Druid Charming Question
 

So let's say I'm charming two mobs as a 33 druid.

My pet is losing the fight slightly. This is a good, because I can throw a DOT on the target enemy or put a damage shield on my pet. This will even the fight out and I can expect to break charm and kill them both with melee or a nuke as they both flee the fight at 5-10% HP. This is my ideal scenario.

Now let's talk about the opposite scenario. My pet is WINNING the fight. The target mob has a slight edge, which is likely going to result in the target mob hitting 20% and starting to flee. My pet will still have 40% HP. So, I have to break charm on my pet and root him. DOT the ex-pet, melee the original target to death. Come back and probably nuke the ex-pet then melee him down.

This second scenario takes way more time and mana and I would like to avoid it. Is there anything I can do to give the non-charmed mob the edge in a fight with my pet so that I can keep them even?

if you root the non-charmed it will not flee and fight to the death

Ahh, that makes sense to make the fight go a little longer. I'll try that and see if it helps. Thanks.

I'm also thinking of maybe starting to just generally buff my pet with damage shield and attack speed and plan from the start on getting 2-3 mobs below 20% before I break charm. Maybe that will be more consistent.

In my experience it really depends on the mobs. Sometimes you are charm fighting two even con mobs, and because of the RNG or some other reason your pet winds up with slightly higher HP towards the end of the fight. In that case it's easy enough to just nuke both at the end of the fight

Other times I'm in a situation like the one you describe, where I wind up with charmed pet that is at least a level or two higher than the mob I'm fighting and my pet has around 40-50% by the end of the fight. In that case I usually just recharm it and go look for another lower-level mob for it to die against.

However, there's not a lot you can actually do in the fight itself.

I think that will be difficult. Either you will have to break charm too early so that you can kill the lowest mob (at which point all of the rest of them, including your former pet, will attack you) or you will have to kill some without breaking charm (losing half the XP).

I see your point if I were doing more than 2 mobs at a time.

However, what I'm talking about is still doing 1v1. One pet, one target. Just buffing the pet to ensure that it gets the edge. So maybe instead of being even or slightly favored, the pet becomes seriously favored and makes the mob flee while still having 60% remaining.

Now, while the original mob flees, I pull a second mob. My 60% charm pet fights that. They both end up low HP, I charm break. Now I have 3 mobs fleeing that I can finish off.

I can still do 1v1 and with ensnare I can essentially just ignore the original victim until I'm ready to finish it off.

I'd be curious to hear how that goes. My suspicion is that you'd have issues with fleeing mob #1 healing up and returning (without snare) by the time you get mob #3 to flee, if not sooner. Then again the only time I've ever charm fought four mobs at once it was because something went wrong, not because I was "flee queueing" them the way you describe, so maybe it would work?

Of course the other thing you have to consider (especially given how much mana all that will require) is whether killing four mobs that way is actually faster than just "normal" charm fighting two pairs in a row. Will be interesting to see what you discover.

I'm currently hunting in Cazic Thule gators. Every mob is ensnared. I buffed my one gator with Brambles and Feral Spirit. He turned into a killing machine and started destroying gators one at a time. I never had aggro on more than one gator besides my charm pet at a time.

When they got below 10%, I back off my pet and he immediately stops attacking. I now ensnare a new target and engage and repeat the process. In the below screenshot, my pet finally got low himself, so I broke and killed him with Careless Lightning.

On the screenshot below, each of those gators is below 10% and fleeing from me, waiting to be melee'd down which I did right after taking this screenshot before writing this post.

This is far more efficient than what I was doing before for sure.

EDIT: Also wanted to add that the HP regen for these mobs is extremely low and not at all a factor. By the time I killed my charm pet, the original mob had healed maybe 3-4%. I would need to worry about refreshing ensnare long before I had to worry about them re-engaging me above 20%.

https://i.imgur.com/4NiJu7c.jpg

When you are chaining charm kills together the easier way imo is to just get used to not killing both mobs each fight. Let your pet and the non-charmed mob fight...kill one of them, doesn't matter which. Then either pull another mob and sick your low health pet on it or charm a fresh mob and send it against the low hp mob...and repeat. Occasionally you'll get the scenario of both being low hp at the same time and you can just wipe them both and rest or start over.

This will also let you do the "meat grinder" style charm killing. Where you sick your pet on five or six mobs...root them all and then proceed to break your charm and kill your pet when it gets low life. repeat now with one of the five mobs you rooted on top of each other.

If you insist on keeping it to only two mobs and wiping them both each pull you can do that but you'll end up with fractional hp left on one (you can try the root trick to keep a fleeing mob fighting) frequently.

As you get more confident you'll find that it is actually easier and much more efficient to kill 5 or 6 social mobs with root/charm then it is to 1 on 1 them.

If pet is left with 40% health just root rot it to get 100% xp.

If there are plenty of mobs that aren't "charm pairs" if you will, I'll just let the pet take the experience. sometimes you'll end up using too much mana nuking/rotting the pet down when it is easier to send it against a new enemy.

Since the new mob will be rooted, it'll likely make quick work of your pet, so you can just break the pet and use very little mana finishing it off, then charming the rooted mob as your new pet, or simply grabbing another new pet to send against the rooted mob.

If you are better off killing the original, slightly healthier than the original enemy pet, yeah go ahead and root rot it down and start fresh with another pair.

I'm a fan of sending the pet into 2-4 mobs, rooting them all, and just breaking charm when the pet is low (much easier with gobby ring, of course). Once the pet is dead, simply charm another in the rooted pack and repeat. Just make sure to keep root and ensnare up and it makes for quick and fun charming exp.