Enchanter Class Guide (Classic - Prophecy of Ro)
This guide will cover the Enchanter Class from Classic EQ until the end of Prophecy of Ro. I consider PoR to be the end of the Classic era of EQ, from this point onward things will start to change a lot with each expansion. One thing that doesn't change though, is Enchanters are always the best Crowd Control (CC) class in the game.
Enchanters are a very powerful and desired class in EQ, not only do they have the best CC but they also come with some of the most useful group buffs like Mana Regen and Haste. The CC that Enchanters employ is called mesmerize or mez for short. These spells will put monsters to sleep and they will stay asleep for 1min or so unless they take damage. It's by far the most effective version of CC in this game.
During this era of EQ you will also be able to dominate with Charm spells. Charm lets you take control of a monster for a short period of time and use it to fight other monsters. This is one of those spells that gets worse and worse after Planes of Power until eventually no one ever uses it anymore. However, until that happens many Enchanters will swear by Charm and they'll use it to solo pretty much whatever they want to.
I personally do not like Charm because I don't like gambling or things that come down to luck. I'm also a frequent alt tab fanatic, I am currently fighting a mob in EQ right now as I write this guide. This sort of play style doesn't go well with Charm because all it takes is a few seconds for Charm to break and both mobs to beat you up for you to die.
As far as my experience with Enchanters go, this class is always a part of my box team when I play EQ. I have a lot of experience boxing Enchanters from Classic - OoW and from Rain of Fear - Ring of Scale.
Important Stats & Focus Effects
You'll get the most benefit for your character initially by increasing your stats. Normally around Luclin your stats will start reaching their cap of 255 with buffs and gear, at this point it's better to focus on other things since you won't gain any benefit to stats past the cap. For an Enchanter you'll want to focus primarily on Intelligence and Charisma.
Intelligence will increase how much Mana you have and Charisma will provide benefits to your Charm and Mez spells. It will also get you more platinum at a vendor ;). Aside from Int and Cha you'll also want to get some Stamina and Agility because you will be taking some hits as an Enchanter and you need to survive them.
That covers the important primary stats for you, but there are some secondary stats you'll want too. Once you max your Int you'll want to focus on pure Mana instead, you'll also want to get items with Mana Regen aka Flowing Thought. If you're an Enchanter that likes to solo or do smaller groups I strongly encourage you to get AC and HP too. You'll need the extra survivability if you plan to Charm.
Intelligence: Increases how much Mana you have; the amount of Mana you get per 1 Int scales as you level up.
Stamina: Gives you HP.
Agility: Increases AC.
Charisma: Charm & Mez spells will last longer, also increases how much you can vendor items for.
Once PoP is released you'll start to notice Heroic Stats on some pieces of gear. Hstats will provide you similar benefits as the regular stat but without you having to worry about the original stat caps. During this era of the game you'll want to focus primarily on Heroic Intelligence since that will give you more Mana and Mana Regen.
I don't think you can reach the soft cap in this era for Heroic Int... Just incase I am wrong, you'll want to focus secondarily on Heroic Stamina and Heroic Agility. Both of these stats will give you survivability which is very important as well. You may be wondering why I don't recommend Heroic Charisma, while it does increase the duration of Charm it has no other significant value. Once these stats are added to the game, Charm is starting to get phased out anyway.
Heroic Stamina (HP/Mitigation): Increases HP, HP Regen, and HP Regen Cap. It also gives you some Mod2s which help with damage and stun mitigation.
Heroic Intelligence (MP/Regen): This increases your MP, Mana Regen and Max MP Regen Cap for Int Casters. You'll want to focus on this until you reach the soft cap then switch to survivability HStats.
Heroic Agility (AC/Mitigation): HAgility increases your mitigation mod2s, your AC, Dodge, Block, Parry and many other important mitigation skills. It also increases your Endurance, Endurance Regen and the potential Endurance Regen cap that you can reach.
Want more information about Heroic Stats and what they do/how they're beneficial? Curious what Mod2s are? Take a look at my Heroic Stats Guide for more information about what each stat does and why we're getting the ones that we're focusing on.
Important Focus Effects
You can start using Focus Effects in Luclin, there are a few important ones for you and they're the best while leveling up. At level 60 you should keep in mind that you'll have to sacrifice using Tower Gear to use many of these Focus items. This is a pretty big trade off and may not be worth it for some foci. Ultimately, it's your choice. Once Omens of War is released it becomes much easier to get the Foci you want on the gear that's best.
