Alliances have been out for awhile, and I think it might be time to take a look at some of the trigger conditions for the fulminations. I play a ranger (also have a wizard), so I might be off about some of these: I'm leaving out the priest ones since they're pretty much in their own category. Bard: Requires 3 matches to trigger. I have no idea how hard this is for bards. BL: Requires 4 matching DoTs to trigger. If I understand correctly, BLs don't normally cast dots and prefer DDs. Berserker: Requires 10 procs from other berserkers. No change in behavior needed since it's AE and just requires others to be hitting the same mob. Enchanter: Requires 6 DDs from other chanters. Magician: Requires 8 DDs from other magicians. Monk: Requires 10 procs from other monks. Basically works the same as zerk. Necromancer: Requires 4 DoTs from other necros. If what I heard from some necros is right, it's super easy to trigger. Paladin: Requires 6 matching DDs(?). Also does like half of the damage of other fulminations in exchange for a short stun. Ranger: Requires 12 matching DDs. In practice, that's 6 summer's, which is a spell I wouldn't be casting much outside of trying to trigger fulminations (rangers have mana issues). Rogue: Requires 4 poison procs. I'm not sure if rogues have to change which poisons they use for this. Shadow Knight: Requires 4 lifetaps to trigger. Wizard: Requires 8 DDs to trigger. Why do ranger (and BL?) alliances require behavior changes to trigger the fulminations when others e.g. wizards don't? Why do wizards and magicians need 8 DDs, rangers pallies and enchanters 6, and SKs 4? Incidentally, I had a trigger pack that I was using to determine when others were using alliances so I could alter my casting behavior - but I had to drop the chat filter (in EQ) that was triggering it because it was causing excessive lag.
The proc based ones need some review. As a rogue, I've seen it not fulimate with 5 rogues on a raid. Poison procs are just way too random. Not sure how it is for the other classes with proc based triggers. The caster ones are guaranteed to work if you have the numbers for the class and give the ability to plan on making it work with lesser numbers if you account for times with twincast available as well as random luck with twincast procs. The cast differences between some casters makes sense as wizards have faster casting spells than classes like enchanters. These are meant to be optimal with 3-4 of a given class present. The issue for me is some classes are relegated to random luck while others can actually work together to make them work. That's completing ignoring the argument of class populations.
I think we found your problem. Summers is pretty much one of the greatest spells in Everquest. Spam casting summers takes a rangers dps from middle of the pack in a raid parse, all the way to the very top now after the berserker nerf. The reason the amount of spells required varies, is based on the cast and recast time of the spells. You can spam cast Summers every second with ease, while very few other classes have anything remotely similar. These are the numbers from the top 2 players on our Prince raid from July 3rd. Top ranger was number 1 on the parse, 2nd ranger was number 2 on the parse. Rangers are incredibly powerful and as long as you have at least 2 in the raid, you should have no issue whatsoever in triggering fulmination. If you cant manage to keep your mana up on raids, with a bard and or, beast, and or chanter, and asking for cleric Qm's then there is some problem with your raid setups. Ranger number 1: DMG: 218902322 @ 231643 sdps (233870 dps in 936s) [6.84%] Summer's Cyclone Rk. III - 164 Ranger number 2: Summer's Cyclone Rk. III - 181 DMG: 186521785 @ 197378 sdps (216634 dps in 861s) [5.83%]
In my guild we give every melee toon in raid free poison to increase the proc chance, it doesn't have to be roques that are proccing them, if I understand correctly.
Interesting. Hadn't thought of that. Looks like Spider Bite and Scorpion's Agony are both in the spell group for triggering the fulimation. Point still stands though that procs are very unreliable to trigger this. Especially if rogues are depending on handing out poisons that require rare dropped trade skill mats and high trivial skill to non-rogues just to improve their odds. Compared to classes that are assured of fulimation based simply on spell cast times and the gcd, it's crap. RNG vs. simple math.
yalls berzerkers, wizards, monks, rogues, necros and mages need to do some parse testing, cause they are doing something wrong if they are gonna let a few scum bag rangers top the parse
Don't get me wrong, I do spam summer's when I have access to mana. I even use a book of obulus for it (and dichotomic). However, there's still a ridiculous issue that the best ranger DDs (the arrow spells) do not count towards triggering the fulmination. If I don't have easy mana available, I'm not going to be contributing towards fulminations once I start getting really low. My broader point was that alliances should be equally easy to trigger the fulmination for all classes assuming same numbers. Why should some classes have to alter their casting behavior while others don't (eg wizards)? There's nothing substantially different about the fulminations, they all do pretty similar damage (other than poor pallies). The proc randomness dependency sounds like another issue - although it doesn't require altering behavior, it's not controllable either. I suspect the trigger conditions were created on-paper instead of based off of what people actually cast when the spells were designed.
Triggering the BST fulmination sux so bad. First you need 4 bsts ( I believe how this works) then the bsts pretty much have to run the mana glyph because our dots after the rework are right at 10k Mana to cast doesn't seem like alot but they drain Mana without glyph very fast. The worst part is the BST being a great ADPS and DPS class with so much utility, there just isn't alot if us dedicated bsts around anymore. Don't get me wrong there are still alot of great bsts around but alot of guilds just don't have 4 bsts ready to fire off an alliance spell. Some guilds do but quite a few only have between 2 or 3 dedicated bsts. I wish they would change ours from 4 similar dots to say 10 casts of our Maelstrom, or maul disc.
