We've asked for more flagging, can we also get more Rune drops for rank 3 spells?

The rune drops are getting a little bit rough on Aradune, right now there is only a couple of runes that drop when you kill a raid boss and it's multiple rune ranks that you need to move through. Humming, Whirring, and Glowing Prismatic.

I am not even remotely close to getting my important rank 3 spells that actually matter, and we're now approaching February and there will only be another 4-5 weeks left in Secrets of Faydwer.

Right now, unless my rolls are extremely lucky, a large number of casters won't be able to even get their rank 3's - and even if they do by that point the new expansion will approach and your older spells could be invalidated.

TLP's are a tricky beast, we are trying to do a years worth of content in a very compact 3 months time and there are a number of things that keep coming up that make it a little less fun.

Any opinions? Seems like a huge drag for TLPs

It sounds like a drag for sure, and probably warrants some level of attention. More generally just a general hard look at loot availability relative to raid size and server pace would be good.

I'm just kind of curious specifically for spells how impactful this actually is. Looking at Temerity as an example, Rk. II is 2904 HP/144 AC and Rk. III is 3128 HP/153 AC. Alla says Kerafyrm in Crystallos hits for up to 15k. Is 200 HP and 9 AC really going to make a meaningful difference that warrants immediate intervention? If other spells for other classes matter more maybe have a guild discussion about fast tracking those classes?

Love it or hate it, spell availability was not a problem at all on Mischief. Glyphs were rotting on bazaar mules in PoP and people couldn't give them away. Might be a starting place for a new formula going forward if a little bit too abundant.

We used to hand out spells for the buffer classes first, then open season on most everything else.

The expansions with spell turn-in "lists" are always the worst of the bunch.

In this scenario, I think it comes down to guild leadership more than anything else. Buffers get their spells, because Rk. II => Rk. III stacking is just.. awful. After that it ought to go to classes where the Rk. III ability is significant enough of an upgrade over the Rk.II for the raid to be successful, then to the classes where there is no direct upgrade to that spell line anymore (or for several expansions).

If I miss an upgrade on a DoT spell. big deal? Next expansion it gets outdated with a new version anyway. But some classes do get a few abilities that don't see regular upgrades (if any at all) like a few of the auras.

Once they shift over to the "pick your own spell" method (HoT? I know UF only has a couple so it's no big deal there either) it's basically a non-issue.


There should, at most, be Rk.I and Rk. II for buffs. (at least TGB types) Leave Rk. III's to be "enhancement" abilities, like weapon proc buffs, Nukes, DoT's etc. That's where the whole ranked spell thing stemmed from to begin with. It was the melee classes complaining that casters just bought their top "weapons" right out of the gate, while they had to get lucky with raid drops.

Interesting. That's certainly a... creative approach to solving that issue. It seems like it would make more sense to have casting power affected by gear in a similar way that melee power is affected by gear.

Im curious how your raid allocated the runes you got if a large number of people wont get their rank 3s?

I ask because I am in a guild that doesnt split except at the very start of the expansion low tier raids for flagging purposes and we havent really seen the same issue crop up. Most people have a majority of their rank 3 abilities and spells, not all of them, but more than not. Because of the way you have to go through spells in order in these expansion, a lot of the ones you get are garbage spells and a lot at the end of the line are not spells that matter, so I wonder if people werent just being greedy and taking as many as they could even when its for spells that dont matter.

Regardless, this is a temporary problem for a couple expansions. In some future expacs you dont have to go in a preset order for your rank 3s. Also, rank 2 spells are more than capable to get by with so it shouldnt be anything that prevents you from accessing content like encounters simply not providing enough flags does.


EDIT - If this is a big issue for your guild, you may consider what events you can split down real low to acquire extra runes. The spell runes can be downgraded so if you have an abundance of glowing, you can turn them into whirring and humming.

They did this with worn Foci first, but it was also approached via spells. There was all sorts of discussion on the matter in TSS beta.

It sounds like they just auto roll the spells.. which sometimes works.. but sometimes.. you end up with those people who think they need every Rk 3 spell for their spell book, even if they never mem/use a spell.