When our guild on the phini server goes into battle we always make a point of Enlisting the best units we can find. Necros grab best undead in zone, Druids get best animals, and enchanters get just best units period. Its super cool Going into battle With the enlisted help of some skeletons, drolvags, and maybe a gorilla or 3. Then i go look at the legend of Norrath Unit cards and just wish i could use all those units as well. Loyal Gargoyle, Sarnak Vindicator, Relic Hunter, Sporali Cloud Weaver, Undead Horde, Just to mention a few. Is pantheon going to widen the spectrum of enlistable units? Kind of gives me a might and magic 3 vibe when you get a bunch of necos, chanters, and druids on a raid and its kind of badass. Also Will Enlisted/charmed units stay charmed or will they continue to drop charm periodicly because i find charm dropping to be very anoying lol
It would be cool if you could permanently charm a NPC pet from the zone, instead of the regular chanter summoned pet, although it would have to be level regulated. Depending on the new environmental effects this could work out well. Like a snowy zone you could charm a cold pet and take him to the volcano at the top and he would do more cold damage to the fire monsters.
However if charm works like it used to I could see all kinds of problems. Some AE spell breaks your charm and now your running from a mob when you should be mezzing adds. Would be interesting! I say GO!
Perma charm shouldn't be in game imo. Maybe down the road for the chanter with a long CD similar to dire charm but not for others. Charming is a skill and people who can do it well can show their skills by doing so. There's plenty of times I've watched chanters try to charm only to end up dead.
However, I don't believe they should allow charmed pets on raid mobs. Make them break on engage. Charmed mobs tend to be a lot stronger and it throws things out of balance
Enitzu said:Perma charm shouldn't be in game imo. Maybe down the road for the chanter with a long CD similar to dire charm but not for others. Charming is a skill and people who can do it well can show their skills by doing so. There's plenty of times I've watched chanters try to charm only to end up dead.
However, I don't believe they should allow charmed pets on raid mobs. Make them break on engage. Charmed mobs tend to be a lot stronger and it throws things out of balance
Let's not have some artificial solution where charm breaks just because it's sent after a raid boss. You acknowledged you've seen plenty of Enchanters die. I'm sure you've been part of a group where charm goes horribly wrong as well. That sort of stuff balances and a lot of people freak out and don't even want an Enchanter to charm because of how much of a risk it is.
Vade said:Enitzu said:Perma charm shouldn't be in game imo. Maybe down the road for the chanter with a long CD similar to dire charm but not for others. Charming is a skill and people who can do it well can show their skills by doing so. There's plenty of times I've watched chanters try to charm only to end up dead.
However, I don't believe they should allow charmed pets on raid mobs. Make them break on engage. Charmed mobs tend to be a lot stronger and it throws things out of balance
Let's not have some artificial solution where charm breaks just because it's sent after a raid boss. You acknowledged you've seen plenty of Enchanters die. I'm sure you've been part of a group where charm goes horribly wrong as well. That sort of stuff balances and a lot of people freak out and don't even want an Enchanter to charm because of how much of a risk it is.
Charmed mobs on a raid boss significantly increases the dmg done thus reducting the length of the fight as well as mechanics. Yes there is risk with charming but the rewards far outweigh them. If we allow charmed mobs, like EQ, on raid bosses then what is to stop the pet walling? Why would any guild not just continuously throw pets at the bosses? It's easy to do and it's been done on the TLP servers more than once. Hell they changed the way pets work completely to counter it on the latest ones. Granted that was based more towards the mage armies but charmed pets are no different, they are actually stronger.
I have never been in a group that told a chanter not to charm, ever. It's a big dps increase which means things die a lot faster. Even if you have to deal with tossing extra heals on the chanter every once in awhile it was still worth it for the group. I have seen them die, usually not in a group setting more from them soloing but it happens in groups too.
The solution wasn't really to limit charming but rather to keep from people finding ways to bypass mechanics or cause raid bosses to become incredibly weak due to them not anticipating guilds stacking pet classes. Which will happen. Especially if pets can tank as well as they did in early EQ.
Enitzu said:Charmed mobs on a raid boss significantly increases the dmg done thus reducting the length of the fight as well as mechanics.
In the grand scheme of things, perhaps yes, mostly no. The designer of a raid has to take into account all variables to begin with, they bear responsibility more than you or I.
