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Phaelia

Aggro-Reducing Items

March 19, 2007
Categories: Items and Equipment, Lunar Guidance, PvE

In the all-too-frequent comparisons of druids and priests as primary healers, one of the tools that generally stands out is the priest ability Fade. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this ability:

Fade Rank 7

330 Mana

Instant cast 30 sec cooldown
Fade out, discouraging enemies from attacking you for 10 sec.  More effective than Fade (Rank 6).

The exact effect of this ability is to reduce a priest’s threat level by 1500 points for 10 seconds. At the end of ten seconds, a priest regains those 1500 points of threat. The assumption is that the 10 second reprieve of Fade will allow a priest to scale back her healing so that the tank can regain aggro. It should also prevent a priest from having to exacerbate the problem of gaining healing aggro by healing herself.

Until recently, aggro reduction was an ability limited only to priests and rogues. However, when content patch 1.9, the Gates of Ahn’Qiraj, went live an epic-colored trinket quietly made its way among the Revered rewards for Cenarion Circle:

Grace of Earth
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
Use: Reduces your threat to enemy targets [by 650] within 30 yards, making them less likely to attack you.

That sounds suspiciously like the description for the priest class ability, Fade, with the added benefit that the threat reduction isn’t time-limited but is actually a permanent threat reduction. At the time, Fade (Rank 6) was the highest available with a threat reduction of 820 points. So for a mere month of ridiculously arduous reputation grinding in Silithus, land of a thousand bugs, a druid (or anyone else) could have a permanent threat reduction equal to 80% of that available to priests! Also notable is that, unlike the rogue ability Feint, the effect of this trinket is not targeted; it effects all hostile creatures within 30 yards.

I completed the reputation/badge grinds necessary to obtain this item four months before the BC release. While I found it to be useful in raids, I frequently used my Mindtap Talisman and Royal Seal of Eldre’Thalas instead. It really wasn’t until the release of the Burning Crusade and an almost endless number of 5-man instance runs that I have come to appreciate the benefit of these items.

I presently have one trinket slot dedicated to having one of these items equipped at all times. I use the TrinketMenu addon to queue my threat reduction trinkets in order of decreasing power. This ensures that a fresh trinket is swapped in whenever I’ve exited combat after using one, allowing me to perma-fade at least once a combat. Trinketmenu also lets you bind a key to each of your trinkets, allowing you to respond instantly when an enraged mob comes charging at you, causing him to do an immediate about-face toward your tank.

For those of you interested in trying this tactic out for yourself, here’s a list of the aggro-reduction items that I’ve found, their relative strengths and weaknesses, and how to acquire them:

Hypnotist’s Watch
Binds when picked up
Trinket
Use: Reduces your threat to enemy targets [by 720] within 30 yards, making them less likely to attack you.
"I’m going to count backwards from three. When I reach zero, you’re going to stop pummeling me… well, that’s the theory."

Acquired from the quest Voidwalker’s Gone Wild in Hellfire Peninsula. Arguably the easiest of the threat reduction items to obtain.

Jewel of Charismatic Mystique
Binds when picked up
Unique-Equipped
Trinket
Requires Level 68
Use: Reduces your threat to enemy targets [by 1075] within 30 yards, making them less likely to attack you.

Drop from Grandmaster Vorpil in Shadow Labyrinth. Highest value available outside of those requiring a reputation grind.

Timelapse Shard
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
+27 Stamina
Requires Level 70
Requires Keepers of Time - Exalted
Equip: Improves your resilience rating by 24.
Use: Reduces your threat to enemy targets [by 901] within 30 yards, making them less likely to attack you.

Acquired at Exalted reputation with the Keepers of Time faction. Shortest cooldown of any of the aggro reduction items and some very nice stats while equipped.

The obvious downside of using the above items is the loss of one or more trinket slots. Which is a small price to pay for the ability to emulate the core ability of another class, especially when you consider that the effects on a trinket are often on-use anyway. Nonetheless, here are some additional options to consider if you don’t want to forfeit a trinket. They can also be used in conjunction with one or more of the above if you prefer:

Muck-Covered Drape
Binds when picked up
Back
66 Armor
+30 Stamina
Requires Level 64
Requires Sporeggar - Honored
Use: Reduces your threat to enemy targets [by 473] within 30 yards, making them less likely to attack you.

Purchased from the Sporeggar at Honored reputation. It has one of the lowest threat modifiers, and you’d be giving up a cape slot to use it. Nonetheless, I will sometimes equip both the cape and an aggro-reducing trinket on fights I know are likely to be problematic for my tank.

Shrouding Potion
Requires Level 55
Use: Shrouds you from nearby enemies so you seem [800 points] less threatening to them.

