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Player Entry

This guide is a work-in-progress and needs improvement. Please do feel free to edit this guide.

Thanks
-The Author

1 Introduction
2 Planning and Execution
3 Helpful Links

Introduction

Background

Fellowship Maneuvers are a general term for a group of attacks that can only be executed in some relatively rare circumstances. They can occur randomly as well as player-triggered (mainly by Burglars, Guardians and Captains, as well as certain Hunter traps and Lore-Master pets). The shortest maneuver recognized by the game is a 2-man maneuver, the longest a 6-man maneuver. There are Fellowship Maneuvers for any fellowship size between 2 and 6 people.

While it is possible to just hit random colors, the most powerful Fellowship Maneuvers require coordination between all members of a fellowship and can provide such useful benefits as a full group heal, heal over time, power regeneration, power over time, massive damage to the enemy, damage over time, or even in some cases area-of-effect damage and removal of fear(?). There are even a few maneuvers which summon one or two Oathbreaker Spirits to fight at your side.

They are generally very powerful and can make difficult fights significantly easier when executed properly.

Limitations

Fellowship Maneuvers occur only while in a fellowship, and largely only against Signature or higher enemies.
Only players level 12 and higher can participate in a Fellowship Maneuver.
Burglars, Guardians, Captains, Hunters and Lore-masters have specific skills to trigger a Fellowship Maneuver, but any class has a chance of randomly triggering one.
After a Fellowship Maneuver has been executed, the enemy will be immune to another Fellowship Maneuver for a full minute. The enemy is also immune to a Fellowship Maneuver during the stun immunity timer.
The maneuver needs to be executed relatively quickly, as the window of opportunity is relatively short. If someone does not make a selection within about 5 seconds (depending upon the trigger skill), the window closes and no one is able to contribute any more.
You cannot move, attack or defend yourself during a Fellowship Maneuver and luckily, neither does the targeted enemy. However, any mobs in the same fight will continue to attack.
You cannot contribute to a Fellowship Maneuver while stunned.
If the target dies before the maneuver gets completed, any beneficial effects from the partial maneuver (heals or power regeneration) will still be applied to your fellowship.

User Interface

This is the Fellowship Maneuver wheel. It displays if you have targeted an enemy whose defenses have been broken (aka a Fellowship Maneuver has been initiated).
The leader of a Fellowship can predetermine what Fellowship Maneuver he would like everyone to attempt. He can select one that he/she has already completed and make it visible to everyone in the group during a Fellowship Maneuver.
Each color of the wheel has its own range. The range for melee attack contributions are about 10 meters and ranged attacks are closer to 20 meters, Hunters can contribute with Red and Orange up to 40 meters. Whenever you are too far away to use a specific color, the color will be blocked on the wheel.
If you have the incorrect target selected, you will see a bullseye icon. You must either click that icon or click on the correct target in order to be able to contribute to the Fellowship Maneuver.
It is suggested that you use adjust the interface using Ctrl-\ to put these boxes in a more convenient location to your choosing, closer to your skill bars.

Planning and Execution

Planning a Fellowship Maneuver

Typically, Fellowship Maneuvers are discussed ahead of a fight. If you have a Burglar in your fellowship, he'll probably be the one who will trigger most maneuvers for example with Exploit Opening, a skill acquired at level 12, and often know the most about them at relatively early levels.

The leader has the capability to set any Fellowship Maneuver he/she knows before any fight, as shown in this screenshot. Whenever a maneuver then gets triggered, the guide will show up on your screen so you have a little helper on what you're supposed to do. Setting the maneuver requires opening the Character Journal, going to the Skills tab and then to the Conjunctions subsection where the leader can then put a check box next to the desired maneuver. Caveat: The list of maneuvers only shows which ones you've completed successfully before. Thus pre-selecting a maneuver is not always possible.

With PUGs (Pick-Up-Groups, i.e. random fellowships with people you don't play with on a regular basis) it's often a good idea to start out with simple Fellowship Maneuvers. Often that means everyone picks the same color (i.e. all red or all blue), though the more powerful maneuvers generally consist of two or more colors. An excellent list of known working maneuvers can be found here.

It is important to remember that classes differ at what range they can use which colors. Hunters for example can use all colors from a distance, whereas Minstrels can only use green and blue from a reasonable distance. The rule of thumb is that with the exception of Hunters, every class has to be in melee range to use red or yellow contributions.

