After 5 Chronicles, i havent found a use for that skill. Can anyone explain it to me? It seems like a useful skill since LE fighters learn it all along their career.
It is pretty much "anti-hate". Every mob has a "list" of all players it has aggro for, and for each player on that list a value - the amount of "hate" it has for that player. All actions you do against the mob (doing damage to it, using skills like sleep, debuffs etc., landing a critical hit, or simply using a tank's hate skills) increase that number. The player with the highest number is the one the mob attacks. What charm does is LOWER that number. So, if you are at the top of the list (i.e. the mob is attacking you), you can use the charm skill on the mob, your "hate value" gets lowered, and (hopefully) somebody else now has a higher number. End result, in the optimum case: somebody else gets attacked instead of you.
As far as I know, it is not possible to get the hate value to zero with this skill, that is if you are alone and nobody else is around and hated by the mob, it is not possible to make the mob stop attacking you. Dagger users "trick" skill can do that, though (if a mob is attacking you and no other player is around, you can make the mob peaceful again with "trick").
So, for solo players "charm" is pretty much useless. But even in groups I have never seen it being used - you either have a tank who can hate the mob back, or you do not have a tank, which means you play in an area where you can kill the mobs fast enough anyway. Maybe it is worth using on a raid boss if you draw aggro for some reason.
Charm was a good skill for the game. same goes to the most class skills like poisen or bleed. The problem lies within the game itself, since I belive the developers never thought of that L2 would be still around.
Same goes for hate. Nowadays raids often start picking on other ppl and wont switch back to the tank because the aggro hate produces is simply too low for the aggro that is dealed with damage. In C1 there were no S grade and high lvl buffs like COV around.
Developers realy need to redesign the classes and skills so that they match the game, but I dont think they really bother since the ppl play it, if they change it or not.
Benidict is right, it's a completely useless skill. The only thing I have ever been able to do with it is turn a single mob from a train back onto the trainer, and even that was a one-in-a-million thing.
Remember, this is a skill that is earned primarily by the Elven Knight and its advancements, the TK and the SwS. Both of these classes are tanks, to one degree or another, so suddenly having aggro is, for them, not such a big deal, especially considering that neither of these classes is a major DD class. I'm not sure (but I'm about to go look) if SR and PW receive as many ranks in Charm as TK/SwS do. Even if they do, I don't see why either would waste the MP this skill requires when they would be better-served by using that same MP to DPS.
What this skill *should* do, IMO, is either make an aggressive mob passive (ie, cast Charm on the mob, and it becomes non-aggro for the next 30 seconds or w/e) or it should be a real "Charm" skill, allowing the caster to entrance a mob into attacking another target, such as another mob (using the pet-command interface) for a set period of time.
I've seen various cases where an elf wouldn't have died if he used Charm.
You'll need to be a lot more specific than that. The skill works just like Hate, except in reverse. It reduces your Hate Score to the mob by its Power.
Oh, it also has a 30-second reuse time, or something similarly stupid, so you can't spam Charm to drop aggro quickly.
In most XPing situations, if your Elf (typically your SwS or SR... who uses TKs these days?) actually does grab aggro, it's usually in such a manner where a single use of Charm isn't going to make much of a difference... too many crits, too many songs, whatever. If the 1 shot of charm doesn't turn the mob, well... they're tanking it.
As stated, it is just an SP sink. Generally if my PW crits, or a skill lands and that gets me aggro, there is no possible way that charm will turn the mob away, if it does it is just long enough for me to get aggro again.
Switch on the other hand is all sorts of random and good for killing your healers.
Charm (and the similar Peace skill) are useful in some circumstances.
Let's say you are soloing in an area where you can handle one mob well, two with difficulty, and three or more cause real danger to you. Sooner or later you may pull too many mobs. If you start pounding on them then you might die. Instead, before you generate more 'hate' through hitting them, charm one (or two) and run away a bit. The Charmed mobs will not follow you and you can deal with the one or two non-charmed ones easily enough, then come back and beat on the charmed ones when you want to.
Sure, it is a specialized skill but it is a Very Useful one in some circumstances.
PS General Rule: The developers are smarter than most players, that is why they make a living as developers and we don't. If there is something in-game that you think is useless, perhaps it is because you have not yet figured it out.
Ive only used charm 2 times, the first time it actualy aggroed the mob, and the second time it did nothing, to me its as much a waste as curse: weakness