The over-use of charming

This isn't a thread about how powerful charming is or isn't, it's a thread about trends, and enchanters charming in groups where is 100% unnecessary.

Having a charmed pet, as a chanter, is completely variable depending on group makeup, it's not something you should do automatically. Let's take lower guk for example. If your group is even remotely competent, you're probably sitting about 5-10 minutes out of every respawn cycle, waiting for mobs to repop (unless your puller is poaching mobs from other camps). This is a perfect example of when you should not charm. Not only are you keeping a mob out of the experience gain rotation, but you are causing a constant level of on edge in camp, especially for the healer, always having to worry about a charm break. You'll use more mana trying to keep the chanter healed, than you would have just healing the main tank and killing mobs as usual.

There are times when a charmed pet is awesome to have. When you get a bad pull, it's amazing, when you are fighting a named, it's fantastic, but when you are doing normal, dungeon /level grinding, it's just a drain on resources, and a constant pain in the .

If you don't *need* the DPS, don't charm, it's as simple as that. It's not something that groups should ask for, and it's not something chanters should be doing. If it's fun for you, and your group is down with it, by all means, charm away. The over use of charm, and the insistence of groups that you have a charm, has become nothing more than a sheeple movement at this point. Everyone has heard by now how OP charms are, so you must have one, even if it makes no difference whatsoever, other than being a complete pain in the for everyone involved.

This thread was prompted for a few reasons, the most recent of which, was a group insisting that I have a charmed pet. The group had a mage, a necro, and wiz....mobs were dying within 10 seconds of pull and we were waiting 10 minutes between respawns. I tried to impart any kind of reasoning, and/or logic, but they just wouldn't have it. I got accused of being lazy, being a bad chanter, etc etc.....sometimes...I swear, the stupid...it hurts.

Charming is great, and it's powerful, but like everything else in EQ it's situational. Please enable any kind of common sense when deciding whether to charm or not.

Once dispels become more prevalent due to DPS Race being King and more people realize that, you'll see a drop in groups requiring this.

I agree that charms are situational, though the situation calls for it more often than not. Another questions you could ask is, if your group was (I assume) pulling singles right as they respawned, killing them in 10 seconds and sitting around for 10 minutes waiting on respawns, did they really need an enchanter at all?

So, what you are really saying is, that enchanters are situational, and not every group needs one.

Mobs respawn timer cannot start until the mob is dead; so even if you're clearing all the spawns you can pull it's still more exp per hour if you kill the mobs very fast... just charm a pet from somewhere other than your camp.

Your enchanter is doing it wrong. You charm a mob from another camp and bring it with you to use in your area.

There is never a situation where you don't need more dps. Sometimes that DPS comes with tradeoffs, and maybe it isn't worth it at times, but no group should ever say, "Nah, we have enough dps already, we are killing too quickly as it is." If it's a high risk situation and the enchanter is likely to die at some point and there is no cleric to rez, then maybe it'd be better to skip the charm pet. But if it's just because "We have enough dps without it," sorry, no.

If you are waiting 10 minutes between respawns, and mobs are dying in 10 seconds, great. That's 10 minutes every spawn cycle that no one can try to pick mobs off from your camp, no one can try to dps race you, etc. That's 10 minutes you can spend scouting around and checking if the next group over has just left, and now there are more mobs to claim before someone else gets them. I'd be pissed too if an enchanter would rather drop the pet and not bring everything he has to the table. It'd be no different than the rogue deciding, "I'm just going to autoattack and not bother hitting backstab, because mobs are dying plenty fast and it's a lot of effort to hit 2."

Unless your chanter uses charm as a short term crowd control tool. On a bad pull, that's at least two mobs kept busy (the charmed one and at least one the charm pet will tank), so two mobs less to care about.

When you're a hammer everything looks like a nail!

1) you always charm a mob from another camp. That is charming 101

2) There is 0 danger to charming now, it's so trivial.

So ya, they should always be charming in classic

That's why you take your charmed pet from someone elses camp. I find the PHers for AM/Lord/Frenzy/etc make the best pets!

