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.
|