threat
Latest
Phat Loot Phriday: Hypnotist's Watch
The post about trash and trinkets earlier this week reminded me of this item that we've never covered on PLP before. It's very class specific (hence the "trash and trinkets" argument), but for the right situation, it's pretty useful.Name: Hypnotist's Watch (Wowhead, Thottbot, Goblin Workshop)Type: Uncommon TrinketDamage/Speed: N/AAbilities: Use: Reduces your threat to enemy targets within 30 yards, making them less likely to attack you. Cooldown of five minutes, which means you're meant to use it a little less than every other fight -- usually only in situations where you need it. A two-minute trinket is meant to be used more often obviously (and you already know by now that you should be using trinkets as much as possible, right?), but this one is a little more special. Most people say it reduces threat by about 720, which isn't much (and there are a few other trinkets floating around that will do more). But this one is super easy to get, and in a few situations, 720 threat is all you need. Like which situations? Pets, mostly -- Warlocks or Hunters who accidentally pull aggro off their pets while leveling can pop this one and sent mobs back to their mini-tanks. DPS Warriors and Rogues can also use it as a preventative measure in instances, though in most cases there, you'll want to stick to DPS trinkets and rely on your usual threat management abilities to keep things controlled. This trinket is more for when you want to mess around solo, not when you're in a group and other people are depending on you. And one more thing: this trinket drops threat, but doesn't erase it. It won't make you lose aggro completely, like Vanish or Feign Death -- all it does is drop the threat numbers, and someone else (or your pet) has to be there to pick the mob up. How to Get It: This is husky loot today -- most of the items we've done the past few weeks are hardcore endgame raiding items, so here's one everyone can get. Everyone that can navigate Hellfire Peninsula, that is -- you'll want to talk to "Screaming" Screed Luckhead, who is one of the goblins near the wrecked Zepplin in the southwest part of the peninsula. He'll have you do a quest to pick up zepplin pieces, and then run you far south to the Warp Fields, where you'll have to kill Voidwalkers and steal their essence (of course, this is right near the Ravager nests down there, and near the Human ghosts area, so you'll probably want to chain quests by this point).Do the Voidwalker thing (the quest is called "Voidwalkers Gone Wild" -- cute), and then bring the essences back to Luckhead to claim your trinket.Getting Rid of It: By level 68, there are a few other threat trinkets which will serve you better, and by then hopefully you've learned how to control your threat anyway and have a much better DPS or utility trinket to use. This one will disenchant into an Arcane Dust, a Lesser Planar Essence, or a small chance of a Small Prismatic Shard, and will sell to vendors for 74s 64c. You are getting very sleepy...
Spiritual Guidance: Diving in to the dark side
Every Sunday, Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now usually Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus, but this week he has midterms and you're left to suffer with a substitute. Elizabeth recently toyed with the darker side of the priest's profession, but for better or worse, is holy again this week.I rolled my first Priest for a very simple reason -- I wanted to play with my friends, and I got sick of always having to wait on a healer when we wanted to do something together. With every group stalled for need of healing, picking up a healing class myself seemed a pragmatic solution. (And three healers later, I'm still at it.) So a few weeks ago when we happened to have plenty of healing... but were short DPS... by the same logic I decided I could respec Shadow and lend a hand. And though the plan may seem simple enough, there are quite a few things DPS classes have to worry about that healers may not pay attention to at all. Ever think about joining the dark side? There are a few things to consider before-hand...
Taming Zul'Aman bears (or not)
Mania wants to know (and so do we): can you train the bears in Zul'Aman or not? We at WoW Insider also heard a rumor over the weekend that the bears in Zul'Aman were trainable again (we heard that when the trolls riding bears split up, you had a short period of time to pick up the bear as a Hunter pet). But alas, all reports since then tell us that's not the case -- even if bears were trainable for a short period of time, they aren't now.Which isn't too surprising -- Hunters have a relationship to wild animals, not trained ones, so the fact that you can't steal bears from the trolls falls in line with Hunter lore (although, if you wanted to make the case that the bears were actually pre-trained and that it would make them easier to train, you probably could, even if Blizzard didn't listen). And it's not like there aren't other bears to get in the game. Blizzard should definitely have some fun pets to get like this (as long as there's no huge gameplay bonus to be gained), but apparently Zul'Aman bears aren't one of them.Of course, you can always go get your bear mount -- we've got a guide that tells you exactly how to do it. And hurry -- even those won't be available forever.
