Is bard charm worthless, or am I doing something wrong?

[SirAlvarex]

I thought the low level charm allowed you to keep a pet charmed?

And that the high level charm had a much longer duration (1 minute says on the wiki, but everywhere else I've read just says "a long time").

The low level charm is rather weak, but the higher level charm is just as crappy but takes Mana.

Am I mis-remembering Bard Charm to always work like this, or was Bard Charm actually made *useful* in future patches after Velious?