Charming Misconceptions

[branamil]

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.