The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Aggro Management
by Vonya
This is quite possibly one of the most important posts I’ll ever do, so let’s see if I can’t get it right.
If you want to play with other people, you MUST understand how aggro and threat work, and how to manage them properly.
Heck, if you’re a hunter, you have to understand it to play with your pet, so I could even make a pretty solid argument that if you don’t understand this, you’re running around in this game with blinders on.
Yes, it’s THAT important.
Let’s go over some vocabulary first. You’ll be tested on this after.
Mob
A mob is any creature/animal/thing in the game which might attack you.
Threat
Threat is a measurable value which indicates how much a mob hates you. Threat can actually be calculated numerically. As a matter of fact, it frequently IS numerically calculated and displayed on addon threatmeters such as Omen and KLH.
The way to use “threat” in a sentence is to say things such as “Careful, you’re gaining a lot of threat!” or “My tank is amazing, he can generate over 1k threat per second!” or “Wow, the boomkin was really high on threat in that fight!”
Threat is often used interchangeably with other words such as “hate” and “aggro”. As you’ll see in a moment, it doesn’t have the same MEANING as “aggro”, but 99% of the population will use “aggro” for everything, and never use “threat”.
That’s fine, but since the two are logically different, I’m going to try and shape up my vocabulary for the purposes of this entry. In real life, I’m probably more likely to yell out “Watch it, you’re gaining a lot of aggro!” than “Watch it, you’re gaining a lot of threat!” because I’m an old school gamer, and “aggro” is what we called it back in the golden days of Everquest.
Aggro
Aggro is…well, think of it like a game of hot potato. Every time you enter battle, each and every mob has a hot potato that they throw to someone. That potato is aggro. They will attack whoever is holding their potato.
The secret to playing the game is being able to tell the mobs who they should throw their potato at.
And you can quote me on that. *winks*
If you are “holding a potato” then you have aggro.
That is the definition of “Aggro”. The mobs will (in most cases, barring the 5% of encounters that were designed by Blizz so they could laugh uproariously at our flailing attempts to control threat) throw their potato to whoever they hate the most - i.e. the person on the top of their threat list.
Most classes never ever want to be caught holding the potato.
Tanks
It is the job of the tank to hold as many potatoes as he possibly can. (Now THAT was a hilarious mental image.) He wants to hold aggro on all of the mobs, keep their attention and hate focused on himself so that the rest of the group can kill them with ease. His plate armor ensures that he’s got the gear he needs to hold aggro (think of a shield like a great big flowery oven mitt, custom made for holding a handful of hot potatoes)
The tank has what he needs to hold aggro. If anyone else in the group “steals aggro” - they’d better have a darned good reason for it.
Stealing Aggro
“Stealing aggro” is another commonly used phrase, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. To continue our hot potato analogy, if you steal aggro, then you’ve just stolen the potato from whoever had it (most notably, the tank).
Edit : An Egotistical Reader reminded me that I should mention - in order to steal aggro, you must generate 110% of the threat of the highest person on the threat list if you are in melee range, and 130% if you are at distance/casting range. So healers (since you are, obviously, at range. Aren’t you? Of course you are) have to be at 130% of the threat by the tank in order to steal aggro. This is good news, as that little 30% bubble of safety is needed in a lot of encounters.
Stealing aggro is VERY bad unless you have good reason for it. As a priest, you never ever want to steal aggro - you never want to be the one holding the potato. If you find yourself with it, you want to get rid of it as fast as possible.
There are a few ways in which you can steal aggro - all of them involve you somehow making it to the top of the threat list for a particular mob.
Damage Threat
Every single time that you damage a mob, you gain threat FOR THAT MOB. Shadow priests do a lot of single-target damage, and tend to find themselves high on the threat list for the mob that they’re attacking. Most classes use damage to climb to the top of the threat list for mobs. Warlocks, hunters, rogues, mages - you name it. Anyone who is damaging a mob is gaining threat on that mob proportionate to the amount of damage that they’re doing.
