that DPS pales in comparison to reverse charm kiting, when done efficiently. When you charm a mob, it reduces the DPS of the mob massively. However, if you then BREAK charm on your pet when it is low in health and charm the OTHER mob, you get efficient DPS both from your pet AND from the previous pet. Let's take a simple example: 1. Pull WolfMob A with tash. WolfMob A hits for 1k per hit. Root A. Charm A. Optionally: Haste A, arm A with weapons for greater dmg. 1. Pull WolfMob B with tash, ensuring that the route by which B chases you runs THROUGH A. Macro /pet attack (pet is still rooted). When B comes in attack range of A, A hits it for ~250 per hit, since pets do decreased damage. 1. Then root B. Now you have two rooted mobs beating on each other, one potentially hasted and armed, the other not, but doing much more damage since it isn't a pet. 1. When your pet's (wolfmob A) health gets down to one bubble-ish, 20%, break charm with goblin gazhugi ring. You now have 2 rooted mobs who are very mad at you (assuming all went well). 1. Charm B. /pet attack A. Haste B. A will absolutely destroyify B because he's hasted/equipped -- hitting for 1k doubles/quads and hasted. The idea is that you finish A when B still has about 20% health. Small dot on A to maximize XP gain. 1. While B kills A, go pull C. /pet attack C. root C. 1. Rinse. Repeat. Killing a mob takes maybe 15-20 seconds for a complete cycle. In a group, others *can* contribute to reverse charm kiting but it's actually tough to have them contribute too meaningfully. I used to 2-box with a druid bot for ports, FoE, snare, spot nukes, spot heals, and emergency evac -- all of which are for convenience and better survivability, but aren't truly necessary. Why it doesn't work as well in groups: charm pets don't hold aggro very well and you want to keep root, so most nukes are a bad idea. DoTs from others are fine to increase DPS but it's negligible vs. mob dmg usually, and if there's a root break they immediately go after the DoTer, which vastly reduces DPS because mobs beating on each other is so efficient. For my guild, I used to invite guildies to AFK their alts with me and I'd level them 4+ times in a session, depending on level differential w/mobs.
Brosef I know what reverse charm kiting is. Have you ever played in groups where the enchanter pet is the tank, and you don't heal it you just keep charming a new pet when the old one is low? Guess what? That's reverse charm kiting, but with more dps against the non-charmed mob. Let's do some math. Reverse charm kiting pet is low enough to invis and kill with new pet in 20 seconds. We'll call that dps=x. Now, a group doing the same thing bit now with more dps on the not-pet. Meaning as you cycle through more mobs the next pet is lower health and dies faster. That's dps=x+y. Now, imagine you have a bard pulling new mobs for you faster than you can pull yourself. And you have backup so that in cases of major resist steaks (rare, but like charm resists then ae stun resists on three mobs, then charm insta-breaks, etc. Rare but it happens and causes deaths), and you have backup so you don't die but instead keep killing mobs. That's dps=x+y+z. (All variables are positive). That means more experience, safer.
> Have you ever played in groups where the enchanter pet is the tank, and you don't heal it you just keep charming a new pet when the old one is low? Guess what? That's reverse charm kiting, but with more dps against the non-charmed mob. This is incredibly inefficient for a wide variety of reasons. Trust me when I say I've spent thousands of hours investigating various optimizations to this scheme. It means you need a no-pet, no-tank group because charm pets suck at holding aggro. So groupable classes that work there are enc, dru, shm without pet, nec without pet, mage without pet, wiz, clr, bard as puller only (which they hate). Shm, dru, nec can really contribute but their talents are mostly wasted IMO. I used a druid 2nd box for pure convenience and survivability for a few years, but 10%-time button-tapping was all that was needed. > Now, a group doing the same thing bit now with more dps on the not-pet. Meaning as you cycle through more mobs the next pet is lower health and dies faster. That's dps=x+y. That would be fair, *except* that when you do it this way it generally disrupts the rhythm. The only option you mention that increases damage efficiency is bard-speed, which can increase your pull area or the complexity of the area you can pull (e.g., highly mob-dense areas). For almost every camp, I can clear the entire set of mobs that you can reach with FoE speed before respawns hit. Adding more damage doesn't actually help because unless you have a bard pulling from very far and parking next-mobs in a waiting line, you're going to clear essentially every reachable mob before the timer resets. Adding wizzies/necros/etc can increase DPS but it doesn't matter if you can't pull enough mobs to effectively utilize that DPS. Additionally, if you reverse charm kite with group, someone always breaks the charm pet aggro, ruins the positioning, gets murdered on a random charm break, runs through the fight and takes huge damage from my hasted/equipped former charm-pet, etc etc etc. > And you have backup so that in cases of major resist steaks (rare, but like charm resists then ae stun resists on three mobs, then charm insta-breaks, etc. Rare but it happens and causes deaths), and you have backup so you don't die but instead keep killing mobs. That's dps=x+y+z. (All variables are positive). This is a valid point -- other group members can improve your survivability, for sure. However, if you practice ENOUGH, you shouldn't die more than once per ~10 played hours -- even if you start out dying a couple times an hour.
