I have played sparingly over the past several years and knew the development team was concerned with how Coercers were using charm to solo many things that were not intended to be soloed. I get it was considerably OP in some situations. I started playing again on the TLE server and rolled a coercer as I have one on live and enjoyed it. ^^^ mobs that I charm are getting one shotted by mobs three and four levels below them. I get that leaving them at full strength can be game breaking, but making them completely useless is going way to far. At this point, why not give coercers Possess Essence at a much lower level than 65 and get rid of charm since they don't want it used?
Every class has spells that are useless. They have much bigger fish to fry these days with the bugs in the game.
Not sure, I haven't played a coercer at low levels in quite some time. But I'm not sure that was the reason it was "broken" on purpose. I thought it was broken in the endgame because of that reason. They really don't care anymore about soloing heroics at lower levels, except maybe on TLE. The problem may only exist on that server. I certainly played a coercer and soloed all through nearly every quest in Nek Castle on-level with no chronomagic, but that was around 2012. It was wildly fun to duo with a beastlord/coercer team also... at low levels. Once at endgame, it was unlikely I could charm anything. However, I've been playing a Trubie on Test server, and I can report that I can charm mobs in solo zones if they are not the nameds, or part of the name encounter, in PoP solos. I think that's fine. It pretty much does less damage than my merc even, so it's just another layer of autoattack and mainly helps with stun situations. So I'm looking forward to when I finally get to my coercer to test and see if she can charm in PoP zones too. I would welcome a return of even a nerfed, but functional charm that is at least twice as damaging as Possess Essence, which is about half the level of the max charm spell level. I remember what I went through to get her a master for PE, so she could get it GM'd. I think the charmed pet should do as much damage as a mediocre player using a beastlord... on TLE. Only fair, right?
Posess Essence is my favorite of the two anyways. A lot of Coercers use it wrong though. If you copy a DPS class with it, the pet will be weak, as they just are. The strength of the possess essence pet is enhanced by copying either buff or debuff classes. I raid on my Coercer, and almost always are in the main tank group, with no troub or illy. I partially make up for this by using possess essence to copy one of the troubs in one of the other groups. I also like to copy either an illy or a brig. I possess essence myself for fights where I need to drain a lot of power from mobs fast. The pet will drain a lot of power this way.
last expansion, KA raid actually made use of the charm ability! rare as it was, it redeemed itself minimally that expansion. This expansion, it seems to have fallen by the wayside again though.
Yeah, charm seems to be very nearly useless. I'm new to EQ2 but played a chanter in EQ1. So I rolled up a coercer for EQ2. I could easily charm orange-con triple up arrow mobs, but the trouble is they would get beat down in nothing flat by white-con single up arrow mobs. So far (my coercer is level 26 now) charm seems to be a complete waste of time. Which is weird since it seemed to be the signature ability of the class, at least according to most of the class descriptions. Is there some reason I should stick with coercer, rather than just re-rolling as a conjuror or necro, where I am guaranteed a far, far better pet?
I dusted off my Coercer recently (lvl 100) and did notice something odd...if you Charm a mob first...you can also use Possess Essence, giving you two pets. If you PE first, it doesn't allow you to Charm. Has it always been like this? Only trouble is there's only 1 pet control bar. LOL
