Charm skill

I was wondering if anyone can explain the skill: charm for me?

Skill description: Charms the enemy to decrease its desire to attack player, power xxx

I have tried using this skill in various ways but it never seems to work.

a) aggro mob - use charm - the mob should turn not aggro? Result: The mob is still aggro after charm, skill did nothing.

b) I attack a mob, the mob runs after me - use charm - the mob should stop following me? Result: Mob is still following me, skill did nothing.

c) In a party I can prevent the mob from attacking me, using charm on it first? - use charm - party attacks mob - mob still runs to me if I do the most dmg. Result: skill did nothing.

d) In a party I can make the mob change its target from me to someone else in party using charm? -Attack mob - mob aggros me - use charm - mob does not change target. Result: skill did nothing

Please.. explaination of the skill please ^^ Im an elven scout and I have tried it on white, green and light blue mobs. TY

use charm before it aggroes to unaggro the mob, and give you a safe passage trough the area

that would be my test A.. but it has never worked yet :/ When the skill fails.. shouldnt it say: charm failed or something? Cause it just says: Use charm.. and then the mob is still aggro ^^

I was wondering if anyone can explain the skill: charm for me?

Skill description: Charms the enemy to decrease its desire to attack player, power xxx

I have tried using this skill in various ways but it never seems to work.

a) aggro mob - use charm - the mob should turn not aggro? Result: The mob is still aggro after charm, skill did nothing.

b) I attack a mob, the mob runs after me - use charm - the mob should stop following me? Result: Mob is still following me, skill did nothing.

c) In a party I can prevent the mob from attacking me, using charm on it first? - use charm - party attacks mob - mob still runs to me if I do the most dmg. Result: skill did nothing.

d) In a party I can make the mob change its target from me to someone else in party using charm? -Attack mob - mob aggros me - use charm - mob does not change target. Result: skill did nothing

This skill is not a "harmony type" of skill which you may have experienced in EQ1 or simlilar games. It is does not affect a mobs aggression state. Those are fixed. This is a combat modifier skill which is used to move the character targeted by the mob on the mobs "hate/aggression" list.
It is a situational modifier skill which means that it has to be used in conjunction with raw damage as well as other skills, most notably the hate/aggression skill of a knight.

Allow me to explain the Mob behaviour and hate/aggression system in the game.
In L2 the mobs may be:

Passive non social - eg. elpys and other stuff you find in newbie areas. These mobs will not initiate combat and will not attract others of their race to assist them if attacked.

Passive social - eg. some low level orcs. These mobs will not initiate combat but once engaged they have a social radius within which any members of their race will endeavour to assist them.

Aggressive non social - various mobs. These mobs will attack you should you wander into their aggression range. By virtue of being aggressive they will automatically be social to their own race. However at lower levels these mobs will be indiferrent to their surrounding mobs of other races, with whom they share their immediate environment. You can target these mobs first in order to "pull" them out of what would otherwise be a large group of mobs to fight.

Aggressive Social - various mobs, more prevalent as you get higher level and often found in dungeons. These mobs will attack you if you wander into their aggression range and bring their racial friends who are in the vicinity. In addition these mobs will also rally the support of all other mobs (regardless of race) within a certain radius when they come to engage you. This is the most common cause of party wipe-outs as pullers make the mistake of not chosing their mobs based on their social class correctly and end up bringing in a train on their party.

In addition to the above you also have group mobs. Group mobs are identifiable by having a leader type mob and their minions who loiter in close proximity. The aggression and any social behaviour of these mobs is linked to the leader mob. Attacking a minion will trigger the leader and minions to attack. All of the mobs in the group are linked to the "leaders" target. If you want to get a group mob off your nuker or healer you have to target the leader. If you killl the leader before you manage to change the target it becomes very difficult (if not impossible in some instances) to pull off the minions from their last designated target. (large DPS spikes have been known to do it)

Raid mobs behave like group mobs when engaged. Those that are alone tend to summon minions throughout the fight which then take on the group mob attributes.

