Difference between revisions of "Decoy's Enchanter Notebook"

Revision as of 05:38, 17 September 2020

Coffee and a good book.

(work in progress.)

pippy scream

New player tips

• Dark Elves' racial Hide is an acceptable replacement for Goblin Gazughi Ring, making them a good choice for your first Enchanter.
• Put all of your points into CHA, and then INT.
• Your gender is likely more important than your race choice. Enchanters get access to long-lasting illusions, but nothing to change gender.
• Stock up on Tiny Daggers. You don't get Charm until level 12, so summon your Animation and get to smackin'.
• If you're feeling adventurous, make your way over to the Ogre city of Oggok and see if folks killing the guards there will let you pick up a crude stein along with a Fine Steel Dagger.
• Folks are friendly so long as you are friendly -- start a chat, trade buffs, settle problems like civilized people, and do your best not to assume the worst about folk. They're likely just as nervous as you.

Oh? You're approaching me?

Bleedingly General Tips

• Get as much CHA as possible, and worry about everything else later. Higher CHA = less breaks, consistent Mesmerizes, better Lulls, and less overall damage taken. Clarity solves mana issues.
• You have the ability to fight pretty much whatever you want thanks to your kit. Try a lot of different things, battle a lot of weird mobs, but don't travel unnecessarily.
  • Try the next zone over, get a port to a place, but try and find a spot you like and stick to the general area.
• Take everything the wiki says with a grain of salt -- it is a source of information for an old game maintained by nothing but it's modest player base.
  • Being such an old game, oddities are present everywhere, and reward those willing to look for and get creative with them.
• Your low level Root and Mesmerize spells work the same all the way up until the level cap, and will be your general-use CC. Spells like Entrance serve more niche purposes as they are otherwise sub-optimal on your mana.
• Every 7 seconds, a game tick occurs. If you are sitting during this time, you gain additional health and mana based on your Meditate skill's level. Sitting at any other time outside of the tick does nothing but increase your aggro radius.
• Thanks to the Clarity line of spells, mana comes back much quicker than your health. Invest in gems for Rune I spells and keep them up at all times along-side your current best Rampage. Consider this to be like a form of pseudo-healing.
• Sitting increases the radius which creatures will attack you. This is especially noticeable with lower level creatures vs. higher level sitting players.
  • Taking damage while sitting will force you to stand up. This will also close your spellbook should you have it open.
  • Taking damage will not force you up if it hits a damage shield like Rune I.

Nukes are expensive!

Combat tips

• Strafing (moving diagonally via W+A or W+D) gives you a 13% increase in movement speed. Jumping gives you a small boost as well.
• Tashan all the things.
• Understand your options for CC. Often times, a few single-targeted Root spells can save you and your group where Mesmerize couldn't due to a DoT or stray attacker. Creatures such as giants cannot be stunned, but Root and Invoke Fear will still work.
• Learn the aggro radius of creatures affected by Lull and Pacify, as well as the duration of said spells. Both are powerful, but situational.
  • Lull leaves a small aggro radius around the mob & lasts about a minute and a half. Costs very little.
  • Pacify effectively disables the mob's aggro radius. Lasts a static 7 minutes, but has a longer recast time & higher mana cost.
  • Wake of Tranquility has a short 7-tick duration (roughly 49 seconds), and is theoretically the fastest way to calm a large swarm of enemies. Costs 300 mana. Each mob hit by this spell throws an MR save, so it's common to pacify 3/5 enemies while the other 2 resist. Follow it up with Lull and pull before those 7 ticks are up.
• When fighting casters, Mesmerize can and will interrupt their casts without robbing you of your mana.
  • Alternatively, you can charm them. Charmed creatures do not cast heals, and only cast buffs if there's nothing on their hate list.
• You don't get Snare as an Enchanter, so if you plan on fighting creatures which flee, be prepared to root or nuke.
  • Alternatively, give your pet a weapon that has a snare effect on it, such as the Glaive of Marltek or the Silken Whip of Ensnaring.
• A creature who is fleeing but rooted will stop fleeing and resume attacking/casting as normal until the root breaks.
• Rooted creatures generally attack what's closest to them instead of staying focused on what's at the top of their hate list.
  • If you and your charmed pet are both in melee range of a creature, you'll always have the focus of the creature.
• Root easily breaks if the rooted creature takes a large amount of damage within a short time. Higher level charmed/hasted/torched creatures generally force root off quickly.

