I was tempted to file this under bug reports, but as I'm not quite sure how this mechanic is *supposed* to work, I thought it might be better phrased as a question in case someone out there has a better grip on how this should go than I do. I noticed in Skyfire last night that my charmed pets were regenerating at a rate of about 5%/tick when not engaged. I don't think that's right, but I'm not sure precisely how it's wrong. A few things I'm certain of: PoP is remarkable for the high out-of-combat regen of almost all of its mobs. There are exceptions (most mobs in PoEB would regen slowly, for example), but almost everything in PoP had out-of-combat regen in the double digits, or close to it. On Al'Kabor, however, charmed mobs in PoP would regen very slowly out of combat - less than 1% a tick - even though the same NPCs would have been full health in a few ticks if uncharmed. It was not always the case, however, that charmed mobs didn't regen quickly. Prior to PoP, a few under-con giants in Kael - Klaggan Iceshard was the stand-out - had out-of-combat regen so high that once Luclin came out, an enchanter could dire charm one and plow through mid-fifties NPCs in the arena without support. Even if the mob got into trouble, spamming back off during combat would allow it to regenerate faster than most mobs could damage it even while fighting. This led to a nerf, but I can't remember if that nerf impacted these specific NPCs (perhaps by lowering their regen) or the regen of charmed (or dire charmed) NPCs more generally. I also can't remember if this nerf took place before or after AK's code date. A couple of things I think are true, but am not 100% certain of: Assuming the above nerf took place prior to October of 2002, there are still people in message board conversations from 2003 talking about charming the dire wolves in Kael and their 3%/tick out-of-combat regen. So if the regen nerf hit prior to AK's code date, it didn't apply to all charmed NPCs across the board. Prior to PoP, I believe, out-of-combat regen was lower for most NPCs. In the old world and Kunark especially, it was very common to die to a mob and return to find it still at low health a few minutes later. I don't think this low rate of regen is reflected on TAKP, but honestly, I see no particular advantage to implementing it. Tentatively, then, I'd suggest that charm should reduce NPC regen in some cases (mainly with PoP mobs, on the evidence) and not in others, but that virtually all charmable mobs prior to PoP should actually have very low to mediocre out-of-combat regen in any case. Which may be an unwieldy solution; possibly it's easier just to make charmed mobs regen slowly across the board than to fiddle with out-of-combat regen for everything in the database. But generally speaking, charm-killing should require an enchanter to either kill off the pet as it runs low on health every couple of fights, or else to rely on a healer to keep the pet healthy. Currently, the pet keeps itself healthy, which is a balance issue.
Yes, that is a significant balance issue. I can make them regen at their combat regen level while charmed. NPC regen is one of the issues I struggle with. I have very little hard data on AK's regen rates, and rates on Live have changed. So for the most part when I set regen rates, it's just a guess. Incidentally I did notice the unusually high regen on drakkel wolves on AK when I was gathering min/max hit/max hp data. Also I calculated about 12 hp/tick combat regen for golems in PoValor. Most mobs had very little combat regen I believe. (Perhaps the same as a player of the same level? who knows) I measured regen accurately on Live for the epic quest NPCs, and they had noticeably less regen than the comments indicated; in one case the comment had a parsed log showing his damage done and how long the fight was, indicating a precise regen value since the mob was a 32k hp mob, and it was 5 times the Live value I measured. On Live, I noticed that many Velious raid bosses regened precisely 300 times normal out of combat. I think Sony may have had some sort of algorithm that multiplied combat regen for out-of-combat regen. Sont and Kland will regen their full hitpoints in a few ticks out of combat; others will take much longer. That 300 multiplier was not true for all NPCs however. Our current database values mostly have combat regen higher than they probably should be, and out of combat regen typically at ~3% a tick. A combination of the impossibility of getting accurate data for AK and me having higher priorities is why. Anecdotes from long time AK players are helpful in these cases, particularly for raid bosses.
*nods* All of that makes sense to me. I think making NPCs regen as if in combat while charmed is a good solution. The only reasonable objection I can foresee is that it'd have an impact on dire charm: casters using DC pets could expect them to regen slowly, but probably not *that* slowly. Still, that's an issue that could be revisited down the road if necessary.