For a healery priest, this type of threat gain is negligible - we really don’t spend much of our time damaging the mob.
Buff Threat
This is threat gained through various buffs and debuffs - even if a spell doesn’t do damage to a mob, it can really piss them off. If you cast Power Word : Fortitude on your group members in the middle of the battle, you’re going to generate an unhealthy amount of threat on ALL OF THE MOBS IN BATTLE.
Nobody likes to see their enemies become stronger. Classes like warlocks and hunters, who have debuffs, can also gain some threat by using them.
In general, however, this isn’t a kind of threat gain that most people need to worry about. Just…don’t buff people in the middle of the fight. It’s silly, it costs precious mana, and it pisses of the mobs.
Healing Threat
THIS - This is the priest’s greatest enemy.
Every time you heal any group member, you gain threat on EVERY SINGLE MOB in battle. Every one.
If you have a good tank, he’ll have been swapping targets, gaining threat on each mob in battle so that the first time you have to heal him, you don’t end up stealing aggro on 3/4 of the mobs.
If your tank has tunnel vision and is only concentrating on a single mob while ignoring all of the others, then you didn’t steal threat, your tank handed it to you on a silver platter.
A healer is only as good as their tank. A superb tank will make any decent healer look good - but a poor tank will leave even the most competent healer slathered across the floor with a veritable treasure trove of weaponry stuck in our gullet.
Have I mentioned yet how much I love my tanks?
Right, back to healing threat. You gain a crazy amount of threat every time you heal (and it makes sense - my most hated mobs in this game are the ones that heal themselves and their companions. I wanna SQUISH ‘em). Obviously, you can’t just NOT heal, so there has to be a way to combat this.
Lucky for us, there is.
CC
Crowd Control - this includes things like mage’s sheeping, warlock’s succubus, hunter’s freezing traps, rogue’s sapping…the list goes on and on. The best kind of crowd control is a great tank - CC is, at its heart, just a way of managing aggro, of controlling who a mob is attacking.
Most CC will actually keep a mob from attacking anyone for a time period, but anything which forces a mob to attack (or not attack) someone is crowd control.
Shackle Undead is the priest’s Crowd Control spell - it only works on undead, so it’s very situational.
An additional note - while a mob is shackled, it still builds threat. Since nobody is attacking the shackled mob, that means that YOU are still building threat on a shackled mob with every heal you cast. This is why, in Karazhan, it’s a good idea to burn down the shackled adds from Moroes rather than leaving them till after Moroes is dead - as soon as the mobs leave shackle, they’ll have had a good eight minutes of hatred focused on the healers. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Hunter’s freezing trap, on the other hand, does not build any new threat while he’s frozen. His threat list is frozen while he is - you could stand next to him and chain-cast your biggest group heal on the entire raid and he won’t care. This is one reason that hunter CC is so popular nowadays.
We have two more spells that might feasibly be called Crowd Control.
Psychic Scream, which is the perfect example of Crowd Lack-of-Control, is our AOE fear spell. VERY useful in the right situation, even outside of PvP. I burn my fear when I have a mob beating on me that I’m fairly certain the tank won’t be able to pick up in time. I don’t use my fear to “control” mobs, since the definition of “fear” means they’re running willy-nilly all over the place. Could vastly complicate the fight if they run into their buddies from up the road, the ones they go bowling with on Tuesday nights. But if the area is fairly clear and your tank is gouged, feared, rooted, or otherwise temporarily incapacitated, use that fear!
Also, use it if you’ve got the ShadowPriest talent Mind Flay, which will slow their panicked run to a crawl.
Mind Soothe is the other talent. It’s a pretty risky one, though, so I tend not to use it. Mind Soothe will dull the perceptions of humanoids, lowering the range at which they will aggro you. Note that it doesn’t actually mean they can’t aggro, just that you have to be closer to them. Also, it can fail. If it fails, you get that mob and all the mobs around it. Probably not the ideal situation, if you were trying to sneak past them.
