Charm, dire charm, reverse charm...Follow

Since it's been slow here, I'll just go ahead and post my meandering thoughts on charming (enchanter, but applies to necro and druid) with the hope of generating some discussion.

Having just spent the 9 aas on dire charm, I am finding it both surprisingly useful and at the same time mind numbingly boring.

You all know how regular charming goes:

1) Find something your charm spell will stick to and charm it.
---> if charm doesn't stick, mez, root, slow, kill, or gate.
2) Take your new best friend out and send him out to earn his pay.
---> root your pet when charm breaks, root/mez any mobs that had already aggroed as well. Recharm and start over. Carefully break mez/root on adds and bring them to your now rooted pet.
3) Exp! Loot! Profit!
4) When pet gets too low in health, invis and kill him too.
5) Find new pet, repeat.

Here's a quick run down on dire charming:

1) Find a level 46 mob in any PoP zone or lower. Click [dire charm].
2) Buff your pet as much as possible!
3) Target fodder, cast slow, send pet, toss in a dot, sit, med, loot, repeat.
4) Gate out when you can't stand the repetition any longer.

Quick comparison between charming and dire charm: genuine excitement vs. mind numbing drudgery. I feel like a bad mage when I am dire charming. I even started tanking with rune spells to work my defensive skills up rather than sit and do nothing.

But wait a moment, I mentioned something else up top... reverse charming? What's this anyway?

Reverse charming:
1) Find the nastiest mob you can charm, root, charm, buff with haste, damage shield, regen, everything including the kitchen sink. Invis to break charm and (quickly) charm something else.
---> Cast root again on instant death machine.
2) Send new pet against instant death machine paying close attention to your pet's health....
---> Cast root again on instant death machine.
3) 40%, 25%, 15% INVIS and break charm! Nuke almost dead pet for full exp!
---> Cast root again on instant death machine
4) Find another fodder pet, repeat.

I like charming, in case you haven't noticed. I haven't actually managed to muster the courage yet to try reverse charming because I've been holding out for a chance when one of my druid friends can come along to handle the root duty on the instant death machine.

After today though, and my mind-numbing experience with dire charm, I suspect I'll be trying out reverse charming sooner than I thought.

I wouldn't bother to buff the pet. Bards used this method for a long time. Find a group of 4 to 5 mobs. Charm one of them, and let the others beat it up. When it is low on health, invis to break charm. Charm the next one that is near full health. Have it kill the low on health one, and get beat up by the rest of the gang. Once you get to the last couple of mobs you have to play with who damages who, but ideally the last mob alive has low health and you can nuke it.

Quick clarification on this: I had understood that as a chanter I had to actually do damage to the mob to get full experience, is this mechanic the same for bards? If I break charm with a group of mobs on my former pet, won't they all run for me?

To get full damage, yes you need to do at least one point of damage. A level 1 dot works wonders for this (fast casting and low mana).

Joph is correct that this might be difficult for an enchanter. Perhaps dropping the number of mobs, selective use of mez and stun, instant cast invis potions, etc. would need to come into play.

This is the difference.

Break charm (I use Ring of Stealthy Travels) 2 seconds
Cast a damage spell to lock in the exp (I use Blue Ceramic Band) 3 seconds
Recharm ~ 4 seconds

All that while standing still, with the group bearing down on you - so yeah it's different than a bard who's always moving. I have to say for the record though that watching bards swarm kiting is just one of the truly awe inspiring things you can do in this game. I never got my bard high enough to try yet...


I haven't spent the pet AAs yet but I will. I hadn't considered that the animation's DPS was even in the same ballpark as a direcharm. The animation does seem to suffer in extremely low durability, but in a group setting it isn't getting hit anyway.


This does depend on the group and their tolerance for charming shenanigans. Sometimes charms don't last long enough and you find yourself constantly tending the charm (I don't have the 'make charm better' AAs yet either).

As it stands now there is still a ton of things I can improve on through further AAs, and now that you've mentioned it snailish, I do suffer from old school mentality on risk assessment. I'm also still in the weird level range where I am hunting in zones where there is nothing else I can charm. By level 62 though, the new charm should let me at least go back to charming in Grieg's. I just want to try some dire charming in Veksar before I move on.

One last thing which hasn't come up yet - is it still the case that charmed mobs have their damage output reduced by 50%? This is the thing that makes the case for reverse charming if it is still true.

That would make a nice guild name...

I should get one of those rings - I just have to be careful I don't take on EQ timesinks that burn me out. Wait... let me rephrase that - I suspect that finishing the chanter epic 1.0 would take less time.