The recipe for Shrouding Potions can be purchased and learned at Exalted reputation with Sporeggar. They require 3 Ragveil and 1 Netherbloom to make and reduce your threat by 800. The downside? They share a cooldown timer with Mana and Health potions.


Aggro-Reduction Immunity:

Some mobs, most notably who have wonky aggro to begin with, are immune to the effects provided by these items. It’s worth remembering which of these mobs cannot be affected so that you don’t waste a cooldown for a higher value trinket trying to survive (and, presumably, find some other means of survival). Fel Overseers from Shadow Labyrinth and Moroes from Karazhan are two such mobs.

Rules of Threat Generation:

  1. Each point of healing done generates 1/2 the amount of threat for each point of damage done.
  2. For the mob to turn to you, you must exceed the tank’s threat by 10%. If you’re standing outside of melee range, you must exceed the tanks’s threat by 30%. This makes the strategy of standing near mobs which AOE fear in the hopes of getting feared along with your tank more dangerous should you be unlucky enough to resist since you’ll be more likely to attract his attention than any casters foolish enough to be standing at range. (As of Patch 2.3, mobs that cast Fear no longer reprioritize their targets by who remains unfeared.0
  3. Both the Priest and Druid class have 5-point talents in their healing-focused talent trees to reduce healing threat across the board by up to 30%, and warriors can increase or decrease the amount of threat they generate depending upon their choice of stance (Defensive versus Berserker).
  4. Finally, you must exceed the threat value of another player by 10% before the mob will switch its target to you.

Related Posts

  • Don’t Poke Fun at Thorns (They Hurt)
  • Handling Threat
  • Mailbag: Bestowable Threat
( 12 ) Comments
Categories: Items and Equipment, Lunar Guidance, PvE
 

Recent Comments

Impressions Solicited: Spell Haste (4)

Runycat
The only druid who’s had any luck with spell haste in our raid set up is our Moonglow/Dreamstate healer. I can’t personally comment on the effectiveness, but if you’re rocking a ToL build, I’m not sure how viable stacking spell haste really is. One thing’s for sure–I’d never stack it as a crutch over other stats. In addition to the items out of ZA, there are a number of haste-stacked items out of BT as well, most notably: Shroud of the...

Thorgrim
Another good reason to look at spell haste is if you, like me, are druid-healing-challenged and have trouble maintaining even a 3 character triple stack; spell haste gives you a lot more room for error.

Lidon
True, you would run out of mana fast Miyra, but the situation proposed in the email is not the average case. For runs like ZA where there are only two tanks, this allows you to squeeze off more raid heals in between keeping lifebloom up. One of my biggest annoyances with ZA is the spirit bolts that Hex Lord Macaroni dishes out to everyone. Usually tossing one rejuv on each person keeps them alive, but unless I start those early, I only get 6 or so off, relying on the other healers, and...

Miyra
While it is definitely true that the healing output afforded by having 5 GCD’s available for tanks is amazing, I don’t think it could be sustained for very long. You are looking at a minimum of 880 mana per cycle if you just used Lifebloom. At that rate you would burn through 10,000 mana in ~57 seconds. Even figuring in a full mana bar’s worth of innervate and chain potting you would be out of tricks in 2 and a half…maybe 3 minutes max.
Some Would Have Made Him into Boots… (11)

Mooire
Grats! I’ve been religously doing my fishing quest each day and have yet to get a baby croc! I’m sure Toothy is just as happy to be your pet as you are at having him. :)

Phaelia
@Tone: Ohhhhh! Okay! Yes, that must be the reference. I only vaguely remember the monster hugging on poor Bugs. But I’ll never forget the line. (Okay, I Googled it to get it exactly right. Same thing!) :-D

Tone
Re: Abominable Snowdruid Oh, I had just thought that your words were a reference to the Abominable Snowman from Bugs Bunny (”My own little bunny rabbit! I will name him George, and I will hug him, and pet him, and squeeze him….”). I was concerned for little Toothy’s safety, at the hands of an over-enthusiastic new owner! ;-)

Mooire
Grats!!! I’ve religiously been doing the fishing quest and have yet to get a Croc pet! They’re so cute with their big green eyes. :)
LFD = Looking for Designer (17)

Mike
I worked for Microsoft (not in Windows or in IE) so I might be biased the other way but I believe the IE differences are not really that sinister. IE 6 is a pretty old browser, it was released in 2001. A lot of the CSS standards were relatively young at the time, and CSS support in other browsers wasn’t stellar either. IE 7.0 improved on CSS support from IE 6.0, it’s just that other modern browsers had more releases and improved more during the same period of time. Ironically...

Juergen
It’s centered now, and there is a tree looking out from behind the central column. So GJ, have a cookie :)
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