Revision as of 01:28, 28 October 2012

So You Want To Play An Enchanter?

In my personal opinion, a dungeon crawl as an Enchanter is one of the most fun experiences in classic EQ. Enchanters don't have powerful damage spells and are quite squishy, but we can use our control spells like mez, charm, slow, and stun to weave a protective web around ourselves and our groups that allows us to survive and thrive in situations when any other class would be heading for the zone (or dead already). You can travel through dungeons freely, mesh well with almost any class, and solo farm almost any mob in the game at level 60.

Enchanters are also one of the few classes that actually gets stronger as they level up (Shamans being the other). Most classes get weaker, because you have to pit your numbers against mob numbers, and their numbers go up faster. A L10 Warrior with 400 HP stacks up pretty well against a L10 mob with 300HP, but a L60 warrior with 3500HP is crushed by a L60 mob with 25000HP. Monk damage and Wizard nukes and Druid healing and really everything else follows a similar pattern. But Enchanter spells are multipliers: a 70% slow on a L60 mob that hits for 451 is far more effective than a 30% slow on a L20 mob that hits for 40.

This guide assumes you have some basic ideas about how the Enchanter works; if you don't you should check out Xornns_Enchanter_Guide first (or really anyway, it's a great guide and a lot of fun to read). I don't think its that hard to play the Enchanter class well; it's just a matter of good strategy, some pro tips, and practice. Hopefully this guide can provide the first two; the third is up to you. Once you can play well in a group, you can experiment solo, which is really the same except it has a much lower margin for error and requires good knowledge about the spawn patterns of the area you're in.

Crowd Control

One of the most powerful abilities of an Enchanter is the ability to put mobs to sleep with our line of Mesmerization spells. In principle crowd control is pretty simple: your puller brings a train pull, the main tank starts killing one, everyone assists, you target a mob that isn't getting beat on and hit the mez key, and repeat until everything is locked down. The hardest part about playing an enchanter is convincing your groupmates to not break mez, and with the generally high level of play on Project 1999 this usually isn't a problem.

If your teammates aren't breaking mez left and right, the next trick is to configure the UI. Go to the options window and bind 'Target Nearest Mob' (the mob beating your face in) and 'Cycle through Nearest Mobs' to hotkeys (mine are ~ and TAB respectively). This lets you quickly cycle through the pile of mobs without using the mouse; the safest strategy is to mez mobs at 100% HP. You should also create a /assist X hotkey (with X being the name of your tank), so you can hit assist/tab/mez/tab/mez until things are under control. I also recommend creating one of those irritating spam macros like '/cast 1 /g %t is mezzed', which will mostly be ignored but is useful occasionally.

Mez spells can be refreshed as long as the duration of new spell is less than or equal to the original spell: Dazzle will overwrite Dazzle, Entrance will overwrite Entrance and Dazzle, Mez will overwrite anything, etc. In addition to the main single-target mez line, you get two AE mez spells: Mesmerization at 16 and Fascination at 52. In my personal opinion, Mesmerization is extremely powerful and should always be memorized. Locking down 4 mobs at once instantly transforms a wipe into just another day at the office. If you want to have some fun in Howling Stones, pull an entire room at once, hit them with AE Mez and AE Tash, and then have a Shaman follow up with AE Slow. Unfortunately Mesmerization will hit you as well if you are in range, so until you are 56+ and level immune make sure you have GRM up!

Your other primary crowd control spell is the Root line. Before 49 these are quite inferior to mez, but Paralyzing Earth and Fetter are very good. Both will last longer than Dazzle, require less mana, and have no recast. Fetter will also cast significantly faster. On the other hand, they can break early and don't prevent summoning, casting, or getting beat on when you step into melee range. I use root quite frequently for CC and recommend another spam macro. A rooted mob will also attack whoever is nearest regardless of its hate list. If your MT is a warrior or monk, just tash+root everything you mez anyway. Even with two taunts there is a good chance the mezzed mob will be coming for you; its a lot easier on your cleric's mana to just root everything. I came to appreciate this strategy on my Warrior, because when taunt finally does succeed you get to move way up in the hatelist (root+tash+mez) and should have aggro for the rest of the fight. You can also try the memblur line of spells, but they require a lot more mana and don't always work.

