Charmer skills don't scale with sexiness stat?

[Mr. Uninteresting]

What exactly is the point of having a tease based class if most of the skills just scale with spell power instead? Even Bolstering Dance scales with spell power. It seems to me that there is honestly no point in using the class since your just gonna be shoehorned into wearing gear that boosts spell power as if you were a black or white mage. Why would you not just use those classes instead? Why have gear to increase the sexiness stat if the only thing scaling from it is the tease mechanic and allure (which is really just a tease that hits everyone)? This just doesn't make sense to me. Also, why does the class start with a dagger? None of the charmer skills benefit from it in the slightest. Am I missing something here or are you just shooting yourself in the foot by doing a charmer playthrough? Is there ANYTHING the class does that isn't done better by another class or one of your companions? Seems to me like the heals are lackluster and none of the debuffs really do much of anything. If the enemy was going to kill you without the debuffs, then they still will after they are hit by them and most of the debuffs only have a chance to succeed anyway.

 

[Animefan666]

No class outdoes the Charmer. It's the most OP in the game and there are few enemies immune to or has high tease resistance. If you're loading one up with mage gear, you're not using it properly.

Song of Splendor nukes just about anything and anything that isn't on the ground after will likely go down with Allure. As far as Bulstering Dance goes, the point is to buff your team, not put them on the ground, too. That's why it scales with Spell Power, because it IS a spell. It just requires the caster to dance.

Because of the stats the class benefits the most from, throwing in some spell-based powers gives the class some versatility.

As far as the dagger thing goes, what'd you expect? It's pretty much a trope that someone who depends on their looks will keep a dagger on hand because it's easy to conceal and when the enemy is distracted by your assets, they won't see the dagger coming.

 

[Prince Charming]

All a class does is the perks it gives you, every power can be taken by any class. Therefore the charmer class is mainly its lvl1 perk: stylish, which gives bonus sexiness. Sexiness is the primary stat used when using tease attacks, therefore the point of the charmer class is to have better tease attacks. To answer directly your first question: the point of having a tease based class is to have a class which boosts the standard tease attack.

If memory serves right a tease based playstyle has three major tools: the standard tease attack which you can use every single turn, allure which is just an aoe tease attack, and song of splendor which is an aoe tease nuke that gives bonus sexiness. With only these three components, you can handle all enemies that are not immune to tease without using anything else from your kit. Therefore you are not shoe-horned into maxing spellpower, because you can go through most encounters in the game with only tease attacks and no spells.

Now comes the question of what the hell do you do when you're faced by un-teaseable golem head enemies, and that is where the spellpower dependent charmer powers come into play. See, for a pure tease attack, you only need presence and agility (as of right now, you don't even need agility, but this is changing in the current test builds so who knows), which gives you the freedom of maxing any other third stat. You could max willpower, and therefore make use of spellpower dependent charmer powers without hampering your tease attack playstyle in any way. But you could also max cunning, to max out your tease damage, and therefore settle on cunning dependent powers to handle non-teasable enemies (namely acid flask, but any weapon can work with agility and cunning even when dumping strength). Or you could use strength, to max out temptation, and have more consistent weapon damage against tease no-sellers. In no way you are shoe-horned into maxing spellpowers, the spellpower dependent charmer powers are there for a secondary failsafe playstyle to complement a full tease playstyle.

But then why give spellpower scaling on most charmer powers? It's so that white and black mages (and spellblade warriors and thieves) can cross into charmer flavor with their primary stats. Now why most charmer powers are spellpower dependent and so few of them are dedicated to teasing, it's simply because the teaser playstyle is bare-bones and i can only speculate that it is simply unpopular. But it is still viable, it's just that you have no diversity (it's always song of splendor into allure into spam tease).

On why do charmers start with a dagger, it's because no starter primary weapon can give sexiness anyway, so might as well give charmers something to use against non teasable enemies (like the lvl1 old forest wolves). Moreover, starting from the most recent public patch, charmers start with wooden pipes (noble harp for noble scion charmers), which are +10 sexiness off-hand catalysts.

