Raiding Enchanters, again

[Spiritplx]

For the uninitiated, enchanters have a thurg reward that's inventory clickable and dispels all beneficial spells off your pet, but doesn't remove charm.

You would have to click this and then break charm just to recharm it before Pot4 pulses again. I guess it solves the issue of not having to get around Pot4, but rebuffing the pet and recharming before it breaks kind of makes it seem "not worth it". However, I am saying all of this from a non-enchanter point of view, so maybe it really isn't that big of a deal to do just that.

 

[Thinkmeats]

You would have to click this and then break charm just to recharm it before Pot4 pulses again. I guess it solves the issue of not having to get around Pot4, but rebuffing the pet and recharming before it breaks kind of makes it seem "not worth it". However, I am saying all of this from a non-enchanter point of view, so maybe it really isn't that big of a deal to do just that.

Essentially, yes. You want to break charm to recharm anyway, as yally said (though 5 minutes is pushing it, doing it that slowly will make you eat more random breaks than I'm comfortable doing). Having to re-empower all the time would be a pit of a pain, but there's not an express need to do that. You can just leave the mob unhasted for trash and haste it for the named, ezpz.

I'm 100% for charming on raids. However I fail to see how your clicky solves all problems. True, you can stop a majority of random charm breaks by recharming, say, every 5 minutes. But you'll still have those random breaks that just suck. I don't personally see that as a problem since I always charm with relic: mez up on my bar and trust my group healer, but wanted to point out that it doesn't really fix the danger brought on by an MR song.

Making PBAOE stun unresistable or giving it some sort of -resist has been talked about before, even by you, and could be considered once again for this sort of implementation.

Actually, it does. The MR from pot4 isn't a danger for random breaks, since rapture is there for that reason (doubly so because any fight with an ae will break rapt once you charm the pet). The pot4 MR is a danger because it fucks up the scheduled recharms, forcing you to cast more than one or two spells to refresh your charm, and to spend a ton of extra mana on resisted charms.

 

[Allielyn]

It seems to me the best way to beat it would be to coordinate between the bard and the enchanter every time the enc wants to do a scheduled re-charm - though of course it doesn't help at all with random breaks.

Using the clicky and recharming before PoT4 has repulsed (which will occur randomly between 0-6 seconds after the clicky has gone off - and not possible to time at 6 seconds, either) doesn't sound at all like a truly viable possibility. And if you're coordinating it with the bard anyways, then why not just do it that way with /cm endsongs so you don't have to re-buff the pet?

No, it appears to me that using the clicky in this situation is not as useful as it could be - and certainly not something I'd depend on in a raid situation vs. PoT4 if I were an enchanter.

 

[GuiardoTuneweaver]

Actually you only have to time the clicky with breaking the mez. Click the pet-go-away button as soon as the clicky goes off and there's just a tiny chance of the POT4 pulse actually happening in between. Once the charm is broken, POT4 won't land on the former-pet when it pulses, so the time to recharm isn't a factor.

 

[Thinkmeats]

It seems to me the best way to beat it would be to coordinate between the bard and the enchanter every time the enc wants to do a scheduled re-charm - though of course it doesn't help at all with random breaks.

Using the clicky and recharming before PoT4 has repulsed (which will occur randomly between 0-6 seconds after the clicky has gone off - and not possible to time at 6 seconds, either) doesn't sound at all like a truly viable possibility. And if you're coordinating it with the bard anyways, then why not just do it that way with /cm endsongs so you don't have to re-buff the pet?

No, it appears to me that using the clicky in this situation is not as useful as it could be - and certainly not something I'd depend on in a raid situation vs. PoT4 if I were an enchanter.

On scheduled charm breaks, you push pet go away followed immediately by another spell (charm, mez, whatever); adding another keystroke just before 'go away' is trivial because the clicky is inventory-clickable instant cast. Coordinating breaks with the bard, on the other hand, would be immensely cumbersome for both characters and shouldn't ever really be done by anybody.

 

[Yally]

I would simply time every break with rapture / relic and ignore the pain of this silly clicking. The whole goal here is not to encumber raids with a burden just to gain mediocre and unreliable dps from an annoying trap. But I could be seeing it wrong. I've always favored seeding zones with mobs between say 55 and 58. You know, just a few here and there. Wouldn't hurt the raid at all, but could help just a smidge. But i'll see how this all pans out!

 

[Thinkmeats]

Pretty much. It's more or less a sure thing at this time. You're welcome not to do it, but I'll only be scoring how effective it is from the people who are doing it--those who opt out, of which I imagine there'll be many, aren't too important to the test. Raid leaders too cagey to let their encs do it have only themselves to blame, and ditto for encs too chicken or unwilling to go to the effort. The ones who actually do it will get a pile of very mana-efficient dps in exchange. My only real job will be to make sure that the pile of dps is fair for the effort--not too much and not too little.

