What do you think about Charm spells/abilities? Yay or nay?

[Voltron]

So I have been respecing my War Caller a little bit to test different stuff.

 

And so I was running with invocation "The lover cried out" which Charms enemies in cone for 8 sec (16 sec with 20 INT). As opposed to mass Paralyze which is only 10 sec.

So... What I have noticed:

The Good:

 

1. It's actually quite strong as you can charm melee guys in front of you which will turn and attack their range comrades behind them. This also gives you nice opportunity to position yourself well (for example for Charge) once Charm worns off.

2. It's very strong on high-level enemies because they hit hard so they hit themselfs quite hard.

 

3. It lasts long enough that with Brisk Recitation you can almost have another one ready before first one wears off.

 

The Bad:

 

1. Little counter productive for Cleave as if you kill enemy it won't of course proc Cleave on charmed enemies. So if some group fights you may actually make fight longer, not easier.

 

2. Useless on low recovery enemies. They will attack like one/two times and (and miss...) and be done.

 

 

What are you thoughts?

[Phyriel]

I used it 24/7 at its level range. I'm playing duo death godlikes priest of bereth + troubadour chanter. Its a slow duo to start with so this charm made things both safer and faster once skeletons became a bit too slow for midgame encounters.

 

I'm at level 14 now with this duo so its a faceroll. At 13 you get this invocation that regenerate resources so with barring death door from priest and casting 2-3 times a priest spell that prolongs buffs by 10s base (with max int and +3 powerlevel from death godlike near death state it jumps quite a bit up so don't need to spam that much). I then use chanter summon animated weapons and priest spams spells like those blue flames from the sky. I'm immortal so I can just stay in it and faceroll everything. Totally broken btw. 

 

I dont know if there are any enemies that dispel buffs with more efficiency, so far only magranites at steel preacher tried to remove my buffs but they got rekt in 2 seconds so by animated weapons so...

 

Its nice rpg build btw - playing immortal because Bereth herself makes you unable to join the wheel as long as you're her Herald and got a job to do. 

 

P.S about charm, I liked to use it more on their ranged if possible. They packed enough punch to make it worth (also saving me from burst which was the only thing that could kill me, high dps I could deal with but burst cought me offguard few times from a salvo from 4+ gunners), they also have low deflection so sometimes enemies aggroed to them? Might've seen wrong, dunno if uncharmed enemies aggro to their charmed "allies" as a rule of thumb.

Edited May 22, 2018 by Phyriel

[Crucis]

So I have been respecing my War Caller a little bit to test different stuff.

 

And so I was running with invocation "The lover cried out" which Charms enemies in cone for 8 sec (16 sec with 20 INT). As opposed to mass Paralyze which is only 10 sec.

So... What I have noticed:

The Good:

 

1. It's actually quite strong as you can charm melee guys in front of you which will turn and attack their range comrades behind them. This also gives you nice opportunity to position yourself well (for example for Charge) once Charm worns off.

 

2. It's very strong on high-level enemies because they hit hard so they hit themselfs quite hard.

 

3. It lasts long enough that with Brisk Recitation you can almost have another one ready before first one wears off.

 

The Bad:

 

1. Little counter productive for Cleave as if you kill enemy it won't of course proc Cleave on charmed enemies. So if some group fights you may actually make fight longer, not easier.

 

2. Useless on low recovery enemies. They will attack like one/two times and (and miss...) and be done.

 

 

What are you thoughts?

 

I don't think that charm spells are useless if the charmed enemy isn't doing a lot of damage.  For starters, just the fact that he's no longer hitting your guys is a good thing.  Secondly, because they're on your side, the remaining enemies can attack the charmed enemy, which means that there's a second enemy not attacking your party, plus he's hurting one of his buddies and hurting him for you.  

 

The most important thing with charm and confusion spells is reducing the number of enemies actively attacking you, and possibly getting some of them to flip sides.  The flippers do damage to the reds, and the reds do damage to them.  And it's all good in the long run.

 

The one rule that I have when choosing who to try to charm is to pick the healthiest ones.  There's no point in charming a nearly dead foe, because he'll just die easily to his enemies.  But if you choose a nice and healthy foe, you get a guy who will hopefully eat a lot of damage for your team, and perhaps do some of his own in the process.

[Witness41920]

Phyriel beat me to it slightly but yes, you want to target charms on enemy ranged characters. Not spellcasters, but ranged physical DPS. This is because charm usually targets the Will defense which is usually quite low on ranged physical DPS but high on spellcasters and ranged physical DPS tend to do a lot of damage and a lot of debuffing.

 

You can also usually use charms on an enemy melee that has engaged one of your squishy characters, this lets them disengage for free.

[Incendax]

Yeah. Charming a Ranged DPS is amazing.
Charming the guy rushing your squishies is the second nicest thing.
There is even some benefit to charming a melee at your chokepoint just to waste time and keep tank damage minimal.

[Myrtillo]

My cipher on PoTD uses and abuses ringleader (and before that puppetmaster).

I find it extremely potent to the point that it probably needs a duration nerf.

 

It is quite common that I end up having all the ennemies dominated/charmed, at which point I kill them 1 by 1 by forcing friendly auto-attack on them.

[Edolamberto]

My cipher on PoTD uses and abuses ringleader (and before that puppetmaster).

I find it extremely potent to the point that it probably needs a duration nerf.

 

It is quite common that I end up having all the ennemies dominated/charmed, at which point I kill them 1 by 1 by forcing friendly auto-attack on them.

agree.. That spell from cipher saved me so many times and duration is quite good