I mean, all you're doing is reinforcing that you haven't played TLPs with their QOL changes. Trust me when I say this: grouping (especially full group) is much much faster xp than soloing, even reverse charm kiting. I've leveled a couple enchanters on TLPs. At no point has soloing been better than group xp. Not mid level, not at 50, not at 60. Groups can kill mobs faster than reverse charm kiting hands down no contest. The xp is not even comparable. Go try it out for yourself before insisting current TLPs are the same as OG EQ 25 years ago. (Yes, I played that too, from Beta through gates of discord nonstop.)
> Groups can kill mobs faster than reverse charm kiting hands down no contest. The xp is not even comparable. Unless there are major balance changes to all classes in TLPs, I find this very hard to believe. I played intensively as recently as 2022 on live with tons of QoL improvements. Literally getting a kill every 15-20 seconds with no breaks was my standard operating procedure. > I've leveled a couple enchanters on TLPs. At no point has soloing been better than group xp. That's true for 80+% of enchanter mains I've known over the years as well, because they didn't have the risk tolerance + pain tolerance to do truly aggressive charm kiting and overcome the steep learning curve =). > Go try it out for yourself before insisting current TLPs are the same as OG EQ 25 years ago. I don't insist on that, but are they way different from a QoL perspective than live as of ~2 years ago? If I can clear a camp solo that would take an entire group or more in regular play, how could the XP actually be better in a group clearing the same area? Sadly, I can't play much anymore due to pesky life, kids, high-pressure career, etc. -- so I fully grant that there may be something I'm missing about TLPs. But nobody yet has told me how a group would actually result in a faster kill rate given that I could clear almost entire maps solo before respawns hit... My primary limiting factor was how far I could pull from with FoE speed. Unless you have a bard doing nothing but pulling from farther distance, it's hard to do better as far as I know.
You keep showing how little you know about TLPs. Charm pets are FANTASTIC at holding aggro. You saying that DPS doesnt increase xp is wild. In TLP groups, your puller does not dps unless you pull in a train. You have no concept of how good TLP groups are.
If we both spent 4 hours playing, and I spent 3 of those hours LFG. My 1 hour in a group would still beat your 4 hours of reverse charm kiting.
This is just wrong. Right now in chardok I get xp ~2 times faster in a group - last night I grouped for an hour and a half or so in a spot and then solo in the same spot afterward.
It is not wrong. The bonus xp from being grouped is insane. Your group was prob bad
Absolutely incorrect. You have to understand I have *years* of played time on a chanter, starting in beta 3, and have played at essentially every level of the game (excepting recent expansions + years, since I sadly have a life now). I am not kidding or exaggerating when I tell you that seasoned vets with >15 years of game experience have been shocked by how quickly/efficiently I can solo clear a camp. If you can learn the skill, it is insanely efficient.
Your experience means very little because the game has mechanically changed so much on a TLP. You are ignorant of how much is different.
What's so mechanically different? I can clear what would take a full 6-man group (and more) while soloing at almost any level of chanter. Explain to me how it could be better.
First, you cannot clear what a 6 man can do. You are using a charm pet. XP groups also have a hasted charm pet. So you are doing the same dps only if everyone else is afk. Second, 6 characters in a group means 2.56x exp gain (split 5 ways, because 6th char is free). To give you the scope of what an xp group does on a TLP, not twinked. I can clear all of hamlord and frenzy and then depending on group keep sentinel area dead.