Finally, you have the extremely powerful color flux line of PBAOE stuns. In his guide Xornn calls these the mortar and mez/root the bricks, which in my opinion is pretty accurate. The key spell is Color Shift, which casts in 1.5 seconds as compared to Mez in 2.5. Whenever you have a mob on you, my suggestion is Color Shift/Mez rather than mez directly; you'll eat a lot fewer hits. With 3+ mobs on you this is almost mandatory if you want to live. The stun line also require very little mana and are great for interrupting casters, especially annoying spells like Turgurs, Ice Comet, or Complete Heal. You also get a line of single target stuns like Whirl which used to be incredibly overpowered but were nerfed when Kunark came out.

These guidelines need a few tweaks for high level mobs. Throwing an AE Mez on a bunch of revenants in the Plane of Hate at L55 will wipe you and then your raid (that is not a personal story! you believe me, right?). Many good enchanters have a tendency to try to do too much. The worst thing you can do is panic throw a stun into a huge group of mobs that are on the MT (he won't die, and if he does it'll be a new experience for him. Warriors don't die much compared to enchanters) thus transferring them to your squishy hide. If you are dealing with very high-level or otherwise resisty mobs, do one at a time. Rapture is a huge help in this area at 59+. For example on the Spirocs in Sky my order is Dazzle and if it is resisted Rapture/tash/plead for malo/Dazzle again when Rapture wears off.

Pulling

Of course the best crowd control is to simply pull one mob at once, and Enchanters are extremely good at this as well if you don't mind dying once in a while. Currently on Project 1999, if you are invisible mobs that cannot see you will not social aggro. So you can invis up and facepull Drusella Sathir (an undead) in Howling Stones right by her golems. There are quite a few named that see invis with guards who do not (like Tolapumj) or who don't see invis and their guards do (like King Tranix) who can be pulled in this manner. With a double invis, you can pull the Crypt Excavator or Embalming Fluid anywhere you want in Howling Stones.

If you have a partner, you can cast invis/ivu on him so that it lands mid-cast, and then drag the mob anywhere in the zone. The best pulling spell is Lull, which doesn't require line of sight (this is how an enchanter+cleric can pull 4 named in HS South to the invis wall tunnel). You can also mez something, invis up, and ghetto SK pull it somewhere more convenient; a great example here is the froglok armsman who can be dragged out past his guards. Finally, if the named in question does not see invis, you can charm it, hit it with a bracer of the hidden, zone/cap out and come back and invis pull it normally. The only use I've found for this so far is pulling the myconid spore king, because the zone out is right there.

If you are hit in melee while invisible with Rune up, invis will not drop until Rune does. Usually when I zone into HS South, I just cast rune/bedlam/ivu and run to one of the pulling spots, dragging any biles and feasters with me. Once I get to the spot, I hit AE mez and kill them off (obviously this is limited to a reasonable number of mobs). If I have to cap out, I can then just ivu down easily rather than lulling every live mob. I don't really like invis pulling (I think it trivializes the game too much) but it does seem to be classic and therefore here to stay.

Your other main option is the Lull line of spells, which reduce a mob's social aggro radius, allowing you to separate it from its friends. Lull spells are resisted much more frequently than normal spells, and sometimes you will get a critical resist where the mob comes after you. I recommend as much charisma as possible for lull which really lowers this chance; I would say at 200+ charisma you should get maybe 1/30 critical resists. I recommend using the L20 Calm spell which lasts for 3 minutes and costs only 50 mana; L39 Pacify only lasts 48 seconds or so. Make sure to have AE mez up (or gate!) in case you do get a critical. You obviously want to lull the lowest level mob first as it will have the lowest chance to critical resist, so go by con, name (boks before krups), and then rotate. Cast Calm on each mob in turn, skipping mobs that are already calmed in each successive cycle.

