Hey guys..I play a 51 druid on AR.Ive been pretty much a quadder since lvl 34,but Ive been reading posts lately on charming pets,but haven't been able to find a basic tute/how-to guide on the subject.Im ready to learn something new and no longer want to ignore this line of spells.i admit Im a newbie at charm kiting and would like anyone to post a basic how-to on which zones,what animals and what spells to use I have available to me at 51.Also,please post any links or posts I may have over-looked on the subject.Thanks in advance and great site,btw.

What expansions do you have?

Call of Karana is a wonderful spell. There is a good post here on the front page on it.

Some like to keep their pets, buffing, healing, etc.

I like them to die.

Call of Karana is a very nice spell, but you can do this with the charm before it too (beguile?) If the mob is too high, just try another one til you find one that will charm.

I use this exclusively at raptors and Permafrost soloing. The only time I quad anymore is if the mobs are not animals. Charm lets you keep far more spawns clear.

As for how to do it, I also like to let pets die if I'm doing only animals. If in ME and using a ravenous beast, I keep it and buff it all to heck.

First, snare a mob, then charm it (sucks to have charm wear off and the mob isn't snared.) Then sic it on a mob. I don't buff at all when doing only animals, not even Savage Spirit. Then watch health. Make sure pet doesn't die first, you want the exp from the pet's death too. If pet is losing, you can either nuke, or do a quick invis to break charm, then charm the one that was winning, or even root both and go get another one.

The only real rule here is to always snare before you charm. Other than that, just play with it. You'll see that the exp is far far better charming than quadding. At raptors, I keep all 8 spawns on large island dead, and I'm always above 70m (usually I'm at full mana) and that's without any clarity at all, just Form of the Howler. If small island is open, I can usually keep 10 spawns down.

Good luck!

Exsyle Ashborne
58 druid, Quellious

Wait until 52 when you get Call of Karana. Allure of the Wild has a 9 second cast time, even with the mob snared you've got to run quite a bit to get it off. Call only has a 5 second cast time.

Thanks for the info :) I have all expansions,including PoP.I did notice by experimenting w/ charming that Allure of the Wild has quite a long cast time,and being new to this tactic,didn't know if it was wise to begin now or wait for the next upgrade.Are theyre any zones that I could practise charming w/ minimal risk at my level and the spells/buffs etc I have available?I really appreciate the input.Thanks

Also i would love to hear about you guys' experiences w/ charm tactics to kinda get an idea of what to expect.

Letting your pet die isn't nice. Intentionally killing your pet for exp is very wrong. Charm Fighting is fun and very profitable. You shouldn't have to be so cheap as to terminate your pet for more exp. I buff/heal my pets and they repay me with much exp and loot. I also try to keep DS on as I would with any tank. I've found that Jagged Pines is a nice place for a good Druid to solo. There is ample supply of animals and you can use them to kill the Gnolls and/or Poachers. The animals here are relatively high level and the enemies are good exp for lvl 50+. I love hunting there its the most fun I have had playing EQ in awhile.

"Letting your pet die isn't nice. Intentionally killing your pet for exp is very wrong"

Twilight Zone anyone. :)

I hope that post was a joke.

The best xp I've earned in a long time was with a druid charming ravens in PoN.

It started with me LFG at the zone in PoN and not meeting with much success (where are those instant-groups I've been told we get?) Eventually a guildie druid sends me a tell asking me if I can heal pets?

I tell druid "Yeah, its nice too, no aggro on pet heals."
Druid tells me "Want to come duo with me? I'm charming ravens."
I tell druid "Sure, why not? Its something to do while waiting for a group."

Well, with me chealing his raven pet, and him buffing it, we were tearing through any mob (and sometimes adds) that came along. XP was better for him, and insane for me. The times charm would break broke up the grind quite nicely. Eventually (me not knowing any better) we added another druid and necromancer and I watched the xp slow down a lot compared to the marginal increase in killing speed.