I'm taking into account we're referring to EQ. In any one raid if you have more than 2 or 3 Enchanters in end game you're probably wasting valuable slots. 2 or 3 charm pets are vastly insignificant, like, to the point if you were to look at parses you'd be like where's the stats for the charm pets again? It would be so, so low, comparatively. Even a solid group of charm pets would be a drop in a bucket. This is assuming you can find anything you can charm, it wasn't always easy, particularly in the majority of raid situations because ... (insert drumroll here) the raid designer took it into account.
Regarding mechanics, eliminating a charm pet from hitting a raid mob in itself can remove potential mechanics. I'm not sure what sort of mechanics you're talking about that could be reduced from having a raid mob being whacked by a charm pet. Let's say you have something valid to say, at best, and worst, I imagine they off-set. There were a number of raid bosses either time locked or you have to do something special to reactivate damage on a boss in EQ where an infinite amount of DMG would do nothing unless you play along with the mechanics.
Enitzu said:Yes there is risk with charming but the rewards far outweigh them.
I would certainly hope so. Even EQ on difficulty mode insane the reward must outweigh risk otherwise you're going to lose interest and eventually no players. Is there some sort of reward you have in mind that would be 'fair' to persons whom charm mobs? The same reward as a Mage player perhaps? Or a Necromancer? Should someone having a charm pet that can turn around and eat your face, group (and) raid on any given second not be worthy of significantly higher reward? I think they should have more, or roll a Mage or Necromancer if their primary class defining ability, which is probably used 1% of their entire career playtime, IF 1% (likely not, probably 0.10% or lower), isn't worth it.
Enitzu said:If we allow charmed mobs, like EQ, on raid bosses then what is to stop the pet walling? Why would any guild not just continuously throw pets at the bosses? It's easy to do and it's been done on the TLP servers more than once. Hell they changed the way pets work completely to counter it on the latest ones. Granted that was based more towards the mage armies but charmed pets are no different, they are actually stronger.
Pet walling, how about player walling? I remember our raid leaders constantly telling people to push mobs in another direction so Rogues could get back there and so on. Anyway, this is coding negligence in my view, which very slowly over time became addressed. I do remember pet push being a pain though, actually, our raid leaders would bench and kick out of raid Mages who would use swarm pets.
Enitzu said:I have never been in a group that told a chanter not to charm, ever. It's a big dps increase which means things die a lot faster. Even if you have to deal with tossing extra heals on the chanter every once in awhile it was still worth it for the group. I have seen them die, usually not in a group setting more from them soloing but it happens in groups too.
I played an Enchanter for at least a decade and more than half the time people would piss themselves if I decided to use a charm pet, so where were you? ... with pickup groups mind you. If I grouped with my guild we all had the best so a charm pet was pointless because DPS of a charm pet wasn't worth inconveniences.
Enitzu said:The solution wasn't really to limit charming but rather to keep from people finding ways to bypass mechanics or cause raid bosses to become incredibly weak due to them not anticipating guilds stacking pet classes. Which will happen. Especially if pets can tank as well as they did in early EQ.
All of which can be solved through coding without castrating my core class defining ability. There doesn't have to be pet push. Pet push exists/existed because someone decided to code it into the game -- somebody actually exerted effort to put it in there, it would have been easier to leave it out to begin with. I think with the TLP note that you're basing opinions on some early EQ examples older than millions of people today. I think Pantheon will be a little more progressive instead of experiencing regression and have faith your concerns can be addressed without butchering my class in the process.
Vade said:...There doesn't have to be pet push. Pet push exists/existed because someone decided to code it into the game -- somebody actually exerted effort to put it in there, it would have been easier to leave it out to begin with. ...
I didn't thin k it was intentionally added as such. I think "push" in general was added and that is a very good effect to have. A mob hitting you can move you backwards so you are constantly having to be aware of your surroundings. A melee hitting a mob can push it off a cliff, so you constantly have to be aware of your surroundings. Pets caused damage so they were just under the same rules, I think - I don't think pet-push in particular was separately coded in.
"push" in general absolutely should stay in the game. Things will be terribly uneventful if a mob (and yourself) just stand stock-still during a fight while getting damaged/slammed/hit/kicked/nuked.
fazool said:"push" in general absolutely should stay in the game. Things will be terribly uneventful if a mob (and yourself) just stand stock-still during a fight while getting damaged/slammed/hit/kicked/nuked.
I'm not gonna disagree with that. It did serve a purpose in interrupting casters as well. Push doesn't actually bother me at all. Part of me also found it funny how our raid mobs looked like they were jogging across the landscape from people beating the piss out of them unless there was a designated corner which usually there was but it wasn't always possible due to the landscape features so you'd need to split the raid force 50/50 on each side to keep them stationary sometimes too.