Interview with Antiarc, author of Omen
Even if you don't use Omen, it's likely you've seen it or heard about it here on WoW Insider, in WoW itself, or somewhere else in the WoW community. Patch 2.4 and the redesign of WoW's combat log called for a complete rebuild of many mods, and Omen was far and away the highest in demand.There were certainly some issues with Omen the day 2.4 launched, but the one man army behind the mod worked endlessly to get the addon in working order, while somehow making time for a chat mod, too. I think it's fair to say we know a thing or two about the mods, but what about the modder behind them?Luckily for all of you, Antiarc(aka Adrine) is open to bribes(not really) so I've managed to sucker him into answering a few questions for us, many of which are taken from you, the readers! We'll go through a series of three categories. The Man, in which we delve into Antiarc's personal and professional life. The Mods, wherein we ask a few questions about his experiences in mod-writing. The Miscellaneous, where we ask Antiarc random questions that hold no bearing on absolutely anything! Hooray! Read on!
Scattered Shots: Addons for shot timing, threat tracking, and pet training
Last week, Scattered Shots hit the bull's eye on which professions are best for a hunter. Today, we take aim at some interface problems hunters have, and the addons we can use to eliminate them.A user interface is an ever-evolving work of art. You can use it one way for a long time and then suddenly find one simple addon that lets you change everything and make it much better. Especially with all the problems that show up every patch, I've begun to look at my interface as a constant work in progress. As such, I'm usually in a constant state of getting rid of old addons, enjoying the ones I use now, and looking for new ones that might help me even more in the future. Every choice of what to put in or what to take out is a conscious decision about what will help make my game play smoother, more successful, and more visually interesting. As hunters, there are a number of needs that we have which other classes don't have - and special hunter addons are there to help in many of those cases, while in other situations, one of the more generalized addons might fit our needs best. Today I'll cover three of the most glaring interface problems for hunters and show you how I deal with them at the moment. In the comments section, feel free to share your own different interface issues, as well as your own solutions, for the benefit of our readers. Keep in mind that a user interface is an extremely subjective thing, and one solution may not work for everyone. Nonetheless, often times just sharing your idea will inspire someone else to vary it a little and make their own thing out of it, which is even better.
Scattered Shots: Basics of pet control
This week Scattered Shots comes to you barking and growling, hot on the heels of an overview about some of the cool complexity involved in being a hunter. Today we turn toward our animal half to get a look at how we can start making some of that complexity work for us.I love hunter pets. I love thinking about pets and writing about pets, and most of all I love managing my pets. I love that yo-yo feeling you can get when you tell your pet to go do something and then it does it well, coming back to you alive and healthy.But controlling your pet isn't necessarily easy or intuitive at first, and it can take a lot of practice to get used to. Below I've outlined some of the techniques I use to make the most of my pet, and described a way to practice controlling your pet by taking on multiple enemies at once.
How Adam got his loot back
About a week and a half ago I reported on an experience I had in Mount Hyjal while fighting Azgalor. While the fight went fine and we did him in one try, I wasn't on Azgalor's threat list and thus did not get any loot. I wasn't on the threat table because I had to tank some spawned demons up and away from the rest of the raid. It was a rather nice conflict of game mechanics.This all happened on Tuesday, March 18th. By Saturday, March 22nd, I had the two shiny pieces of loot that were coming to me: Glory of the Defender and Onslaught Handguards. Specialist Game Master Skelend had sent me the items, along with a form letter apologizing for the issues we experienced in game. I was quite happy to see this resolved. I was even more pleased that it was resolved quickly and did not take a few weeks; as many people, both those of you who left comments and friends of mine that I talked to, said it would.So what are we doing to make sure this never happens again? Well for one thing, all the melee is hitting the boss now with a ranged weapon after the tank gets a couple hits in. That's pretty much all we can do to assure this problem doesn't pop up again for us. Despite a few enquires I've made, there is no word from Blizzard if they've fixed this. I suspect that one day it'll just be hotfixed without much fanfare.All in all, not a terrible experience when something went wrong. Quick and quality support from Blizzard.