Talents
There are also some lovely talents that you can (and should) pick up in the talent trees to help with your threat generation.
For shadow priests, there is a talent called Shadow Affinity which reduces threat from shadow spells. Predictably, this guy is in the shadow tree.
For healery priests, there is a talent called Silent Resolve which reduces all threat from your spells and also reduces the chance that they will be dispelled. This talent lives in the Discipline tree. The “reduces the chance that they will be displelled” bit is really only useful for PvP (player versus player). Your threat generation has absolutely no meaning to the other players out there that you might attack or be attacked by, and most PvE (player versus environment) mobs will not be dispelling your spells.
For a raiding priest, I recommend Silent Resolve so strongly as to look askance at anyone who doesn’t have the talent maxxed out. If you raid with me, you’d better have a hella good reason for not taking that talent.
Spells
There are also a few spells and tricks you can use to manage your threat.
Fade - This is a spell given to all priests. If you want a long discussion on how Fade works, I encourage you to use the link. The nutshell version is that it will TEMPORARILY lower your threat by a guaranteed, specific amount. In most cases, this will send the mob away from you so that it’ll start attacking the next-highest person on the threat list.
Use Fade when you accidentally gain aggro, or when you see that you’re about to. Since it’s a temporary spell, you should only use it when you need it - spamming Fade won’t accomplish much.
Wait before you heal - if you can…wait. Don’t blast away with your biggest heal as soon as you can - the longer you wait between heals, the more threat generation your tank can sneak in before you lay a heal (and its accompanying nuclear threat warhead) on him. Don’t hesitate to heal if he needs it, but wait when you can.
Renew - Renew is our HoT spell. Renew heals a small amount each tick - and gives a small amount of threat for each tick. Rather than a HUGE heal, and a spike in your threat, Renew is a steady heal and steady threat gain. Use it when you can, it’s a good spell. Tanks and warlocks LOVE this spell.
Power Word : Shield - PW:S is a sticky spell - most tanks will not appreciate you casting this on them before battle, though from the healer’s perspective, that’s the best time to cast it. The instant that PW:S is cast, it generates threat equal to half of the HP that it shields - so if it is a shield against 2,000 damage, you gain threat as though you’d cast a 1,000 hp heal on that person.
Not too shabby. PW:S does have some issues with tanks and rage generation, so don’t use it frequently. Feel free to toss it on the warlock or mage as they begin to AoE, and toss it on your tank if he took a health spike and needs a quick bandaid to help you get all the way through the casting time on your heal.
Frisbee - (aka Prayer of Mending). Use the frisbee AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. It gives the healing threat to the person who gets healed instead of you. I try to begin every fight with one or two frisbees - the tank gets a large chunk of time during which he’s not fighting me for aggro AND I actually HELP his threat generation. *hugs her frisbee fiercely*
Binding Heal - Another one of my favorite spells - Binding Heal will heal yourself and another player for a decent amount. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call it 2k. That’s not a shabby heal, especially on our notoriously low health pool. If I EVER need healing, the first thing I do is glance around and see if anyone else in the group needs healing. The tank is almost always the person to receive the other end of the heal, but sometimes it’s the warlock or the rogue - it depends on the situation.
And best of all? Binding Heal has a very low threat generation compared to the amount of healing it does. Reduced threat AND I get to heal myself and someone else? Where do I sign?!
Multiple Healers This one’s not always possible, but if you can split the healing threat up between multiple healers, that’s even better. This is one (of many) reasons that raids have multiple healers and love hybrids like Boomkins and Shadow Priests.
Summary
The “trick” to WoW, if such a thing exists, is to manage the aggro and have the PLAYERS be the one to tell the mobs who they should be attacking.
To do this, everyone in the group needs to have a strong understanding of Aggro mechanics and management, and how their abilities and actions affect it.
August 2nd, 2007
Hey Ego - Nice post on aggro. I’ve got 2 priests going right now, and the only time I’ve done healing in an instance was in the Wailing Caverns. Whew, that takes multi-tasking skills! I probably overhealed, but I felt busier than my hunter would have in WC.
