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Phaelia Aggro-Reducing Items

Published on March 19, 2007 by Phaelia
Items and Equipment, Lunar Guidance
12 Comments

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:

FadeRank 7
330 Mana
Instant cast30 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

  • Handling Threat
  • Adding Trinkets to Your Macros
  • +Spell Damage or +Healing to be Removed in Wrath?
12 Comments
Categories: Items and Equipment, Lunar Guidance

12 Comments

  • Gravatar Anonymous

    Friend of mine who is close with the Sporegar just made me a couple Shrouding Potions that I have tried out on a heroic trip. It tastes like tar but anything is better than dying. I can definitely recommend.

    2:24 pm on 9/7/07
  • Gravatar Phaelia

    I need to add Shrouding Potions to this post for sure. I love them, but unfortunately they’re on the same cooldown as Mana Potions. Nonetheless, I can see them being a great emergency tool when my trinket is already on cooldown! Thanks for pointing that out!

    3:14 pm on 9/7/07
  • Gravatar Anonymous

    Your “Rules of Threat Generation” are abit wrong.

    You generate constant amount of threat dependless of your position.

    To make mob aggro you, you have to be 10% above current mob target if you are standing in melee with mob, and 30% above if you are standing in range.
    So you can just do nothing, come to mob and get aggro if you are sitting somewhere at 120% aggro ^^

    This was made to prevent ping-pong kiting(with 2 hunters for example)

    Denetor @ Laughing Skull @ EU

    4:45 am on 10/6/07
  • Gravatar Phaelia

    @Denetor: Thank you for the correction! I’ve updated the post to reflect your revisions. =)

    10:10 pm on 10/7/07
  • Gravatar Someone

    Quote: “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 (of course, if you're the only one to resist or avoid, you're chances of survival are already pretty low).”

    You should probably update this again! As of 2.3: “Creature AI has been changed to no longer prioritize attacking unfeared targets over feared targets.”

    7:32 pm on 12/26/07
  • Gravatar Someone

    Why are your comments “processing” single quotes and changing them? I had to manually type a & #39; instead of the simple ' because they’re changed to something else (intentionally didn't “fix” in the they're above!)

    Odd! Didn’t happen in this comment!

    Let me try this instead…

    Just Testing: “This is a test we’re doing…”

    Nope. Can’t seem to find the exact conditions that make it happen, it just does sometimes… Instead of a ', it displays a ?

    7:35 pm on 12/26/07
  • Gravatar Treespaz

    Well my problem is.. say first pull in heroic SH i have a Kara/badges geared tank and i wont even START healing till hes 50% and I STILL pull aggro how do i get around things like that?

    12:10 pm on 1/11/08
  • Gravatar Phaelia

    @Someone: Thanks for the correction! Sorry I missed your comment earlier – it must have been when I was out of town. And I’m not sure about the single quotes thing. It’s something that WordPress does every now and again that cannot be disabled within its default configuration (you can install a plugin that disables it on a per-post basis).

    @Treespaz: I’m really not sure what to advise you in that situation. It sounds like the issue lies not with you but with your tank’s aggro generation. You could try tossing a Lifebloom on him before he engages so that he gets all of the aggro from the Bloom (which is AOE aggro divided among the number of mobs in the pull) while you would get none of the aggro from the HoT. Other than that, I recommend using these aggro-reducers and bringing good CC so that there are fewer mobs for him to have to maintain aggro on. You could even opt to CC one of the mobs via Cyclone for 10 seconds and have him switch to that one after downing the first. A single taunt should ensure he beats on your tank and not you. =)

    12:29 pm on 1/11/08
  • Gravatar Luke

    Quick question….how much reduced threat value do each of the items you listed provide? I know fade is 1500, but not the absolute value of most of the others.

    Thanks!

    Hushai / Medivh-US

    11:06 pm on 2/3/08
  • Gravatar Phaelia

    @Luke: Whoops! I guess those threat values got lost in the process of migrating from Blogspot to WordPress. I’ve restored the values to their respective tooltips. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

    11:30 pm on 2/4/08
  • Gravatar yunk

    I know this is old :) But even as a priest I use the Jewel of Charismatic Mystique for trash in heroics where I find healing threat is a problem unless the tank is overgeared. It’s only once every 5 minutes though which means one every few pulls. But it has saved me a few times.

    9:11 am on 3/18/08
  • Gravatar Phaelia

    @Yunk: I’m glad that you’re still finding value in these items. I’ve been able to reduce the total number I carry from 4 to just 2 (the Timelapse Shard and Jewel of Charismatic Mystique), but I still find them useful in 5-mans and certain aggro-sensitive fights like Morogrim’s Murlocs!

    3:04 pm on 3/26/08

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