Used to play regularly with a Cleric for stuns and charmed pet heals, is the enchanter pulling via agro radius reducers, memory blurs and mezzes still a viable option? And can hasted charmed pets still work as a viable main tank for a party with a solid ranged targeted stun in the party?
I had a pretty long post when I looked at it. In short, charm isn't that great at higher levels, but you can nuke well at 105 especially. Charm really had it's heyday, but it is also nerfed in that if you have 4 or more things on aggro, the charmed pet won't tank. This means you could have yourself (1), your charmed pet (2), and a friend or merc (3). If anything else.. another merc, a swarm pet, another person, their pet.. gets on aggro, then the npc will ignore the charmed pet completely and go for the next highest thing on aggro. As far as pulling goes, enchanters are still pretty good pullers. Pacify works. Memory blur works, and mezzes still work as well. Usually named npc's will be unmezzable and unrootable in the newer expansions. There aren't many areas where you can't pull well with an enchanter. In fact the only ones that come to mind are Frostcrypt from back in the day, most of Velious from waaay back in the day, and Argin Hiz. If you never really experienced it, beguiler's directed banishment is amazing as a tool to pull with. It punts the mob fairly far away, roots it, and memory blurs it. I think you get that aa mid 70's. If you are in the lower levels, I think charm is still great to play around with. In fact I'd say it is amazing most of the way through to level 90, and drops off at 95, becoming unreasonable to use in most areas at 100 (Grelleth was still ok though). The nerfs that have taken place to charm mostly deal with zone changes where the npc's in the newer zones won't accept weapons, so you cannot make them dual wield for more damage. Through most of the game they are not the best tanks by any means, but with stunning they are pretty good. There are also mercenaries now, and I would say that the caster dps ones can be interesting in correlation to stuns.
Charming can still be useful depending on the situation, but it isn't particularly valuable as a main tank for a group because of the nerf Reval described. That being said, Enchanters themselves have been given significant amounts of runes, making rune tanking a very viable strategy for a group. As far as pulling, I personally don't use pacify much, but that's down to personal preference. Between that, Mez, Punts, Roots, Stuns, Memblurs, Swarm pets, etc, there are very few things that Enchanters can't pull. Depending on mob immunities, Enchanters are especially good at keeping multiple mobs in a camp locked down, which IMO is one of the "speed"iest forms of pulling because the mobs are already in camp waiting for you.
Charming works great still as long as you don't go beyond three things on the tanked mobs hate list. stuns are wonderful as enchanters can stun lock a single MoB (given that it is stun-able with the stuns used) enchanter pulling is viable still, but since we have a silly amount of utility, the lull lines (agro range reducer) are a bit outdated. I mean why bother trying to single pull when you can toss a mez at the group, break a mez and single with a delayed pull on the others? Or even just mez them in camp.
Charming ramped up & up, it got to really stupid levels of powerful in Underfoot before a forward-looking brake was put on its power, and Enc instead got powerful personal & attrib dps with the Mindboom nukes & proc auras. Charm still really good, just not replace-multiple-groups' laser-eye-beams clear-the-zone powerful.
I would agree that it was probably too powerful at various points in the game, but I thought it was nice for the class to have something, and in my head I justified it based on the learning curve/risk of death for the whole group, and by the fact that on raids, unless there was a ton of crowd control, I was basically 1/4 of a wizard back then. I would say the charm pet scales badly at the top end, but is decent at 105 if you're at the lower end of the spectrum. If you're grouping with say a max aa'ed wizard, they're going to make that pet seem almost silly to even have around. You'll feel like it's your animation when comparing the damage it deals to any well set dps class, but with that said, no damage is bad damage, and it adds up over time. It used to be that the enchanter pet was legitimately as powerful as/more powerful than a dps class if it was properly equipped and buffed, but that was back in underfoot and to a lesser degree house of thule. I enjoyed those times, but with the lower risk of charm nowadays and the increases in nukes and runes, I can say it would be unreasonable for that sort of charm to exist right now. All the way up to 100 you will probably do great with charm. There is a rough patch between say 68 and 74 or so.. whatever level you can really charm well in Ashengate that I experienced in the game. There is also I would say one between 100 and 105, but they aren't game ruining deals if you have an ok group or maybe find zones I didn't find (at 100 if you're relying on charm, grelleth is the place to be unless there's a crazy exp mod elsewhere). I guess I'll leave it at that it may not be the path you are expecting in the end, but it's a decent path to choose.
If you're doing group content by yourself, reverse charm is by far the best thing you can do. Basically let's you kill at a rate twice as fast or more than you normally would. Just charm a mob and have it tank 1-3 other mobs while you're nuking them down then break charm and 2 nukes later it's dead and you've basically got a free kill.
Neriak 4th charming works quite well in some HAs. Also, not good for experience, but some buffed up pigs from PoWar do a ton of damage.
