The Enchanter Identity Crisis

foxroar1

EQ enchanter vet here. I’ve spent a lot of time the past few days thinking about how to rework and balance charm. I’ve even lost some sleep over it. It’s that important to me.

My favorite thing about EQ was the wide variety of combat tactics – quad kiting, fear kiting, all variations of charming, swarm kiting, root/rot, Earthshaker procs, etc. So many incredible ways for classes and spells to synergize in different ways.

Far and away, the most fun I ever had was charming. It was hard. It took real skill. I died many, many times. But the payoff was second to none. With careful planning and quick reflexes, I instantly became the best DPS in the game.

Let’s take a deeper look at the enchanter. It has 3 main pillars: Buffs/Slows, Crowd Control, and Charm.

Enchanters are well known for their elite stat buffs, including haste and mana regen. They’re the best at mezzing and crowd control, second only to shamans in slows, and they’re decent pullers with lull and pacify.

But charm is an enchanter’s bread and butter. Not every enchanter is effective at charming. Not every enchanter even wants to mess with the perils of charm. Some are happy to relax and take it easy. Not me. Charming was one of the few times I felt immediately stronger. It kept me on my toes. It made me feel alive.

Charm needs to be viable. It’s class-defining. Charm is how enchanters bring meaningful DPS to the table.

Imagine monks losing feign death. Or removing backstab from rogues. There. Would. Be. Riots!

But, foxroar1, pre-deep dive charm was super OP. Okay, fine. Let’s tune it down a little. Enchanters can’t (or shouldn’t) be the best at buffing, CC, and DPS. Right?

Right. At least, not all at the same time.

Make charming a choice. Either fulfill the buff/CC role, or supply high-risk DPS. Make it difficult to simultaneously fulfill both roles.

Want to chill, support the group, and use shadowkin pet (yawn) for nothing-burger DPS? Fine. Have it. Eat your sandwich.

Want to live on the edge and charm powerful enemies? Great! You’ll now incur a detriment to your mana regen.

What?!

Yes. A temporary debuff to your mana regen. Think of it as a continuous neurological connection between you and the mob to maintain charm.

Example Spells and their Values:

Level 4 Charm, -2 mana regen, 0-4 minutes duration
Level 12 Enthrall, -4 mana regen, 0-6 minutes duration
Level 24 Beguile, -6 mana regen, 0-8 minutes duration
Level 36 Coax, -8 mana regen, 0-10 minutes duration
Level 48 Persuade, -10 mana regen, 0-12 minutes duration

If enchanters gradually become too powerful, tweak these numbers.

The negative mana regen shouldn’t be so oppressive that our mana pool drains while sitting/medding, but it should be enough to make it difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with all the other demands of the class.

Mana Drain will become a permanently scribed spell. Necro mana batteries will be our new best friends. Mana regen items will be at an all-time premium.

Additionally, charm should scale with your level, up to your level minus 4, give or take. You should always be able to charm dark blue cons at a minimum, but never white cons.

You’ll still have to buy new spells every 8 or 12 levels. The main benefit of a higher-level spell is the increased duration of charm, at the cost of additional lost mana regen while charm is active.

Make stats matter
Charisma is the primary stat for charming. It should affect both how long you can hold charm and the mob’s power.

Duration:

For every 1 CHA stat point, increase charm’s minimum duration.

Got 30 CHA? Charm will last a minimum of 30 seconds.

Rocking 180 CHA? Enjoy 3 minutes minimum. Sweet!

If these values prove too high, cut them in half. Either way, every CHA point earned should give you just a tiny bit more breathing room and peace of mind.

Mob Strength:

Scale mob damage based on charisma.

With 0 CHA, charmed mobs will do 50% of their normal damage. Your aura isn’t very convincing. Mobs will hardly lift a finger in your defense.

With max CHA (255) charmed mobs will do 100% damage. You’re highly skilled at beguiling even the hardiest of minds. Mobs will go to war with you.

Roughly every 50 CHA will increase the mobs damage by 10%, or about 0.2% damage per point of CHA.

Intended Outcomes:

Gear matters. Charisma, intelligence (larger mana pool), and mana regen become critical for success.
Achieving leet levels of damage output won’t occur until late game or with super twinked chars. But remember, twinking is fun and encouraged for replayability.
If you charm for DPS, that’ll be your primary role. You’ll be able to toss a mez or buff here and there, but it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to maintain all the other demands of the class, namely slows, debuffs, and CC.

Charming is about living on the edge. Charm needs to be high risk/high reward. It should be something that scales in power with gear and levels. Non-twinked enchanters aren’t effectively charming at low levels. Most won’t even attempt it until the 30s when it becomes more viable. Charm is a late-game mechanic, and it needs to be worth the effort after proper planning and skill.

With all its risks, perils, and upkeep, a charmed pet should be a solid tier above other classes’ single-cast pets.

Whatever you do, please do not remove charm altogether, and definitely don’t make it a short-duration fixed charm. There is no challenge to that. That's just pressing an easy button. Charming. Should. Be. Hard. But worth it!

Should druid and necro charm receive similar treatment? Maybe. Probably. Then again, another class’s success never made me bitter. We’re all on the same team.

I don’t want to be a buff bot.

I want to be the all-powerful genie. (Laughs in Jafar)

I hereby volunteer for all testing purposes.

Love,
foxroar1

rabbi

No thank you <3

riverbender

Almost anything is better than the state Charm is in

kridak

Yes please.

foxroar1

riverbender
Trying to strike a balance between both sides of this debate while also encouraging tactics and decision making. But scaling damage and duration with itemization is a no-brainer to me. That automatically balances it to scale in potency as you level.