Just wanted to say good job on the post, you’ve given a lot of good tips.
August 2nd, 2007
Very good primer, and well written.
It might be worth noting (and then again, it might not) in your section on stealing aggro that to steal it, one must generate 110% of the current aggro holder’s threat (if within 5 yards, aka melee distance), or 130% if they’re at range.
August 2nd, 2007
@Bloodshrike
Thank you!
I love Wailing Caverns - that’s one instance that needs more love. It’s SO much fun!
@Chris
Ack, you’re so right - that would be an awesome addition. I’ll smack it up there as soon as I find a link to confirm the numbers. *scampers*
August 2nd, 2007
Ahh very good post.
Keep ‘em coming.
August 2nd, 2007
Super post Ego.
I’ve sent links to this to all my little nublette friends, saying read this now.
you do not already know all this;
arrogance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, hate leads to noobness - such is the path of the Dark Side.
August 2nd, 2007
@gg
<3 I’ll do my best
/salute
@Fiscal
roflmao - one must strive to attain a state of anti-noobility. Remain calm, center your chi. Avoid the Dark Side at all costs, lest ye be beaten about the head and shoulders with sharp sticks.
That, or I’ll just pick up Elysya, our gnome warrior, and launch her like a lawn dart at those who offend me. She’s got that axe-head helm that’s sure to cause some serious damage. And she’s specc’d for ankle-biting.
August 2nd, 2007
^^ Good post as usual. I do want to point out that you missed out another priest CC in the CC section (although I do understand that you aren’t really focused on that sort of thing in this post). Mind control! I happen to mind control a lot, though I do realise that healery type priests tend to not mind control so they can actually heal the tank.
August 2nd, 2007
@Lauchis - that’s a good point. It’s CC that a priest can only use if they’re not main healer though (usually). I should probably add something in about it though…*ponders*
August 4th, 2007
Wailing Caverns? OH, how i hate that place! Something about the way that it sends you off in multiple directions combined with the fact that my party ALWAYS gets attacked by creatures that have fallen through the floor really pisses me off. I’ve reported the buggy pathing of creatures in there many times, but either the GM’s are laughing and throwing away my comments or the devs figure they have better things to do with their time than fix WC.
Uh.. where was i going with this?
Our shadow priest pulled aggro from me a couple of times in BM yesterday, but we figured out that i could mostly fix the problem by removing some of my gear so the enemies could actually HIT me and give me some damn rage. If i was in full tanking gear, i could barely throw any attacks because my bar was usually empty.
August 6th, 2007
@Mel
The “fallen through the floor” bug is definitely irritating. It’s always one of those big shamblers too.
One of the many reasons I love hunters - if you can be attacked by it, their pets can eat it. Regardless of how many laws of physics it’s currently breaking.
And yeah, it’s a sad state of affairs when you’ve got better armor than the instance can handle. My tank has a set of damage gear (spelldamage for his pally, regular damage for his warrior) and he’ll swap into pieces of that when we’re tanking lower-end instances. =]
August 22nd, 2007
Nice blog. Not much to add nor disagree upon
.
But… (I had to write it right?). The Moroes fight you say it’s better to take down the shackled targets before taken down Moroes. I know that if a shackle breaks they will run of and smack our druid healer (everybody hate that damn tree :P), but as soon as Moroes is down and our tank breaks the shackle the mob stays on him. I don’t know if he does something speciel, but I’ve never seen a shackled mob run towards me when the tank has it.
Better read some more of these blogs so I can believe that I’m not that bad of a healer priest
.
August 22nd, 2007
Silver
We’ve never tried it the other way, to be honest. Your raid team kills Moroes first?
August 22nd, 2007
One thing to note on the Moroes fight (or any fight which involves shackling adds) is that the warrior Taunt ability instantly gives the warrior as much threat (and no more) as that mob has on its current target. It also forces the mob to attack the warrior for a short period of time (just a few seconds, long enough for the warrior to get some rage and build additional threat to lock the mob down).