So, how about this as a solution to inter-priest bickering? Druids grab an LFG cleric and charm your way to even faster xp in the planes? :)

""Letting your pet die isn't nice. Intentionally killing your pet for exp is very wrong"

Twilight Zone anyone.

I hope that post was a joke."


Nah, i think a roleplayer with a roleplayed perspective on it.

Btw, you should be using Savage Spirit if your going to buff it with anything. It makes a huge difference. And ensnare it, dont snare it, but i know thats what people mean, heh.

If you charm in the Tier 1 planes, I would strongly suggest NOT using a haste buff unless you have CC with you have lots of room. Any type of add coupled with charm breaking can have very bad results. More specifically, you run an increased risk of a sloppy camp by having to be more cautious when you cast your re-charm. I've seen lots of Druids hasting their pet only to have it tear them to pieces at the first add/charm break. Be careful out there :)

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ME is a damn good place to practice before you go plains charming.

you learn to make good use of your space, recharming the hasted dog, with much less risk to yourself. he only takes 3 seconds to kill you instead of 1.

Love pet charming hunting. I tell you Velium Hounds can take down a mob hard. As for killing your pet just for expience. I know people play druids for different reasons, but personally I think is just wrong. He's my pet, I feed him, Buff him, he does goodwork for me. I treat him well. If he turns on me I fear him. But like I said that is me. Happy hunting gang.

You can charm pretty effectively with allure of the wild. Keep grasping roots memed and when charm wears off root everything, recharm and root will break fairly quickly. I used this method through 50 and 51 with pretty good results.

One thing that no one has mentioned is how to rapidly retarget your former pet once normal charm breaks.

Let's say your raven or young bat or whatever is happily pounding on another mob for you while you lay on the dots. You may be solo or in a group, doesn't matter. Charm breaks. You now have at least one mob ignoring all else to tear you a new one, and yet the other mob is targeted. How do you recharm the former pet ASAP?

This technique requires one preliminary step. After you've initially charmed a mob, use the <strong>TAB</strong> key to save it in your <em>Tab Target buffer</em>. You only need to do this once. Hereafter do not hit the TAB key or you may cause yourself grief.

Back to the battle. Assuming the target mob is under control (ie. rooted and ensnared) you just have one mob after you: your former pet. To rapidly retarget it simply (and quickly) hit <strong>F1</strong> then <strong>TAB</strong>. This keystroke combination restores your target setting from the Tab Target buffer. Now channel that charm until it works. I prefer this technique over hitting F8 because it is more reliable. It works even if you're blind or turned around and at any distance in zone. It's also FAR more reliable than clicking on the mob, particularly when you're on a horse.

If, however, the original target mob was not under control then you may have an even more serious situation on your hands. Both your former pet and the target mob may be gunning for you. Since the target mob is still targeted it's best if you immediately root it and back off as your former pet is beating on you. Rooted? Great, now you just have to recharm. Hit F1 then TAB to retarget your former pet. (Get in the habit and soon you'll be doing this reliably without thought.) Back off if you like -- and have room for -- now channel charm. You may be interrupted once or twice. That's fine; that's what ac and hit points are for. It's charmed, great, find that rooted mob and press the pet attack button. Back to the hunt.

Btw, a variation of this technique allows for resnaring. The originally targeted mob is rooted and the formet pet is after your hide. Kite it as needed to position it within arms reach of the first mob (and yet you are out of reach) then root it. Now ensnare and charm it in that order. Select the other mob then hit the pet attack button. Both are rooted, ensnared and duking it out like rock-em-sock-em robots.

Excellent tip Onetree. I never knew about the Tab Target buffer. Would have saved more than a few deaths, heh :)

*edit - fixes
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Nice tip Onetree! After reading a lot of the topics here about charming and with the addition of more animals in PoP, I've been charm kiting and I love it. It's a lot of fun and a challenge.

Now, my question is what spells do you keep mem'd? Good grief, it seems like I don't have room for any dmg spells at all.

