Reposting this from another thread to see if I can get some eyes and respectful opinions. I'll preface this by stating I've read every thread on this start to finish and seen some really good ideas presented and understand and appreciate both sides of the argument. Much of this is borrowed from those ideas. I personally am in favor of original charm with no level restrictions with a reasonable dps nerf far from what was recieved. If there is risk there needs to be a pay off. If it's going to be core to the class then what we have isn't it.

I guess a lot of this depends on the overall goals they are trying to achieve. If they wanted to make charm a core part of the class they failed. If they wanted to kill reverse charm they just made it more annoying. If they wanted to remove the potential to out dps 2-3 dps they succeeded.

I only see a couple of ways out of this without leaving it broken.

A full or partial revert gives brings us back to status quo or gives a half baked version of what once was. A partial while being the easiest fix/compromise is also the laziest.

It doesn't appease all parties but taking everything I've read in the forums into account just rebuild charm to keep it core but in no way what it once was and remove shadowkin entirely. Make charm permanent and give it a reasonable reagent cost. A dismissed or killed pet is lost to the void. A charmed pet removes the entity from the world allowing respawns. Charm open to at least your current level. Normalize the hp. Damage scaling reasonable, hopefully better than the shadowkin, and based on charisma. You still get some flavor and use out of charm...casters with buffs/heals maybe bringing some extra utility to the group or solo play that wasnt already available. Let the enchanter control the spells being cast or not cast and on who or what. Bring back some variation of enchant ally. If runeskin was the issue apply a debuff like bandaged.

This doesnt bring back the potentially stressful gameplay unfortunately but it can at least make charm interesting (sort of) and core to the class. No more 3x dps. Reverse charm is officially dead if thats what they want. Depending on what is charmed and what you are fighting there may still be some solo potential.

There is much more that can be tweaked or adjusted outside of charm but I kinda feel something like this would make the most people happy, though definitely not all.

By the way I'm super in favor of random respawn timers something like 50-100% randomly and more patrols. Group buffs costing reagents is bad for all classes. I miss 1 hour timers.