As for your specific objections, I'm not worried about any of them and I doubt you will be either once you get playing with it. Traps will be entering the raid game regardless of if I flag every last trap mob uncharmable, so 'annoying' is moot. Mezzing instead of using the clicky is pretty dumb because clicking an item is no harder than clicking a spell and rapture ain't word of command. Seeding zones with low-level mobs won't ever happen for a whole score of good reasons (it's been brought up and defeated before re: dire charm).

The only thing I'm a little worried about is getting the raid to trigger a mob-spawner trap on purpose, but that takes a tiny fraction of the time buffing does and improves dps so I doubt it'll be a big deal. A raid will beat the shit out of a few level 50 or 54-58 mobs fast even if half the folks are afk.

 

[Yally]

What are your thoughts on swapping our relic nuke out for a relic charm when this goes in? Basis of relics = use on raids, ergo if we dont get to use relic nuke, we might as well get a relic mez to use as intended. Ideas would be slightly less mana cost, slightly less resistible, slightly longer max duration, 1 level higher max charm level, etc. Or some minor combination of such. Some enchanters would scream their heads off, but I can see this as being a neat thing personally.

 

[Tempus]

What are your thoughts on swapping our relic nuke out for a relic charm when this goes in? Basis of relics = use on raids, ergo if we dont get to use relic nuke, we might as well get a relic mez to use as intended. Ideas would be slightly less mana cost, slightly less resistible, slightly longer max duration, 1 level higher max charm level, etc. Or some minor combination of such. Some enchanters would scream their heads off, but I can see this as being a neat thing personally.

Wouldn't a longer Min duration be more beneficial to you than a longer max duration? Other than that it seems like a good idea to me! THe enchanter nuke has always been odd to me, not that they shouldn't have something to do on raids at all times but rather that I never felt it should be nuking.

 

[Retrovertigo]

In my experience of raiding on my enchanter, which is extensive and not at the same time (I still raid, but I quit my enchanter as it was getting incredibly tedious and doing nothing but buffing people on command.) Some fights, I could see a pet being benefitial, but in all honesty, unless we got a better charm spell, I wouldnt risk the raid on the charm lasting with the ridiculously crap ones we have now. It can be nice in groups, and on raid trash Ive done it. But I cant see it being viable on bosses in any situation that isnt already trivial for your guild. If a set amount of time, or a relic charm instead of nuke was implemented that might make it have a long or decently long but set duration, along with having a resist modifier, I could see it being a viable solution TM, but as it stands, theres no way to justify the means.

 

[Yally]

Wouldn't a longer Min duration be more beneficial to you than a longer max duration? Other than that it seems like a good idea to me! . . .

I thought about that, and while it's certainly an option, I don't think this should be a mindless ability lest it go right back to being useful even to botted enchanters or whatnot.

 

[Tempus]

I thought about that, and while it's certainly an option, I don't think this should be a mindless ability lest it go right back to being useful even to botted enchanters or whatnot.

I agree completely that we do not want to see a fixed duration charm, as that doesn't reward them for being active and non-botted. However, I am assuming here that we are talking about an upgrade to Word of Command (The 8min max level 58 charm) and not to Control or Dictate (The Short Duration, High level charms). I don't see what would hurt in making a relic charm that is 10 minunte max duration, and 2.5 minute min duration. I know that when my enchanter friends try to use the 8 Minute one it breaks after just a 1 minute even on light blue mobs with max charisma. I don't see how upping the min duration and the max both within reason makes them that much more bottable.

 

[tinkaa]

I fully support Tempus's suggestion.

 

[Yally]

Well yea, if you are going to push them both up like that, then it's not bad at all. It would obviously need a big enough boost to make it worthy of "relic" status. I thought you simply meant a significant bump to minimum level and leaving the 8 minutes alone.

EDIT: another neat feature would be to make the charm effect on it less of a debuff to mob attack speed / stats.

 

[Foolra]

Little late to the game here, but I'll throw in my opinion as well. I played an enchanter all the way up and it was my first raid character on SoD. I've since switched to a wizard for a couple reasons, but still do bot the enchanter on occasion on the raid if needed. I can still do all the things people are saying they do with enchanters while botting a wizard (admittedly, not a huge attention-needing class). Tash, slow (if help is needed on a boss), start giantkining (with tab target set between two PCs being buffed). And just switch back to nuke on wizard, etc while switching back to enchanter to redo GK.

It's not exactly a difficult setup, which means I'd probably be bored out of my mind just playing an enchanter now that every zone we go to (I've seen it pretty much Sepulcher and beyond, probably started prior to that) everything is yellow con or higher, and the few dark blues in the zone (animations or whatever in CoD) are immune to mez.

