So, enchanters with lots of experience, can you give some strategies on handling charm breaks, including keeping the thing charmed to begin with? I wonder what I'm missing as my charm breaks constantly while grouping. This drives everyone nuts, including myself, and I usually end up losing that extra DPS because it's not worth charming when the thing breaks every minute or so and attacks members of the group. Charm is such a long-casting spell, sometimes group members are dead before I can get it off, especially when the mob resists it the first time I try to re-charm. Sometimes I die before I can get a stun off. SO * I've always got my charm aura up * I double check that any bard in the group is not doing something with invis * I'm working on strategies to stun or banish my broken pet until I can re-charm it What do you guys do? Does everyone else have this issue with charm breaking constantly while grouping? Are there AAs that help with keeping a pet charmed for the duration of the spell rather than it breaking every minute or so?
There are some annoying things done by mercs or other player's buffs that can cause these issues. I think the most common was Clr Mercs curing tash, unless you block certain heals they use. One other was something with Bsts, but i forgot hopefully others still remember. If you have your pet tashed, and it's not getting "cured" or runs out, and you have the total domination AA (i also forgot if there are more) and it still breaks all the time...it might just be a bad pet, and time to look for another mob type. Everything with higher mag resi is bad of course.
What I do is have Beguiler's Directed Banishment up on a hotkey (S in my case), and an audio trigger for charm break. I also have my current pet set on my Extended Target window as one of the boxes. When I hear the audio trigger, I click the pet, click BDB and then proceed to tash and recharm. *This works really well with a player tank. If you're using a merc tank, avoid the BDB on your pet it will just make the merc run off and chase it. With a merc tank I just let the merc tank wail away at it until I get it recharmed.
There are already really good suggestions, but there's a few that I think could be added. Charming with a group is different from solo charming, it's literally a group effort. If the group isn't going to get involved with controlling the charmed pet it's not worth the effort. The way things are set up now charming definitely favors soloing. If you want the charmed pet to tank only three can be on the hate list, if you want dps, then it doesn't particularly matter. Watch the rangers for habitual casts of invis too. If you're in a group, ask for Malo along with your Tash and get someone to snare it if they can. It may sound obvious, but stay way back away from your charmed pet (and make sure you don't get one that summons or stuns). Use the Arcane Disjunction Aura (87) or Wake of Atrophy Aura (78) along with your Charm Aura. I keep Ward of Bewilderment up when I charm and use Color Shock if the pet is stunnable, just in case they get in close.
I have an entirely different experience. My charm lasts the full duration more often than not, despite me almost never (99%) using the charm-improving auras, nor do I bother with anything other than spell Tash. Snare seems to be a detriment these days since my pet poses no threat to me, whereas, in the old days, I could use the extra distance to recharm. Now it just means it joins the fight slower. What I do when charm breaks depends on the situation, especially whether there are lowbies in the group. Usually, I tash, see if it's stunned, if not, AE stun both it and whatever else we're fighting, and then recharm. Unless there are lowbies to worry about, this seems sufficient. One tip is that I try to use my tank merc if that's a possibility. A) the tank merc protects everyone from the ex-charmed pet, and B) because it's my merc, I can then set it passive before the charm lands so it doesn't get bugged and show up in the extended target window as aggro on the group when it's not.
Usually if a charmed pet keeps breaking charm, i just kill it and try another one. Or another type for that. I remember VXED, where you could charm all day with hynids, and ruin your day with the high MR pookas...
Are you giving your pet Mage-summoned jewelry? That has a lot of magic resistance on it. The haste belts from the Teek tasks have some too, but I don't have much issue with using them. It seems to make more difference if Tash falls off, but I redo Tash almost every break. I do get an apparently charm-resistant mob on occasion. I let it go and charm an identical mob, and it's usually fine.
Something we should have asked right up front: Do you have all of the charm beneficial AA that you could have? If not, make sure you get it. Most of the time when I'm charming I don't bother with much beyond tash either. Unless there's a very specific goal I don't bother with the business of putting armor and weapons on the charmed pet particularly if it involves a lot of farming. Despite my own advice to make sure the pet doesn't stun or summon, I do occasionally use them. when we did Vxed and Tipt I liked the cragbeasts which stunned. I forget whether they summoned, but with runes being summoned might not be as bad as it would seem. That was well before we had mercs for healing and if you didn't have someone snaring you before you charmed the pet you got its health down to about 6% where it would normally walk away slowly, then you charmed it and used it on mobs. Having the cragbeast stun its victims helped keep it alive longer even at the 6% since it has so many hitpoints. I was never particularly fond of the mephits even though they were very fast dps. For a long time I duo'd with SK's, rangers or necromancers. We'd charm/fear-kite. I've also used casters as pets, (depending on what they would normally cast) since they'll stop and try and cast when charm breaks rather than run right up. There was a class of holgresh that I used to charm for LDoN adventures in Everfrost that worked quite well in that instance. Of course there was that time I accidentally charmed the wrong evil eye in the Guk adventure.. It was very funny while it lasted, not quite as funny when it broke. The Evil Eye began charming and mezzing mobs all over...the charmed mobs were running amok breaking mez and charging all over. Different expansions, and even the zones have variations that can effect the charming or make it virtually impossible.
I don't know what level you are, but if your Charisma is not capped, you have the buffs to make it so. A PB aoe mezz, a stun rune on yourself, Beguiler's Banishment (depending on the location and what's behind your mobs) will repel both for your erstwhile pet and the mob it was attacking.
So, a follow up: * I was 99 when I made the post and am now lvl 100. That has already made a big difference; my charm sticks longer, and my runes are better. * Outside of that, the audio trigger has made the biggest difference: I can react much faster to that. * I'm also trying to keep a group rune going when I'm in a group with guildies in their upper 80s/low 90's -- those are the ones that get squished if we don't have a tank holding aggro well when charm breaks. Since we are low on tanks and end up in caster groups fairly often, this helps. * Ward is definitely most helpful when soloing or in a group with not many pet classes. In a pet group where I'm pulling, it can be frustrating to have the mob mezzed and the pets disengage every time it hits me. * AoE mez is working well when we've got a real tank or if I'm soloing. Could I be pickier about group make-up? I suppose, but it's fun to play with guildies and I'd rather enjoy my time with them than go hunt down a perfect group. Or exclude a person in favor of a merc tank. I'd rather find strategies to work with the people I like to group with. Thanks for the feedback!
If charm breaks and the mob for some reason doesn't come right at you, a quick key bound phantasmal unity will get you agro 99.99999999% of the time.
I use Color shock and the shock clickie on our Epic when it's likely swarm pets such as Army of Dead are going to be used since they won't re-engage. I haven't really found that to be a really major problem because anyone with a pet that's going to worry about it has a pet that casts and will probably get aggro and be tanking it before they get to me. I was hoping the Banishment rune would be more useful along these lines but so far haven't been particularly impressed yet. I forgot to mention that I also keep FD potions in the potion belt where I can click one if it becomes necessary to drop aggro. It has something like a 70% success rate, but you can actually wait for the mobs to walk away rather than count down the seconds til the ones still standing there looking at you go away. The nice thing about being an enchanter is that we don't have to be quite so picky about the make-up of a group unless it's a specific task that really depends on massive dps and tankage. In that case it's not usually a matter of making a choice about the group, but being chosen rather than a healer or dps class.
