Bard charm/mez

[Shin Noir]

Alright, here goes! Feel free to criticize, scrutinize, add commentary, etc.

Voice of the Vampire is our level 70 Charm, which under typical bard formula is capped at level 68. Our high mez, Luvwen's Lullaby, works up to level 70.

Due to clicky legs for enchanters, They can charm up to 73. Their best mez can go up to 70, also.

Researching the tendancies of every monster past the 70+ exp zones, you will see:

70+ Group: http://thehiddenforest.dyndns.org/zone. ... rder=level
Kael only has the drakkal wolf, which is dire charmed by enchanters, and
Chardok
Tier1: http://thehiddenforest.dyndns.org/zone. ... rder=level
Ssra has some targets for this song.
http://thehiddenforest.dyndns.org/zone. ... rder=level
This song has no use.

Considering Charm has to be at point blank for a bard, I am suggesting at one point or another, perhaps in the same mindset as enchanters, bards gain a lesser version of their clicky legs. This lesser version can have a long recast timer, perhaps, like.. I don't know.. 3 sec cast time, 2 min charm, but 15 min re-use timer, with a level 70 cap? The general idea is to give bards a form of emergency crowd control due to their fading memories they can charm an additional target in a hard encounter, or at least try. This can alternatively be a mesmerize like spell with a higher level cap (maybe 73?).

The only issue with the above is how many mobs are flagged as uncharmable/unmezzable/etc etc.. It makes this a limited use skill, I can foresee. But still! Let's talk about it!

[Tyler]

Alright, here goes! Feel free to criticize, scrutinize, add commentary, etc.

Voice of the Vampire is our level 70 Charm, which under typical bard formula is capped at level 68. Our high mez, Luvwen's Lullaby, works up to level 70.

Due to clicky legs for enchanters, They can charm up to 73. Their best mez can go up to 70, also.

Researching the tendancies of every monster past the 70+ exp zones, you will see:

70+ Group: http://thehiddenforest.dyndns.org/zone. ... rder=level
Kael only has the drakkal wolf, which is dire charmed by enchanters, and
Chardok
Tier1: http://thehiddenforest.dyndns.org/zone. ... rder=level
Ssra has some targets for this song.
http://thehiddenforest.dyndns.org/zone. ... rder=level
This song has no use.

Considering Charm has to be at point blank for a bard, I am suggesting at one point or another, perhaps in the same mindset as enchanters, bards gain a lesser version of their clicky legs. This lesser version can have a long recast timer, perhaps, like.. I don't know.. 3 sec cast time, 2 min charm, but 15 min re-use timer, with a level 70 cap? The general idea is to give bards a form of emergency crowd control due to their fading memories they can charm an additional target in a hard encounter, or at least try. This can alternatively be a mesmerize like spell with a higher level cap (maybe 73?).

The only issue with the above is how many mobs are flagged as uncharmable/unmezzable/etc etc.. It makes this a limited use skill, I can foresee. But still! Let's talk about it!

Highest Enchanter mez goes to 73. Not so sure about Bards tbh. Im all for charming for charming classes, adds spice to the game - that's why i try to add even raid mobs that can be charmed.

Again all i can say is wait for the new spell file. Then i can start to customize for real.

[Jeido]

While we're on the mez topic I want to add one thing. Mez on emu is bugged to hell when a mob is moving. To see what I mean, just aggro a mob and mez it while it's still moving. It will get mezzed, but the mob will not stop running client side. It does stop server side, because if you go to the spot you mezzed it at and hit attack then it will reappear. This is going to be a big issue if mez becomes useful again, though, because to work around it you need to make sure the mob isn't moving which cuts out a lot of the spells effectiveness.

[Shin Noir]

What's wait on spell file, just curious?

[Jeido]

Again all i can say is wait for the new spell file. Then i can start to customize for real.

I know you'll do great with the spell file Tyler, but just know that if I post recommendations for custom spells then it's just to help you out a bit when the time actually comes. Let's face it, EQ has TONS of spells between all of the classes. It would be extremely easy to overlook a horde of spells without realizing it.

Personally, I think a thread should be started where every class should post what spells they feel need improvement based on the new gear available vs what used to be when the spells were actually live. Now I'm not saying to set what people say in stone, but I think it would help you out and you could pick and choose what advice you think is reasonable.

[Shin Noir]

A lot of my changes are without the knowledge of latest gear unfortunately Jeido, but I do try to investigate as much as I can and try to ensure my suggested change is not too altering in power.

The flood of posts I'm doing about bards is just an attempt to help create a defining point at which bards can be encouraged by the community to be played.Once some of these changes are in I'll likely give continued feed back if I feel anything is too powerful or out of whack. I expect nerfs and a lot of my posts not to go through, but still posting them for consideration.

I don't want bards to be overpowered and make everyone flock to make one, I just want them to be defined to a point they are recognized for what they do and scaled for the server.

[Tyler]

I know Shin and Jeido - i (almost) never feel pushed or steppd on my toes. Your intentions are all golden and i'll try my best to make this Server a nice, sweet home.

As soon as i have an Eta (Striat is working on it) i'll let you know and open threads for it.

[drawnir]

I think Voice of the Vampire was the first time our charm got nerfed with the range. When I saw this post...I was hoping the range on it was going to be contested. Since that isn't so, I'll take a stab at it.

Is there any chance that the range on Verse of the Vampire can be given a reasonable range again? The 64 and earlier charms had the regular 200 range...then boom! the 68 charm changed to a range of 30 =(

This was to change it to an emergency only use...but it essentially became useless since it wasn't worth it to put into our spell list "just in case," since we normally like to hit mez/charm before the target's pummeling us. Charm kiters found a workaround by mezzing and THEN charming, which was known and not contested by dev's, so basically only the crowd control portion got chewed up. The range was never reverted to 200, but I'd like to ask that it's changed here, if that's possible =) I'm asking because I don't know if it can without the custom spell file.

On live, they frowned against swarm kiting in later levels (charming one, sending it after 10+ mobs, then dropping charm and dotting the ex-pet to death...this is done in a fast succession and can yield mucho exp quickly). I enjoyed swarm kiting, but for some reason, it cannot be done in the rapid succession on EQMU that it could be done on live. So even if you agree with the change, there's no reason for the nerf here since you can't really swarm kite.

[Tyler]

Voice of the Vamire

now with -10 resist mod
150 range (5x original range)
300 mana cost (50% increase)

Sounds fair?

[Shin Noir]

Seems range fix didn't work. But Storm song was repaired successfully.