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Guide to Threat Part I: What is Threat?
I mentioned recently that I wanted to write a series of posts on threat, what it is, how it works, etc. I should say again that I didn’t decide to do this because I think I’m uber or that I understand anything in WoW better than anyone else. I just think that if I take the time to do the research and write it all down for others to read in an easy to understand manner, I will understand it much better myself. So here goes nothin’.
What is threat?
Wowwiki.com says:
Threat is a measure of an NPC’s aggression towards a player.
That pretty elegantly sums it up I think.
More specifically, threat is the mechanism in the World of Warcraft which helps an enemy decide who or what to attack. When you’re out questing with other players or romping through dungeons with a full group, the enemies you encounter need to decide who they will be focused on and threat is what controls this.
Each enemy you encounter in WoW maintains a list of all players it is aware of and how threatening they are. The player who is highest on a given enemy’s threat list is going to be the one getting attacked (with some notable exceptions).
Without the threat system, enemy encounters would be wildly out of control and players would spend more time running back to their corpses than actually enjoying the game. Especially Mages and Warlocks.
Threat is created by damage done to enemies and beneficial effects to players. Beneficial effects include healing (from spells or items including bandages, potions and health stones), buffs (such as a Warrior’s shouts), and regaining mana or rage from spells or items.
Threat from damage is applied directly to the enemy the damage was dealt to. You blast an enemy with Fireball or whack him with Mortal Strike, he gains the amount of damage you dealt as that many points of threat towards you.
Threat from beneficial effects is generated on ALL enemies that are aware of the player that caused the effect and is divided evenly amongst each of those enemies. So there’s a group of three mobs being tanked by a player in your group. When you heal that tank, the amount of health he regained (not including any extra overhealed amount) is divided in half. One half is thrown away and the other half is divided evenly among those three mobs as points of threat towards you, the healer.
And that is just the base threat system. Most classes have talents that increase or decrease the amount of threat they generate (ex. Feral Instinct). There are pieces of gear that come with threat modifiers (ex. Muck-Covered Drape). Some abilities even have innate threat modifiers built into them (ex. Searing Pain).
Now trying to do all this math on the fly is impossible. Even if you are some sort of computer-brained math wizard AND you could actually SEE what everyone in your group was doing at the same time AND you knew every threat modifier they had equipped, talented and enchanted, trying to keep up with it would be exhausting.
That’s why there are AddOns that keep track of and allow players to monitor their threat. Arguably the most popular is Omen. A popular alternative is KLHThreatMeter. I personally use Omen so that is the one I’ll be referring to throughout my guide.
And speaking of math, I think this is a good place to stop and wait for the next installment. Be on the lookout for Guide to Threat Part II: Math.