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Tio's Conjunction Junction

What are Fellowship Maneuvers (aka Conjunctions)?

Fellowship Maneuvers (formerly known as Conjunctions), or FMs for short, are coordinated fellowship attacks. With proper coordination they are the most powerful player initiated attacks in the game. FMs can deal massive damage, heal the fellowship, restore the fellowship's Power or a combination of those effects plus more very powerful additions like summoning an Oathbreaker that fights on your side for a certain amount of time. I will mostly use the terms Conjunction and FM in this guide because I can't spell "maneuver" properly.

When a Conjunction is triggered on the mob you are currently targeting a colour wheel will pop up:

(If you're a Hunter R and G will unfortunately be switched. I reckon this is still from the time when the different classes had different selections of only tree colours to chose from. I consider it a bug, but Turbine doesn't seem to give a damn.)

If a Conjunction is triggered on a different mob than the one you are targeting at the moment, the assist button will pop up instead:

Clicking this button will change your current target to the mob an FM was initiated on so you can join.

Every member of the fellowship now selects a colour and waits for the FM to fire. More complicated patterns on higher tiers will launch more powerful attacks. More on that later. For now it's enough to know that if you can count to six and tell four colours (R, G, Y and B) from each other you'll be able to contribute to even the most complicated Conjunctions. The base colours and their effects are:

B and G can be hit from range (about 20 metres). R and Y can only be hit from melee range (about 3 metres). The exception to this rule are Hunters who can hit every colour from range.

How are Conjunctions initiated?

Conjunctions can be triggered... Conjunctions can not be triggered on mobs that have stun immunity or Fellowship Maneuver immunity. Stun immunity is indicated by a red circle buff under the mob's Morale and Power bar: It kicks in after a mob has been stunned or knocked down and lasts for 10 seconds.

FM immunity is indicated by a red shield under the mob's Morale and Power bar:

It kicks in after a Conjunction has been started on the mob and lasts for one minute.

Some instance bosses such as Thrang or Thaurlach also have special buffs that make them immune to FMs. In such cases, something has to be done before triggering a Conjunction, like bringing them down to a certain level of Morale, making Fumaroles explode on them, wait for them to do some special attacks etc. Also note that some instance bosses like Thaurlach can have extend immunity to FMs (it lasts several minutes instead of only one in Thaurlach's case).

Make sure to not waste Conjunctions starters - watch the mob's status bar closely!

Patterns, Tiers etc.

Conjunctions will always be beneficial to the fellowship. Worst case scenario (nobody even bothers to hit a colour) is a stunned mob which gives you a few seconds to breath - but of course you want to pick a colour! Low on Power? Hit B. Morale down? Hit G. Morale and Power alright? Hit R or Y. Better than not hitting anything, but still not good. What you really want are named Conjunctions!

Named Conjunctions are made up from special patterns. The easiest patterns are pairs, so only two people contribute to the FM and pick the same colour. Examples are:

The part in bold is the name of the Conjunction. A list of named Conjunctions can be found at the end of this document. Named Conjunctions are much more powerful than just having everybody click a random colour, but they need some coordination.

Named Conjunctions have tiers, from 2 to 6, which for the first four tiers simply comes down to their length. Our examples above are all tier 2 Conjunctions because they are named and two colours long. If you look closely you will see that only G and B have an advanced effect on the whole fellowship, just as the description on the colours above state for tier 2 B and G FMs.

If in a six person fellowship the FM starts with let's say GG and the other members just contribute random colours that do not form a named Conjunction, let's say GGRBYR, the FM would still be "Rallying Cry" and a tier 2 G Conjunction. The last four colours would be treated as an effect for the person who clicked it, so R would deal direct damage, B would restore his own Power (not the fellowship's) and Y would deal weak direct damage and damage over time. The last four members of the fellowship would, however, benefit from the group heal over time GG provides.

Let's go on with our examples, this time we'll look at triples, the easiest length three FMs:

These are all tier 3 named Conjunctions of a single colour. The names are different to the tier 2 FMs and they are stronger, but you still only get one effect. And that's where straights come into play. The shortest straights possible are tier 3 Conjunctions, but they are tier 3 for all colours they are build with! Straights start with one colour and the next two colours following must follow in order around the colour wheel (the "normal" colour wheel, not the Hunter's, that's why it's harder to contribute to random not planned FMs for Hunters). Let's have a look at all possible tier 3 straights: You surely have noticed that tier 3 straights are always missing one colour, so let's go straight to tier 4 straights which give you the effects of all colours: The first colour sets the strongest effect of the Conjunction, so "Noble's Honour" will restore more Power than "Eagle's Eyrie" but will have a weaker heal over time and vice versa, but all tier 4 straights give you tier 4 FMs of all colours.

Other possible tier 4 named Conjunctions are flush fours and two pairs. I will just give two examples here, see the list at the end of this document for a full list of possible combinations:

Two pairs are easier to hit than a tier 4 straight, but only have two effects and have the disadvantage that if the fourth person cannot join for some reason you only have a tier 2 Conjunction while you would have at least a tier 3 FM with a straight or flush. The flush four has only one effect but is very easy to hit and will come down to a named conjunction even if only two or three people contribute. Also note that there are no three pairs, like GGBBRR (it would still be "Noble Lineage") and no flush five or flush six FMs (RRRRR and RRRRRR would still be "Hail of Blows").

Let's move on to length five Conjunctions. Length five FMs introduce the full house:

Note that you can't mix restoration and damage dealing, so BBBRR would only result in "Three Pronged Assault", a tier 3 B Conjunction, not a tier 5 B and tier 5 R FM (although the two Rs at the end would still deal direct damage just as if they would would have clicked R as the only contributor to the FM).

Now back to straights. Unfortunately length five straights are a bit special. They are not tier 5 Conjunctions of all colours. Instead they are tier 4 of three colours and a tier 5 conjunction of only one colour - the colour that is repeated. Here's a list of all length five straights:

As you can see only the length five flushes that have a certain colour appear twice are tier 5 Conjunctions of that colour. The other colours are "only" tier 4.

Let's move on to the length six FMs and start with straights. Length six straights are tier 4 Conjunctions of two colours and tier 6 Conjunctions of the other two colours, the two colours that appear twice:

There are also some "special" length five FMs, like two triples: This one is special as there is no GGGBBB (would be "Pure of Heart") and the Y does not seem to apply the timed debuff. And then there are five flush Rs + X which will give a tier 6 R plus a tier 6 of the last colour: And last but not least: uniques, the most powerful player initiated attacks in the game. Unfortunately they have a huge drawback: if only one player doesn't join or clicks the wrong colour or too early or too late you get no named conjunction at all. Most other combinations are already very powerful if only the first two or three colours hit, here you get basically nothing. Let's have a look at all uniques:

Tips'n'Tricks to nail that FM

* Bind the colours to your cursor keys and the assist button to the enter key on your number pad.

Common misconceptions

ToDo.

Advanced topics

ToDo.

List of named Conjunctions

ToDo.
Published under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2. Some pictures mooched from Lotro-Wiki.com.