Thread name should be changed to "EQ Post 2001" so we can all disregard, as far as I'm concerned anything that happened in EQ past Velious (maybe Luclin, but not really) are things I don't want to see in Pantheon. Charming used to be a high risk high reward thing, after velious and with the addition of AA's that all changed, charming was considered the norm, you either did it or you were worthless, then eventually even further down the road rendered irrelevant altogether.
Was about to post the same thing, but Rallyd beat me to it. I also agree with Enitzu for the most part here.
Charming was originally a high risk high reward activity. Charms would break, sometimes instantaneously on live. Charming for the unskilled player, meant certain death. I remember while charming that the entire group would have to be on the ball, regardless of how skilled your enchanter was. Today in EQ, and even on P99, charm is much more predictable. That means you have to do one of two things: nerf the charmed mob or prevent the mob from being used against a raid boss. I'd prefer no artificial restrictions, but that means players have to respect charming and be prepared to deal with the risk involved with the reward.
Vade said:Enitzu said:Charmed mobs on a raid boss significantly increases the dmg done thus reducting the length of the fight as well as mechanics.
In the grand scheme of things, perhaps yes, mostly no. The designer of a raid has to take into account all variables to begin with, they bear responsibility more than you or I.
I'm taking into account we're referring to EQ. In any one raid if you have more than 2 or 3 Enchanters in end game you're probably wasting valuable slots. 2 or 3 charm pets are vastly insignificant, like, to the point if you were to look at parses you'd be like where's the stats for the charm pets again? It would be so, so low, comparatively. Even a solid group of charm pets would be a drop in a bucket. This is assuming you can find anything you can charm, it wasn't always easy, particularly in the majority of raid situations because ... (insert drumroll here) the raid designer took it into account.
Regarding mechanics, eliminating a charm pet from hitting a raid mob in itself can remove potential mechanics. I'm not sure what sort of mechanics you're talking about that could be reduced from having a raid mob being whacked by a charm pet. Let's say you have something valid to say, at best, and worst, I imagine they off-set. There were a number of raid bosses either time locked or you have to do something special to reactivate damage on a boss in EQ where an infinite amount of DMG would do nothing unless you play along with the mechanics.
Enitzu said:If we allow charmed mobs, like EQ, on raid bosses then what is to stop the pet walling? Why would any guild not just continuously throw pets at the bosses? It's easy to do and it's been done on the TLP servers more than once. Hell they changed the way pets work completely to counter it on the latest ones. Granted that was based more towards the mage armies but charmed pets are no different, they are actually stronger.Pet walling, how about player walling? I remember our raid leaders constantly telling people to push mobs in another direction so Rogues could get back there and so on. Anyway, this is coding negligence in my view, which very slowly over time became addressed. I do remember pet push being a pain though, actually, our raid leaders would bench and kick out of raid Mages who would use swarm pets.
I can agree with most of your statements. i'll just comment on these 2.
What I was refering to in these is pet walling which I think you and I have different meanings for. Pet walling is just throwing pets at a boss so that you don't need even a tank to be there. A group of 12 mages can defeat raid bosses that usually took 72 players because all they do is continually summon pets as the other dies. The same can be done with chanters as well albeit a bit harder to do since you have to have mobs to charm. It may take longer than a full 72 person raid but it's 50 times easier than that raid as well. No melee for the aoe dmg, no tank deaths, no risk at all but all the rewards.
So my question to you is this, why would we at any point want bosses to be able to be taken down in this cheezing method? You could argue and say that it won't happen but I can assure it will. There area already people doing in on the TLP servers, or were, and those same people said they had every intention of doing it here come launch. It's how these people make money. They take down every raid boss they can while 12-24 boxing mages and sell off the loot for real cash to pay for the accounts and their bills. Once the money starts to slow down they start selling off accounts. What I want is to find ways to stop it before it begins. If we stop the mage pets but ignore the charmed ones we would have the same deal. Granted it would be much harder to do but still not impossible. Especially considering charmed pets are always stronger than summoned ones.
Enitzu said:I can agree with most of your statements. i'll just comment on these 2.
What I was refering to in these is pet walling which I think you and I have different meanings for. Pet walling is just throwing pets at a boss so that you don't need even a tank to be there. A group of 12 mages can defeat raid bosses that usually took 72 players because all they do is continually summon pets as the other dies. The same can be done with chanters as well albeit a bit harder to do since you have to have mobs to charm. It may take longer than a full 72 person raid but it's 50 times easier than that raid as well. No melee for the aoe dmg, no tank deaths, no risk at all but all the rewards.
