WHAT THE HELL! we can no longer use charm

[Asheb]

There are many modifications to the spell that would make it more useful than is currently live. The implementation now is utterly pointless.

IMO, if it uses any concentration it should be a long or permanent duration spell. Here is my take on Jordinn's scale of possible implementations:

0 conc = same as previous mechanics, or

0 conc = minor pet, 3min duration
1 conc = full pet, 3 min duration
2 conc = minor pet, indefinite duration
5 conc = full pet, indefinite duration

All of these with a 1 min recast after charm ends.

I don't want to see charm go away as a Troubador spell. It's a very big reason for me choosing the class (in fact, my character names are coptic words meaning 'enchanter' and  'charm-singer').

Please, devs, change back the mechanics to pre-LU#9 for now, and if you feel there must be a permanent change don't make it 5 conc = full pet, 30sec duration.

**EDIT**

You know, I must admit I haven't double-checked this myself. Has someone -confirmed- that the duration with 5 concentration points is still 30 seconds?.

Message Edited by Asheben on 05-31-2005 02:52 PM

[Bi]

This is my question: In what sort of circumstances would I stop buffing the tank, the scouts(dps) or the groups HP/avoidance to take control of 1 mob? I used to use charm when the tank was being overwhelmed, or if a caster /healer got agro... So basically I'm going to cancel buffs that makes healing the tank easier because he's being hit less.. to..uhm.. take control of 1 mob? If the tank is being hit badly enough that relieving 1 mob from him is going ot make a difference.. well I would be fighting orange or red 2up heroics, even if 2 heroic 1ups and a heroic 2up.. I doubt charm would be that useful, and is the only instance where charming a mob would be effective; and with a 36 second duration - well. If a caster gets agro.. sure I might be tempted to take off all my buffs, and then cast a 3s charm spell.. right-click cancelling 4buffs, and the cast time.. i would be quicker attacking the mob myself, or rooting it with my 10s training option root (or the slow) as the caster runs back.. If the tank hadnt noticed in the 7s or so it takes me to cancel all my buffs, and then cast charm (like its worthwhile enough to have a space on my hotkeyed bars)- its not saying much for the tank, and I think one of the previous options is better. I cannot think of any other situation where charm would be useful.. with or without the conc use. Both of these instances would be ok IF there was no conc req.. I think anything requiring conc should be on a short reuse timer (<1min) Not even going to touch on dirge/troub 'class' skills, and how we technically only have 1 now, which we dont get til 50.

[Bi]

yes, just tested and its still 30s (bitterwind pioneer in EF)

[Asheb]

Thanks for checking, I didn't want to be tooting out my faarbot.

I *might* forgo 5 concentration slots of buffing to get a yellow con tank to help wade through some grey/green mobs I need to kill en-masse for a quest. I would definitely forgo 2 slots to have a temp tank I could trust to stay with me for 3-5 minutes to take on those blue/white grouped individual encounters (the ones that are suited for an individual, but have several mobs in the encounter). I don't know about anyone else, but for instance the groups of dust adders in Zek are a pain for me.

[Pickup]

It would be nice if the dev responsible for troubabors (he does play one right?) could give us some tips on why this song is so useful it justifies taking up 5 concentration slots. Perhaps he/she could also inform us of a quick way to free up all 5 concentration slots so that we could charm a mob before it pounded someone into the ground, or are we supposed to forego singing any other songs on the off chance that we would need to use this one?  Perhaps there is a precognition song in our lineup that I missed which would allow me to see briefly into the future so that I can cancel songs just before charm is needed?

[Cygnu]

What annoys me most is not the change in dynamics to the spell, but the fact that its changed at all with no warning and no response from the DEVs. 

 

As there was nothing in the release notes about the 5 conc slots now needed, I am lead to believe this change is one of 2 things. A bug introduced in the last patch, or a stealth nerf. If its a nerf, then for gods sake have the balls to come out and tell us and settle this discussion. If its a bug, then pull your fingers out and read the boards. Its been days now and I havent read one response on this matter anywhere. How long does it take to say "We are aware of the problem and it will be fixed in...." or "Thanks for the info, this has been passed onto....".