On the other hand it also means that rogues can use their alliance, even if there is only one rogue in raid. Just ask your guild to drop some poison-crafting mats in the guild-bank or something. As a wizard I sometimes have to drop alliance from my spell-bar on raids, simply because there are not enough wizards in the raid... I agree that wizards probably have it easier(when we are enough), we just have to avoid overwriting each-others fulminations(we have a chat-channel for that, that we already use for manaburn coordination), and otherwise just nuke away like always...We are even one of the few classes who can make alliances work with mercs in normal groups, if we have room for enough wizard mercs(kinda rare, but its a possibility). I think we got a useful alliance-spell. Overall, I think the idea with spells that requires coordination is valid, and I can understand why some classes feel cheated when its based on randomness rather than coordination. Going overboard and requiring micro-management is no fun either...
This is founded on incorrect assumptions, and goes to highly suspect conclusions. To the point that I suspect you've made no attempt to use it thus far, rendering questionable your likelihood to use it should the behavior of the spell be changed. One bst casts Alliance, other bsts' ticking dots Fulminate it. One other bst with two dots running will reach the Fulmination when those two dots tick twice each, 7-12s. Two other bst will Fulminate the Alliance with one tick each of their two dots each, so inside 6s. After which the next Bst teammate gets to put their Alliance on the mob. It Fulminates highly reliably and quickly and no bst has to cast any more dots in service of the bst Alliance than they would otherwise. I'm very confident in saying that only the necromancer Malevolent Alliance is better under remotely similar conditions.
Personally, only change I would ask for is to change Ench req. from 6 to 5. Generally Ench are light on the roster and we are also doing a ton of other stuff even mid burn. Sure - spellshield the raid, lose alliance you could say is fair but could be a tiny step nicer to the usual 3-Ench lineup that many guilds have (if even that). I've also learned by listening to healrs b*tch that people still don't understand how alliance works. Those people need to just...
K, so it fulminates with the dots ticking and with the dot durations we can fire off a couple alliance with just a few dots. But how many allied BSTs are needed, is it 4? This is mainly where I'm confused as mentioned in my post with the number of bsts, we only have 1-3 bsts at any given raid night, we could sure use some more dedicated BSTs but hey you get what ya get...but the point being , how many allied BSTs are needed to fire off the fulminates. We haven't been able to test it really, because like I said...numbers.
If it works like the necromancer alliance you only need two of the class. One to cast alliance and one to trigger. The dot ticks which do NOT belong to the alliance caster count towards the fulmination requirement. I have no clue how beastlords work their dots but with minimal communication, you should be able to alternate casting alliance and keeping DoTs on to fulminate in a rotation. Test it on group mobs. One loads dots, one casts alliance afterwards. Watch the dot tick and fulmination messages.
Bst fulmination fires from one other bst .. so you need 2 total to get each bsts fulmination to fire. The casting of the dot counts as 1 hit .. each tick of dot counts as 1 hit ... so as long as there's 2 dots from another bst ticking down on a mob and u cast alliance the fulmination will fire.
I love how this is a raid spell and the pally one has half the value because of the stun which doesn't work on raid mobs
Rangers have been the 2nd most OP dps class since TDS, where ya been? Time to start practicing on a combat dummy!
Aside from Teamspeak, how do you coordinate Alliance casts if there is permanent chat lag >20s during raid times ? Welcome to AB.
Bard alliance is rather good but it's hard to keep track of it since it never says who casts the song in the chat log. It just appears as <Alliance of Sticks and Stones Rk. III> and that's it. Kind of annoying, really wish they'd give Bards cast messages so that sort of thing is trackable.
While Rangers have been very strong throughout EoK, there are also plenty of classes that can far exceed the DPS values you posted for that duration/raid. Rangers can definitely compete (especially considering they're a hybrid), but I think I agree with Thraine that player skill is probably a factor in your perception of Ranger DPS relative to other classes.
Sancus you should know first hand how good Findictive is from his time in ROI. He was 2nd on that parse I posted if that sheds any light on the talents of the rangers in question. Sure the numbers are kind of low, I agree. Parses from a few months ago we had berserkers hitting close to 400k sustained and rangers nearing 300k on Prince, I dont know what is accounting for the drop yet but would be curious to see if others are noticing dramatically lower numbers on Prince especially. Even during the time that Berserkers were at their apex of OP-ness Findictive was competitive with some of the elite folks in ROI, not to say he was winning, but it was ball park. Now that Berz have been nerfed, rangers like Moneyy and Findictive have few fights that they dont win. I dont want to turn this into a nerf thread. I just posted those numbers to illustrate that it is very possible for a ranger to spam cast summers for 15 straight minutes on the Prince fight, and the great results some can reach through its use with alliances. The raid force just needs to be effective at using their AE paragons, mod rods, Circle of mana, miniature horns of unity, KISS, bard reflexive, Glyph of Lost secrets and QM's.