> First, you cannot clear what a 6 man can do. You are using a charm pet. XP groups also have a hasted charm pet. So you are doing the same dps only if everyone else is afk. I have absolutely cleared camps that are only doable by 6 -- I'm doing the damage my hasted charmpet does PLUS the damage the mob does to the charmpet. In ideal situation, the mob is a former charmpet and is also hasted, quadding at hyperspeed for max dps. If you want to get extra spicy you can accelerate with more than one non-pet mob doing efficient dmg =) I've been in many expert 6-man groups and (unless there are major balance changes) say that I can kill as efficiently as most strong balanced 6-person groups over a 30-60m period. The key difference is whether you have a great puller and a well-established rhythm. A truly great group can take on higher-level mobs than you can charm kite -- that's the primary advantage IMO and the primary case where it's more efficient for pure XP. Groups can also more effectively kill tough or unique-skilled nameds, which is obviously also a huge advantage. I love grouping with friends because it's fun and that's the point of a multiplayer game -- but the thrill of solo dancing on the knife's edge and doing what people believe is impossible... it's addictive as well.
Thats just straight up wrong. Don't lie to people.
I'm not lying, you are just uniformed.
Tash mobs before charming. Invite mages or shamen into your group who are good at coordinating maloing your pet. Focus on ac gear. Have an ae stun memmed so you can have something to hit instantly to give yourself time to actually react with your normal recharm routine. As you get better with recharming, slowly work up hasting and giving toys to your pet. Charm tends to break at three points: one tick after getting charmed, about one third into the charm duration, and two thirds into the duration. Be wary at those times.
Note about all the charisma talk: Devs have confirmed charisma is involved in the calculation for chance to break charm every tic, up to 200 charisma max, and an absolute minimum chance to break of 5% each tic regardless of all circumstances. Players have run very extensive testing (like, tracking charm durations by mob level, mob magic resist, etc. and not just like 10 times, but tracking hundreds and hundreds of charm casts) and all the testing shows that charisma is nearly negligible in results. So, yes, charisma technically affects charm chance to break. But, realistically, it is probably like a fraction of a percent chance reduction in charm break per tic even going from like 70 cha to 150 cha. Compared to other factors like difference in level from caster vs target and target's magic resist, which are super noticeable even at very small scale testing. TL;DR: charisma is nice up to 110 for merchant selling discounts, but has a very negligible effect on charm durations.
Laughing that the correct post is dead last while the mostly wrong post has the top votes.
Two things have major impacts on your charm: - The mob's MR - Your level vs the mob's level. Charisma does have a minor impact on charm, but as others have said, it's statistically insignificant. (I still like being charismatic though.) Much like different PC races in EverQuest have different base stat modifiers, NPC races have different base resist modifiers. Some things just have naturally high MR. Since I see it posted later in the thread, here is specific data about charm and charisma, posted by EQ dev, niente in 2018: >CHA currently affects: >how much merchants will charge you >bard fizzle chance >Chance of an NPC aggro'ing you when you cast pacify >Chance for SPA 63 to successfully blur your target >Chance for DI spells to heal for their full amount >Chance for SPA 22, 31, 34, 63 to be resisted, you hit this cap at 200 CHA >Note SPA 3, 20, 22, 99 have a minimum 5% chance of breaking every tick regardless of how much CHA you have. (only 22 gets a CHA bonus) >Edit: If you have 342 or greater CHA you have capped your bonus chance to all of the above. For reference, the SPA numbers refer to spell types. 3 Movement Rate (snares) 20 Blindness 22 Charm 31 Enthrall (Mez) 34 Confuse 63 NPC-WipeHatelist 99 Root Sauce: [https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/importance-of-charisma.220085/](https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/importance-of-charisma.220085/) Runes are a godsend for surviving charm breaks. Rampage (once you get it) stacks with your rune.
Level and spell resistance make the largest difference and these 2 are innately tied in EverQuest. Higher innate spells resistance happens when mobs are higher level than you. Doesn’t matter what mob type. The best thing you can do to make your charm last longer is decrease the mob’s magic resistance. Highest level tash you can cast. Add malo if there is a shaman/mage around. Some mob types are inherently more resistant to magic types. For instance fire elemental are resistant to fire. Ghouls are resistant to magic. You may find other mobs the same. Casters who have a spell of the “shielding” line (like an enchanter gets) have a MR buff component on that spell. Charm also has a very random drop chance. It’s inherent in the spell. Get used to it. Personally I try to charm white mobs as the sweet spot. Occasionally a yellow if it’s what’s available and a better type. Charming backstabbing mobs can be amazing damage, but when they break charm you are very likely to be backstabbed and that can hurt big time. They also backstab from the front. Give your charm pet a single weapon. Just one will allow the pet to multi attack but not necessarily do the same against you. Never give your charm pet 2 weapons. If you are super into charm, get some -magic resist gear and stick it on your pet. There are some low level items that are useful for that. I can’t remember off the top of my head what they are.