But really LGuk I think is a bad example, that zone is so easy and boring, that really the only reason you have a chanter is for clarity, which you don't really need, because you have 10 minutes of down time every rotation regardless of camp. I find the extra DPS in the Hole pretty significant between when I have a charmed pet and don't. And then while leveling up, the charmed pet was usually far better DPS than most of the players in group especially those brave enough to play melee classes.

After hitting 45 I started getting into Hole groups on my shaman. Some of the enchanters there are managing their charms very badly, and frankly don't have the gear to tank their hasted, backstabbing charm pet for the 3 secs they need to stun/mez/root it.

I disagree. Charming is a great cc tool... there is pacify etc. But some camps have a bad view of targets. But charming one of those mobs can help a puller in the future by splitting up the spawns. The additional dps or lack of dps from the pet can also be used to split the spawn.

Regardless if you run out of mobs you can always break the charm after removing buffs. Oh and they sometimes buff other group members pets.

I agree with the OP. If I have a lot of down time between killing, I don't want a charmed pet in my group; just like I don't always use my most powerful nuke, its situational. I prefer people to learn to think and not just do the same thing over and over. I know I'm in the minority because what I see is people doing and expecting the exact same thing over and over, even when not needed.

I had a level 18 Chanter for a short while on Phinny last year. Even in Unrest at that level, there was pressure from the groups to 'find me a pet' as soon as I arrived in camp. Well, there are other things to be done first like buffs before you can be ready for a pet. And I agree, its situational, a pet is not always called for.

I don't think the OP's wrong, but in general I find any place where you're waiting for more than 1-2 mins (barring an AoE group) as probably not good XP. I'd just have less people in group, if a dps isn't allowing the group to kill more mobs than they're just a drain. Even if you're afraid of having a named sniped that has more to do with your group being on the ball than the theoretical max dps it can do.

The overcrowding should be less of an issue as more expansions are released and there are more zones available for XP at every level. Being able to bring 4-8 mobs every pull for hours on end with a bathroom break as the only reason for a pause makes for some good XP. Adding on a charm pet there significantly increases the XP.

when are people going to realize chanters charming is about all we have. if we didn't have charm we would be afk more than wizards...

most group makeups consist of 1 or 2 melee and the rest are casters. if your over 26 you hit 4 with clarity and insight/brill. and 2 with augmentation. you have no more buffs for the next 30 minutes. most groups these days can handle 2-3 mobs without any form of CC or slow, so unless you are lucky in a pick with a bunch of mobs up there is really nothing else for the chanter to do becides sit around and twiddle their thumbs and cast random stuff that doesn't really help the group. Or they can charm a pet and be active and be helpful to the group.

my chanter is not very well geared, just close to max defense and dodge and i can grab a white/yellow golem in the hole give him swift and control him without heals 90% of the time. Chanters self buffs provide enough ac to mitigate the damage from our pets.

OP sounds reasonable and in your specific situation a charmed pet sounds like overkill. As someone else pointed out though, you're arguing about XP efficiency when you are waiting 10 minutes for spawns.

As for the people saying you should charm from another camp. More often than not that is just a move.

Killing too fast, going to take my gear off... healers have an extra 10 minutes to med if we still keep ahead of spawns.

I wish you people would stop making so many posts about charming as an Enchanter and charming in general.

For whatever reason, if you feel uncomfortable in a group, then you should have left said group. A simple, 'thanks for the invite, but I'm going to find another group' would have sufficed in your situation.

Oh, you think it's bad now? You just wait until the next few expansions where enemies quad in the 100s. People will be singing a different tune versus the weak NPCs of classic era.

Thread titles will go from,
Enchanters are OP
Charm is OP
Charm this and that

To,
Chanter charm wiped our group
Chanter charm wiped our raid
Chanter doesnt have enough mana to CC and charm
Chanter charm keeps breaking, wasn't like this in classic
blah blah blah.

(Save this post for reference.)

In many cases charmed pets are the best DPS in classic. I can't think of a reason to not want that in your group. KPH (Kills Per Hour) is the name of the game. Taking your best DPS out of the picture is going to lower your KPH.