In other words, if you had it shackled for 8 minutes while everyone was killing Moroes (causing, for example, 80,000 threat over the course of the fight), then the warrior comes over, taunts it, and breaks the shackle, the warrior will end up with a VERY comfortable threat cushion vs. every DPS’er in the raid, allowing the mob to be burned down pretty much full blast and killed almost instantly. None of the other DPS classes should have any threat on that mob at all until they begin actively DPSing it. It would still be fairly easy for the healers to get aggro off the tank if they were unwise with their heals (or if the tank was poor at threat generation) but those adds generally don’t hit very hard anyway so not much tank healing should be needed once Moroes himself is dead.
August 23rd, 2007
Tulkas
Hmmm, I wonder if I can convince my raid to give it a shot, it sounds like it might work. I’d need to do some more research first, but if I convince them to try it, I’ll let you know how it goes!
August 25th, 2007
@Ego
Depending on how much CC we have with us we kill 2 or 3 adds and then move on to Moroes. The reason for this is that we want to make sure we have enough mana to at least get him down (probably a left-over from the first days in kara :).
@Tulkas
.
Ar yeah of course, I forget about the taunting since it cannot be used in most boss fights
August 27th, 2007
@Silver
That’s pretty much what we do too - keep at least one add alive through Moroes, but burn down a few of the others before we start on the big fellow.
August 31st, 2007
Comments have been Assimilated
September 20th, 2007
Throw the Hot Potatoe:-) ROFL!!! This is the best explanation of Aggro that I’ve ever read!
Prayer of Mending seems WONDERFULL! I’m lvl65 100% holy and haven’t put a single point into PoM. I’ve been boosting my other stats because I wanted to concentrate on myself rather the group for a bit…I been maxing out the talents like ‘increase resistence to spell damage’ for the past levels. the ‘victim’ of a heal gets the Aggro??? WOWOWOWOW that’s my lvl66 talent;-)
Xcal
September 21st, 2007
@xcal
The nice thing is it’s not a talent point - you get the spell from your trainer at 68!
Have fun with it when you get there!
September 29th, 2007
Outstanding! Very well done.
I wish I had read this 2 years ago.
Regards,
eloi
October 21st, 2007
I’ll have to save your site… just got curious, I have a 70 prot warrior and I’m interested in getting more serious about the lvl 21 priest i’ve started. I didn’t understand aggro/threat until I approached endgame and i’d like to understand much earlier how to control it with my healer
Very nice start to me understanding (and what to keep an eye on in the talent tree), thanks!
November 22nd, 2007
I had never heard that casting Fort on other players caused you to “generate an unhealthy amount of threat”. I always thought it was a small, insignificant amount of threat. Just out of dutiful curiosity (I rebuff in the middle of battle all the time), what is your source of information on that?
November 23rd, 2007
@MK
My source of information is buffing people and pulling aggro on the mobs.
Any threat is unhealthy. Sure, it’s less threat than you’d get from healing, and right after the line you quoted, I mentioned the following :
In general, however, this isn’t a kind of threat gain that most people need to worry about. Just…don’t buff people in the middle of the fight. It’s silly, it costs precious mana, and it pisses of the mobs.
No, you’re not going to generate a LOT of threat for buffing mid-fight. But it makes more sense to buff between fights, when you can regen the mana it cost to cast the buffs and you don’t have to worry about getting threat. Obviously, if you cast the buff later in the battle, you’re probably not going to get aggro, and with the new lowered buff costs, it won’t hurt you very much in the mana department.
My personal choice is to buff between fights and not have to worry about whether that mana might have saved the group from a wipe.
November 23rd, 2007
My personal choice is to buff between fights, too. I don’t always get that luxury, however. Say you are fighting Teron Gorefiend (or another environmental shadow damage heavy boss) and someone dies and gets battle rezzed. I am certainly going to rebuff shadow protection on them mid-battle. It’d be nice to know how much threat buffing actually causes. In my experiences, I haven’t had any trouble buffing mid-battle, but I know that buffing (just like crowd control abilities) aren’t accounted for in threat meters. And sure, most healers might not have to worry about this, but not all priests are healers. As a shadow priest constantly scrapping the aggro ceiling, every bit of unaccounted threat matters.