Finally, is there anything that the charmer can do that other classes can't do better? Yes: using the tease button. Is there anything that the charmer can do that other companions can't do (bimbo azzyran, sun dancer cait, quintillus)? No, but why would having a teaser companion prevent you from being a teaser yourself? Also, if you really want to be the only teaser in your party, you can simply not take these companions.

By the way, in the current test builds, sexiness is about to become an even more important resource and stylish is about to get buffed, so the charmer becomes even better at what it is meant to be. However i don't think anything in a test build is final, so take this with a grain of salt.

 

[Mr. Uninteresting]

All a class does is the perks it gives you, every power can be taken by any class. Therefore the charmer class is mainly its lvl1 perk: stylish, which gives bonus sexiness. Sexiness is the primary stat used when using tease attacks, therefore the point of the charmer class is to have better tease attacks. To answer directly your first question: the point of having a tease based class is to have a class which boosts the standard tease attack.

If memory serves right a tease based playstyle has three major tools: the standard tease attack which you can use every single turn, allure which is just an aoe tease attack, and song of splendor which is an aoe tease nuke that gives bonus sexiness. With only these three components, you can handle all enemies that are not immune to tease without using anything else from your kit. Therefore you are not shoe-horned into maxing spellpower, because you can go through most encounters in the game with only tease attacks and no spells.

Now comes the question of what the hell do you do when you're faced by un-teaseable golem head enemies, and that is where the spellpower dependent charmer powers come into play. See, for a pure tease attack, you only need presence and agility (as of right now, you don't even need agility, but this is changing in the current test builds so who knows), which gives you the freedom of maxing any other third stat. You could max willpower, and therefore make use of spellpower dependent charmer powers without hampering your tease attack playstyle in any way. But you could also max cunning, to max out your tease damage, and therefore settle on cunning dependent powers to handle non-teasable enemies (namely acid flask, but any weapon can work with agility and cunning even when dumping strength). Or you could use strength, to max out temptation, and have more consistent weapon damage against tease no-sellers. In no way you are shoe-horned into maxing spellpowers, the spellpower dependent charmer powers are there for a secondary failsafe playstyle to complement a full tease playstyle.

But then why give spellpower scaling on most charmer powers? It's so that white and black mages (and spellblade warriors and thieves) can cross into charmer flavor with their primary stats. Now why most charmer powers are spellpower dependent and so few of them are dedicated to teasing, it's simply because the teaser playstyle is bare-bones and i can only speculate that it is simply unpopular. But it is still viable, it's just that you have no diversity (it's always song of splendor into allure into spam tease).

On why do charmers start with a dagger, it's because no starter primary weapon can give sexiness anyway, so might as well give charmers something to use against non teasable enemies (like the lvl1 old forest wolves). Moreover, starting from the most recent public patch, charmers start with wooden pipes (noble harp for noble scion charmers), which are +10 sexiness off-hand catalysts.

Finally, is there anything that the charmer can do that other classes can't do better? Yes: using the tease button. Is there anything that the charmer can do that other companions can't do (bimbo azzyran, sun dancer cait, quintillus)? No, but why would having a teaser companion prevent you from being a teaser yourself? Also, if you really want to be the only teaser in your party, you can simply not take these companions.

By the way, in the current test builds, sexiness is about to become an even more important resource and stylish is about to get buffed, so the charmer becomes even better at what it is meant to be. However i don't think anything in a test build is final, so take this with a grain of salt.

Hmm, I see. I guess I just don't see the point in dedicating a character to do something like tease which every character can do well enough. If you are fighting enemies weak to tease damage, then having everyone focus on using tease is more than adequate. As for the dagger thing, why not give something that boosts spell power since a lot of your abilities scale with it? I've been doing a dark difficulty playthrough and the charmer just doesn't seem all that useful in it. The fighter is a great tank, the thief does a ton of damage with crits, the white mage is an excellent healer, and the black mage is really good for crowd control. Frankly, the charmer feels like a thief, but worse since some enemies are completely immune to your main source of damage. If you are looking for burst damage, you are better off just being a thief with dual daggers, no? Especially now that tease damage is dealt to hp. The charmer's damage doesn't come close to a dual dagger thief. By the way, what on earth does War Song scale off of? It's not sexiness or spell power so I'm confused on that one. I think I'll try switching to a spell power charmer to boost healing from Bolstering Dance and damage to Song of Storms(Totally not a Zelda reference) and switch between Dischord and Song of Splendor for groups and use Song of Storms on myself for single target damage with the spiral staff and see how that goes. Oh, and how does Stylish work exactly? Is it only the chest armor that gives a bonus?

