Today, my gentle snowflakes*, we are going to discuss the priest ability Fade.

Fade is the spell that priests get at level 8. The tooltip says “Fade out, discouraging enemies from attacking you for 10 seconds.” The icon looks like an advertisement for the Blue Man Group, and when you punch it, your character becomes temporarily translucent.

For giggles, use a Light Feather and cast Levitate on yourself, then cast Fade. BOOM, instant ghost! Better than a Hallow’s Eve costume. Childish, I know, but it never gets old.

Back to the topic at hand, I see a lot of priests misusing this ability, and I can understand why. The translucent spell effect is used on too many other abilities, and that can be misleading.

Aggro Mini-Lesson
To understand Fade, you have to know just a little about aggro and hate. I’ll have a longer post dedicated to it later, but for now, I’ll give a mini-lesson.

‘Hate’ is the numeric, quantifiable amount of threat that you’ve built up on a mob. In layman’s terms, it’s ‘exactly how much you’ve pissed off the mob’.

‘Aggro’, on the other hand, is usually understood to indicate the person who is the ‘most hated’. So if someone ’steals aggro’, what they’ve done is put themselves on top of the hate list, thereby drawing the mob’s attention and attacks away from the tank and to themselves.

I tend to be somewhat bad and use the term ‘aggro’ in almost all cases. It’s the term I learned in EQ, and old habits are hard to break. So if I talk about ‘aggro management’ or ‘how much aggro you’ve got’ — I am talking about hate, but it’s all just semantics. You can nitpick on me all you want, but I’d wager you’re not truly confused about what I mean.

The important things to note here are :

1) Aggro is bad (unless you are a tank, then aggro is godly. Note : if you are a priest, you are NOT a tank. A fact that you, my gentle snowflakes, already know.)

2) Hate/Aggro is an actual number and can be calculated by people more interested in number crunching than me.

Every time you cast a spell or make an aggressive move toward a mob, you are building hate. Casting a heal will build hate on every single mob in the battle. Casting a direct damage spell will build hate on the targeted mob. You get the idea.

What Fade DOES
Let’s take a closer look at that tooltip, shall we?

“Fade out, discouraging enemies from attacking you for 10 seconds.”

“Discouraging” — the word discourage means ‘to dissuade’. By casting this spell, you are ‘discouraging’ the mob from attacking you. You are doing the game equivalent of giving the mob giant disney eyes, bursting into tears, and telling him that he shouldn’t eat you, because you’ve got seventeen kids at home to feed, and if you were to die they would just be distraught, and who would walk the dog or feed the homeless on Saturday mornings….

Discourage does NOT indicate guaranteed success. If developers had wanted to make the spell a guaranteed aggro wipe, they would have used a different word there. “Preventing” or “Thwarting”. ‘Thwarting’, by the way, is now the word of the day. Try to use it in a sentence, it’s a lovely word. Say it out loud. “Thwarting”. See, I knew you’d like it.

The word “Discouraging” was added as an indication of the spell’s true purpose.

It lowers your numerical “hate” against all mobs in a fight by a set EXACT and measurable number.

Let’s give an example. Please note that I pulled these numbers out of my magical number-generator hat, also known as my ass.

Scenario 1 : Tanky
You’re in a group fight. Tanky McTankerson has built up 150 hate on Mob_1 and 100 hate on Mob_2. Stabbity the rogue has built up 100 hate on mob_1 and zero hate on mob_2 (He’s assisting and spending all his time on a single mob, like a good little rogue).

You finish casting another greater heal on good ol’ Tanky, and Whups! That sends your aggro up to 140. Mob_1 could care less - he’s more worried about the guy with the shield and that odd tickling sensation around his midsection which indicates he’s just been backstabbed again.

But Mob_2 — well, he figures he’s had just about enough of your healing, and you look nice and squishy. He turns and runs toward you.

You cast Fade. This drops your aggro on BOTH mobs down by 50. So you now have 90 hate on both mobs.