So my question to you is this, why would we at any point want bosses to be able to be taken down in this cheezing method? You could argue and say that it won't happen but I can assure it will. There area already people doing in on the TLP servers, or were, and those same people said they had every intention of doing it here come launch. It's how these people make money. They take down every raid boss they can while 12-24 boxing mages and sell off the loot for real cash to pay for the accounts and their bills. Once the money starts to slow down they start selling off accounts. What I want is to find ways to stop it before it begins. If we stop the mage pets but ignore the charmed ones we would have the same deal. Granted it would be much harder to do but still not impossible. Especially considering charmed pets are always stronger than summoned ones.
Okay, I think I see your point. See, I don't play on TLP, I played the natural progression path where AE's alone would have wiped Mage armies and such without getting cure poison, cure disease, so on and heals. I heard of a guild once killing Quarm with a guild of Beastlords. But, nothing like that ever happened on my server, and it could have been a rumor.
Pet walling isn't likely to occur in Pantheon. Refer to the Twitch video, even the starting zone has mechanics that will kill you without heals so you know a legit raid event is probably going to take more to complete than an angry mob of pissed off Mages. Mages and pet classes normally aren't very well capable of healing. EQ through Velious basically had very little mechanics you had to fight with, you normally only needed to kill something faster than it killed you. Even in today's EQ you're not just fighting mobs, you're also fighting various mechanics.
I mean hey maybe you're 100% correct, but I think the guys coding the game aren't going to remain stuck in the past and have already shown, with video evidence even, it's not likely to be a zerg-friendly game.
EQ exists after Velious and I could do more DPS by nuking than any charm mob today. Charm ended up a joke, as a totally situational tool, due to many charm nerfs and often when raiding there's nothing to charm to begin with. Today there's more risk associated with charm than ever before, because once your charm pet which tickles another mob breaks, it's likely now hasted and hitting you for full and ripping your face off (provided it gets to you). And those charm AA's I never felt really did anything, it's still very unreliable. So yea, when before the game is even released and I'm already reading people make posts about how we need to nerf charm I'm like what the #%#! after getting repeatedly hit with the nerf bat on EQ Live. ;-) Understandably, right? Like, give me a chance at being born first. Like really, charming is a tremendous joke on EQ Live.
So I don't think it's going to be a big deal in Pantheon because raids will be intelligently done. Maybe I'm giving Visionary Realms too much credit? However, if it were a legitimate problem, make it so it's a logistical improbability of a pet army steamrolling through raid events. Raids tuned in the 20 through 30's player amounts are a joke. Have raids tuned for anticipation of 50+ people needing to be somewhere, doing something, or you all die, and I bet that drowns out the pet armies. Totally doable and it's been done many times.
I agree it's all in how the fights are programmed. I am just so skeptical about it after going back to EQ for those TLPs. That completely ruined the end game for me and I quit pretty quickly. Racing guilds is fun, racing 1 person with a boxed army is not. They clear through a zone in seconds when they can cast 1 aoe and have 20 mobs drop dead. If that person is literally camping the boss then it's even worse because by the time you find it up it will already be dead.
In modern day EQ this can't be done. Mechanics make it nearly impossible. But with all the talk of going back to old school EQ mechanics it is a concern for me. If it becomes a possiblity then it needs to be anticipated beforehand and countered. A simple fix to it is not having pets cause threat or having the threat caused by them to count towards the person controlling it. But that will severely hurt pet classes that depend on pets tanking while soloing.
I had no idea it was so bad on TLP's. I played through Rain of Fear and never looked back. I never actually encountered that problem. I can see some high level player going back and farming old world bosses and such, but all the new groovy stuff was always no-drop, no-trade, and along with the new mechanics to events, it just never really materialized.
I totally get your concern though. I don't want to see pet classes strolling through end game content. If it was a couple expansions ago, whatever, don't care, lol. But if it's current stuff, yea, I'd be pissed!
I'm actually not in the camp of everything being tradeable. I think it's a bad idea. If it drops off a raid boss, it shouldn't be tradeable beyond the characters on an account (I'd LOVE to see items tradeable with characters on the same account). But I think we're looking at items being tradeable short of quest drops according to Brad. But I don't feel strongly enough to argue with anyone about that particular topic -- whatever, I'll live.