 

[Prince Charming]

Prepare for a wall of text that i might or might not have re-read and corrected.
TL;DR: the charmer class is useless when your goal is to optimize a party for crushing hard mode; the charmer class's point is to give players who want to tease their enemies to victory a way to fulfill their fantasy. Also i did a lot of geeking about support builds in this porn text-based game.

In my previous answer I answered to "Who is Stylish meant for?" (namely players that want their character to tease their enemies into submission) and how to fill in the gaps of a build that entirely revolves around the tease damage that Stylish amps up, but I see that your question here is rather "Why would I play tease for damage when I can play thief to fulfill the damage role better?"

I'll try to answer your secondary questions first:

• Stylish indeed only cares about your chest armor being light (likewise, Veteran's heavy version only procs if your chest armor is heavy or if you wield a shield, it doesn't care about other equipment).
• War Song only scales off of Presence (if memory serves right it deals 20 + Presence / 2 damage). It uses base accuracy (agility * 2 + non-weapon-equipment accuracy) against enemy mental resistance, and base penetration (your strength score) against enemy focus (it doesn't use temptation). It can crit, but overall its damage scaling is indeed rather poor, but War Song's usefulness is less its damage and more the 5 turn long AOE debuff that can ensure a lot of reliable Twist the Knife procs for a thief pc (imagine a thief that starts its turn with a mind rapey performance), and also Etheryn: Outrider and Cait: Hexblade.
• As for the dagger as a starter item, i, too, think the new wooden rod would be a better starter item for a charmer, but consider this: charmers already get a nice off-hand catalyst, so giving them a main hand catalyst too would give them much more value than the other classes (white mage acolyte and black mage arcanist only start with a wooden rod for example). Also the dagger has a nice roleplay flavor (an easily concealed self-defense tool for an outwardly happy-go-lucky charmer), even though in a such a setting, a wooden rod could also fulfill this roleplay flavor but i'm rambling. Also the dagger gives +5 evasion which no starter-area one-handed primary weapon catalyst does, and the only starter-area one-handed weapon that gives more evasion (the javelin at +10) would feel quite awkward for a character that is meant to be a sexy enchanter. So you could see the dagger as giving an "evasion vibe" to what is meant to be a backline class (backliners need evasion), rather than doubling down on spellpower.
• If you are looking for burst damage, dual wielding dagger is not really optimal. With the off-hand penalty, i think it only has 52 base damage i think, and it's all penetrating which sucks because enemy tanks have 25% resistance to penetrating damage. I'd suggest Galon's Griefmaker for its 50 armor penetration and its split damage profile, and get Belt with a Pouch to offset the -5 initiative penalty of griefmaker's heavy weight. Although mind that griefmaker is an outlier and will get nerfed-adjusted in the future, just like Bessy Mauler in the latest patch. The wooden rod / metal rod / fire rod are actually good damage weapons (and fulfill the "gun" fantasy, at least for me), but i'm already digressing.

But now, i'll talk about what role a charmer has in a "competitive" party, and what does Stylish have to do with it. Spoiler: it's going to get convoluted, because this class is firstly meant for the roleplay potential of playing a (sub-optimal) character that wants to tease everyone into submission.

So the optimal role that the charmer wants to fulfill is to be the party's support. And by support i mean damage amplifier + enemy debuffer and not healbot, otherwise white mage would be better. Prime example of support recharge powers are Blessing, Song of Storms (with the infamous blessed song of storms combo / exploit), Grease, Crackle Powder, Blinding Beauty. The most support-y of encounter powers is Resplendent Aria, but i'll go back to encounter powers in a sec. For at-wills, the only support at-will that is not an outright healing power (and would thus justify going for white mage) is Song of Courage, which amps up the whole party's Attack Power by your own Presence: at level 6 it's a party-wide +17 to +20 (depending on your starting choices) Attack Power boost! And while toggling Song of Courage does heal your party, the heal is so meager that it does not justify healbotting with it, but more on that later.