Due to the fact that some character classes typically do not engage in melee combat it thus makes no sense to assign red or yellow to them (with the exception of Hunters, as mentioned). Lets presume your fellowship has decided to go with the Fellowship Maneuver Chill of Bone:

If you have a Minstrel in your group, it does make sense to have him/her either pick the first color (green) or the last one (blue). Presuming you assign him the last color blue, the colour green would then be assigned to any other non-melee class like Loremasters, if you have any in your group.

In the case of such simple maneuvers usually you only need to assign very few colors to specific players. In the example above that would be green and blue. Everyone else hits yellow as soon as they see that green has been selected, and whoever has blue just waits until all the yellows are in place, thus typically providing a great chance for successful execution of the maneuver.

For more complex Fellowship Maneuvers it is often essential to assign every single color and position to an individual player, though experienced groups often can pull off maneuvers on the fly.

Executing the Fellowship Maneuver

Executing a successful maneuver requires practice. Don't get frustrated if you don't pull it off on your first try, especially the more complex 6-man straights.

There are however a few tips you can follow to successfully execute a Fellowship Maneuver:

If you have someone in your fellowship who can trigger maneuvers, let them call out their intention to trigger the maneuver before they do so.
Try doing simple maneuvers at first, i.e. all same color, or conjunctions with two or three colors.
If you have Minstrels or Loremasters in the group, let them do blue or green.
In case you decide on a maneuver which has no blue or green in it, have the Loremasters and/or Minstrels stand relatively close to the group so they can run up to the enemy in time.
Since Minstrels rarely have enemies targeted (they're hopefully targeting your fellows, to heal them), assign them one of the last colors if possible.
Sometimes a maneuver will trigger randomly. Don't fret it, they're the most difficult ones to pull off.
Calling out colors via voice chat does help some people, but it also annoys other people.
Sometimes it makes more sense to use a different Fellowship Maneuver than the previously planned one, in particular to save a party from wiping or to replenish power in a long fight. This should generally be called out beforehand by the groups leader, i.e. "Next conjunction go all blue", or more often "Next conjunction Tom, Jane and Luke goe blue, then the rest go green".

Successful Strategies

For groups of three or larger, making straights are a powerful option. When longer straights (Turning the Wheel) are used, they usually provide everyone in the group with major healing if they involve greens, power fills if they involve blues, and damage either in a DOT (Yellow) or Direct (Red). A fellowship that can regularly pull off six-man straights is very powerful indeed.
Performing a straight FM of length 5 or 6 that involves starting with a Blue and turning the wheel in either direction will provide a fellowship with two Oathbreaker "pets". These Oathbreakers (strength depends on length 5 or 6) will attack the target mob or any other mob in the area that has aggro on the fellowship member who picked blue.
- For example: The burglar has pre-selected Wings of the Warlord as the Fellowship Maneuver of choice for the evening. Since he triggers it, it is easiest for him to go first, selecting Blue. A Captain is Yellow, Loremaster Green, Hunter Red, Minstrel Blue, and the Guardian Yellow. After completion, the Burglar and the Minstrel now have two Greater Oathbreakers, and even if the Guardian can't get the last Yellow in time, two regular Oathbreakers are summoned with Wrath of the Oathbreakers.
The key to higher tiered straights and uniques is communication. A good fellowship leader will preset the maneuver to be performed, or let the burglar take over as leader and do it before heading out into the wild. The burglar should also communicate either through chat text or voice what position he wants a certain person to contribute. A good rule of thumb is for the burglar to be first since he knows they are coming 85% of the time, put the loremaster on a blue or green in the early to middle positions, put the minstrel on a blue or green near the end (so he can finish his healing inductions) and put the guardian in one of the last yellow or red slots (for the 15% of the time when he starts a FM and is stunned for a couple of seconds).
The most important strategy is to practice, practice, practice. Some FM triggers are longer than others so timing can be critical. A Fellowship that practices the big six-man FMs before the major boss fight at the end of the instance will be much more prone to pull it off in the heat of the battle when everyone's hair is on fire...the other option without it could be a party wipe. By practicing, the minstrel will learn how much time he has before he clicks after healing, the hunters will learn to jump at triggers to stop inductions, and the six-man straights will be rolling and rolling.