 

The silence is pathetic and embarrasing.

 

The more I think about it though I am starting to believe this is a nerf. I mean, surely this wouldn't get through testing right?

[Marri]

They won't respond.  What can they possibly say if this is working as intended?

I can only assume it was done because they know how many times charm was exploited (by bards in particular) in EQ1.

So the response would be... "We did this before someone could figure out how to exploit this..."

I doubt they'd say that.  And yet it is the only explanation.

[Valdas]

What exactly did the charm spell do before it was changed to 5 concentration slots and what does it do now?  Would somebody that has used the spell tell me what it can do?  Would someone that uses (or used) the spell regularly please tell me about their experiences?

I attempted to use this spell a few times after I got it with very little success.  In the spell description, it says that if you ask the charmed mob to attack, the charm breaks.  Does this actually happen?  Even though I am now a level 42 Troubadour and this should be one of my main spells, I still don't understand what it does.  It seems to me that it works as a mez with a duration of 1-30 seconds.  This sounds like a very low level mez and not a charm.

At this point, I do not miss the charm spell since I have never used it.  I had hoped to be able to charm a mob long enough to be able to fight a number of enemy mobs.  It would be nice if it lasted longer.  After playing a 65+ enchanter in EQ1, I have a preconceived notion of what charm should be. 

I have the Apprentice I version of the spell and it states in the explanantion that the spell gives a 10% chance to charm a mob.  The Adept I explanation states the same thing.

 

Your help is appreciated,

Arnaut @ Mistmoore

[ForgottenFoundling]

My experience with the spell was this:

Back when it cost a concentration slot to use, it was worthless to me.  I never felt the need to use it.  Then, somehow, there was no concentration needed and so it became a useful tool when fighting linked solo mobs (did not take effect on ANY heroic).

I would cast it on a mob (usually a caster) and then go back to attacking another mob.  Generally, the "charm" effect would default into the mob protecting me and so it would aggro on its own party.  This lasted varying amounts of time depending on what the mob conned with respect to me.  When the charm broke the mob was [Removed for Content] and would often damage me far more than the "normal" mob would (I don't know if this is just my imagination or what).  I rarely used the "pet" window in connection with this spell because it took too long to assign it to do things.

I haven't tried it at all since the concentration was upped to 5 slots, although I do sometimes catch myself clicking on it when fighting linked solo mobs... 

[Asheb]

I can't say that I use it frequenty, but I do use it regularly for three different purposes:

1. For pure sophomoric humor.
Sometimes it's just fun to charm things for the fun of it.

2. For saving a caster from certain death.
When the tank is already working full-time on getting aggro back from a nuke-happy mage and your healer backs into a wandering add, it's nice to be able to hit the pause button on one problem. 

3. For breaking up grouped encounters (when working solo).
There are lots of ways to work this, but if a group of mobs has one caster (mage or cleric), I like charming him to my side while I thin out the encounter. They usually blow all their mana while charmed.

 

[Lamba]

I have to agree that this is one of the most STUPID things SONY has done to the troub class.  I really want an explanation from a developer. It is unacceptable to make a change like this, to one of the (albeit week and only occasionly useful) but still class defining skills for a troubador and not even include it in the patch notes.  You just don't do that to your customers with no heads up!!! 

[Asheb]

Well, since we're feeling a bit ignored, just for kicks I checked out how many troubadors are on my server. Some time ago I copied the list of all the troubadors on my server because I was interested in tracking if I was levelling at a similar pace to other troubadors.

Anyhow, I decided to look again and see how many troubadors had been active since last February. Besides being a geek, I found out that on Guk there are only 149 active troubadors, half of which are new since February. 73 who were around in February had levelled at all since then. 160 had not levelled.

What do I glean from this information?

Half of the troubadors ever created on Guk have most likely not been played in the past 3 months.

With 30 servers, if Guk is typical there are at most 4500 active troubadors game-wide and possibly as few as 2200.

If there are roughly 15-16k characters per server (from MMORP stats) then active troubadors are less than 1% of the player base.

 

Now back to screaming in the wind.

