How bad is the charm nerf on TLP?I saw the stuns are now all on the same timer. Are either of those all that bad? I’m going to power level with a 51 cleric.
Stuns still land on unlimited mobs and have the same duration, cast time etc. Has little if any impact on regular enchanter play, what it does impact is AoE groups, mainly the ability to put pick up AoE groups together. The "professional" PLers had to add some extra enchanters to their crews and then it was business as usual to them.
I started an enchanter recently. I had completely forgotten about the charm nerf until you mentioned it. I doubt most people could tell the difference without parsing. It was more of a bone to throw at the naysayers. I vehemently disagreed with the stun timer change because I feel it is a core part of the enchanter class. However, in reality it has a minor impact on gameplay unless you are AEing. In the old days, on a charm break I would stun/tash/stun/charm. Now I tash/stun/charm instead. I take a few hits until tash lands but it isn't too bad. I could stun/mez/tash/charm but I don't find it necessary most of the time.
What spells do you run when charming? When are you using the aoe stun, when pet breaks and you have pet and target agro? For charm stun control, lvl 1 clr spell stun to 55 I believe will be your most effective charm break stun. The only good thing the chanter aoe stun spell is good for now is to counter heals and to counter pet break in your duo scenario. I have not had the an aoe stun of any kind loaded for the whole of PoP and charm dps is what drives my 6 box dps. I think even in your case, you should be stunning the pet via cleric and channeling through the slowed targets attacks on you to reapply charm and get right back at it. I almost think loading an aoe stun might be a waste of utility or dps in your duo. Id prob have tash,slow,zerker,mezz,tot/sieve(clr npcs only),choke/nuke,charm,buff/dispel/paci loaded in your duo and lvl 1 stun on the clr. If you find only having the 1 stun is troublesome vs healers, use mezz to interrupt. This way you can add zerker (my stun is hot key 3, tash is 1 etc) as the free rune to protect you while charming. Consider using a lower level mezz to conserve mana as your duo is all about control, paci pulls. You should not have to mezz adds all that often, I think Entrance might be the mezz I would consider, save mana on those interupts. For me charm agro management has become more an issue again in PoP as the charm pets strength increases. It requires quite a bit of pet management, when to send, when to call back. I do not haste my charm pets vs motm, since I 6 box I usually plan for multiple breaks of charm vs motm targets. I am not 100% sure but it seems I can reliably send a pet right after a break and it seems like I incur less hate then I would expect. Most Luclin motm mobs I was doing, which wasnt many, 80%+ uptime with charm pets, especially unhasted. In PoP even un hasted pets will pull agro for the chanter. It can still be effective though, you just need to work harder at agro management, using your spells such as horror and tricksters to agro buff your tank. Charm is fine and probably in one of its best states. Pets tanking raid mobs was imbalanced, the added agro management required to utilize charm dps vs raid mobs has added an appropriate amount challenge and risk as well as job back to the appropriate class. Charm pets can still put a group(s) over the top vs motm raid targets and of course own any group content, just not quite as great as before.
for <=60, I load Color Slant and Whirl till you Hurl. With just those two, you can still keep any single mob essentially stun locked barring resists, and either give you enough time for Allure or Boltran's recharms. Even with the charm nerf, chanter DPS is still more than fine for the first several expansions, but gets progressively worse with each passing era. And since every group wants a chanter for CC / buffs anyway, there has been no lack of desire for them on Mischief/Thornblade.
A few things. The part about whirl and such is great advice, especially for less well geared enchanters. Charm DPS tops the charts for most of the functional life of a TLP because a large chunk of population moves after the next TLP releases. The only other thing I would like to add is, in all fairness, enchanters aren't a DPS class. There are classes like wizards who have only one functional group role and that is DPS and they are vastly out done by an enchanter's pet. I'm not saying nerf charm any more than it already has, though I freely admit I was for toning it down during the first few rounds. It just always struck me as odd that enchanters would complain about their DPS. To me that would be like wizards complaining about their lack of useful group buffs and crowd control.