Now, when you engage a mob (regardless of whether its passive/agressive or social) you are placed on the mobs hate list. The person at the top of this hate list is the person which the mob will target. Once combat ensues ppl will move up and down on the hate list IAW with how they interact with the mob (eg how much damage they do to it, how much damage they heal on the mobs primary target, what buffs they cast and on whom, the higher the person on the mobs hate list the more hate is generated by the supporting effect).

The mobs hate/aggression value is numeric and relates directly to the damage valute or skill value (eg the power of the hate/charms skills are a direct damage equivalent) being utilized by the players as they prosecute the engagement.

Various buffs/non damage effects have intrinsic numeric factors which influence the mobs aggression value. I don't know what those are exactly, but you can get a feel for what they are the longer you play L2. As a tank I have "bracketed" those values simply by seeing how much "hate" I have to spam (which has a numeric value) IOT turn the mob back onto me.

In addition the Mob AI associated with Aggressive/social behaviour will tend to build up hate on non primary targets as a portion of the damage received by the primary target.
In this way you can begin to control the aggro of the "adds" depending on your knowledge of the mobs behaviour class as described above.

This info is not only important for tanks but also DD's who may have skills such as charm or confusion.

In this situation charm acts to decrease the persons aggression value on the mobs hate list. If there is noone competing for the mobs aggression then charm cannot lower you competitively and so the mob continues to attack you.

The difference between charm and confusion is that charm lowers your aggro value, whereas confusion adds its value to a random party member hoping to elevate them above you in the hate list.

The purpose of charm is to assist DD's in maintaining the tanks spot at the top of the mobs hate list. In complicated situations the tanks can also use it as a survival tactic IOT "turn" non social mobs off themselves onto heavy armour DD's like Glads, Warlords, Destroyers, Warsmiths if they had a bad pull, got respawned on etc... In this manner they will disburse mob group DPS and allow time for the healer to react and cast their spells. This is esp important if mobs have nasty secondary attacks like poision dots and if you have a good tank who knows how to use the hate/charm combo in conjunction with good comms with the DDs, they can save your group from wiping out.

Its important to understand that these skills are entirely reliant on combat effects, the most influential of these being raw DPS.
In light of the ever increasing DD DPS the effectiveness of these skill effects diminish. This is furhter exascerbated through the use of Soul/Spirit shots as these do not have any corresponding effect on hate, charm or confusion as they have on damage spells/skills.

There have been lots of requests to have the hate skill tweaked, but I'm not sure whether this has been noted and whether it will occur in the short or long term. In the same vein Charm and Confusion will show a corresponding increase in efficiency if this issue is addressed.

Regards,
Ellyrion Fiallathandriel
6X Knight of Eva
Kain

In short: charm has no use and you shouldn't bother to spend SP on it. And btw this topic has been already discussed here as well, try to search for charm.

In short: charm has no use and you shouldn't bother to spend SP on it. And btw this topic has been already discussed here as well, try to search for charm.

On the contrary, I know of many a DD who has needlessly lost XP simply because they could not lose aggro following a long string of crits. In a dynamic combat situation, every little bit helps...

Regards,
Ellyrion Fiallathandriel
6X Knight of Eva

On the contrary, I know of many a DD who has needlessly lost XP simply because they could not lose aggro following a long string of crits. In a dynamic combat situation, every little bit helps...

On the contrary to what? Charm is useless, period. Its a single target skill and if your DD dies to single mob, something is wrong with your party setup. He'd be better of to try to kill it, then trying to charm it off (charming it off to whom anyways). Every healing potion helps more then charm.

On the contrary, I know of many a DD who has needlessly lost XP simply because they could not lose aggro following a long string of crits. In a dynamic combat situation, every little bit helps...

On the contrary to what? Charm is useless, period. Its a single target skill and if your DD dies to single mob, something is wrong with your party setup. He'd be better of to try to kill it, then trying to charm it off (charming it off to whom anyways). Every healing potion helps more then charm.