I have quick heal (for me when I get pounded and lotsa mobs on me :P once they are rooted), TR, charm, savage spirit, glamour of tunare, root, snare, egress.

aybe glamour of tunare gets swapped out a lot? BTW, in PoP at least, I've found that charm does last noticeably longer with glamour on the pet than without.

For learning the basic without much to much risk try North Karana (griffon vs hill giant are fun). No xp, but it ok, you are learning (do /pet sitdown when you have a mini-griffon as pet) and you have space to outrun the mobs and take the time to learn the how.

As you become better reduce, the space you need to do the charm fighting. Then it time to try in a dongeon (try the sonic bat in sol A (or B?), and it can be funny when the 2 bats are stunned at the same time).

No xp be doing that but no much risk to die to (I hate dying when I am learning a new trick).

Eridalafar

When charming (in PoN for now, but the same general technique works everywhere), I keep the top four spell slots exactly the same as my basic load out for grouping.

1. DD (Wildfire)
2. DoT(Winged Death)
3. Ensnare
4. Root (Grasping roots)

The next 3 vary a lot.

5. Glamour of Tunare/Tunare's renewal/Savage Spirit/Personal buffs
6. CoK
7. Chloroblast
8. Egress/gate


Snare a raven, glamour, CoK. Unmemm Glamour (you aren't going to need it for a long time anyway), mem savage spirit. med or send your pet for the first kill depending on your mana state. When savage spirit pops, buff you pet, unmem Savage, mem TR. Settle in for five or six kills. Then sit your pet, back away and med up. When you are near full mana, break charm with hide, root the pet, resnare, re-glamour, CoK again. Wash, rinse repeat.

On pulls, I use bracer when it's a long ways back to my pet, ensnare otherwise. I always root my pull when it gets back to camp, just in case my pet decides to go AWOL. If charm breaks, back up, resnare, recharm. Heal as needed and keep a DS on your pet.

Other than staying alert for pops/other groups, that's about it. Bad pull? Sic the pet on em, back up, egress and start over. If you keep your pet snared, charm-killing is fairly safe and the XP can't be beat.

Note that savage spirit takes a bit to refresh after you mem it. If you're going to use it you may want to assign it a slot of it's own, or at least plan ahead so that it's castable when you need to refresh it. I also prefer to keep a long duration root spell memorized for CC when those adds come in, unless of course your targets break root constantly. :)

Teena, I use something like the following...

1. Egress if soloing, Succor if grouped, or something else if hunting close to zone out and no one is around
2. Chloroblast (lvl 55) for quick heals
3. Tunare's Renewal (lvl 58) for big heals
4. Shield of Blades (lvl 58) for ds, or Girdle of Karana (lvl 55) then Natureskin (lvl 57) temporarily for pet buffing
5. Engorging Roots (lvl 56)
6. Savage Spirit (lvl 44) for pet haste or Glamour of Tunare (lvl 53) temporarily for pet debuffing
7. Call of Karana (lvl 52) for charming
8. Winged Death (lvl 53)

I like to keep the top half of the stack beneficial while the bottom half is generally detrimental. Life is simpler that way. But for this particular hunt I swap out rsd from slot 6 and moonfire from slot 7.

What about ensnare? For this type of hunt I swap in my Tanglewood Shield (http://www.magelo.com/eq_item_info.html?num=22827). You can buy one in the bazaar.

Btw, I'm currently level 62 but this spell selection will work for levels 58 and up. Lower levels can do this with appropriate substitutions. And, of course, where spells are memed doesn't really matter, but you do want to be consistent.

Does girdle make much difference? I've been looking to get it to round out my spellbook, but everytime I see it in the bazaar people are charging 3-4k, which is insane.

I like this thread. I was gonna pose this question myself, being that I am officially sick and tired of quadding. One additional question that I have is do you have "charm gear" when you go out on your nightly romps? I have none, but looking at the tactics above, it doesn't look like a requirement.

I charmed raptors for a few levels.