So at that point, while a +20 party wide attack power buff might sound cool, bear in mind that you're a charmer support so your basic attacks aren't relevant (otherwise you'd go for light warrior or thief to boost them), and one of your companions has to be a healbot because you are not, so their basic attacks aren't relevant either. So really Song of Courage is about giving a +20 attack power bonus to your tank companion. But now it's time to talk about encounter powers. See, if you want to play support, you have to max Presence, because it gives you Leadership, which in turn gives (at level 6) +40 attack power to your tank and +40 spellpower to your healbot. But Leadership and Presence are also what your summons base all their stats on, so if you're playing support then you want a summon, which will take up your encounter power slot. Most summons (at least Wolf Spirit and Phyria) use Attack Power for their actions, so now your Song of Courage benefits your tank and your summon! Also, i've tested it, and max Presence + Leadership equipment makes your summons actual powerhouses, averaging 70 damage per turn (post-mitigation) on their own.

So here is the typical "competitive" full support build: Song of Courage, 2 support recharge powers (blessed song of storms for fireworks), and a summon encounter power, and you're maxing Presence (for overall damage boost) and Willpower (for song of storms), and going for all the Leadership you can (bear in mind it's capped at 100, but currently you can't reach that). Now we've finally arrived at the question: why go for the charmer class for this if it only gives Sexiness?

Well, at this point, we have a build that is fully dedicated to boosting your party's damage, and that's a given. We might want to compare a thief pc's damage to the damage that a support pc gives to their party, but i think it's more of a choice of tactical approach: do you want direct enormous damage (thief), or do you want good damage with relevant utility (support). But now is the time to choose a class for our support build:

• Thief and light warrior don't cut it, because we already max Presence and Willpower, which means we can't max both Strength and Agility too, which are mandatory for a plain weapon damage build. Unless you count on getting drunk at Garth's every morning but that's a personal choice. Also you can't go for Agility + Willpower spellblade because your at-will is taken up by Song of Courage, and Song of Storming yourself wouldn't be optimal because, as you're dumping Strength, you should have less Armor Penetration than your tank.
• Black mage would be useless because you simply have no spells.
• White mage would have a minor utility of healing you a little bit each time you toggle Song of Courage.
• Charmer gives you more sexiness to boost your tease attacks, which you might as well use because you're already maxing Presence so you might as well use the Sexiness it gives you, and your simple attacks with no Strength + Agility won't do as much damage as tease.

So really, after having developed this whole support build, the choice comes down to:

• a meager heal when toggling song of courage, which you don't need because you have a healbot companion and you're not frontlining;
• better tease which is the best thing you can do while waiting for your recharges to cool down and toggling Song of Courage feels useless.

So here you have it: the point of Stylish and therefore the charmer class in a "competitive" party, is to have better things to do while playing support and waiting for your recharges to cool down.
But i prefer to see the point of Stylish as enabling players who really want to put enemies on their knees by wiggling their hips while their tank is getting gutted and maimed in the frontline.

Also, finally, bear in mind that if you play support, then your priority is Leadership over Sexiness, and the only chest armor that gives Leadership is Conqueror's Breastplate which is heavy armor. So if you play support optimally then you can't even benefit from Stylish. So right now, with the current equipment available, the charmer has indeed no point if you're going for a party that is optimized for crushing hard mode.

 

[Mr. Uninteresting]

Ah, I see. Yes, I know this is all very technical for a porn game, but I'm very much a min-maxer at heart. This matches up pretty well with my experiences as a charmer. As for the dual dagger weapon choice, performing two attacks instead of one means you have a much higher chance for a crit each turn and the daggers are the best one-handed crit weapons that boost evasion. If you don't want bonus evasion, then dual balanced blades are the way to go for massive crits. I would only use the griefmaker as a warrior, since their skills tend to work better with a two hander, and they are tanky enough to not worry about the -10 evasion stat on it. Really, the charmer wouldn't be so bad if it didn't somehow generate even more threat than the warrior. Like, how in the world does that work? Guess the enemies are really mad about you shaking your bits at them, huh? Anyways, thanks for indulging an old school min-maxer who just can't break the habit. Lol.

