I didn't notice anything in the update notes, but did something recently change with Charm in pvp? I had an opponent (a Illy within one level of me) that I attacked in the Ruins (level 13, he was 12). I tried to charm his pet, and the pet attacked me. Then, I tried charming him, and I got a weird message about Charm not working on this target. What gives? Is my class defining ability broken in PvP???
I suppose no one cares about PVP any more. Ok, fine, if I can't charm other players, why shouldn't I just re-roll as a summoner? I mean, as a coercer, I charm a ^^^ yellow con heroic mob, it gets ripped apart by blue con solo mobs, then charm breaks and I have a full strength ^^^ heroic mob again, mad at me. If I'm a conjy, I have a real ^^^ heroic mob to work with indefinitely it seems.
Well for starters instead of charming yellow ^^^ try charm vv nuking pet issue command /pet ranged and see you pet tear apart yellow ^^^ from the distance (providing you have master or better grand master charm) ... As for PvP - aside of charm you have many other tools - stifle, stun, daze, mez... Pleas if you want to charm something or someone why not go first with AoE mez then arcane debuff and only after that charm?
Mez, debuff, and then charm is what I always do. The problem is, it seems I can no longer cast charm on other players, or other player's pets. I was suspecting that this was silently nerfed/removed, but I can't find anything about it on update notes. I know this worked recently because an opposing faction Coercer charmed me for like 5 minutes the other day, it was fun/funny as heck, and inspired me to make my own Coercer. It would be really, really sad if this one class defining fun skill was silently removed for no good reason.
FWIW in game yesterday, I was able to charm an opponent. I don't know what the issue was in the Ruins, but it worked fine in FG.
I know you're talking about coercer charm, but The Makers have been messing with my own (troubadour) charm for some time. Whether these changes have been detailed in the update notes or not, I can't tell you, as I rarely read the update notes. The most recent misbehaviour is that when I charm one beastie and cause it to attack another, quite often the charmed one will die almost immediately, which is not the way it's supposed to be. Another, somewhat frustrating, thing that has happened for some time now is that if the charmed one survives but then the charm breaks, the beastie is teleported back to its original start point. Quite often that will be in the middle of a bunch of other beasties, causing them all to aggro (which is exactly why I charmed the one in the first place, to get it away from those others to attack it separately). What all this says to me is that there's no Maker love for the charm spell
I see the same issues with Charm as a coercer. Charm one of a pair of the exact same mob, send it on it's friend, and it gets the tar beat out of it. I think this is by "BAD" design, and it is intentionally nerfed to discourage people from playing the classes that depend on charm. As to the behavior your seeing when charm breaks, it's somewhat different on Coercer, at least I think it is because it's very, very rare that a charmed mob lives long enough to see this (see the above problem, which I've learned to use to my own benefit anyway)... When my charm breaks, the screen flashes an alarming yellow color and starts attacking me. I then have a split second to mez it back under control before the restored strength mob rips me apart. I have empathy for the "Makers" as you call them, as I am also a software developer, and realize that it's hard to give people cool wondrous tools that they can then go off and cleverly misuse to have fun (or, rather from their perspective, break the content model that dictates "you need a group to do that"). Charm, if left pure like it used to be for Enchanters and Bards in EQ1 where you could carefully charm a mob that would turn you to paste in one hit and then go off and solo hard content with it, and likely die when charm broke; while being incredibly fun and balanced via risk/reward for the skillful, would probably cause all kinds of problems for the general population who don't have the tools or skill to do this.
