Thinking of rolling an Enc, what should I know first?

A lot of information is outdated, what some things should I be aware of in the modern group game? I don't raid, I imagine I can't mez ToV Kael giants. How are the animation pets these days? How is personal dps? Adps for casters/melees/hybrids how does it stack up? I'm starting at 85, is there anything like the pet focus earring that I should be aware of while leveling? Do you guys charm solo or pet tank with the animation pet these days? I only know one enchanter main and he's online very rarely during the times I play so I don't really have a good avenue for asking these things

Also what sorts of things are super busted?

What information is outdated? Things change as you move forward in levels, but almost all info from the past for lower levels is still valid. The only thing you cannot do is rune tank effectively since they changed timers.

If you are starting at 85, there is a good deal of information in this forum. Just search for heroic enchanter … 85 enchanter … enchanter guide (and then all those with just chanter).

Most of the information you asked about is in those posts/threads.

If you have questions, just ask in server enchanter channel (or just General). Usually someone will be willing to answer.

Animation pets these days are decent dps but bad tanks. Charmed pets are mediocre dps but good tanks. Adps for casters is highly desirable because when we are actively casting nukes/dots/stuns they passively receive boosts to their dps and free spell casts. They also like our activated illusions of grandure, chromatic haze, spire adps and to have night's endless terror kept on them at all times if they melee. These things are pretty good for hybrids as well, but melees could take or leave us. Aside from CC, we also have five whole spells/AAs that stack to help groups survive harsh dot and nuke AEs. Our own dps is not bad, at our best we can still loose out to druids and shaman! Most classes at their best still greatly outperform us in dps. Things that are super busted atm is our most current tash adps does not work for current spells as it should but that's something as an 85 chanter you won't have to worry about till 115! Some AA descriptions are busted.

The modern group game for an enchanter is not all that much different than before, except that with most groups these days, pulling is not an art form, but an exercise in determining how many mobs can be tanked or mezzed. Thus, it's important to improve the AoE mezz capability of your enchanter. Current Autogrant will take you through TBM for all access accounts. Pet tanking takes a lot of points in the Companion AA lines.

What should you know?

Never post on public forums about all the cool things you can do. When asked always remember, your abilities are mediocre at best and they have sucked all the joy from playing your class with all the nerfs over the years.

First thing to know, enchanter is one of the most fun classes in the game. Enjoy playing one every bit as much as bard. Probably all you need to know as well!

Of course, if you're DPS centered in mindset, then your most fun class will be different from mine. I much prefer the classes that can do unusual things, and this one fits the bill.

Are you parsing your animation versus a charmed pet?

Let me describe 3 play styles as a max level enc:

Group conductor: Your job is to perform crowd control, and maximize the dps of your group. Your own personal dps is average at best. You usually use your animation, but if your group doesn't mind the extra risk of charm breaks, you can charm a pet to help dps.

Solo with charm pet: I don't play this style, but you love your charmed pets. Charmed pets are not OP like they used to be, but they still have a ton of health. After killing a mob or 2 with your charmed pet, you then kill your weakened pet for extra experience.

Solo with animation: This only works if you are doing old content, or you have all pet fortification AA in which case you can barely do current content, maybe tossing in some stuns to help your pet out on the tanking side of things. Your own dps output is low, so you normally only choose this route if you can't find a group and just want to earn some experience or kill a ph for a named mob to spawn. Currently TOV animation isn't strong enough to tank even trash, so this is pending a fix from DB, which they have done before.

I soley based my judgement on seeing my pet's hits in the near 20ks verses a charmed mobs's constant string of near 7ks. I guess the parse doesn't lie though, charmed dps is better. I 99% of the time never cast infused minion on it either cause who has room on their spell bar for such things lol. I'm mostly mad that charmed pet dps isn't scaling with the mobs uncharmed dps, like wasn't it supposed to be half of wht it hits for uncharmed? So when a lvl 115 mammoth is hitting for 58k, i'd expect a lvl 114 charmed mob to be hitting for around 29k... instead they've been stagnate at like 8k for many many expansions.

I love the class, and have been playing an enchanter main in high end raid guilds for 17 of my 18 years as an enchanter. My first response is not an answer, but a question. What is it that you want to do as an enchanter? Soloing, boxing, grouping and raiding can be very different things in terms of approach or focus. Of course, you can do all of them, but each has a different approach to playing the class.