Mob_2, like a the idiot he is, falls for your trick and runs back to the tank. Breathe easy, you’re safe again.

Scenario 2 : LoLWarrior
However, let’s say trusty ol’ Tanky is off grinding wife rep, so you have a LoLWarrior tanking for you. He’s been ignoring mob_2 completely and only generating hate on mob_1. Same situation as last time, only this time he’s got 200 hate on mob_1 and only about 50 hate on mob_2.

You cast your heal, steal aggro on mob_2, and Fade like you’re supposed to. Only the mob doesn’t go bouncing back to LoLWarrior. See, even after Fade, you’re at 90 hate, but the tank only had 50 hate to begin with. The mob is still pissed off at you more than the tank, and would rather peel you like an orange.

So for Fade to work, your tank has to know his stuff and have a goodly amount of aggro/threat built up on every mob, not just one.

But wait, there’s more. Take a look at that tooltip again.

“for 10 seconds”

…Now wait just one gol-darned minute! Am I saying that the effects of Fade are only temporary?

You betcher bottom dollar I am.

Let’s revisit Scenario 1, shall we? If you remember, we successfully sent that mob back on his merry way to our good friend Tanky.

Ten seconds go by, and Tanky still hasn’t touched mob_2. Our Fade (and it’s effects!) wear off. Our hate shoots up from wherever it is at this point plus the 50 hate we lost for using Fade. Mob_2 says “What a minute, what a dullard I am! That priest is probably easier to kill than this Platemail wearing sonuva biscuit eater, and she keeps healing him to boot! I’ll go give her what-for!”

He comes scurrying back to you, plenty pissed, and….guess what? Fade is still on cool-down. Unless you have the points spent in the Shadow tree to lower the cooldown, you’ve got another 20 seconds to rock back on your heels and pray that someone rescues you. And if that tank wants his heals, he’d better be paying enough attention to see that he’s lost a mob and it’s eating his priest.

That doesn’t mean that Fade is useless, but it DOES mean that it’s not a magic cure-all. It works marvelously in certain situations where you’ve got a good tank, but always remember that fade is :

1) finite and measurable
2) temporary

What Fade does NOT do, and never will

Despite the fact that it looks similar, Fade is neither Shadowmeld NOR Stealth.

You can NOT cast fade on yourself, then saunter into dangerous territories thinking that mobs won’t attack you.

It does not affect your aggro radius. If that Naga will attack you from 40 yards before Fade, it will STILL attack you from 40 yards while faded.

It doesn’t make you “harder to see” or “less noticeable”. Yes, I have seen priests do this - Fade, and then peek around a dangerous corner to look ahead.

We are not rogues, we can’t do that.

Also, Fade is not a 100% threat wipe. It will NOT put you at the bottom of the hate meters. It is a finite, measurable value.

It will -not- permanently lower your aggro. Again, we are not rogues. Rogues have an ability called Feint which will permanently reduce their aggro by a set amount if it lands. We cannot do that.

So spamming Fade will do you very little good.

When should you cast Fade?
You should cast Fade when you have stolen aggro, in order to send those mobs back to the person who SHOULD have aggro, namely the tank.

You should cast Fade when you see that you are encroaching on the Tanks threat range (if you use a ThreatMeters Addon). This is simply a preemptive version of waiting until you steal aggro. If you do it BEFORE you steal aggro, even better.

You should -not- cast Fade if you are the only person who has engaged a mob in battle. Do -not- cast Fade if you are soloing. In both of those cases, there is no one else on the mob’s threat list. So what if they hate you a little less? You’re still the only person they want to attack.

Do -not- cast fade in PvP. I hate to break it to you, but people don’t play by the same rules as mobs.

Summary
Fade is a -very- useful talent in group PvE play. It should be your FIRST panic button when something goes wrong and you get Aggro.

It is a very situational spell, and knowing when to use and when not to use it is the difference between a n00b and a good healer.

And don’t forget the tip about the Hallow’s Eve costume. *winks*


* Bonus points if you get the reference.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 and is filed under Spell Review, ~ Vonya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.