You either haven't read what I have written, or do not understand it. The skill works fine, its returns are just diminished because it has not had the changes applied to it that other skills, namely those that cause damage have, since the release of the game.
Its a situational skill, its based on a contest and the user needs to understand the mob upon which it can be cast to optimise its effects.
Just because the skill is ill-suited to your playstyle don't presume that its useless.

Regards,
Ellyrion Fiallathandriel
6X Knight of Eva
Kain

You either haven't read what I have written, or do not understand it. The skill works fine, its returns are just diminished because it has not had the changes applied to it that other skills, namely those that cause damage have, since the release of the game.
Its a situational skill, its based on a contest and the user needs to understand the mob upon which it can be cast to optimise its effects.
Just because the skill is ill-suited to your playstyle don't presume that its useless.

It has no use and thats not a question of playstyle, its a pure question of game mechanics. I know lots of high level groups that go out without a tank, heck even raids happen without any tanks. If a high sophisticated hate-controller like a tank has a utterly limited use in this game, an unreliable skill like charm has no use at all. And maybe you can imaginate yourself situations where charm could have been of some theoretical use(which i even can't), but this isn't the lineage2 i see or i have played for the last months and years. In every situation SP and MP for charm is spend better one something else. Telling somebody to level that is like telling him to make a TK or BH for PVP purposes.

in my experience I have charmed mobs and they attacked the next one who hit them, even when they were hated and the tank established aggression. I have used it on KSers back in the day when they were around. Someone would come up and start touching our mobs or spoiling them, tell the group to stop when i cast, then cast charm, KSer dies lol. Doesn't work often, actually I havent used it in a while but it does have a use.

You either haven't read what I have written, or do not understand it. The skill works fine, its returns are just diminished because it has not had the changes applied to it that other skills, namely those that cause damage have, since the release of the game.
Its a situational skill, its based on a contest and the user needs to understand the mob upon which it can be cast to optimise its effects.
Just because the skill is ill-suited to your playstyle don't presume that its useless.

It has no use and thats not a question of playstyle, its a pure question of game mechanics. I know lots of high level groups that go out without a tank, heck even raids happen without any tanks. If a high sophisticated hate-controller like a tank has a utterly limited use in this game, an unreliable skill like charm has no use at all. And maybe you can imaginate yourself situations where charm could have been of some theoretical use(which i even can't), but this isn't the lineage2 i see or i have played for the last months and years. In every situation SP and MP for charm is spend better one something else. Telling somebody to level that is like telling him to make a TK or BH for PVP purposes.



I see we're going to go around in circles on this issue. I am happy to agree to disagree with you.

In anycase the original poster wanted to know how the skill works not whether in your opinion it was worthwhile or not.

I am of the opinion that your playstyle does affect game mechanics. It is reflected in the choices you have when you play eg whether to spam SS or not, which mobs to hunt based on your race/class offensive/defensive skills, do you kill single mobs as fast as you can or train yourself for an AoE encounter ? Right down to how to best stack your buffs depending on availability esp if you only have one buffer/healer available to you for the group.
The combinations are endless and I hope you can see my point.

Very few people romped around in top end armour for their grade or spammed SS when I started playing this game nor did we have the perfect group everytime.
Under those circumstances everyone explored whatever skills they had at their disposal to try and improve the XP efficiency. It is here that I had the opportunity to try out these theoretical limits of my tanking skillset.

I also did it to enjoy the game and test the boundaries of possibility, as I would readily recommend to any player thats new to L2 and deserves the right to make their own conclusion.

Asking a new player to overlook a skill based on your experience and bias without taking the time to explain its workings, purpose and shortcomings is simply being ignorant.

In conclusion,

L2 is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but at least we should allow others the opportunity to discover the game for themselves and make up their own mind.

Regards,
Ellyrion Fiallathandriel
6X Knight of Eva
Kain

I've had atleast one successful use of charm where I would have died without it, in a duo. But over the course of one year that is about it - though with the lousy cast speed of charm I've tried it about ten times during that year anyway...