I heard that buffing will only aggro mobs that have zero other threat on them. I’ve never tried buffing in cases like that, but I think I’ll go run some tests of my own to learn more.
November 24th, 2007
Known from experience:
Buffing another player who is in combat will put you in combat and on the threat table.
Buffing another player will cause threat - how little I do not know, but I have a specific experience. I came across a warrior who had gone AFK and was being beat upon. I tossed a fort with my plan being fort, heal, run. The mob switched to me with the fort.
I have a guess about the amount of aggro generated, based solely on the currently known models. Note this is a GUESS — do not trust it with your life.
I am guessing that a fort buff will act like a heal for the amount of health by which you’ve improved your target. If my fort gives the warrior fighting a single mob 500 health, then I get 250 threat on that mob. If he’d fighting 5 mobs, I get 50 threat on each mob.
I am guessing that my Improved Divine Spirit buff will act like a mana infusion (I know, we priests don’t do that, but it’s the idea). My guessed value is their spirit plus the 40 I’ve added, times 15 (as though it’s Int), and then 5% or 10% of that depending on whether I’m 1/2 or 2/2 in IDS. Remember that once you have the number it’s treated like health In other words, if I toss this on a mage who has 120 base spirit, I generate (with 2/2) 120 threat to be divided between the mobs. (120 plus 40 = 160, which gives 2400 ‘mana’, of which 10% is 240, halved for the heal-threat application.)
I am guessing that my shadow protection buff generates at least one and no more than 10 points of threat per point of resistance. Which means MY shadow protection generates 700 threat at most, or less than what I generate from a flash heal.
Of the above I have the least confidence in the shadow protection threat. I think it strongly possible it generates no threat, or if it does it’s a lot less than 10 points per resistance.
December 19th, 2007
Hey,
Just a quick post to say how much I’m enjoying reading this blog! I’ve just started a priest, having always played damage classes in the past (none of which are past lvl 40 yet, so I have a lot to learn anyway!), so this has been a real eye opener! It sure helps to know how threat works before you try and avoid it, and all the info on instance runs has been a great help too.
Keeeep it up! Nice Xmas togs btw
January 2nd, 2008
I think this is the very first thing a healer needs to learn when he/she has reached level 70 and moves from shadow to Holy spec, in preparation for end game raiding/instances. With your permission I would like to link this article on our website for all our members to read.
January 2nd, 2008
@Jim
You’re more than welcome to do so, and I thank you for the compliment!
January 10th, 2008
Hey Ego, fantastic post - for the sheer brilliant explanation of necessary terms (and the fantastic analogy) as well as the actual priestly tips. Hopefully will make me a better healer, but also I think linkage to this for anyone I have to raid with who fails to appreciate threat issues.
January 15th, 2008
One trick that I use is to drop a Renew on the Tank right before he charges into combat (and possibly a Shield onto the mage as well). It appears that the benefits of spells cast before combat do not affect threat during combat. Does that jive with your experience and what you know?
January 15th, 2008
Tried it myself in smaller encounters. If i was too late and the tank was already in aggro range when i was casting the heal, my name popped up at the aggrometer at first sec.
If the cast was done and only the heal still ticking, the damagemeter kept quite.
But how about a druid tank breaking the shackle - have they an ability like taunt?