If you want to solo then charming and using the animation pet become more of a focus. The animation has been beefed up again and using the pet AA, and commands that are now the same as the "real" pet classes. Charming mobs is not generally encouraged in groups any more, the risk of a mob once charm has broken has been mitigated somewhat with our newer charm spells but the large reduction in DPS on a charmed mob and the general aggravation of having charm drop doesn't appeal to most groups any more.

The nerf that really makes charming next to useless in a group setting is that the charmed mob will hold aggro only if there are three on the hate list. If that has changed I've not seen anything to the contrary. That's not a big issue if you're soloing/moloing or boxing since you can control the hate list more easily. There are a lot of posts and information on charm soloing. I don't much care for it because I find it boring to do for any length of time and rarely do it other than to farm AA or experience when there's no group available. I will generally spend the time soloing while looking to put a group together

Grouping is the fastest way of gaining experience of any sort if you have a decent group and particularly with a group with six players for an experience bonus. I think it's more fun and the challenge of adjustments to various play styles to be part of that. If you want things done your way you might be better off soloing, moloing or boxing.

One of the great things about being an enchanter is that you can make pretty much any group better with the mitigation spells that can enhance the aggro abilities of a tank, decrease the aggro on the healer, decrease incoming melee, spell and, and DS damage resulting in lowered healing demands, control most mobs through a variety of spell and AA and lower their ability to do damage, while at the same time increasing the damage that the members of the group can do (ADPS). The multi-tasking challenges and being aware of more than the "assist mob" is what keeps the class challenging and fun for me. I use the HoTT window constantly in groups and raids generally while cycling through the mobs on the extended target to make sure they're all aggro'd on the tank, debuffed, check the mez timers, and so on.

Raiding as an enchanter expands the utility nature of our class in groups to becoming aware of what's going on with several groups. If you are good at multi-tasking and adapting to changing conditions and group make up you'll enjoy raiding. Enchanters can do a lot of damage, enough to put them in the top ten of a parse on a raid, but at a cost to the overall raid ADPS which I think is more important. Expectations vary by guild, raid and class leaders, but ADPS, damage mitigation and player enhancement are usually at the top of the list. We have a surprising number of spells and AA that are adaptable to many situations that are often overlooked or go unused by enchanters that solo, box or just occasionally group.

The 3 target limit for charmed pets hasn't been a thing for a while. I want to say it was changed during TDS. Although, they definitely aren't as good at holding aggro in ToV as they have been in recent expansions.

an enchanter has an awesome ability to single pull mobs very effectively if your using your abilities correctly

You cant mez any giants.... all giants are unmezzable as a general rule

ENC's get ranked pet spells but not pet focus ear almost all enc specific clickies have been replaced with AA abilities

Enchanters can do a lot of damage, enough to put them in the top ten of a parse on a raid

Please post these parses , I cant wait to see what your wizards , mages and necros are parsing.

UEE is my fav raid for parsing, obv. It's a real confidence/ego booster.

Is there any possibility of borrowing Renaii and Proximoe back into Reckless Ascension? Temporarily of course

@ Jordis , cant wait to see your top 10 parse post.

@ Kimb , I never ment to imply it was impossible to parse in the top 10 , im sure if u cast everything for yourself this is entirely possible.

@ Kimb or Renaii , +Pets , im guessing your guild lets you use doppleganger and Phantasmal , if so is it possible u could post the break out for them ? I would also be interested to see what Renaii's group make up was in that raid. ( im guessing she wasn't in Pie , Kizant's or Sancus group and that there enchanter was Got , who is all about adps for his group , even at the cost of his own parsing ). Good to see though that it is possible on one raid to have the ability to parse like that. Ty for sharing , always interesting to see what's possible.

@ Renotaki , feel free to recruit a new enchanter , or better yet , stop holding back your greatness in the guild your in and join the best in the game.

Edit: Gotcharms is retired

What do u mean by, "if u cast everything for yourself"

I personally do not use doppelganger or phantasmal opponent during raids (edit: well, maybe very rarely in certain circumstances, but for the most part I do not)

I still don't get this correlation. Being "all about adps" does not cost an enchanter their own dps. Most of an enc's adps comes from them DPS'ing. We are literally justified in going all out ham on dps to provide adps for our group... especially during events where there is no (or little) CC duties to worry about.