...if the cast speed and cooldown was adjusted to be more like the tank hate skill then it would be much more useful. The fact that it takes a LOT of time to cast, and that you CANNOT recast it again if the situation is so that you need to descale the hate list or die, pretty much makes it "mostly worthless". It does work, however, it's not bugged or anything, it's just such a fine balance when dealing with mob hate values the situation needs to be somewhat perfect for it to save someone's life.

Switch, veil and trick. Whats the point in so many moves that do the same thing i dont get it :confused:

Whatsoever one can say about the effectiveness of the Charm skill, Reckless_Knights first post is a great read for new players as it explains a lot about ingame mechanics and clever tanking.

As far as the skill itself goes...experience tells me that is not very usefull even if you try to adjust your playstyle to a more tactical point of view - casting/cooldown time and MP useage are simply to high to use it very often (every use robs me of almost 1/10 of my MP; considering that I have to cast songs on a 2 min base as well) and I found its use to be too specific...if I have mobs beating on me, its usually because I wanted to pull their attention off my low-on-hp main tank or a healer/buffer/etc. in the first place - no real need to decrease aggro after I finally got it to stick on me.

Those times when I actually wanted to shift aggro away from me I usually had too many mobs on me by accident - the problem now being the slow casting speed and the desperate need to have a charm that works AOE; I think the EE "Serenade of Eva" is the AOE version of charm btw.

Not a good points for a skill that I could, theoretically keep increasing all the way till Level 75 - it falls neatly in line with Sword Symphony when it comes to usefullness.

Your test A is correct. It does fail, its magic. So use BSPS and it will land more often. Use it on a nearby aggro you wish to pass by. The only problem with this is you dont know if it worked or failed, essentially making the skill USELESS.

Thx for all your help on this. As I understand it, charm is used to potentially change the mobs target from me to someone else. And it is not affected by sps. Even tho all this info has been useful, I think I will decide to save my sp for more useful skills. Maybe Ill get the skill when Im at some higher lvls and notice that I need it. For now, I kill the mob faster than I can cast charm anyways. thx guys! Oh and btw, I understand the mob behaviours thx, Ive been playing l2 for 2 yrs, altho this is my first elf ^^ But all info is appreciated cause im sure other ppl wonder about this skill too :) The bad thing about the skill is that u cant see if it failed or not, when used on a aggressive mob u havnt attacked yet. I am using sps (not bsps cause im poor) but it dont seem to help :/

There's one more use for charm which no one has mentioned.

If you see group mobs, cast Charm on a minion (not the leader) and just that minion will come running out to get you. You can lure him as far away as you like. As soon as you hit him, the rest of the group will come to get you.

For this use, the level of charm does not matter AT ALL, so just leave it as low as you can to reduce the MP use. Mine is stilll lvl 6 (in my mid 60s).

...now that is an interesting idea and a creative use if it works as advertised :eek:

Too bad I have maxed my charm skill already, 100+ MP is too much for a casual pull but for lower levels this might actually be good spend SP.

Charm works rarely but I use it to train social agro mobs on bots and switch their target off me and onto the bots.

Charm is not switch. Hence, why they are two different skills. Charm = single monster silent step with a success rate of 50%.

Charm is not switch. Hence, why they are two different skills. Charm = single monster silent step with a success rate of 50%.

Charm IS NOT VEIL. Think of Charm as the exact opposite if hate. Whereas hate draws aggro with the Power of 500 a charm will lose aggro with a power of 500. Those obviously aren't accurate numbers but used as an example. The problem with charm in my opinion is that is has no power, hate has twice the power so in essence it takes 2 charms to cancel out a hate.

I could be mistaken but I never recall seeing Charm fail because thats not what kind of spell it is. Blessed has no effect just as blessed has no effect on Aggression skill.

