Charming Misconceptions
 

There has been a trend from a lot of ignorant but loud people that having a charmed pet is always the right thing to do, even mandatory, without considering the whole picture. I've had people leave groups before because I wouldn't take a pet. It's an annoying trend that results in more headache than it's worth in some cases, especially with subpar groups. Charming is powerful in SOME but not ALL situations.

* If you can manage to kill all the spawns in your camp, and you have downtime waiting for spawns, charming one of your spawns is pointless. You didn't need more DPS.

* Charming uses up one of your spawn points. Nothing will spawn in your pet's spot until he's killed. This can be bad if you're trying to maximize XP or loot.

* It's an extra strain on your healers. It will break eventually. If your healer is struggling then perhaps charming isn't right for the group.

* Intense camps need all of your mana and casting time spent on mezzing and rooting and slowing and buffing. Random breaks are preventing the camp from going smoothly. One particular camp that I can think of is Karnor's basement. If you have an intense puller you can potentially get constant waves of 4+ mob pulls with no breaks, in a small space. You should probably focus on keeping the adds locked down 100% of the time.

* no afk time. It's very rare to go 3, 5, or 8 hour grind sessions without needing an afk.

For your average 6 man group the benefits are almost always marginal. Charming is probably best for camps with lots of room to recharm with little chance of taking damage - or oddball composition groups with extra heals and low dps - or duos with a healer specifically formed with charming in mind - or situationally trying to break a tough camp - or soloing of course.

My personal opinion on the matter is the only real reason to not have a charmed pet, is because your not at a level your able to viably hold one or there's a mechanic in the zone or glitch that prevents it.

All your bullet points can be mitigated by maintaining your runes/using stuns and breaking your pet when needed. Not adding the DPS because things die to fast, is about the silliest thing I've heard. Then you turn to say there's too many things...so you can't have a pet. If the zone is so busy that you can't find things to pull, then you kill your pet. And get a new one when things are moving again. That frees up your puller to go find more things to kill outside of your camp. You make it sound like the benefits are marginal, when in reality this post is promoting marginal gameplay. Which is fine, if your with people you know, and just relaxing. But a well played enchanter, should be up there in DPS as well as performing their other roles.

Will a group wipe if you don't have a charmed pet? Probably not. But time to kill is raised, which in return lowers your groups xp potential. If you really are pushing an 8 hour grind, charmed pet DPS is going to increase your groups efficiency a lot. Also charmed pets do have other utility in CCing and pulling as well.

The only time I can see you using an entire mana pool to CC a pull, is for a really bad pull that has something in excess of 6 mobs. Which means you're trained, and most groups would zone. But a good enchanter can turn that into a successful pull, and the added pet dps, makes the amount of time you have to maintain a big pull like that less. Also, what group is rolling without someone who can root a few, or root your pet if it does break mid pull? It's really not that complicated.

So yes, you should be charming in groups, especially in later groups where NPC dps is substantially higher than summoned pets. If you're not, your just MARGINALLY playing the class. Which...to each their own I guess.

I see 3 valid reasons for not having a charmed pet:

1) Group that is deficient in heals. If the healer is struggling even without any charms and causing downtimes than the added strain on heals might be counterproductive. The counterpoint here of course is "just use runes". But sometimes pets break when the chanter has other even more important things to do like mezzing 4 adds...

2) Chanter is too low for reliable charms.

3) In groups with lots of melees while still not being high level the chanter might struggle to keep haste up for all and keep charm up at the same time due to mana pool. Then a decision has to be made: keep up best haste for all or have charmed pet? It's not obvious what the best way to go is here, depends on situation.

I know this is a little higher level than my chanter is but I swear when I read about charming I feel like I'm playing a different EQ than everyone else. My chanter isn't super twinked but I've got 201 buffed charisma at 35. Charm killing solo has been nothing short of outright infuriating. Blue tashed mobs outright resisting charm(not first tick break, outright resisting), multiple charm breaks before killing/gating. I just couldn't imagine holding a charmed pet in a party, let alone hasting the thing.

If you're having that much trouble you're charming to close to level. I like to shoot for 7-8 level gap between my pets at least. It's difficult to find that in the 20s and 30s. It becomes much easier in then 50s and 60.

This! My Druid (I don't even know what his charisma score is, but it's crap) was getting tons of resists on the mobs in OT, and I couldn't understand why. Then I moved on to the alligators in Cazic Thule and resists suddenly became extremely rare.

Level matters ... a lot.

-You can speed up kills, regardless of if you're clearing camp or not. Stuff dies faster = stuff respawns sooner = more exp/loot happens at a faster rate

-You can charm something that is not near your killing area. Alternatively, Drop the charm when the pet gets low HP and use that damage it took as a DPS boost to your group killing.

-As someone who has played healers for multiple years, I'm always for the enc charming when willing, More DPS = Less damage on the tank, more loot, more xp. If you have a super inexperienced or plain bad enchanter, or charming things out of your league, yes, I could see it as inefficient.

-Anyone who is asking their group ENC to charm -AND- slow -AND- CC -AND- Root ON TOP OF buffs, probably doesn't have a great concept of mana regeneration/usage for that class. If the enc is charming, you shouldn't be asking for much more than haste/C and maybe some sporadic mez/slows.

-If you need to AFK, there's nothing stopping you from suiciding, killing, or uncharm/memblurring the pet.

Edit:
I would go so far as to say, a charming enc is the highest DPS addition you can add. A light blue charmed pet will be on par with most rogues of the enc's level, and a charmed hasted rogue pet will outdps any PC hands down. With drawbacks, sure, but an incredible amount of DPS all the same

Sounds like you have gotten ate from charming a few times recently. I have certainly taken my fair share of 'learning curve' hits from learning to charm, but once you get a good feel for it the risk level goes way down. If you think the group is iffy or are worried about heals then don't haste the #$%^ out of him or give weapons. Unhasted/weaponless charm pet still does insane damage. Charming is borderline broken on P99 because of how much damage it adds. Aftermath did Vindy/Statue/AoW last night and the charmed giants did more damage then any of our DPS by a pretty significant margin.

Charmed pet DPS beats every other class in the game at pretty much every level range. If your group's fine with you not charming, do your thing I guess.. but you're not doing everything you could be. But hey its fine to be lazy sometimes. The only time I'm not charming on my Ench is 1) recouping after a wipe and 2) zone/camp specifics don't allow charming.

Druid charm is level based, no charisma checks :D So always pull barely blues and you'll have the best experience. I enjoy charming on my druid more than Ench really, just because SoW+Snare+Heals=trivial to charm. Too bad there's so few camps.

I generally stick to around 6 levels below me or more. At least according to the wiki. I really feel like my warrior solos better, specially if I have to drop the levels even farther. I'm practically killing greens at that point. I'm sure it gets better 50+, and it doesn't much matter cause i've kind of decided I just don't like the class. It's just the way people talk about charming I never expected it was this miserable.