I'll also add in that you want to tell your charmed pet to taunt as he won't do it automatically. Once I realized that and turned on taunt my pet kept aggro far easier.
As for charisma I've noticed a similar phenomenon. I began my charming career at level 12 without a single piece of charisma gear, and it was sitting pretty at 95. I've found that even with my new 209 buffed charisma I don't see much difference in charm legth. It can break in one tick with the 209 or it can last for minutes, and this is with the same level of mob.
Mob level definitely seems to have the greatest affect on charm length, and I'll also throw out there that I think there is some variability in a mob's resists even at the same level. I started charming the Miller's out in Qeynos Hills at level 25, in which they were white to me. They always spawn at level 25, but sometimes they seemed to have super resists that made spells bounce on them over and over, while other times everything stuck on the first try. Not just resists, but their damage output as well seemed to be boosted. I've charmed Baobob where he was so powerful he ripped through Chanda and both guards before his hit points ran out. While other times he gets his arse handed to him by his sister.
My guess is other mobs may have this variability built in so even though they are supposedly the same level, they are far more resistant to spells than usual. The other night I was charming gnolls in SK and making them fight against Centaur Chargers. I used the gnolls because they were lower level and seemed to have more damage output than the chargers did. One of my pull the DB gnoll broke charm 3 times so I finally said screw it and charmed the Charger (who was an even con) and it never broke once.
I keep an entire second set of gear in my pack. One for taking my cha to 209 buffed, and another set which boosts my mana/hps by 300/200 respectively. I'm beginning to notice there doesn't seem to be much different between the two for charming other than I have more mana/hps at my disposal with the 2nd set. Maybe things will change at higher levels, but at level 30 the cha just doesn't seem to be making that big of a difference. If it's helping it's not helping enough to warrant the loss of hp and mana. If charm breaks then I have 300 more mana to simply recast it, whereas when charm breaks with my cha gear I don't have the extra mana to make up for it.
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