Hybrid Theory: Magisters' Terrace, stomping all over your comfort zone
We've been talking about Magisters' Terrace a lot. I have been talking about Magisters' Terrace a lot. Lucky you, we're going to talk about it some more!Magisters' Terrace is the brand new 5-man that came with Patch 2.4, so it comes across as much harder than it actually is. It is hard, sure, but not the soul-rending pain we're all feeling right now. All new dungeons require a period of adjustment. I remember when Dire Maul first came out, way back in the day. Everyone thought it was utterly horrifying.During this period of adjustment, you're going to run into groups being far more strict about group composition. Once the community has become accustomed to the difficulty level of Magisters' Terrace, things will ease up. Currently, a lot of damage specced hybrids are having a rough time finding a group consistently due to one pretty large factor: A lack of crowd control. There are a lot of things you can(and should) do to make up for that, and knowing those things will do a lot to contribute to speeding up the adjustment period.
Issues with Omen?
I gave a preview of Omen 2 awhile back before patch 2.4 hit, and we saw just how popular the addon is the other night. It has become almost necessary in the WoW community, and when it isn't working right, it really has an effect.Everyone that has downloaded Omen 2 has noticed that there are some... issues. The author is aware of most of these, so fixes are on the way, but there's only so many hours in a day. Bugs and issues can crop up in strange places though, so it never hurts to report them. There are some minor things you can do yourself to make sure things work smoothly and be confident the problem isn't on your end, so take a look behind the jump for some tips.
Scattered Shots: Beloved complexity
This week on Scattered Shots, David provides a break in the rushing waves of Patch 2.4 news to wax philosophical about his love of being a hunter. To be perfectly honest, he hasn't had time to even try out the new patch yet, but he's really looking forward to waxing on and off about the patch at some point as well.They say that being a hunter is WoW on easy mode, but in reality, the "easy mode" style of hunting is only the beginning of what a hunter can do. Sadly many hunters never really arise out of that stage - easy hunting can become like a rut in which one may not even realize that there is another way to do things. A player can rise out of this rut, however, either through an enterprising nature, or through acquaintance with a good hunter role-model. However one rises to it, the opportunity is there for hunters to do all kinds of things amazing things, mostly at the same time. In fact, you could say that a fundamental mechanic of the hunter class, probably the mechanic I love most in the entire game, is that of controlling multiple characters at once: the hunter and the pet. You have the most control over your hunter character, obviously, and the pet functions as something like a yo-yo which is attached to the hunter. You can point the pet in the direction of an enemy to attack, or you can recall it to wherever you are, but you can't tell it, for instance, to kite an enemy around in circles in the same way you yourself could.The limitations inherent in the abilities of the hunter and the pet, as well as the synergy between them, reminds me a bit of chess. Managing both the pet and the hunter to greatest effectiveness in different situations means you have to keep more than one thing in mind at all times. When you play most other classes, you can just pay attention to them and what they're doing, but being a good hunter requires you to be more aware of what's going on around you, just like chess requires you to keep track of the whole board, not just the little portion of it where the most action is happening.