TemplarZ i suspect you are wrong but I am a little shaky on one thing. Can someone who isn't at work test out whether BSPS makes you cast charm faster? From what I believe Charm does (anti-hate) it shouldn't, but I seem to remember leaving it on auto-bsps a couple times by accident and saying 'woah, that was a fast charm.'

So can some1 just check? B/c that is not consistent with it being just anti-hate.

exactly ^^.

BSPS does make it land/cast more. Its a magic skill.

No its NOT veil. Veil has a 100% land rate and works for ANYONE who passes the mob. Charm is LIKE veil, but only works for the person who casts it and does fail alot.

IE: Charm a monster, it works, yet it is still aggro to the other 8 people in your party.

The reason most of you are saying its like anti-hate is simple. 9 poeple are hitting a mob, you draw aggro. After a few hits you're about to die, you cast charm (which takes a long time), meanwhile you do zero damage to the mob. Why would a mob stay on you if 8 others are nailing it? Dont confuse charm with a built in game mechanic.

Switch/confusion is anti-hate.

Now, when you engage a mob (regardless of whether its passive/agressive or social) you are placed on the mobs hate list. The person at the top of this hate list is the person which the mob will target. Once combat ensues ppl will move up and down on the hate list IAW with how they interact with the mob (eg how much damage they do to it, how much damage they heal on the mobs primary target, what buffs they cast and on whom, the higher the person on the mobs hate list the more hate is generated by the supporting effect).

The mobs hate/aggression value is numeric and relates directly to the damage value or skill value (eg the power of the hate/charms skills are a direct damage equivalent) being utilized by the players as they prosecute the engagement.

Various buffs/non damage effects have intrinsic numeric factors which influence the mobs aggression value. I don't know what those are exactly, but you can get a feel for what they are the longer you play L2. As a tank I have "bracketed" those values simply by seeing how much "hate" I have to spam (which has a numeric value) IOT turn the mob back onto me.

[...]

In this situation charm acts to decrease the persons aggression value on the mobs hate list. If there is noone competing for the mobs aggression then charm cannot lower you competitively and so the mob continues to attack you.

I think Reckless_Knight wrote a very good description here of how the skill Charm actually works. Charm lowers the aggro a mob has on the character using Charm. It does NOT change the mob's target, it does NOT take away all aggro from a mob, and it does NOT disable a mob's aggressive behaviour.

The actual use of Charm is very, very limited. Not because it doesn't work as intended, but for the following reasons:

<ul type="square"> Lv 52 Charm - which can be learned at character lv 74 - costs 109 MP (the ingame description says 137, but that's a bug), has a Power of 458 and a re-use delay of about 60 seconds.

Lv 49 Aggression/Hate - also available at character lv 74 for tank classes - costs 68 MP and has a Power of 1963 and has a re-use delay of about 2 seconds.
Even lv 15 Aggression/Hate - which can be learned at character lv 40 - has a Power of 1136, about 2.5x the power Charm has on maxlevel.

The Skill Power of Charm is simply far too low at higher levels to have any noticeable effect. You might sometimes lose aggro to another player when using Charm in a party but this is more likely happening because you stop attacking the mob when using Charm while the other party members keep on attacking and not because of the actual skill's effect ^^

Both the MP cost and the re-use delay of Charm are totally off the mark compared to the skill's benefit.

Since Charm is a spell, it takes far longer to use it for Elven Fighters than it would take them to use a physical skill like Hate/Aggression (Casting Speed versus Attackspeed). Why Charm is a spell, that's beyond my understanding, but I don't think it can fail. All spells or physical skills show a system message in case of failure and I never got such a message for charm.

Charm works rarely but I use it to train social agro mobs on bots and switch their target off me and onto the bots.

im glad someone mentioned this use :)
"i attacked a mob, then i faked death, then i attacked it again...is fake death USELESS?"
but really, i can do the same thing with ultimate defense. get some aggro mobs and let them hit me until they loose aggro on me and aggro the nearby bots instead. but ultimate defense works every time, and i can use a lot more than one mob, so really, i guess its still useless :(