Because Lull does not require line of sight, you can play some tricks with the camera. For example, to calm a room in Howling Stones, stand facing into the wall right next to the door, zoom backwards and rotate slightly. This will let you target the mobs without them seeing you. You can also bind sight to one of the mobs inside and use that for targeting, e.g. the bat/ghoul room next to the bedroom in Gukbottom.

Once you are down to one mob, your usual pull spells are slow and tash. Initial aggro is capped at a small value; a charmed pet will pull a mob pulled with slow off you almost instantly whereas if you slowed it after the engage it would need 10-20 seconds.

Buffs

Cast clarity on casters, haste on melee, GRM on everyone, and Shielding/AC/Charisma on yourself. I usually keep epic haste up on myself for the AC bonus. I once knew an enchanter (no names to protect the innocent) who did not cast Shielding on himself 'because its 350 mana'. He had 1100HP at L60 and wondered why he was dying all the time trying to solo the disco. It's a pain, but keep those buffs up.

On raids, demand that people send tells to you directly rather than asking in guild chat so that you can use /rtarget (/rt) to target them. Raiding on an Enchanter can get rather boring as most raid targets are immune to all your spells (imagine being able to mez Trakanon for a minute or two while your raid healed up, or being able to charm him and have him clear out all of lower Sebilis . . . ). Aside from buffing, you can summon a pet (usually it will get aggro from the AOE and do a few hundred damage) and also 'patch heal' with rune. The easiest thing here is to set your assist key to the mob, i.e. /assist Trakanon and Rune his target.

When soloing, add Bedlam and sometimes Rune to that list if you don't want to spend all your farmed pp on rezzes. Usually if you have Bedlam higher on your spell stack you can go quite a while without refreshing Rune.

If you are grouped with a cleric, demand symbol. Bring peridots (you need them for rune anyway) if necessary. +1000HP from cleric buffs makes recharming a lot easier.

Debuffs

Your best debuff is Tashan, which is unresistable, low mana, fast casting, and debuffs MR quite a bit (over 40 at L60). Since all of your spells check against Magic Resist, it's a good idea to cast this on all high-level mobs if you can. Unfortunately its quite high aggro. If your tank is an SK or Paladin you'll be fine, but with a Warrior or a charmed pet you'll have to either wait or root.

Your other primary debuff is the Deeds line which reduces the attack rate of your target. Forlorn deeds caps at a 70% slow, which means your tank takes less than 1/3 as much damage as normal. Cast this whenever you have mana. If 70% slow is not enough, you can chain the color flux line of spells starting from L52 (Color Shift/Skew/Slant/repeat). I have killed the froglok armsman with a pet and the Rod of Annihilation without taking a single point of damage by just chain casting these spells.

You also have a few other debuffing spells which debuff AC and stats including your DoT spell. These are relatively ineffective against mobs with their insane stats (check mqemulator some time to see just how much strength the sebilite protector has) but are worth casting if you don't have anything better to do, i.e. you're raiding.

Getting Around and Other Tricks

As an enchanter you should be able to get just about anywhere you want in a dungeon. Just invis or ivu, lull the mobs that see you, and move on. Aggro on Project 1999 happens on ticks, so you can also try to just run by. Make sure you aren't full HP and mana, wait for your hp/mana to go down (assuming you aren't full mana, your Titanium client will assume you are getting out of combat regen which was added to EQ later (wizards rejoiced). So your mana will go up by more than your classic regen, and then down again on the server tick when it coldly informs you of the classic reality), and run. It's probably a good idea to have rune on and ae mez memorized if you want to try this. Sow/Jboots help a lot as well.

You can also lev-jump. Alt-tab out at the bottom of your levitate bounce and alt-tab back at the top. Somehow Levitate is affected by the framerate and this will cause you to rise.

Suggested Spell Lineup

I am pretty confident in my spell lineup of Dazzle / Tashanian / Fetter / Color Shift / Color Skew / Theft of Thought / Mesmerization / Swap at higher levels. This entails a lot of spell swapping in that last slot (slow, clarity, haste if you don't have the epic, blur, charm) but in my opinion its worth it to have the full set of CC tools available.

