Veksar and Dire CharmFollow

I can't speak for a level 65 necro but, when I was around level 59, with dire charm, I noticed a few things. I didn't use my standard pet because I was in Veksar. Any lower level necro (55-65?) would be smart to use our charm abilities in Veksar. The place is filled with undead and most mobs are single pullable.

I spent the better part of five levels and a couple dozen aa's there camping various drops.

I did not go into the highborn area as it was too tough for me at level 55, when I spent the most time there. I also did my camps prior to when it was a hotzone and I often had the whole place for myself to plunder.

First, any of the DC mobs are right after the goblins near the entry and not all of them are DCable. Second, know the mob types by name so you can pick up a warrior or shadowknight pet. The casters are kinda useless as any pet will do much more dps while in melee. You can test to see which ones are DCable by sitting and letting them hit you. The max hit with no shielding or spell mitigation (vie line) is 149 or lower for a DCable pet, I believe, but it's been a while. If I wanted to DC a mob I sometiems had to spend a few minutes choosing/clearing mobs to get the best pet I could; getting the best pet possible I consider to be very important.

Don't DC the mob yet! Once you know which mob will be your pet, :a sentry, you need to make room for junk buffs before you charm him. Many mobs further in dispell frequently and it is not discriminate to Dire Charm. I tried to make three or four slots avaiable for junk buffs, like ac, resists, anything else you can put on him and lastly, haste.

To start, hit the mob with a root then a snare. Then put a couple more weaker dots or debuffs on him. Then quickly DC. Hang out for a bit until the dots/debuffs wear off and go about junk buffing. I'll keep a spell set, if possible, just for junk buffs and another for charm.

You will most likely be camping much further in after you get your pet. If you are not very buffed or geared you will need to proceed with caution because, as you know, FD or invis will break DC/charm and all that work to that point is down the drain to your DC timer. This doesn't apply nearly as much for regular charm, which I will describe later.

Now, if you are camping the church or somewhere with near difficulty, then your DC pet will do fine tanking. If you are camping things much harder you will either need to kite or expect your pet to die. The aa /pet hold would be a great one to have for kiting here as there are many casters. /pet hold is just great to have period. If you need/can protect your pet by tap tanking the pet will go in normal regen almost immediately after using /pet hold, even while on a mobs hatelist. Resume kiting, if possible, once your pet is above 25% health. I remember the charmed pets in Veksar regen'd very slow before and I'm not sure if that has changed much, so standard pet healing may need to occur.

I have more info about DC and regular charm, particularly in Veksar, but I'll let you ask the question if you are interested. I will say that the regular, fallible, charm can net you a much better kill rate than DC, plus it's a heckuva lot more exciting. If you want to be lazy, or take it easy and do content below your skill level, then DC can be a relaxing grind. I am still only level 60/61 and I use it in many PoP zones or farming runs.

Regards

Edited, Apr 23rd 2007 8:29pm by sprucecln

I can't argue Felicite's point on the 65 pet, CoB, as I am not 65.

What I can say is my DPoC focused pet at level 61 is outparsed by the DC undead squire in PoV, self buffed, versus crystalline golems. Not only did that parse true, but it was reflected in every battle. I cast one less dot for approximately the same kill length and I was able to constantly kill minus one short med break with LoTD on.

Without DC I had to cast an extra dot which meant medding sooner, albeit at approximetly the 14 minute mark rather than the 18 minute mark. Same buffs, same spell set. I understand that DC is largely obsolete and I am not defending acquiring DC. I am stating my own experience of this and it is fact for me at level 61.

Now, would I buy DC at level 65 with CoB and people telling me that there is parsable evidence of the normal pet doing more dps? Not unless I wanted a toy, and simply that.

I will say and with no parsable evidence that charming a level 50 or 51 commoner or sentry will outparse the 65 pet. When I used Thrall of Bones on the stated mobs and went to grinding I could acheive a kill rate almost twice as fast as the DC pet in the same zone. I didn't need to heal the pet and I could chain pull. At around 55 the xp was sick, for that level, and this was before hotzone status. I prepared myself for this exciting charming endeavor by reading both enchanter and necromancer boards on charming.

EDITED to add:

If you want to achieve the best XP per hour then forget DC and normal pet and go regular charm. I believe that Veksar one of the better necro paradises in the game for the level it's doable.

Edited, Apr 24th 2007 5:14am by sprucecln

Ahh Dc in Veksar... lots of fun! Took my necro from 61 to 65+200aa mostly doing just that, back when the lvl cap was 65. I still go back to it at 75 sometimes for fun : ) Definately worth the aa, especailly if you intend to hang around in Veksar and bang out aa.

I prefered the Sentry's for a DC pet, becasue they are pure melee... the Crusaders cast, sometimes when you dont want them to. At 65 theses things are major upgrade to your pet. They have 10kish hp and hit for 110-125 top-end. Compared to my war pet at 75 it is almost the same, he also has 10kish hp and hits 120-130 high-end.
Put a set of mage armor on a Dc'ed Sentry for the ac, belt for hp, mask for haste and mage weps that proc .. dont forget our pet haste buff, and watch him tear the zone apart!

You cannot fd with a dc pet or you lose it, nor can you invis. I would swap out my fd spell and mem both Divine Aura spells, that way if you find yourself with to much agro you can hit DA and usually your pet will taken back agro by the time it drops. If things are still bad, click the last DA and sit an mem fd again hehe. Losing a DC pet sucks because of the 1hr+ re-use timer, and hitting fd is a instant reflex so keeping fd up can be bad.