Dragons are a lot like cats...

Charm

• Charm or fight the roamers first.
• If mana allows, Root the target your pet is fighting. If a break happens, you'll have one fewer creature beating your skull inwards.
• Boon of the Garou's proc breaks Root frequently. Avoid it unless you're very comfortable with breaks.
• If you and your charmed pet are both in melee range of a creature, you'll always have the focus of the creature. This is more noticeable with rooted enemies.
• Keep up your equivalent Rampage and Rune I in case of a break. You should be doing this anyways, realistically, whenever mana allots.
• Learning to handle breaks and CC enemies efficiently will leave you with more mana & time to sit, meaning better overall EXP efficiency.
• Whenever your pet dies, if you still have it charmed, it will disappear along with any gear you may have given it. However, if you break charm, it will forget all damage other creatures have done to it akin to a memblur, and you can kill like any normal mob get your items back.
  • NPC's who are involved in quests do not drop the items they were given by the player. This means that your Gnoll Hide Lariat you gave them is entirely impossible to retrieve. The weirdest creatures can be quest mobs -- it's best to test them first by giving them something expendable, like a torch, and then killing them to see if they drop it. If they don't, they're involved in a quest.
• When delving into an area, if you have the spells, find mobs with mana for Wandering Mind and Theft of Thought, and look to include them in your circuit.
• Caster mobs love dispelling. Learn the visual effect of Dispel and always interrupt it when possible -- there's a chance it will hit your pet's Charm debuff.
• Dispel hits completely random buffs, so the best way to counter it is to give your pet a lot of weak, cheap buffs, or to interrupt the cast.

Pet stuff

• "/pet back" simply clears your pet's hate list & has them walk back to you or the point they're guarding.
• "/pet attack" simply adds that target to the hate list.
  • a macro sequencing both of the above is important for getting your pet to attack what you want it to.
• You can give your charmed pets an inventory of items. Most folks settle for a Torch -- Giving humaniod pet a Torch, Lantern, Shield, or Instrument will force it to Dual Wield (and 44+ to Quad), vastly increasing DPS. - from https://wiki.project1999.com/Charmed_Pet_Gear
  • Should be noted that creatures such as a shambling cube, while entirely not humanoids, benefit from having a torch, so I do not think it's a humanoid-only thing.
  • Charmed pets only have one ring slot.
• You can Lull your own creature while they're charmed.
  • To heal your charmed pet: Lull them, break charm, Mez, Tash & Memory Blur. NPC's in EverQuest heal for 5% of their health per-game tick so long as they are out of combat. Let them heal until you're ready to dive back in to things.
  • More information on memblur can be found below.
• During breaks, re-tash your pet if you have the time. It's easy to forget simple stuff during the chaos, and tash makes a big deal when it comes to spells landing.
• Have a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C whenever hasting your pet in-case of breaks.

Reap the rewards

EXP efficiency

For folks like me who find joy in optimizing circuits for additional EXP & loot per hour.