With Cha at 85.

Charm gear was normal gear for me.

I kept the raptors clear with that. I still have not seen any 'science' on whether cha effects animal charming, but my low cha had no effect on my killing with a virtually full bar of mana and very little/no downtime.

There has always been a debate on Druid charms and the effeect of charisma. I can raise mine by over 30 with different gear... and saw NO difference whatsoever.. I'm sure there are others that would swear by it though.

Find a friendly mage and get him to summon a Muzzle of Mardu.

uzzle is a summon HASTE items (~10%). My tests with PoD rats shows a nice damage increase with one.

Of course.. those rats won't duel wield. I give mine a FS/Summon dagger just in case it will speed it up some (it wont but I feel better).

EDIT: P.S. If you are into killing your pet this works, because the muzzle should be lootable off its corpse to give to your next pet.

Lol, I've got 45 cha and CoK usually lasts for awhile and is rarely resisted.

A Quick Question: I thought maybe it was true, but does charisma have anything to do with charm duration? or just the chance for it to land? or anything like at all? Any information on this would be of great help. I wanna know if it's worth replacing my primary and secondary items with cha cups or just go with my horrible 45 charisma and try to charm and kill.

cMarcus Wolfwalker
56 Preserver of Karana
ithaniel-Marr Server
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CHA=76

Been that way forever, and it's not unusual to have CoK last ten minutes or more. Ensnre often runs out before my pet breaks.

I doubt charisma has any effect at all.

CHA = 90

Last night, I had 3 or 4 charms outlast Ensnare. That's not a good thing with a hasted pet dual wielding stun proc weapons.

Just sit your pet, back up, break charm with hide, root, resnare and re-glamour.


Then git back ta work!

Does DC work on PoN animals?

Only young bats and the occasional blood raven.

The number one rule for charming is: (en)snare everything. Snare your pet, snare the mob, snare adds, snare everything. Snare is your friend. Snare will allow you to have 8 agro mobs in camp and still have each of them killed for xp in a short period of time.

I think there are two main ways to charm:

<strong> Toe to Toe </strong>
If you have plenty of mobs, going toe-to-toe is definately the best way. I still buff (with savage spirit and my free ds from my gloves) my pet even if I want it to die. I generally get 2 kills out of a pet, and by then the pet is within a nuke or two of dying. So 3 kills every 2.5 min or so. That's only if there are plenty of mobs.

What helps tremendously for this is if you have the innate camo AA. This allows you to still suceed in non-optimal situations... ie if your pet is about to die, you can camo and then nuke him down. Alternately, you can just root both of the mobs (your ex-pet, and the mob the ex-pet was on), find yet another pet, and finish both mobs up. If you do this, make sure you get some damage in on your first ex-pet... if your pet does 100% of the damage you get much less xp. You only have to do 1 point of damage. Actually oftentimes you don't even need to root both mobs (which is why you want to do damage) as if you root the mob with higher health, your ex-pet will come after you for a little bit, realize that its friend is no longer around, and then go into flee mode (and be unable to flee because it's snared).

<strong>One buffed mean pet </strong>
If you are keeping a pet around (better if there aren't a lot of pettable mobs), whenever charm breaks ALWAYS resnare and retash it if your charm has lasted more than 1 min. I've had charm last long enough that the ensnare wore off (with extended affliction even). Then you have to be very very careful, as now if you get 8 in camp and your pet's charm wear off, you are unhappy. It's best to keep a camp that is relatively mob-free if when snare wears off.

Edit: I've found that it's always better to duo with another healer if you are keeping a pet around. The following assumes that you can keep your pet always healed (and it's in your best interest to do so... it is your source of highest dps). The following assumes that you are able to keep your pet fighting 100% of the time.