At lower levels you won't have Theft of Thought or Color Skew so you can replace them with a nuke and slow for example.

Recharming

I titled this section recharming because any idiot can click the charm key. The challenge is not dying when charm breaks.

Your first choice is what to charm. The primary determinants of charm duration are Level and Magic Resistance (charisma has a small effect, but it's worth nothing that Save, one of the best enchanters on the server, wears a Fingerbone Hoop and a Helot Skull Helm which is something like -50 charisma compared to the Insidious Halo). So tash anything you charm and get Malo if you can. For reasonable charm durations my recommendation is to charm something 0.75-0.85 times your level; at L60 this works out to L45-L50; 51 is possible but risky and 52-53 is almost certainly going to be a short trip without malo. Mobs between L40 and L55 or so will generally hit for Level*4 - 60 (136 hit = L49, 140 hit = L50, 144 hit = L51, etc).

Your next decision is what type of mob to charm. Over time a warrior is the best DPS (or rogues if you can get them. Try the abhorrents in Hate!). For xp, wizards are great since they can do great damage even without haste. Necros are great dps as well but more annoying because their dots prevent mez. Shamans are the worst since they not only dot but also slow and heal. The most annoying fight in Sebilis is krup shaman vs krup shaman which can easily last 7-10 minutes.

Finally you have to decide whether to haste/weaponize your pet or not. Grouped this is a nobrainer; if you are worried about breaks a light-blue pet with haste and weapons will do more damage than a high blue pet without and break charm far less. For xp I think its easier to not haste and kill both, but for farming high-level mobs it just takes forever for them to kill each other without weapons. Even a weaponized L50 pet will take 3 minutes to beat down a L55 mob. The best weapons are the Ykesha's which are both stun and damage (and magic based, so you can resist them well with GRM up) but gnoll-hide lariats are also great aggro and very cheap. You can also give your pet a 2H weapon and a torch, which gives you access to useful procs like Swarmcaller or Withered Totem of Widdershins or Nature's Wrath. If your weaponized pet gets low on health, break charm and root/calm/memblur and it will get the 5%/tick out of combat NPC regeneration bonus.

In my personal opinion the best recharm routine is Color Shift + Mesmerization or Mesmerize + Allure. This casts in 1.5 seconds, costs just over 300 mana, works on summoning/casting mobs, and allows you to keep Mesmerization up as well as manatap/tash your pet on charm breaks. Second best is Color Skew+Boltrans, which works even when one of the mobs is dotted. I have seen enchanters sit there trying to cast tash and Allure while getting beat on. Do not do this.

Enchanter + ?

Warrior: not really your favorite tank because of their poor aggro. Root after mez and take it easy on the debuffs.

Monk: these punks like to bring one mob at a time in some sort of monkey conspiracy which makes your life very boring. Demand that they pull trains or you won't haste them.

Rogue: cast haste on them and watch mobs die. You can also chainstun while the rogue backstabs from behind.

Paladin: your favorite tank, let the debuffs fly. They can also heal you in a pinch.

Shadowknight: Almost as good as a paladin except that occasionally they dot the wrong mob. Once in Chardok I had an SK pull with Darkness and then switch targets. Of course he had other issues as well.

Ranger: A well-played ranger is really not that bad. You can actually fear kite fairly well with them outdoors.

Bard: An underrated combination; enchanter+bard is insane mana regen. You can focus on charming and buffing while the bard pulls.

Shaman: Your best duo at very high levels as they can tank better than a warrior with slow+torpor and cast malo on your pet. Tash+malo and two players chaining slow is great for killing high-level targets.

Cleric: Almost as good in a duo because they can CH your pet and with 1k HP in Cleric buffs it's hard to die, and of course great in groups. Average clerics will heal you during a charm break, but good ones will stun the charmed pet (bad clerics will let you die and ask for clarity after you have zoned. And yes, this has happened to me).