 

[Aelana]

TL;DR: the charmer class is useless when your goal is to optimize a party for crushing hard mode; the charmer class's point is to give players who want to tease their enemies to victory a way to fulfill their fantasy. Also i did a lot of geeking about support builds in this porn text-based game.

Huh? I read most of the post, but I don't get it. The difference between the classes is what class-bonuses you get, i. E. The "Stylish" bonus, versus "healing hands" from white mage.

So there is nothing keeping a charmer class from going into battle with a heavy armour and bessy mauler. I think you would agree to that, which is why I am confused with this statement:

So the optimal role that the charmer wants to fulfill is to be the party's support. And by support i mean damage amplifier + enemy debuffer and not healbot, otherwise white mage would be better

Why? "Healing Hands" is a must for early game using "heal" IMO, because of how expensive it is to heal the party in terms of actions. But as soon as group heal is available, and the heal is stronger than the damage per turn, then "Healing Hands" is optional. I believe it also works on the "group heal" ability, but the character is doing something else on the other turns, so...


It could be there is a difference between hard mode now. I tried a bit of hard mode months back, and I believe group heal was still viable there. How is it now?

Anyways, before the last patch, Song of Splendor was THE ability. AoE tease, plus party tease buff... Amazing ability. A charmer needed high agility. The target was to get the first action in the turn, open song of splendor, and if any enemies are standing after the first turn, burst them with Allure. Only tease immune enemies were standing after that combo.

So the charmer build was max libido, and prioritizing temptation. Together with "Stylish", you'd probably hit the sexiness cap and your tease ability will hit like a truck. This will make your standard attack suck, and you have issues with defense. That's why I ran with the Roseblossom shield.


So that was my experience before. Now with the patch, the charmer synergizes easier with other damage classes. I haven't played hard mode yet, but I expected it to behave similarly.

But back to the main argument:

TL;DR: the charmer class is useless when your goal is to optimize a party for crushing hard mode... So the optimal role that the charmer wants to fulfill is to be the party's support

Summons have been historically lackluster. So the argument that summons are viable, but won't outperform a pure thief is a known thing. IMO that's the issue with a summon-based character, not with a charmer per se. The same argument sticks to a black-mage. (I think there is an old thread arguing black mage sucks, because its summons suck. Never mind that you can also not use summons as a black mage.)

So IMO the main argument for/against the charmer is the "Stylish" perk. Is it useful? This depends on two things:

1. Are tease builds still viable? If not, there are of course better perks. IMO the latest patch should have made tease builds more viable, because they used to "lock in" your attacks on one bar, wasting all the damage of the health bar. Now since this is gone, I expect tease builds to be more useful. But mind you, I have not tested this on hard mode.
2. There is a cap to sexiness. Can you reach the cap easily without the stylish perk? If so, there may be more useful perks even for the character. But even then the question becomes more difficult, because the perk may free up stats/item slots.

Really, the charmer wouldn't be so bad if it didn't somehow generate even more threat than the warrior. Like, how in the world does that work? Guess the enemies are really mad about you shaking your bits at them, huh? Anyways, thanks for indulging an old school min-maxer who just can't break the habit. Lol.

Depending on the build, the charmer has massive AoE dmg. AoE is the main threat generator.

If I remember correctly, there were threads complaining about how OP the charmer was. It had by far the highest AoE dps in game. It nuked most encounters in a single turn, given the enemies were not immune to tease. On top of that, the charmer took the first action in most encounters. A crit could disable an enemy before it took its action, reducing the overall dmgoutput of the encounter.

 

[Aelana]

Oh, BTW: Has anybody tried Prime Target yet?

It used to be garbage, because it split its damage over both resolve and standard health bar. But now, it looks like THE new ability for the charmer:

My build has high agility, so the ability hits and staggers the enemy, plus I get a tease AoE for free.

Mind you, I am currently overlevelled, and have not tried hard mode, but in my experience so far:
It is a strong AoE. And on a single target, it hits harder than Hexblade Cait's Smite Evil. So much so that I do favor it to song of splendor