Definitely agreeing with you on the buff limits. No mob gave out everything, that their class had access to. 3-4 meshes well with my limited charming experience.
The spells, that seemed to be usually cast, were SoW and HP/AC buffs (Inner Fire for shamans, Courage line for cleric mobs, druid skin line). The Tnarg line (the hp buff that doesn't stack with the 'shielding' line hp/ac/mr self-buffs) I think I've seen a few times as well. Damage shields also were favored.
What certainly wasn't there, was any of the stat buffs (Str, Sta, ...). I might have seen haste a time or two (though that could have been an enchanter mob buffing), but I'm really not sure.
But as you said, the 3-4 spell limit seemed to pretty much hold.
Also, the list of actively SoW casting mobs is years old, in some places (I haven't revisited some of these zones in years). I agree with the LoY zones not really being all that buff crazy. (They loved their malo debuff, and also the low level slows, never really what they could have done purely based on their level.) A rethinking of that design aspect, starting with LoY, perhaps?
Also, since I completely forgot about it with the list, yes, OoW had mobs with innate run3 (and higher, in some zones and later expansions). There was no buffing, for that run speed increase. (At least, it couldn't be dispelled. If they just used a buff with the un-dispellable flag, or actually changed the run-speed, no idea.)
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