***Mana Preservation: Reduces the amount of Mana consumed with each cast.
**Extended Range: Increases the range of your spells.
**Spell Haste: Reduces the cast time of your spells (makes your spells cast faster).
**Improved Damage: Increases the damage your DD spells do. This is very important if you plan to deal direct damage (with nukes).
**Extended Enhancement: Increases the duration of your buffs.
**Increased Detrimental Spell Duration: As the name suggests, this increases the duration of your detrimental spells. For a complete list of items that do this check out the Allakhazam Focus Page. I think most players will probably use the Jagged Gravestone of Affliction or a similar Aug from OoW to acheive this.
*Improved Dodge: Chance to Dodge is increased by a moderate amount. Pretty much gives you a bit more survivability.
*Improved Parry/Block: Chance to Parry and Block is increased by a moderate amount. More survivability.
*Reagent Conservation: Decreases the chance of a reagent being consumed. It saves money since some of our useful spells do have reagents.
Important Spells, Skills & AAs
Enchanters use many different types of magic but I recommend you specialize in Alteration which will reduce the mana cost of buff spells or Conjuration which will benefit your Mez spells. Your most important spells on an Enchanter will fall into these two categories, they're the two primary reasons that people want you in their group.
Aside from your buffs and Mez spells, you come with a load of other useful spells, I recommend you check out Allakhazam's Complete Spell List for an idea of what chanters get. They get tons of illusion spells, Enchant Metals, Memory Blur, Charm, Mez, Invis, Enchanter Pet, Haste, Slow, Levitate, Resists and much more.
You have a ton of utility in your tool kit as an Enchanter and a good player will know how to use this to the fullest potential. Something I recommend you do early on is make two or three spell sets and some macros to buff yourself and your group. Check out my Macros Guide for more information about this. I have links to more guides about this at the bottom of the page too.
Normally I have one spell set for Buffs and another one for grouping. The last spell set will be for solo or charm play. My Buffs Spell Set will include Clarity, Haste, CHA, Runes, Self Shielding and all other pertinent buffs. The Group Spell Set typically includes a mixture of short duration buffs that you recast often(like Haste), Slow, Nukes and Mez. Your Solo/Charm Spell Set will include the your Mez, Charm and all the spells you need to solo effectively.
Below are the notable spell lines for your class.
Shielding: All Int casters get a self shielding line that stacks with most other buffs. Use yours! Shield of the Arcane is the PoP version, Mystic Shield is the OoW Version and there are many prior to this.
Clarity (Mana Regen): This is probably the most important spell line for your entire class, you get Breeze then Clarity then Clarity II then KEI. Casters in your group will beg you for this buff.
Runes: One of the most under appreciated spell lines in the game for an Enchanter. Many people avoid using this because many of the runes cost money to use. Not all of them cost money, however - so be sure to read carefully! Also, even the ones that cost money are worth using. They're quite literally the difference between life and death sometimes.
Tash: Cast this on every mob, it's one of your main debuffs and it will make the enemy more susceptible to magical attacks.
Slow: You'll be casting this next on every mob, it will decrease their attack speed and their overall damage. Most groups will expect this from you and it will be a very important buff to land on difficult mobs.
Haste: Melee in your group will beg you for this; it increases their damage by a noticeable amount.
Mem Blur, Charm & Mez: You have three spells which all are very similar and compliment each other. Mem Blur, Charm and Mez. You already know what Charm does if you've been reading this guide - it lets you take control of an enemy for a random amount of time. There's also Mem Blur, this will make an enemy forget about you completely. Mez is another easy one, it will put an enemy to sleep for about a minute. Any damage will wake it up, but otherwise it won't fight you. This is your best CC spell.
Illusionist's Aura: Starting in Prophecy of Ro most classes will get an Aura that stacks with everything else. For Enchanters, their first Aura is called Illusionist's Aura. Use this for the time being, but it's replaced with something better in later expansions.
AAs
Like all of the other classes, I am only going to cover the clicky AAs that are available. Almost all of the passive AAs are good and worth getting, the order of importance is mostly up to your playstyle. Starting in Luclin you will get Dire Charm, Gather Mana and MGB. Dire Charm will let you permanently charm a mob that is a certain level or lower. It's useful once it's added for a few expansions then it fades in value.