[HannaIcebla]

STILL broken, STILL no response from devs or acknowledgement of a problem.. Charm was a spell I used a lot - you have broken my character and not said a word about it.. pretty poor "service" - another nail in the coffin of EQ2 for me.

[VolgaDark]

I didn’t use the spell often but when I did, then it really came in handy.

The effect’s duration was so short that it was really only useful when healer or caster had unwanted agro and tank was already too busy, or when an add showed up while soloing, or when trying to split solo encounters.

But in those situations it became very useful and already few times since the nerf  I had wished I could use it 

I really don’t understand why Devs felt it was making us so overpowered or something that they had to neft it, I wish they would explain their line of reasoning.

As far as I know I have never heard of the spell being a part of no exploit to warrant drastic change like this.

And if the upcoming PvP addition is the reason behind this, then it also makes no sense, because all that would have take was to have Charm and Fear not work in PvP encounters ….

[Asheb]

I'm back, with more research. This time instead of whining about the lack of response, I did a little fact-finding on how our charm spell actually fits into the game balance.

There is only one other class with a true charm ability - Coercers. They get this ability at level 37, where we get ours at 21. It has the same short duration as ours and apparently the same range of targets, but with the notable difference of an 8-second recast time and no concentration.

So, here's a quick comparison.

 

Access - Troubador (level 21 vs. 37)

Target - even (non-heroic)

Duration - even (about 30 seconds)

Concentration - Coercer (even, before change of concentration from 0 to 5 for Troubadors)

Availability - Coercer (recast < duration for Coercers, 5 min recast for Troubadors)

 

Given that comparison, it looks like we had it pretty good up until the concentration change. If I were a Coercer I might be grumbling that Troubadors had a nearly identical charm spell 16 levels before me. The balance seems to be our inability to chain-cast the charm. Still I agree with the overall sentiment that 5 concentration slots effectively kills the utility of the spell, but my opinion has changed regarding duration and recast. Clearly we shouldn't expect any sort of indefinite control of a combat pet when using concentration slots if Coercers don't have the same ability. If we had a shorter recast we'd have the same spell at a much lower level than Coercers.

 

I'd like the functionality back to where it was before. If that can't be the case, I'd sure like a word from the Devs on what is their reasoning. I suspect it has to do with the observations I made above. Regardless, our charm just cannot remain as it is currently live - it effectively removes the spell from the game.

 

In reading the spell descriptions, it appears that the implementation of the Troubador charm has never been as intended. The descriptions indicate a function more in line with what most Troubadors probably expected. Here's the cut-and-paste of the descriptions, my reading of what the intent most likely was, and my take on how to implement it.

 

Coercer - Beguile.

Level: 37.5. Concentration: 0.

Impairment, placed on an opponent, that grants the coercer control over the opponent.

My read: Turns a non-heroic mob into the Coercer's combat pet.

My take: Leave it implemented as-is, allowing Coercer's to chain-charm a combat pet.

 

Troubador - Charm.

Level: 21. Concentration: 5.

Charms a creature into following the troubador. If it is instructed to do anything other than follow the bard, the song breaks.

My read: Turns a non-heroic mob into the Troubador's fluff pet - ala the Pied Piper.

My take: Leave as a 5-concentration spell, but make the duration indefinite with no control over the pet (follow only).

 

Message Edited by Asheben on 06-03-2005 11:06 AM

[Bi]

huh? troubadors 2 main perks were charm and mez, compared to rez and fear for dirge. 5 conc slots makes anything but the most uber of skills useless to me Like i said earlier - in which situation would you use this? tbh I cant imagine a time or place where dropping all my buffs to charm something for 30 seconds (or any length of time) is worthwhile, Maybe with a 2nd add I might consider it.. but doubtful as it would not effect  ^^'s if we were taking 2 ^'s and a ^^ i wouldnt drop *every* buff i had for 1 1up..

[Wensleyda]

I would like to add my frustration to the discussion (as if more is needed).  First, it's absurd to think that this spell that was only sometimes useful, if it engaged at all, would be intentionally changed from 0 to 5 concentration, meaning that if you solo (which is what I do) it is effectively suicide to use it.