Another note for mad xp. ALWAYS have an extra mob in camp. In nightmare, your buffed pet will take a little over 1 min to kill a mob. Use the time wisely to find another target, get it into camp and root it (but not so close that it beats up on your pet). Then hit pet attack, and your pet will automatically go after your new target as soon as the old one is dead. This makes a tremendous difference in efficiency. If you wait till the first mob is dead, even if you pull quickly and it only takes 20 seconds to get another pull into camp, that means it's taking 1:20 to kill a mob instead of 1:00, or in another words, you are 33% less efficient... ie instead of 12 hours to level (and you should be able to get through 62 with just a pet and a cleric in 12 hours) it will take you 16.

With practice you should be able to juggle multiple mobs in camp, all snared and rooted, all waiting to die. I think the average number of mobs I had in camp was about 2.5 at any given time.


Those are the two ways I know to charm. Charming isn't for everyone. If you are charming to get mad xp, you have no time to go afk, no time to get into involved discussions (though chatting I found was still fine), and you need to keep fairly sharp. But if you are ok with that, you will get tons of xp.

Oh another note... I don't like to have extra mobs in camp when I am charming toe-to-toe. I hate having a pet that is rooted, and I don't like kiting a soon-to-be pet around while waiting for my current pet to almost die. If you are ok with that, that is probably a viable strategy that will net you even more xp.

- Xylem, E'ci

My charming line up is as follows:

1- regrowth to refresh on myself, or Tunare's Renewal for pet healing, or Imp sup camo if I'm looking for a pet.
2- Chloroblast
3- Glamour of Tunare or Shield of Blades
4- Call of Karana
5- Savage Spirit
6- Ensnare
7- Engorging Roots
8- Egress

Always keep pet under the effects of Ensnare and Glamour of Tunare (break charm and refresh if it wears off), and buffed with Savage Spirit and DS. Natureskin or PotC is a waste of mana, so is Regrowth.

BTW Diseased malarians are gimp as long as you dont' get charm break.

My spell slots are:

1. nuke of choice
2. heal of choice
3. dot of choice
4. ensnare
5. savage spirit
6. root of choice
7. charm of choice
8. glamour of tunare

I also have innate camo for invising, pog gloves for ds, and exodus for succor though. I replace glamour with whatever other spell I may need to cast.

- Xylem, E'ci

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Only young bats and the occasional blood raven. [/quote]


'bout 70% of the ravens are charmable, from what I have seen in the last week.


There are other mobs there that are tagged animal, too. Do some looking around, it will surprise you.

Charming nightstalkers I can keep the entire camp clear. This tends to piss off the group that can only kill 5 of them before respawn when they claim them all as camped, and then I finish off what they can't kill, and then kill the respawns.

I usually don't bother though, the exp there sucks compared to swamp rat in PoD and genociding the foul puslings or malarians or something.

MR has more of an effect for duration of charm than charisma. Glamour of Tunare a blue con pet, snare, then charm. See how long it lasts. Now, dispell the pet completely and charm it again, cast resist magic on it. See how long it lasts.

Just a quick guide to charm kiting in PoD.

This was my bread and butter getting to level 63. You charm a rat, buff and park it in the large area infront of the castle. Its a nice large area with no wanderers. Go inside the courtyard and pull Crawlers and Underbulks. These are great xp and can also drop parchments. I also highly recomend if you can to work on getting inate camo. This spell has saved my butt many times.

With DS and you Debuff the mobs with Ro line your pet can usually take out 2 with only needing maybe one heal. (Tunare's Renewl) now the trick here is fully re healing your pet can take a TON of mana so get out of aggro range of pet and log out. When you log back in recharm the rat and it will be full health. This saves a TON of mana and only 30 seconds of your time.

Good luck and have FUN.

Now for when you hit level 63 and get your level 63 charm, move to PoV you need to get flagged for this zone. Find a snareable frog ( this could take time since 75% of them are not snareable) Once you do charm it(Need Command of Tunare) and you have yourself a pet that doubles for 400+ and has 20+k HP. you can have a lot of fun with this. Its very dangerouse but done right the EXP will blow your mind.

Cyas,

Rendaan
63 Druid Rathe Server