Shield me, my love
Warriors of all shapes and sizes have one thing in common, their need for a good shield. They are the life blood of any tanking strategy. They give us health, protection, and threat. For a protection warrior, the shield is often time the most important part of their inventory. This is both a blessing and curse. While a good shield can't help a bad tank become good, a bad shield can easily make a good tank bad.There are a few key stats in a shield to look at. First, the armor – one of the most important stats for a tank. It lets us take less damage from each hit, which means our health lasts longer and our raid survives more. Block Value is another important stat, and helps determine how much damage a shield will outright mitigate when an attack is blocked. Finally, stamina and defense are also always present on a shield, and are again, a key stat for a warrior.While these stats are beautiful all in their own way, their infrequency in upgrades presents a problem for some warriors. To show what I'm talking about, let's take a look at what shields are available for the protection spec warrior at level 70.*
CC: How to run instances without a net
Running 5 man instances is the bread and butter of gearing up any PvE character. There are some short instances, and some longer ones. There are some bosses that are ready for fun, and others that like to die fast. Many people consider it a universal truth that all you need to do these instances is solid crowd control. When you're faced with a pack of six or seven level 70 elite mobs, the last thing you want is one or two of them running loose.But what can you do if you don't have any CC available? Are you just out of luck? Nope! There are a few tricks to running instances without CC, and if you pay close attention, you won't miss the lack of sheeps at all.In fact, you might just start preferring to run without crowd control entirely.
Have prot warriors been left behind?
So we've been having a back and forth about various tanking classes, and our overlords have commanded us to share this with you, the readers. So I enter into the fray, girded for battle (you have to gird, you'll pull something) and ready to provide unto you my opinions once again. For I am an opinionated cuss. Also, I just dropped something like 100g to respec fury for the night in SSC because we had a surplus of prot warriors, prot paladins and feral druids for once. So I got to see how the DPS half of the warrior class lives in raids, and it got me to thinking about how, of all three tanking classes, it was the warrior who got asked to respec.My responses here are unabashedly pro warrior and from my own experiences. Some of them will be extreme cases. Some of them will be stressing a worst case scenario. I'll admit my bias now. I love warriors. I don't love druids or paladins. I try and leave this bias out of the people... I have a lot of druid or pally friends in the tanking corps, because, well, I'm a tank first and foremost and not a DPS player anymore. So fury warriors and I have only our class in common most of the time (except for, say, last night in SSC), while those off spec tanks and I are tanks together. I try very hard never to call for a nerf to another class. And I don't think paladins or druids should be nerfed as tanks now. If you're interested on a perspective from a hybrid tank, Allison Robert's post is here.I'm going to reiterate that. I do not think paladins or druids need to be nerfed as tanks now. I hate nerfing. I hate taking abilities away from a class. I do not think they are overly weak, no: in fact, I find them fiendishly strong tanks. Paladins can AoE tank to a degree that I find irritating, to be honest, and ferals are just plain better as offtanks because they can tank as well as a prot warrior (specific boss gimmicks aside) and DPS far, far better than a prot warrior, no matter what gear switching he does. You'll notice that no one asked a feral to respec to offtank and DPS, because that would be absurd. All he needs to do is switch gear. I had to re-train in order to contribute.This doesn't mean that I don't feel that prot warriors can tank. Hell yes we can. We can tank any boss in the game... if you'll let us. I will say this about the paradigm I'm seeing, the idea that paladins and druids are getting shoved aside for warrior tanks in late endgame raiding, that it's not fair that warrior threat starts to catch up in Hyjal and Black Temple, catch up or exceed. If so, where was all the complaint from hybrids when warrior tanks got to watch their archaic static threat mechanism sideline them to an extent post TBC?
Shifting Perspectives: Bear Tanking Strategies Part 2
Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, sometimes known as the Big Bear Butt Blogger, continues his discussion of the finer points of bear tanking. Previously, I talked about exactly how threat mechanics work in groups. Now, you might think I was going to use that knowledge to inform our decisions on being a bear tank. Instead, I'm going to talk about gearing up. I'd like to start by saying, up front, that this article is unlikely to contain stunning new information that will change your bear tanking world. For those players that are firmly bear tanking their way through Gruul's Lair and beyond, you are most likely to read this, chuckle, and move on. You are already living the dream, kicking butt and taking purples. Hopefully, you will share some of your insight with the rest of us. But for the player just starting out, eager to prepare themselves to be the best bear tank they can be, I hope that this article will be of some help. So you want to be a bear tank. Great! Bear tanks are lots of fun, and speccing feral gives you the wonderful ability to not only be able to tank at the drop of a /invite, but also let's you solo effectively with a simple change of gear. To be a bear tank, you need to realize that your role requires you to focus on two main responsibilities;