CC for an enchanter just doesn't happen on a regular basis on raids. Granted, there are a few encounters designed to need an enchanter, but often a necro or bard can fill in as needed since the CC component isn't incredibly hard (Jeremiah's wolves does come to mind as an exception, but only if you screw it up).

The idea of charming on a raid is a good one I think. To be honest, the way the charm spells work now, I'd be hesitant to do it. Tempus was referencing us working on Sadri Malath gate neck the other night in MielechB and I had charmed a light blue froglok to mess around with. It broke charm in about a min using word of command with 305 cha. Granted, I don't have Hidden Power AAs, but I figure what I do have should make me a little more secure in charming something that isn't going to try to eat my face right after I finish buffing it. Obviously, this is an outlier, but the fact that it can happen makes me hesitate and would do so on these traps. I would certainly give it a try, but I could see it turning into "Hang on guys, my pet broke. Can I get a heal?" and making it more a hassle than it is worth.

The proposed suggestion of switching out relic nuke for relic charm as an upgrade to word of command is a good idea. We're pretty much talking just about raid scenarios, and relic spells should be useful on raids. Plinking away with relic nuke, especially after playing a wizard, doesn't seem very effective. It's much more useful to just giantkin, which is something an enchanter without a single relic spell can do.

In summary, I support the change to a relic charm and would be more than willing to give charming a trap-pet a shot, even more so with a more reliable, raid-worthy charm spell to do so with.

 

[Thinkmeats]

I'm really surprised at all the support for a relic charm. I personally don't see one as being terribly viable, but I'll give it some thought. Still, while some manner of charm progression is entirely possible, you're more likely to see something like a charm focus (like a fixed Charm Enhancement or something that gives charmed mobs more damage a la Pet Strength or something) than you are to see a relic charm--there's just not much a relic charm can do that means anything. Higher minimum duration is completely irrelevant, as are lower resist adjusts and less mana cost and so on. A higher level cap would be really hard to implement without a lot of fiddling to the current trap plus current dungeon charmables. There'd just be no purpose, at least as far as I can see.

Also, those of you saying that the current charm spell is 'too weak', you're probably just not used to using it. As long as the pet isn't tanking there's no real reason you should ever have trouble with it in a raid fight. The idea that a level 58 mob on the loose is a danger to the raid is pretty lol, and frankly I'm pretty fond of the idea that there's a difficult but doable path to higher dps for mained enchanters--that's rather the point. If we put in a relic charm that makes charming easier we might end up putting it well within the reach of bots, which is something we manifestly don't want.

 

[Spiritplx]

The idea that a level 58 mob on the loose is a danger to the raid is pretty lol, and frankly I'm pretty fond of the idea that there's a difficult but doable path to higher dps.

It's not that the raid can't contain a level 58 mob, but on a boss fight, having your healers have to watch your enchanter if charm breaks may not outweigh the DPS. On trash, sure, the charmed pet is nice to clear faster as the added DPS is good and can be controlled a lot easier. On higher end fights where all heals matter and there is a lot of interaction in the fight, a charmed mob is just too risky.

 

[Tempus]

It's not that the raid can't contain a level 58 mob, but on a boss fight, having your healers have to watch your enchanter if charm breaks may not outweigh the DPS. On trash, sure, the charmed pet is nice to clear faster as the added DPS is good and can be controlled a lot easier. On higher end fights where all heals matter and there is a lot of interaction in the fight, a charmed mob is just too risky.

This is why I was favoring a longer min duration. I would rather have the potential for distaraction be once every 2.5mins in a 5mins + raid boss fight vs. once every minute. Now you can say that is irrelevant from teh enchanters standpoint, but it is pretty important to me from a healers standpoint.

 

[ryutakin]

This is why I was favoring a longer min duration. I would rather have the potential for distaraction be once every 2.5mins in a 5mins + raid boss fight vs. once every minute. Now you can say that is irrelevant from teh enchanters standpoint, but it is pretty important to me from a healers standpoint.

Raid face would change a good bit if this was in as before every boss fight and every so often on trash enchanters would have to manually break charm and re-charm so the charm won't break when it's at an inconvenience a-la boss fight.

It would certainly give chanters something more to do but it might be more of a hassle if you plan to raid for extended periods of time

 

[iaeolan]

Is there any way to make pot4 NOT land on charm pets? (Without screwing other pets in the process?) Or to make re-charming ignore the effects of Pot4? It is terribly sad that these two things become essentially mutually exclusive, and I don't think its fair to solve the issue with itemization. I would be happy to make charm pets immune to all melody songs if it would mitigate this problem.

This would ruin bard charm kiting which is pretty viable xp around 40-55

Just make sure your bards are not asleep at the wheel and have them make a /cmd endsong hotkey. The need to do the same thing while charm kiting or else they get destroyed by a selos'd and hasted blue con