February 2nd, 2008
Hey Ego… Just found this blog last night, after being a holy/disc priest for neigh on 103 days or /played *cringe.* Must say, have been enjoying it! Felt compelled to add my two sense… yes, I too have noticed that buffing someone puts myself in combat, and I can believe that it generates some threat, but at the same time, I have often buffed newly battle-rezzed companions with little or no ill effect (note, however, most of the time this is not the first thing I do because buffing between encounters is by far the preferred and mana-efficient mode, and therefore, my tank in all likelihood has sufficient threat). Sometimes the extra 1k hitpoints is the difference of life or death for a fallen tank OR a fallen dps that for whatever reasons may need to take a hit or two. Also, the spirit buff causes 10% of all my caster’s dps to go up, proportional with their amount of total spirit. When I can afford the mana, I try to hit every battle rezzed with at least one buff or two, and as of yet, have never pulled *because* of buffing.
Second, have you or any of your readers noticed that POM (or as you’ve now gotten me calling it, our dearly beloved frisbee), IS BROKEN!??? It’s been causing ME threat! But only very recently. I think this is highly NOT COOL. I’ve been hearing rumors that others have faced the same problem, but… ya… wondering if others here have. This spell goes on each and every one of my tank’s first pulls, and 3 times last night in SSC i drew immediate agro where I would otherwise not have. Cant explain it but… wish bliz would UN-break it. *pout*
One last note, I lvled my priest holy/disc, or dis/holy, but never once shadow. I know… shocking… I however, was never ever a fan of addons UNTIL I started raiding. There are many that benefit me now, but what I hope to stress here (as it pertains to threat management) is a nice little UI called Xperl. Many cool things about this addon, but one of the best is the GIANT “AGGRO” warning that flashes across my screen when a mob is targeting me (regardless of what the threat meter says). I can not begin to tell you how many times this little feature has SAVED MY LIFE! (Think, Curator trash, phase-shifting Hydross, High King’s minions… among many others.) In a world where mobs hit harder than my sqishy armor can handle, the AGGRO warning + a quick fade = a living priest. Go download it, and then hotlink your fade and get very close and comfy with the ability to use it!
Nice post Ego… *wanders off to re-read tips on raid healing*
/salute
-Alessar, Frozen Blades, Eitrigg
February 15th, 2008
I know this is way late for comments, but you may want to add a few more things you can do to help manage your threat-
Enchanting your cloak with Subtlety will reduce all threat generation by 2%, and any healing or shadow priest should use this on their PvE cloak, as there just aren’t any better ones yet for us. The recipe used to drop in AQ rarely, so most enchanters don’t have it… but thanks to a recent patch, it is available from Honor Hold/Thrallmar vendors at the Exalted level.
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=25084
I personally use the Intellect/mana regen meta gem, but if you find you are frequently hitting the threat ceiling, you may want to pick up a Bracing Earthstorm Diamond, good for +26 healing/+9 damage/ additional 2% reduction to threat. The pattern to cut this is found on the Ethereal reagent vendor in Karazhan right before you get to the Chess Event, and only requires Revered rep with Consortium, which any Jewelcrafter should have.
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=25897
P.S. - Ego it’s great to hear from another Kirin Tor person! Nice low population, but I never see anyone talking about this Realm
February 29th, 2008
@Kusuria
This post is waaay out of date - it needs some tweaks to bring it up - just like the ones you’ve suggested. It’s on my to-do list. Unfortunately, I’m both busy AND lazy, which is a dangerous combination.
KirinTor is a great server. The population’s not too high, and I’ve found a good mix of guilds and people here, on both horde and alliance sides of the faction line. =] I like that it’s not talked about much, keeps it from being “discovered” by too many mouth-breathers.
March 5th, 2008
^_^ Thanks for the wonderful post! I’ve been playing WoW for a while but never tried a healer. Im 53 on my priesty now and your post REALLY helped prepare me for healing @ 70!
Ty again!
August 22nd, 2008
I have to say that this post was the most helpful of them all. I’ve been running around dungeons healing people to death and wondering why I was getting constantly attacked. *scratches head* “OH! So that’s what that threat stuff is!”
December 22nd, 2008
Thanks for a great post. Im pretty new to wow and are leveling my priest in Northrend at the moment. Since i was lvl 68 when Wotlk released ive never raided and have much to learn so your post was very helful. Ill make sure to stop by here again.
Tanks again
Smultron