More than this, however, I'm frustrated with the fact that what little was said about changing it in the update notes came nowhere near indicating that this is not a bug. 

Finally, I'm near furious that no one with any authority is responding to this.  I submit bug reports and get nothing.  I submit CS tickets and get a bunch of placating BS.

I rarely complain about the way a company runs a game, because I don't think it's worth it, personally.  But this is absurd and frankly, dismissive.  If you're going to change a spell so dramatically, #1 TELL US, SO WE DON'T FIND OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF A COMBAT!!! and # 2 explain why.

And finally -- F%#$ing fix this before I outgrow it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

--Laughter the Troubador 

[Blith]

Devs, please respond. We deserve some kind of official word on this. Are you waiting to see how much we complain or something???

[Nasyr24]

They will not wake up, until players start leaving the game...

[Cygnu]

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bieb wrote:

troubadors 2 main perks were charm and mez, compared to rez and fear for dirge.

5 conc slots makes anything but the most uber of skills useless to me

---

So have Dirges had one of their skills like Mez changed to 5 concentration slots? I don't think so.

 

First they get the 'Bard Defining' extra run speed (are we not bards?) and now we get another nerf.

 

Starting to become a little pi**ed off with the lack of response :smileysad:

 

Then again, with out lack of numbers maybe they feel they should deal with the more common classes first!

[Martrae]

I'm not generally one to b*tch and moan at every change, but this has REALLY irritated me. Like many of the above posters I don't use this spell that often but I like knowing it's there in case the sh*t hits the fan. As it stands they may as well remove it from the spell line, it's absolutely crazy to think I'd drop my buffs for a spell with a 10% chance of success.

[Marri]

If the issue is how early we get it...By all means leave it like it is and give us an identical spell with 1 conc point at some higher level...

[Bi]

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CygnusX wrote:

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bieb wrote:troubadors 2 main perks were charm and mez, compared to rez and fear for dirge.5 conc slots makes anything but the most uber of skills useless to me

---

So have Dirges had one of their skills like Mez changed to 5 concentration slots? I don't think so.

 

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uhm, way to prove my point. didnt think i had to draw everyone a picture.. maybe i was wrong

[Damascus0]

Charm sucked when we first got it and it still sucks now... honestly why do you even bother about it ?  Mez also blows, except when you've got a ton of encounters on you and you really need to mez.  You aren't gonna be dropping buffs when tanks can stand there and hardly notice it, and lets face it even lvl 50 grp encounters are total trash to a decent tank.  When your healer falls asleep and you keep clearing sol eye giants for 2 hours b4 he wakes up and apologises, you really start6 to wonder... Fiddler Bridgeburner Rat Bard of Veni Vidi Vici Najena

[Andric_D]

A stealth nerf of a pretty poor ability - why? was it broken or overpowered in anyway? It was usefull occassionally to try and control an add & reduce damage for 30 secs at most  - now it may as well not be in our repetoir at all. Really hope we are gonna get some explanation of this at least

[Asheb]

Small item in the patch notes...

 

"- Charm spells will now correctly show their chance to charm when examined."

 

 

I'm at work, has anyone examined charm today to see if there's been any changes?

[Aegol]

Oh yeah...

 

Bria's Entrancing Sonnet: Charms target with 1000% chance of success.

 

Concentration: 5 !!!

 

In other words: they wasted their time on "fixing" the description of the song. Time to delete it from my hotkey bar.

 

Aegolin

47 Troubador

[Cygnu]

Oh well thats that then. Consider this spell worthless. Its not even any good for farming greens because of the low duration and long recast time.

From what I can tell Troubadours are only needed for their stat buffs and resists. Both of which require no skill and no recast. We really are the perfect follow bot and we are becoming more and more boring to play :smileysad:

Thinking its time for a character re-roll.

[Asheb]

Perhaps you misread it, Charm has a one-thousand percent chance of success!

Wohoo!

[MadisonPark]

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Asheben wrote:

Perhaps you misread it, Charm has a one-thousand percent chance of success!

Wohoo!

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Logically, shouldn't that mean it will work even when not using it? :smileyvery-happy: