Our Resto Shaman was pulling weirdly high threat (Threat Classic 2 mod) from 60-70 and in Karazhan tonight. I never saw anything like it in Classic and I played a resto shaman myself classic from day 1. He even eventually specced 2/3 in the threat reduction talent (which I or he had never taken or deemed remotely necessary throughout all of classic).
Something feels off/weird/wrong. Anyone else experience this, know the cause, have a fix, etc.? Did something change? Am I just nuts?
Can you elaborate? Was it just watching on the mod, or was he actually pulling aggro on things and creating issues? What was the healing output of the other healer, and how were their problems? What was their class?
I’m not a TBC expert, but speccing full threat reduction sounds like a good way to not cause issues.
Post your log if you think something was going oddly and people can look to see what happened. Otherwise its only guess work and thats not really to helpfull in fact it leads to the spread on missinfo and that is more hurtful than helpful.
During leveling, when there was a threat drop and tons of damage, he was keeping up with tank threat from time to time. It was only in weird situations, but it didn’t make any sense to us. It felt like something new. We all have played a LOT…it just felt wrong. We started watching the threat table like hawks. We tried having him close (In melee range) vs. far to see if that mattered. We could not find a systematic reason.
Tonight on Netherspite, when the banish ended (Portals just started…threat wipe) he had 3k threat immediately before anyone else was even on the table (which is a ridiculously high number even if he healed RIGHT as the transition occurred). The other healer did not show that I could see. Both were Resto shaman.
Just as a follow-up, every guide I’m seeing on the web is suggesting 3/3 threat reduction, even for raiding. I would suggest downloading a meter, but unfortunately in healing you can’t just back off of using abilities because threat is getting high in a lot of circumstances. It’s only 15% at max though, so I’m not sure if he’s just preemptively casting on pulls or something. What are his over-healing numbers looking like?
I’ve been leveling with a resto shaman and I agree that something feels off. He is pumping out so much aggro with his healing that I can get a mob to 1/2 hp before it peels off him.
Take a bit of time to test some things. Threat should only be generated by EFFECTIVE Healing and Mana regeneration effects, as well as any damage done and application of certain buffs/debuffs.
Check the following:
You can go beat on a Hellfire boar to do this kind of thing without endangering anything and it eliminates all the other variables that can cause threat problems. I know personally that I haven’t seen any issues having a Restoration Shaman (or an Elemental Shaman play-acting as Resto) that I didn’t see with other Healers. That is to say, if I got a huge heal on the pull I had to scramble with Swipes and tab-targeting to snag everything up, but otherwise nothing unusual.
One thing I did notice because I run with a Hunter often is that if her Feign Death was slow and the mob got close to the backline, it could swap straight to the Healer since proximity has a major impact on how quickly you can rip aggro (110% vs 130%), making it look like the Healer actually pulled aggro on mobs that hold their target to finish casts and such before going to the highest threat.
If there are two shamans and only one of them is having the issue and he isn’t specced into reduced threat then there’s your answer. Like you mentioned it happens a lot when there is a threat drop and people are low. So he is probably using chain heal to heal a ton of targets and pumping a ton of threat, and if he doesn’t have the talent to reduce threat then yeah, he CAN pump a ton of threat. It was not uncommon in tbc for healers to pull threat especially at the start of fights.
I’ll fill in for Holberhamwel here:
Resto shaman, large moscle.
Every other healer, very, very smol moscle.
I appreciate the replies, but these are all things we have thought about. I am not really looking for a “Beginners Guide to Threat”. No offense. We understand the basics of threat. We have tried to test pretty much everything (MAYBE everything) Fasc mentioned.
The real issue to me is IF there is some difference between classic and TBC threat…because none of this stuff has ever been a repeatable, reliable problem previously (i.e., in classic).
What Tacticx posted was the most useful. He is seeing a lot of people suggest 3/3 on the web. However, it does not really get to the heart of the “why”:
Is there some change in healing threat or not? Do we have any info on the facts of the matter (other than anecdotal stuff that I noticed and am curious about).
I am not sure, but my guess is that it is likely.
Not that I’m aware of, which would mean the only way to know for sure is to compare the current understanding of threat from healing with what a threat meter is showing, as well as identify any oddball sources of threat.
