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Tank Talk: All about aggro
Tank Talk is WoW Insider's tanking column, promising you an exciting and educational look at the world of getting the stuffing thrashed out of you in a 10- or 25-man raid. The column is rotated amongst Matthew Rossi (Warrior/Paladin), Adam Holisky (Warrior), Michael Gray (Paladin), and Allison Robert (Druid). Our aim is to use this column to debate and discuss class differences, raid-tanking strategies, tips, tricks, and news concerning all things meatshieldish. This week's Tank Talk is a little bit of a public service. Recently huddled around the ticker-tapes of WoW Insider, we came to realize that your intrepid Insider lacked a particular resource: a basic guide to aggro. Certainly, this most important of subjects is old hat to us meatshields ... but maybe not quite so much to everyone around us. And gosh, who better to talk about this subject than your devoted Tank Talk tanks! And, really. If your team doesn't know aggro, then you're going to have a hell of a time as a tank. So, let's Tank Talk about aggro. What it is, where it comes from, why you want it, and why they don't want it.
Bornakk hints at upcoming threat meter
This isn't the first time we've heard about putting a built-in threat meter in the standard World of Warcraft interface. The idea came up back at Blizzcon 07, and Neth confirmed plans to include such a meter in February '08. But there's not been much discussion about the idea since then. Today, Bornakk confirmed they're still working on it, but there's obviously no details to be shared yet. ("Soon," and all that.) So, while we don't know that we'll be seeing the threat meter with the release of Wrath of the Lich King, at least we know it's probably still coming eventually. Threat meters are almost entirely a mandatory requirement for most raids. The two big ones are KTM and Omen, of course. It lets your DPS know when to let off the gas a bit, before they pull aggro off the tank. Or, maybe, tells the tanks they need to push the pedal harder and build up more of their own threat instead of limiting the DPS. I can't imagine raiding without one, and if that's the state of things for enough players, I expect Blizzard will take it over themselves soon enough.
Built-in threat meter coming in future patch
As time moves forward, so does WoW's built-in interface. Last patch we got some big additions in voice chat and guild banks (alright, that's not quite interface, but it's not quite gameplay either), as well as cursors and tracking for various types of objects and NPCs. There's not much in terms of interface news in patch 2.4, but Nethaera has just confirmed that a future patch will bring a big new feature: threat meters. (We first heard about this back at Blizzcon.)Required by many raid groups, two big threat meter add-ons have been available for a while: KLHThreatMeter (a.k.a. KTM) and Omen Threat Meter. They both work very well (and Omen's new version is going to have some shiny new features), but they share a flaw: they don't have direct access to the game's threat info, relying instead on databases of clever deductions and discoveries painstakingly built up over months. This means whenever a new patch comes out, the developers have to figure out what, if anything, has changed in terms of threat numbers, and how much. Presumably, Blizzard's threat meter will have direct access to the numbers. And hopefully when the threat meter is added to the game there will me methods added to the API for accessing the numbers, so KTM and Omen can become even better alongside the new official meter.
A message to those that ask me to group
Dear PUG Members,Recently you've asked me to group with you. This is cool, and I appreciate being wanted. It gives me that warm and fuzzy feeling inside. The same warm and fuzzy feeling you get after you've killed a million boars and are holding the Sword of a Thousand Truths. However, if you don't mind, could we go over a few dos and don'ts?Here's what you should do: Do ask nicely if I have time to join your group. Do look to see if I'm using the LFG tool. If I'm not, I probably don't want to group. Do offer me at least 100 gold to run you through the Stockades. The two gold you're putting forth does not make up for the time it's going to take me to run you through. Do talk in English or some other real language. I'll even accept Klingon. Leet speak is not a language. Do ask if everyone is ready before MDing the boss to me. Do use Omen or KTM. Do use something more than auto-attack. Here's what you should NOT do:
Breakfast Topic: Refreshing addons
I'll admit it-- I'm a lazy addon user. Whenever Blizzard updates the client, I always manage to forget about my addons. I'll log in, realize I have no addons working, and then jump back out and just "enable out-of-date addons." Eventually, those addons will show bugs, so I'll log back out, disable them, and then keep playing without them for a while.And sooner or later, as happened this past weekend, someone will point out that I'm not running KTM, or that I don't have the latest version of CTRaid up and running, so I'll write down a list of everything I need, go and download them all at once, and refresh them all completely. When I do this, it's a good feeling. It makes the game seem new again to me-- everything works, and everything does what I want it to once again.Until Blizzard puts out a patch, and then the whole grueling process starts over. I would just download new addons when a new patch drops, but addon authors aren't all on the same schedules. And I know programs like the WowAceUpdater help (by checking for updates for me), but so far I've never gotten around to installing those programs either.But that's just me, and I've got to deal with my own problems. How often do you refresh your addons completely? Do you have a good system for keeping your addons up to date, or, like me, do you only get around to redownloading everything when something stops working?
A faster, better, stronger threatmeter
KLHThreatMeter (more commonly known as KTM) is definitely one of the most required addons out there for raiding guilds. With the addon installed on every member of the raid, the threatmeter can give a heads up to both tanks and DPS when aggro is getting unbalanced. But KTM is an older addon, and as a result, it's gotten a little shaky-- it's a bit of a resource hog, and some readings from it (especially when not everyone has it installed) can be a little off.Enter Omen, a relatively new addon (part of the Ace set) that the hype says is a KTM-killer. The author says it's fast and clean and it seems much more customizable than KTM-- you can even pull out specific threat bars to watch. It'll also hook up to KTM, so if everyone else in your raid is using KTM, Omen will still work for you-- and probably better. One big drawback is that it won't distinguish threat between same-named mobs, but KTM doesn't do that either (it's a failure of the addon API), and there's not too many situations where you'd need something like that.Lots of guilds have already switched over to Omen, and apparently more all the time. Have you used it yet? Does it match up to the hype? I haven't had a chance to get it running in a raid, but the next time my guild heads into Karazhan, I'll be watching to see how it works. If KTM hasn't been running as quickly as you've wanted lately (and you're looking for something harder, faster, better, and stronger), Omen might be worth checking out as a new way to handle threat.