• A circuit is a mob-to-mob kill route that can span quite some distance in a zone. Think of circuits as a very mobile camp that plays around the zone's respawn timer to maximize EXP gain & drops.
• Efficiency of your circuit is generally more important than zone ZEM. The Hole is great on paper thanks to the amount of bonus EXP, but finding a consistent route through can be difficult with A rock golem forcing a likely to be resisted Pacify around every corner.
  • *there appears to be an ad for Decoy's Guide to Stopping Extortion shoved into this portion of the notebook with the words "example paper" scribbled on it.*

• Two viable strategies are prevalent in the world of EXPing as an Enchanter: the first being charming with the intent to kill both the target and the charmed creature, and the other being killing everything but the charmed creature.
• If you're flying solo, pets that deal over 50% of the damage to a mob eat 50% of the experience that mob gives. Common soloing methods for Enchanters generally attempt to play around this in some way:
  • Kill-both strategy -- research up on spots with static enemy levels. You'll have to spend less mana evening out a fight between two 35's than a 35 and a 37, leading to greater efficiency in mana, which leads to faster experience. It's also way less frustrating.
  • Kill-everything strategy -- charm something as low of a level as possible, and have it fight enemies 2-4 levels below it. The level difference will cause it to mow through everything, and your level advantage over the creature will determine the number of breaks. The more confident you are with breaks, the lower the gap can be between you and your pet.
• Despite which of the above you're using for EXP, get into a habit of Rooting the creatures you're fighting. In the case of a break, one creature being preemptively rooted means less bonks to your noggin as you're getting things under control. Less deaths = more exp!
  • Boon of the Garou's proc, despite being a heal and theoretically synergistic with buff strategies, breaks Root frequently. Avoid it unless you're very comfortable with breaks.
• Upon a successful Memory Blur, the affected mob forgets all damage done to it, meaning that if it's at 1% health and your pet did the other 99 that it now doesn't remember, you can smack it for that 1% and get full credit for the kill. You can use this in a kill-both strategy on the creature you're pitting a charmed pet against to get full exp off of both. Charm breaking completely memblurs the creature, so you should theoretically only need to blur the creature that wasn't charmed.
  • You can then utilize the lowest level nuke possible to finish off mobs & save on mana.
• There are tells for Memory Blur working, such as rooted creatures turning to try and path home, or the out of combat 5% health regen ticks.
  • Lull pet > break charm > Root > Tashanian > Memory Blur > Tashanian again is your best bet on having a successful blur occur. The second tash is to force the creature back into combat again, hopefully avoiding any ticks of out of combat regen.
  • NPC's that are out of combat will regenerate 5% of their health per game tick, regardless of their total health. If you intend on keeping a buffed pet alive on a long circuit, consider planning points to break & heal it. Pacify > Goblin Gazughi Ring / Hide > Enstill > Mesmerize. The Pacify technically isn't required, and if you are able to stay far enough away from your mob to avoid bringing it back into combat, you should be fine to skip it -- the spell's expensive anyways.

Technical

• Don't use your hotbar for spell gems if possible. Save those slots for macros or clickies like Journeyman's Boots.
  • ALT+1-0, by default, cast your spell gems directly -- these can be rebound to whatever else you prefer.
• Some modifiable keybinds are only visible within the "all" section of keybinds.
• Prioritize practicality and comfort when binding keys.
  • If something is practical and you know it, but feels weird at first, give it some practice; you'll get used to it, and it'll benefit you in the long run.
• Having easy access to your 7th and 8th spells, as well as clickies from your inventory can be a great boon. E, R and F are great for this.
  • You can click & hold items that are in your inventory (but not within a bag) to get a gem version of that inventory slot. You can then put it on your hotbar and use it like you would any other hotbar ability.
• Bind the Title Window to something easily accessible like V. With strafe on Z, you can easily strafe away from enemies while keeping a clear visual on them.
• Ducking cancels spell-casts. Bind this to something easy to reach, and get used to pressing it. I use G, and it felt really weird at first.
• While casting, you cannot open things like your inventory window or click on enemies to target them, but you can click on UI elements to target things such as yourself or your charmed pet, or tab/tilde target to things.

incoherent screeching - Decoyboy, Iksar Enchanter of Cazic Thule