On the other hand you have Gather Mana which is a great AA and is something you'll be using forever. MGB is an AA that basically every class gets - it allows you to turn one of your group buffs into an AoE buff that works on the entire raid. Technically, Spell Casting Subtlety is a clicky AA too but you use that once to turn it on each time you buy a new rank and that's it.
In Planes of Power you will get Eldritch Rune which gives you an AA rune spell, very useful. Once this is added I put it into my buff macro so that I cast it each time I buff. You'll also get Project Illusion which will allow you to cast your self-only illusion buffs on party members. Companion's Suspension is also added in this expansion and it's useless for us during this era.
Added in GoD is the Doppleganger which can do some DPS and also save you if an enemy is attacking you. You will get Noctambulate in OoW which is a clicky mez; I guess you could consider this an "oh shit" mez. Color Shock is a damage shield that stuns targets which attack you... A Stun Shield, if you will. You also have Mind Over Matter which will eat away your Mana when you're hit instead of health. I personally never used this.
The last expansion which gives you a clicky is DoDh, you get Silent Casting. For right now this spell is just meh but it becomes an important part of our burn rotations later in the game during future expansions.
How To Play: Enchanter Basics
Playing an Enchanter is no easy feat, there is a lot going on with this class. I don't have a ton of experience playing solo or charming so I will encourage you to read this Enchanter Guide as well as this one. They will give you a lot of details about how to do these tasks. I find that both of these guides explain well how an Enchanter works until Velious/Luclin too.
However, the guides I link become a lot less useful once we start to move into PoP and they're basically completely useless by the time you hit Omens of War. Enchanters are one of the classes that change most from Classic to Omens of War primarily because of the changes/nerfs to Charm and the devs desire to make a balanced game. We'll talk more about this later.
When you join a group on an Enchanter the first thing(s) you'll be asked for are Mana Regen and Haste. It depends on who is in the group but you'll very likely have to give both to the group regardless. Depending on where you're at, you may need to be ready to mez too. Some zones/dungeons will require mez and others will be more laid back - you should keep mez on your bars at all times though just incase.
Your role in a group boils down to support, you'll want to debuff all monsters that your group pulls, mez any adds and keep everyone buffed. Aside from Slow and Tash you may also want to consider using Cripple on monsters. This will lower their damage output further, Cripple will stack with all other debuffs too. Just be warned, it's a high threat spell. As time goes on you will get upgrades to this line too, if you're above 60 it may have a different name.
Enchanters also have a few lines of DoT and DD spells which are sometimes worth using. As always, you should read all spells because some DoTs are just that, a DoT (like Strangle) and other DoTs provide you with extra benefits like lowering stats (Asphyxiate). The same is true for your DD spells, you will get spells like Insanity which deal direct damage and do nothing else. You'll also get spells like Dementia which are a DD paired with a stun.
I personally would discourage you from using Dementia and spells like it because all it will do is generate additional agro for you for little benefit. From all the guides I have read, Enchanters almost never nuke in the early eras but that starts to change a lot as time goes on. Eventually you will get Twincast and other AAs which will dramatically increase your DPS.
The best Enchanter I ever knew raided with me during Rain of Fear until the end of CoTF, we spent about two years playing together. He was also my best friend IRL back then so we talked a lot about how to play and what he did to be so amazing. He would keep the top 3 damage nukes memorized and after he debuffed the enemies and did any mezzing he would spam his nukes.
Despite being an Enchanter he always parsed very well. When boxing we used the same rotation on all of our Enchanters, if you'd like to check out some of my old parses from boxing here is one and here is another. In these examples, Mezmezmez is my Enchanter. As you can see he is doing almost as much damage as Theycallmestacy (one of my Mages).
Some people will point out that in my parses I am level 110 and they are correct. However, I can almost guarantee that by level 70 you'll want to start transitioning into that sort of Enchanter you see in the parses and getting away from the "old school" Enchanter that most people are familiar with from Classic - PoP.
More Tips & Tricks
- When writing this guide I used some research materials like this TLP Enchanter Guide and _____________
Enchanter BiS Lists
I have BiS gear lists for this class which include both Tower and Pre-Tower BiS items. For those of you who care less about a BiS list and just want a list of good gear options, I have included that at the bottom of each page too.
Classic Enchanter BiS Gear List
Kunark Enchanter BiS Gear List
Velious Enchanter BiS Gear List
Luclin Enchanter BiS Gear List
PoP Enchanter BiS Gear List