Newb coercer here. Just got Possess Essence after lvl locking for a while to get AA's. Prior to this, I didn't charm that much, as I found AA grinding with the SK merc much faster and didn't feel like dealing with the hassle of mezzing and re-charming etc. But the little time I've used PE I find I like it...which brings me to my question - how do you determine the mob type? I wasn't smart enough to roll a race with Aura vision, and mages can't equip the tinkered Aura goggles. So is it just trial and error and looking at what buffs mobs might have on them? I realize that PE produces a pet with different characteristics then the original mob, but I'd like to find high dps and/or self healing mobs.
There's a tinkered consumable that grants aura vision; the Tinkered Vision Enhancer. Gives 30 minutes of See Invis, See Stealth, and Aura Vision.
Aura vision is only going to tell you if its a mage or priest npc, both of which are trash archtypes for PE at any stage of the game. This is because they dont have great AI like a healer or mage merc does, even though pets share casting stats and potency/crit/crit bonus, they just arnt that great. If you want a self healing ally, use a merc imo. Npc's you PE are 1 of 24 classes (no BL npc sorry), I normally only grab Zerks, Pallys, SK pets and some times brawlers, since bard ones (mainly troub) are fairly rare for me. That said, if i find 2 zerk npcs with different names, ect they will both do the exact same things (prioritize the same spells and also have the same pre-set ability list), and thus come down to how cool the other one looks. I hope this helps you out with understanding the ability.