I would also keep undead mez out, pet heal and slow of course... loads of fun. Dc doesnt get less useful once you start leveling past 65, but there are a few other fun spots to use it like PoN, HoH, The Grey and a few others.

I dont regret getting it, and every now and then still use it for kicks. Have fun!

It seems you've already been told or figured out that the 65 pet is better dps than a DC pet, and that normal charm of higher level mobs is even better.

I will mention that Dire Charm can no longer be dispelled, so no worries about that.

Charming suggestions are: always keep the target rooted unless they summon. If using dire charm invest in pet toys and armor. Get Suspend Minion AA so you can whip out a summoned pet at a moments notice. If using high level charmed pets try to finesse the fight so pet is very low hp at the end of the fight, then lose charm and finish it off (with your pre-summoned pet you un-suspend) then suspend summoned pet again and charm a new bruiser.

Hey Norm, I'll write up a few things later on, I don't have time atm. Didn't know about the dispell thing, great to know. It's true, my charming spell set in veksar had few dots and mostly undead stuff, slow, DD, etc. The charmed level 50/51 pets hit for 200-208 from Thrall of Bones spell. The higher charms will be even better. I often had charm last the entire duration, which was very nice. I get to more of that later.

Regards

To answer Norm's questions:

Is the key to a longer lasting charm difference in level between Mob and my toon?

That is one of the top two biggest determinations to the length of a fallible charm. The second of the top two biggest determinations to the length of a fallible charm is the mobs innate resists.

For example:

I hunted in Veksar with charming during my mid and late 50's. I had such a great time with it that I wanted to find other places I could go and do it. I had hunted in the hole for a long period of time when I was level 51. I knew about the undead down by the city entrance and wanted to give them a try. Long story short, it wasn't nearly as fun as veksar and I became frustrated with the duration of charm. As many know, many mobs in the hole have rediculous resists to magic. Even though I was about ten levels higher than these mobs (they were actually lower than the mobs in veksar that I charmed), charm would not stick for very long due to their resists.

Other things that seem to help and other things I know help:

One thing to know, even given the best circumstances - you are twenty levels above your charm target and he has weak resists - fallible charms are still fallible and it means that on any given tick, the mob can break charm.

A factor I am certain has an effect on charm length is the preapplication of a magic resist debuff. When tash or other MR debuffs have been applied to a charm target, I observe a noticable difference in the duration of charm. This is the third biggest factor to charm duration and is not a feeling or a hunch.

There is much dispute over the charisma stat and it's effect on charm with necromancers. Some say that low charisma helps our charms. I say that is hogwash and that the old-world necromancer gear with negative charisma was put in for role-playing purposes.

Many say that high charisma has no effect on our charms. Some say that high charisma has a positive effect on our charm length, as it does for enchanters. I am of the camp that believes every stat that we see in our character sheet has a purpose and high charisma has more purpose than selling and buying at better prices from NPCs.

I believe that high charisma provides a beneficial modifier when determining if a charm will break on any given tick. This is probably the smallest of the factors I have listed that determine charm length. I have no parses to prove or disprove what, to me, seems to be true. Granted, with or without my high charisma gear equipped I still have fast breaks and long durations, respectively.

It should be restated:

There are factors that reduce the chance of charm breaking on each tick. Level difference and innate mob resist have the greatest effect. The innate mob resist can be adjusted by use of our debuff spells. *Our charisma score adjusts this to some extent also.

*this is my opinion

To answer Norm's questions:

Do I worry about dotting, nukeing or just keeping charm up?

What your strategy is during the battle will depend on what you are fighting and what your pet is doing.

From my own experience, I found that 2/3 of my time was spent on killing mobs and 1/3 was spent on recharming, FD or junkbuffing. I was much closer in level to the mobs I was fighting/charming than you would most likely be so your results may vary. Even spending 2/3 of my time on fighting meant that I was at a kill rate of about one and a half times that of my DC pet when I went back to try it at level 59. I also had to med more at level 59 because I needed more damage or kiting to kill the mobs effectively.

When the battles went smooth, I could kill a single mob in 30 seconds or less. The only spells I cast on the mob was slow, snare (not root as suggested), the undead nuke often and an occasional dot to see if it would last it's duration. I snared the mobs because I knew that it was guaranteed duration. I usually started casting slow a couple of seconds before my pet got to the mob so it would hit soon after my pet attacked. Most of the time I didn't get any aggro from the mob. I then immediately snared the mob and about seven seconds into the fight my pet had aggro lock. I could chain nuke my best undead nuke and not get aggro. That wasn't necessary. I nuked once or twice to speed it up but tried to keep mana high for charm breaks and inevitable lifetaps.

If charm broke I had a brief moment to decide if I was far enough away to get a recharm attempt in before getting walloped. If I was too close, I would cast the fast casting level 34 root on my old pet and then try to recharm. After a charm breaks, I am pretty sure that all of the aggro that has been built up from the pet transfers to it's owner. It doesn't matter if I successfully recharm the same mob, I still have all that aggro, which then turns into a little tap tanking or kiting.

If things got really bad I would FD and wait until they started walking back and pop up and root the hasted one followed by the slowed one.

If things got really, really bad I usually died because I had been resisted on roots/snares. I was stubborn about losing the progress I had made on my "project."

Edited, Apr 25th 2007 11:08am by sprucecln

SO... don't make me beg, what is the little secret? :)