Druid: Very underrated partner for a group, because you fix their problems (a Druid is basically a shaman without mana regen and slow, which you provide).

Enchanter: Enchanter/Enchanter is the single most crazy XP duo if you are good. Two charmed pets = massive killing, and just AE mez on breaks and figure it out later.

Magician: Also a great duo but its not as forgiving as the priest classes since the Mage can't heal you. Great in groups for malo and DS as long as the mage can control the pet.

Wizard: You're their best friend for clarity, but they can't do that much for you other than port you around (and blow up raid targets while you watch, of course!) Unfortunately wizards can't stun your pet on breaks as effectively because their stuns do damage.

Necromancer: Might even be better than enc/enc against undead. A good necro will ST your pet on charm breaks and heal you too!

All in all I would say you can duo effectively with any class in the game, even monks and warriors if they have a fungi tunic.

Character Creation

Enchanters are one of the most forgiving classes when it comes to race selection because of our various illusion spells. Your choices are, ranked in my opinion from best to worst:

High Elves and Erudites tie for the best total intelligence/charisma after the 5 point Erudite agility penalty, and High Elves get infravision. Dark Elves however get Hide which is extremely useful both for breaking charm and for going AFK and in my opinion is worth some stats. Gnomes look the best, get tinkering, and most importantly can see through walls - solo enchanters should in my opinion spend all their time in Gnome illusion. Humans are traditionally the gimp race of Everquest but aren't that bad as enchanters because of their high charisma, with only 8 fewer total points than Gnomes.

Generally speaking it's hard to screw up creation as an enchanter unless you do something silly like putting all your points into stamina. I've heard people make this argument, but considering that 25 points in Stamina are worth 60HP at L60 and considerably gimps your character in the mean time its hard to make this case for Enchanters.

Gear

Enchanters are the most gear dependent of the 4 wizard classes; in a group a naked Necro or Wizard is about 85% as effective as a fully geared one, and most Mages could take off all their gear except their robes and no one would notice (probably they do this anyway). Not only do Enchanters need both Intelligence and Charisma, but we get beat on a lot more, making HP/AC and to some extent resists a lot more important.

Charisma in my opinion is somewhat overrated. Back in the day (around when Kunark was launched) charisma had a huge impact on charm. I was really looking forward to the L12 Charm spell. I had read about how charisma was not important on various classic EQ sites only to find out that at L12 with 75 base CHA Charm would hold 2-3 ticks at most even on light blue mobs. However during the Great Charm Nerf a few months after Kunark was launched the effect was substantially reduced, and I think it has been reduced even further since then. I played a DE enchanter on red with ~100 CHA who had no trouble charming mobs for minutes at a time under L20. However, Charisma remains extremely important for another line of spells, the Lulls, which in my opinion get better all the way up to 255.

Basically my advice is to wear the enchanter planar gear and then tune the rest for HP/AC. I think Loraen might be the only enchanter on the server wearing a Granite Bracer! Some specific gear suggestions: Classic, Planar, and Kunark BiS

The most important clicky for an enchanter is the Goblin Gazughi Ring which lets you break charm instantly. Get one. And don't wear it permanently; swap it out. You need the HP. After that go for two Leatherfoot Raider Skullcaps which will save your life while charm soloing for the minor cost of 200p. If you can afford it Puppet Strings are great for instant recharm or when you run out of mana. Finally a Bracer of the Hidden is great for keeping up trash buffs against mobs that dispell.

Conclusion

I haven't held back much in this guide; if you follow these recommendations you should be able to do quite a bit solo and grouped. So just go out and practice, experiment, and find out what works for you. If you level up a bit, try out the Solo Artist's Challenge. Keep in mind that you will have to learn the spawn patterns very well to solo; if mobs are walking up behind you you won't last long.

If you have questions or suggestions, try not to vandalize this page too much and chat with me in game on Loraen or Radium on Blue or occasionally Loraen on Red.

Zonen's Conclusion: This is the best Enchanter guide to date!