Rallyd said:Thread name should be changed to "EQ Post 2001" so we can all disregard, as far as I'm concerned anything that happened in EQ past Velious (maybe Luclin, but not really) are things I don't want to see in Pantheon. Charming used to be a high risk high reward thing, after velious and with the addition of AA's that all changed, charming was considered the norm, you either did it or you were worthless, then eventually even further down the road rendered irrelevant altogether.
This a million times. The charm and root mechanics on P1999 right now are laughable compared to release EQ. In realease EQ you could not solo with a charmed mob, it would pop and you would die. Running the length of a zone with a charm intact was lucky. I remember the first time we got the King to the Ghoul Lord and it took quite an effort. Wizards could solo root and nuke single mobs but it was extremely dangerous. Today on P1999 you see Necros breaking the bottom of HS taking 4 mobs at once with charm and root with seemingly little risk.
Gorrax said: It would be cool if you could permanently charm a NPC pet from the zone, instead of the regular chanter summoned pet, although it would have to be level regulated. Depending on the new environmental effects this could work out well. Like a snowy zone you could charm a cold pet and take him to the volcano at the top and he would do more cold damage to the fire monsters.However if charm works like it used to I could see all kinds of problems. Some AE spell breaks your charm and now your running from a mob when you should be mezzing adds. Would be interesting! I say GO!
I'm not sure I remember or maybe never was on servers that had that, but I did really enjoy hunting down and training pets as a hunter type in GW2 and WoW (and possibly some others) - of course that could apply to mage pet classes too. Are you guys talking about classes that aren't really pet-classes having pets though? That might be a big imbalancing? *shrug* fun though, clearly! Maybe if you're not a pet class then yeah there should be a good chance of the 'charm' breaking and you (and your group) getting in trouble.
Pet quests and hunting out special pets-that-were-NPC and all that stuff was a really nice addition to pet classes when it came about. Sure you get your basic 'awarded' pet at first, but being able to seek out interesting and special monsters to train was and would be great I think. I'd forgotten I did that stuff! Nice.
Vade said:Enitzu said:Perma charm shouldn't be in game imo. Maybe down the road for the chanter with a long CD similar to dire charm but not for others. Charming is a skill and people who can do it well can show their skills by doing so. There's plenty of times I've watched chanters try to charm only to end up dead.
However, I don't believe they should allow charmed pets on raid mobs. Make them break on engage. Charmed mobs tend to be a lot stronger and it throws things out of balance
Let's not have some artificial solution where charm breaks just because it's sent after a raid boss. You acknowledged you've seen plenty of Enchanters die. I'm sure you've been part of a group where charm goes horribly wrong as well. That sort of stuff balances and a lot of people freak out and don't even want an Enchanter to charm because of how much of a risk it is.
Such behavior is easily explained away. You're not only charming a mob and bending its will (which it should have a chance of breaking), you are also demanding it kill not just its allies but its lord, or potentially even its god. At some point the creature should have the ability to resist your will, or at the very least just go totally insane and try to kill anything anywhere near it.
Krixus said:Rallyd said:Thread name should be changed to "EQ Post 2001" so we can all disregard, as far as I'm concerned anything that happened in EQ past Velious (maybe Luclin, but not really) are things I don't want to see in Pantheon. Charming used to be a high risk high reward thing, after velious and with the addition of AA's that all changed, charming was considered the norm, you either did it or you were worthless, then eventually even further down the road rendered irrelevant altogether.
This a million times. The charm and root mechanics on P1999 right now are laughable compared to release EQ. In realease EQ you could not solo with a charmed mob, it would pop and you would die. Running the length of a zone with a charm intact was lucky. I remember the first time we got the King to the Ghoul Lord and it took quite an effort. Wizards could solo root and nuke single mobs but it was extremely dangerous. Today on P1999 you see Necros breaking the bottom of HS taking 4 mobs at once with charm and root with seemingly little risk.
That was along time ago, and much has changed....
Dullahan said:Was about to post the same thing, but Rallyd beat me to it. I also agree with Enitzu for the most part here.
Charming was originally a high risk high reward activity. Charms would break, sometimes instantaneously on live. Charming for the unskilled player, meant certain death. I remember while charming that the entire group would have to be on the ball, regardless of how skilled your enchanter was. Today in EQ, and even on P99, charm is much more predictable. That means you have to do one of two things: nerf the charmed mob or prevent the mob from being used against a raid boss. I'd prefer no artificial restrictions, but that means players have to respect charming and be prepared to deal with the risk involved with the reward.
As someone who is looking at maining an enchanter, I really, really like this mechanic.