This could be as simple as plopping down totems on the pull and getting a static 500 threat on the Shaman that normally wouldn’t matter but because it is a fresh pull with no Rage, things go haywire. It could also be completely normal Healing aggro that overwhelms what your average Tank can manage with AoE threat, notably for Warriors who are the most dependent upon good tab-targeting skills to even out threat distribution. A lot of pulls in Outland dungeons feature heavy AoE damage to the whole group, even when the mobs are mostly under control, so folks just aren’t used to doing more than hitting a side mob but once.
If my Resto buddies are online tonight, I’ll see if I can do some tests and post them up here. The last week has been terrible with everyone having real life stuff coming up so schedules aren’t settled at all and we’re all different levels trying to get to the end.
What are you tanks? I’m pulling threat fairly easily also as resto, but I only had one point in the reduction talent.
Generally only a problem on oops pulls though.
Again, these are all “known knowns” of threat. It is not AoE or single target situation specific.
In dungeons, we can always manage it without much effort…UNLESS it is a crazy “Uh-Oh…we done messed up A-A-ron” moment. BUT, in classic, healer threat moments like these were few and far between…VERY VERY few and far between. I healed all throughout classic and I cannot remember it happening…it probably did…but it was so rare that I can remember NONE of them (again, sans “A-A-ron” moments).
Since people are sorta floundering with this (either not experiencing it or suggesting the most basic of basic stuff), IDK how to direct this conversation. If anyone can come up with a good way to figure it out, I would greatly appreciate it. My basic tests have not pushed me to a definitive answer.
I mean… how often in Stratholme did the entire party take 30-40% of their health in damage from spells/abilities that have nothing to do with aggro? A Tank had to be royally AFK and DPS had to be all on different targets AND they had to not try to CC/kite/mitigate the damage in any way.
My point being that Classic is essentially irrelevant to TBCC since even the most simplistic pulls require substantially more overall healing output from any Healer.
Post what you’ve done, logs, screenshots of ThreatClassic, whatever you have. We can happily pick it apart but until we see what you did, we can’t really know what to suggest or direct you to do.
If you tested Chain Heal, saw it did X effective healing, expected it to do Y threat, and it did Y threat, then you can check that box and move on to something else. Just don’t know what else to say until we see what you did.
I’m a resto Druid and I rip aggro off the tank a lot for some reason , seems odd to me.
For what it’s worth, nobody specced into threat reduction as healers in original TBC, but we’re coming off of Classic Vanilla with a multitude of trash-tier tanks who could barely handle cheesing tanking with Fury/Prot, while offloading half of their responsibility to the rest of the raid.
My favorite quote I heard from a tank who got one-hit (300 overkill Hateful Strike) on Patchwerk for the first pull - “I need to DW with Edgemasters to keep aggro on Patchwerk!”
No kidding. Watching a friend of mine’s stream doing Steamvaults and ho boy… the Warrior was something special. Had a mix of T3/A40 gear, but the way he moved around mobs, the way he positioned, his absolute snail pace reaction time to anything going wrong, his never waiting for Healer mana, his never waiting for his own abilities so he could start with high Rage, the list went on and on and on and they were wiping a lot.
TBC Tanking is a lot more active than Vanilla by far. Folks with terrible UIs will find themselves struggling a lot even when DPS are patient.
Having Rejuvenation/Lifebloom rolling on 3-4 people will easily pull aggro on mobs the Tank has only tabbed to once for any direct damage. I have the most issue with Resto Druids on 4-5 mob pack pulls where everyone is likely to get damage even if I’m holding aggro well (Chain Lightning, Hurricane, AoE in general, etc).
Tanks have learning to do.
I’m finding less tanks that are incapable of holding aggro, and more tanks that are incapable of chilling for 20 seconds while I’m trying to drink, personally. The upside to most if this is 9.1 was announced today, so most of the M+ players will return to retail and the rest of us can play the content the way it was designed in their absence.
Druids and warriors are balanced around salvation or tranquil air on everybody AND a hunter misdirecting on cool down.
Prot pallies tend to have far less issues because they generate global aggro naturally through self righteous fury healing.
If there is a bug, perhaps it is with MP5, mana spring, or water shield.
It’s going to be very interesting to watch what happens moving forward to the PVE meta, because the limiting factor in TBC isn’t DPS potential, it’s the threat generation to DPS ratio.
There is no fury/prot crutch.
Healers need to be careful and cc is important not because your tank can’t hold it or will die, but because your healer will heal for a ton to keep the tank up and pull aggro on the 3rd off target because you didn’t cc a mob and then your healer gets 1-shot. That’s not the tanks fault.