A Guide to Threat
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Threat, also known as hate, is the concept which governs which party member any individual monster (mob) will attack. The most obvious way to generate threat to any given mob is to deal some damage to it. All things being equal, a mob will attack the party member dealing the most damage to it. This is important for two reasons:
1. Classes which are able to wear heavier armor (mail, and later on, plate) not only have more health points to begin with, but also their larger armor counts offer far more damage reduction than cloth or leather, which can be readily seen by holding the cursor over your stat for armor in your character window.
2. Healers, an absolute necessity in instanced dungeons, have limited mana and often long cast times which translates into limited heals. Thus, healing the party members which have the most armor, and thus best damage reduction, is, by far, the most efficient use of time and mana.
I hope that it is pretty obvious that you want the guys with the big armor taking the hits. I’ll soon describe for you how to make that happen.
There are some outright fallacious ideas with which I entered this game. Way back when, I was heavy into Starcraft. Often, in a real-time strategy game such as Starcraft, it is the case that the most efficient way to deal with an opposing army is to focus fire upon one enemy at a time, quickly destroying the foe and thus circumventing the damage that this individual foe might have continued to do to you if you were just letting your units attack the other units arbitrarily. Just the
other day, a certain mage I had brought with me into Blackrock Depths seemed to have the same idea, and just would not stop talking about it. Finally, I gave in just to show her what would happen. Something I neglected to mention earlier. A heal to a friendly generates threat to ALL of the mobs with whom you are engaged. Predictably, after the first heal was made, all of the mobs which had no damage on them, and only minimal threat from some area effect debuffs we had haphazardly cast, immediately set upon our healer, and made quite quick work of her, and without a healer, in an instance fighting elites of comparable level, the party is dead.
I already mentioned that party-based battle is not about damage. I am not saying that damage doesn’t have its place. Let me illustrate this better with a nightmare I had in an instance which I owe to a mage who shall remain nameless. Simply put, this mage had one thing in mind, arcane missiles early, often, and unceasing. As you can see on my post, I play a warrior, and I may be biased, but I’d say I play him pretty damn well. Warriors have the sole distinction in this game of having instant aggro-grabbing abilities, which, though they do not in themselves generate threat, give them time to generate it by forcing the mob to attack only us for a short set amount of time. However, no warrior can generate enough threat to overcome a suicidal mage attempting to set speed kill records on elite mobs. This mage died a lot, which often caused the rest of us to die often shortly thereafter, being shorthanded with no real damage doers. Yes, we need damage, but the battle must be paced properly so that tanking characters can keep threat leads on our more lithe ranged attackers, not to mention spaced properly so that any possible dangers to our cloth-wearers are both distant and obvious, giving tanks sufficient time to recover threat.
Enough with the anecdotes, I want to tell you how this is done right:
1. Warriors lead the way. Now I don’t care if this is your first time in this dungeon and the other guys have been here tons of times. Warriors, you are the battle leaders. It is simply too important that you be fully synchronized with the beginning of the battle for you to let others decide what disabling abilities are to be used and when they are to use them. You having the initial threat on all of the enemies (usually grabbed by a well-timed demoralizing shout) is crucial to the spacing and pacing of a battle. Whether you are charging headfirst, pulling, or having someone else pull to set up a charge for yourself, you are the ones who call it. Once you are in the battle, it is your job to place threat on as many mobs as you can. Tab, rend, tab, rend, etc. I hope I don’t need to tell you that if a mob sets upon one of your cloth wearers, it is your duty to run back there and regain his attention.
2. Other melee attackers follow. Your job with respect to threat is relatively simple: Keep one mob concentrated on you. Now I know that this might not always be the smartest course of action. A rogue, for example, may find it a better idea to jump on the mob which the warrior has already had a few good whacks on due to his lighter armor. I hear that rogues are the scourge of healer mana pools, but due to their large melee damage (and thus, huge threat generation), it can be quite unavoidable for rogues to take a few hits. However, for most, the general rule holds.
3. Mages drop the hammer. Mages do the most damage in the game, and can do it very quickly. Know that any idiot mage can put out a lot of damage. It takes a good mage who knows what he’s doing to do the right amount of damage at the right time. I’d say about 90 percent of the time, a mage wants to attack the target which the warrior has focused upon the most, waiting at least until a decent chunk of health (maybe 1/4 of the total health, I’d know better if I actually played a mage) has been taken out of the mob. You’ll get a feel for this. You’ll know that you’re doing the perfect amount when they only start coming for you when they haven’t a prayer of making it to you and getting more than a single hit in. As with any general rule here, there is an exception. If mobs set upon your party’s primary healer, you tee off on them, no doubt about it.
4. Healers hold off on healing as long as is safe. If you think warriors are good at generating threat, you should see what an in-battle heal does before damage is done to many of the mobs. Well, you probably caught the gist of that from my story above. Your holding off on heals until very necessary not only helps keep the battle formation intact for at least a few more seconds, it also helps you save on mana by getting the full effect out of each and every one of your heals. Also, priests, I am pretty sure this is common knowledge but, before a battle, feel free to put a Power Word: Shield on your tank. It’s like an initial heal, without the messy initial threat that usually goes along with that.
