Just wondering whose coalition spell your guild uses on tanks during raids? Shaman or druid or cleric? Is one more effective than the others? Thanks!
Shaman. It emanates from the caster, not the target. At least that's the way it worked the last time I looked into this. Conq
I'm pretty sure these spells haven't changed in how they work, but here are a few old posts/images to illustrate the difference (just replace "alliance" with "coalition" since the name was changed for some odd reason several expansions ago). I'll be using "alliance" throughout as I am old school and can't get used to the new name: The other thing to keep in mind are the differences between the priest alliances in terms of heal amount (and most importantly - range). The image here is old, again, but given the copy/paste nature in upgrades the relative differences should still be the same: Given this information, most raid teams probably use shaman alliance/coalition. This is because it has the largest range on the small heal (the big heal is irrelevant given how infrequently it procs). Even though it is only a 10 foot difference, given how important alliance healing is to overall raid healing, you don't want people left out because they happen to be a few feet too far from the priests proc'ing it. The fact that the tank doesn't need a target is significant as well, as that means it will proc with a heal on any tank with the buff, even if they are just standing around waiting for mobs while AOE damage is being tossed about. That doesn't mean that there aren't specific situations where the cleric alliance would be preferable. If it's an event where the priests are hiding behind a big rock (meaning no line of sight with the tank) and the tank and most of the raid are on the other side doing damage, cleric alliance would actually work better as most of the raid would be around the tank, not the priests, and the priests won't need line of sight with the tank to proc the alliance heals. Those situations, however, are few and far between given the design of most raid events, where the raid is encouraged (and almost forced to) stand in a pile to either avoid or manage AOEs. In those cases, druid alliance might actually be better provided your guild has druids willing to maintain the buff on every tank in the raid and your guild actually piles up perfectly each and every time. In my opinion, though, the extra healing (though it could be useful when the raid is undergeared for the content) isn't worth getting druids who don't like to buff upset and forcing perfect execution on ***piles (as some people are always going to stand a bit away from the pile no matter what you tell them).
Thanks Conq and Clarisa! Clarisa, thanks so much for taking the time to explain all of that, I really appreciate it. You hit the nail on the head here, haha! There's a shaman in my guild who's convinced the druid alliance is far superior but I'm the guild's only consistently raiding druid and I like to go hard with dps, I don't want the alliance assignment. Thank you again for all the info on it.
The size of the AE on the druid version is jut way too small to be a good option on tanks in most circumstances. Unless you're super stacked, like as tight as you can physically stack, the extra 20 percent healing isn't worth the fact that it's going to miss half the raid. As far as I'm aware (I could be wrong, somebody correct me if I am), but the AE range is basically the diameter of the effect, with an EQ unit being roughly a foot. The druid's is a 28 unit diameter, shaman's is a 60 unit diameter. Which means the shaman one covers about 4.6 times more actual area.
Pretty sure it's radius, not diameter. Same "difference" but the 2463 vs 11,309 actual area units is a pretty big difference for the raid force. Even non-idiot rangers get covered. Note - I did say the non-idiot ones ... nothing can be done about the normal ones ..
Answer is Cleric. For the same reason. Every event currently is focused around a mob, and to ensure that all casts hit everyone, it is easiest to use clerics (which emanates from the mob). Shaman requires your single target healers to be standing in the right place. Cleric ensures that if people that need healing are standing in the right place they get healed. Edit: From an efficacy standpoint, it's starting to require a discussion as to whether we even do it. If you have a low number of shamans (4 or less, maybe), it is definitely worth it. For higher amounts, it likely is going to begin to output more lag than is worth it for actual healing purposes. With the spells themselves being heavily outdated and non-scaling, we are quickly entering a dynamic where healing alliance is simply going to be phased out unless updated.
Something I neglected to mention is that the priest casting alliance on a target is excluded from proc'ing it on that target and that only single-target heals can proc it. Other considerations aside, this means the raid would be better off with a shaman casting alliance than a cleric. Even if you assigned a single cleric to cast and maintain alliance on every tank (a waste of that cleric's time, in my opinion), that cleric would probably provide more potential procs than any shaman in the raid due to the differences in how the classes heal. The buffing cleric is far more likely to cast multiple single-target heals on a random tank than a shaman, whose healing is mostly duration-based and comes from squalls and elixirs cast at fixed intervals. This means that you lose far less proc'ing potential by excluding a shaman compared to a cleric. In regards to its efficacy in the modern healing game, the healing potential of alliance is still significant, with potential healing based on a proc rate of 1 proc per 1.5 secs, a rate easily achievable on at least the main tank with spam-casted remedies from clerics. Even with a low, non-focusable heal per proc, the overall potential healing given the number of targets and the rate goes into the millions. It's not life-saving healing, but the rate at which it is produced provides a ton of gap healing that no other "free" healing source can really touch. Though lag is certainly a consideration, a raid leader would be crazy to turn down that much potential healing, as doing so would just put more pressure on clerics, shamans, paladins, and druids (who are least able to contribute) to make up for all the missing gap heals.
Bottom line for me: Shamans have better things to do, and more productive ways to add to the success of any given event than keeping Alliance buffs memorized and constantly monitoring tank buff windows. Like dps and adps and Innoruuk knows what else. i don't play a shaman but secondhand knowledge tells me they can be as busy as they choose on any given event, and if they could have twice the number of spells memorized max as is current, they would, and every slot would be useful. Clerics are already constantly monitoring tank buff windows. The *other* things clerics can contribute to the raid are.. uh....um.... heals and uh...buffs...and. Heals. That's all. i add whatever dps i can on any event i can and it's very very sad, but still, EQ is a game of small gains adding up. Imagine if all the Shaman on my raid were doing as much dps and adps as they could, doing enough group healing and squalls etc that is already very good and sufficient to support the other priests, without messing around with alliances. Even if ONE shaman is handling all this, the missed out damage would probably be enough to cover an infinite number of clerics. Dead mobs deal no damage. Kill it fast enough, and healing becomes irrelevant past a very small contribution. This is how raid events have been designed for a long time now.