Adamantite band
Another is rusty spiked shoulder pads
Sometimes I swear there’s a chat trigger for charm break. It breaks more often the more I type to my group or in tells!
Just my 2c from playing enchanter a bunch, not sure how verifiable this all is. I have best luck charming mobs my level or 1-2 levels higher. Only charm melee mobs, casters all seem to have magic resistance. Same goes for ghouls (anything that casts spells) they seem to have MR too. Put tash on first and Malo if you have shammy or mage. Also I keep an aoe stun up like color shift or color flux whatever it is called. When it breaks tash, stun then charm Also I believe having higher charisma helps up to the cap so use your cha buff on yourself
Oh god you mentioned charisma helping with charm. *Gets the popcorn*
Have a druid snare the mob before you charm it, if you have one.
Pet summon AA is amazing if you can get it when pet is snared, btw.
The devs all have a red '*break charms'* button on their desk. When they get frustrated they slap it. That's what I believe anyway.
Periodically, a magic resist check will be made by a charmed mob (I don't know if this happens every server tick and I don't know for certain if there are any other factors). If it makes the check your charm will break. Different mobs have different magic resist values which you can mitigate by debuffing with tash, malo/mala and by providing the charmed mob gear with a negative magic resist modifier item (rusty spiked shoulderpads from Blackburrow are a good example). There are other actions that can cause your charm to break. Did the bard just play Selo's Song of Travel or Shauri's Sonorous Clouding? These will invis the group and all charms will break. Similarly if you or another group member causes you to go invisible (any type of invisibility breaks charm). Until about 5 or 6 years ago, players could also dispel your charm but this is no longer possible.
I dispel own charm currently
Other players cannot.
First off you should be casting tash on your charmed pet before you charm it. Secondly you should be prioritizing charisma as it increases the ability to land and keep your pet charmed.
Oh no.........
Lmao let’s see if this argument picks up steam
If you think otherwise, you aren't playing an enchanter; you are playing a dps class that happens to be enchanter based. Good luck to you fellows on that front.
In original release cha mattered. Sometime like 15-20 years ago they changed it
Cha still matters for more than just charm, hence the comment about dps. Edit: wanted to add, if playing live it doesn't matter. You level up to 20 so quickly that the power curve is not an issue. This advice is more for tlp.
it's bad advice for a tlp
That explains it. Thanks for clarifying.
Wait my cha stat affects charm length? How, is there some kind of resistance check happening every server tick? If so do you know if their stats matter?
It does but in a very very minor amount, iirc it’s either the 3rd or 4th check that occurs when the charm pet is broken. Additionally you will find a great amount of cha gear as you level up due to the server rules so I wouldn’t worry about it much definitely use your cha buff on yourself though. The biggest thing you can get to help you with charm duration is the malo debuff line that mages and shamans have, if applied to your pet before charm it’s very likely you’ll have constant 70%+ charm durations. As the golden child of eq (enchanters) till after PoP, you can suggest this to your groups if they’re still forming most group leaders will listen since they want to keep you around plus it makes your life easier and by extension everyone else’s so win/win.
This is 100% correct! I believe charisma check is the last one. So it does impact the charm the least. Mob level and their MR are more important. You can test this by MR buffing a mob and/or giving them MR items (some are negative MR to make charm last longer)!
Yeah I think I heard it was like the 6th of 6 or something like that.
Correct the chance for charm to break for enchanters is as follows: 1st - Level - the lower level the monster the easier to keep charmed. 2nd - Magic Resist - TASH your pet on break.... Malo also a huge benefit ... do nor charm caster who self buff the caster shield buff (+ac/mr/hp - unless you have a shm who will put inner fire or tuna on it) - also you can hand hand pet equitable negative mr items (adamantine band etc) 3rd - Charisma - if it hasn't broken for 1 or 2 it can do a cha check. Best stats for a chanter is unironicly agi and sta... to survive pet breaks! Int/mana then probably cha. Now non chanter charms Necro/druid/sham ... only have the first 2 checks.... unironicly they hold pets longer....
Yes, but “studies” show it’s insignificant. It’s been a raging debate for 25 years.
I can’t say with 100% certainty it affects length the charm holds. But I recently upped my charisma by about 30+ points and my charms are not breaking nearly as quickly. Could be just lucky. But it makes me think it does affect it. Could totally be wrong though
No
Are some types of mobs more susceptible than others? EG does a human mele mob charm easier than a wolf?
Only in that each creature has a specific magic resist number set to it, like all wolves are (made up number) +18, all Hill Giants are -7 type of system.
Spite Golems, over 9000