Zaroua

Problem with buffing Charm DPS is that Enchanters already provide absurd amounts of group DPS through Haste and their mana buff/transfer. I'm willing to bet that once they get 20% haste, Enchanters contribute the most DPS to melee centric groups WITHOUT counting their (old) Charmed pet. Once they reach 30% haste buff and above, it propels them into being the best contributors to group DPS throughout the leveling process. Should a single class provide this much damage to a group while also doing good DPS itself, on top of the CC and other utility they provide? I think it's too much. The post-nerf Charm damage needs to go up a little bit, and the Charisma requirements need be looked at again.

If it was a decision between Charming for DPS or providing group buffs, it would be a good trade-off. You either do great DPS through your Charmed pet, or you do great DPS through your buffs. Not both.

Zest

Costing less mana than your in kit mana regen buffs isn't much of a tradeoff. Especially being that the rest of the kit, the parts you're suggesting trading away for charm really aren't terribly mana intensive. In most cases the 1st mez is the best option anyway, it's so cheap it may as well be free by late game and 30 seconds duration is more than enough. Buffs costs significant mana in the moment but not so much relative to what you regenerate over their full duration.

The hardest choice I'd anticipate from a change like this would be maybe settling for a cheaper lower level AoE stun.

Enchanters kit brings so much to the table I doubt there is a balanced version of charm where they are the games top DPS, much less by the margin of 200-300% they were with full mob damage. No way that should come back.

I can agree it definitely should do significantly more damage than it does now though- charm making for a B tier DPS that situationally becomes A if their charm is actually tanking something(including the incoming DPS) seems the reasonable goal to me. Very impactful but preserves a purpose for the more unconditionally applied regular DPS classes.

Spellweaver

Inquisitor can tank, CC, aoe stun, purge, mana drain, aura haste, and sustain melee DPS when camps are broken. And wear plate with a taunt button. Stack int and Inquisitor is the new Enchanter.

Oofok

maybe i didn't catch all the changes. isn't it just that a charmed pet now does 25% more dmg than a summoned pet or were there more changes recently? to me that doesn't seem that bad at all, especially for a support class that's already top tier in a couple other ways. sure, there's the added risk, but it still means they're the best pets in the game by a pretty wide margin. what am i missing? scaling with itemization seems like a decent idea, i'd say probably not up to 100% though unless the risk the the ench is immense, they were crazy op before. any skill doing the dmg of 2-3 dps classes combined is kinda silly. I was just reading elsewhere and it sounds like part of the problem is charming stuff that's a few levels lower, so instead of 25% more than an even con pet that a mage or something would have its 25% more than a very under-leveled pet. Also sounds like it might get scaled back up a bit.

Ghally

Oofok from what I read the charmed pets do less than the summoned Shadowkin now

Mesh

Charm needs to be viable. It’s class-defining. Charm is how enchanters bring meaningful DPS to the table.

I agree with this. Charm should be viable and it should provide more DPS than the summoned pet to make the extra effort worthwhile. Devs have set that target at 25% which seems reasonable to me.

The current iteration doesn't seem to be working as intended and will need some tuning before or during EA.

All this hubbub seems a bit unnecessary. They've told us what their goal is. Let them cook.

Zest

Mesh

Honestly I think to account for wasted time not DPSing during charm breaks and the ongoing mana cost associated with fixing breaks it could even be a little higher than that, maybe 40-50% more on a per hit basis than regular pets.

But yeah minumum they need to hii their stated 25% more damage benchmark.

Honestly though I think the first thing they need to fix is the wierd leveling cluikiness where at many levels your forced to charm things 5+ levels levels lower than the pet you could summon. With the new damage normalization charm level caps and difficulty landing charms should be far more generous- chaming something your level should be an option. Doing that alone will buff charm damage and once we're actually comparing equal level charms and pets I suspect it will be easier to tune the damage to whatever level is deemed appropriate.

Ucuri

until EA is running stable and all reworks are done we won't get anything.
but after that (if there are still some enchanters left) they have to deliver

Fell

Mesh They've told us what their goal is. Let them cook.

Their stated goal is 125% of summon pet damage, which is results in a net loss of damage when all factors are considered (charm pet duty cycle, mana costs, ability to redistribute CHA to INT for more nuke dmg, etc). That's a mathematical fail.

navyrob

Lol cute way to get charm unerfed but it wont work. TLDR Enc wouldnt care about the bad part and charm constantly regardless, breaking for mana where needed.

Velthorian

125% of who's summoned pet? Hopefully it's 25% more then their shadowkin, not 25% more then the best pet class in the game, that recently had their nuke completely obliterated into laughable non use state. 220% NERF (1600 to 500).

navyrob

I think its possible they will do a partial un-nerf in a future patch, but I think it is important to respect the design philosophy they have committed to: Wiz are top DPS not ench or mages. They are making this a reality and I think that is fine and fair.

tummystix

Velthorian had their nuke completely obliterated into laughable non use state. 220% NERF (1600 to 500)

A bit disingenuous. If ele's new nuke cost the same amount of mana as the previous then you could pitch a fit and call it 220% nerf. I played both classes to 60. Ele's rework was a net positive and should not come here to gripe.

Raybane

Velthorian Your "fear" is correct. It would be 125% of a real pet, not their own somewhat sub par one. Just as other charms being 100% of a real pet.

Rossell

The Enchanters class identity is as a SUPPORT caster. Not a solo-capable damage dealer who can ALSO buff and CC.

I get why you want to be more powerful, we all do. But having a charm that does a significant amount of damage should mean you are literally unable to do any damage yourself. Otherwise you end up as 1.X value of a normal player in terms of value to a group. Why would anyone want a Rogue/Archer/Beast or pure damage dealer who can't buff or CC when you can get an Ench who can do all that + 75% of their damage? It would be inefficient and leads to "meta" class stacking.