Bah. I can't find anything on this topic. I'm sure some of you veteran players know the answer. Is there a threat radius (meaning that standing at max range causes less threat than standing within 20 or 30 yards of a mob)? Does OH cause threat? Does direct healing cause a higher threat percentage than say what is being put forward by dps or buffing characters? Is healing threat an AOE base across all mobs that are engaged? Does pre-casting (warding before a pull or HOTS) cause threat to where it should be held off on until a tank has engaged a rather than having just pulled the mobs? -- I mean by this that a tank pulls and if they're warded and hoted up, are the mobs going to zoom right past them to the healer? Are there any other threat mechanics that should be of concern? Thanks! =)
I'm rather new to healing but from what I learned from experience: IF the tank body pulls (ie. gets close enough to get mob's attention but does not hit or taunt it) you will pull agro if anything you pre-cast on the tank procs (ward, HoT, Reactive, buff with a proc, etc). I learned this from having a HoT active on the tank (got agro), having Thornskin or Regenerating Spores on the tank and it procs (mob gets a hit in on tank, proc activates, then mob makes a beeline to me), Having Instinct (dps buff) on the tank (he said it grabs agro) so I put it on myself or a melee dps class instead. Also, if you're trying to DPS and heal, maybe back off the DPS to compensate. IMO, ask your tank if they want you to preheal/prebuff. If they're not body pulling, though it shouldn't be as much of a problem. Especially if someone has a hate transfer on you to help out. In the end if you're doing your job keeping the tank up, he needs to do his job and protect you in turn. As for the other stuff, Heals, dps, crowd control, basically any hostile action generates threat. Spamming heals seems to be equivalent to spamming a spell on the mob. From playing my coercer it seems like whoever is standing closer to the mob tends to get its attention first. ie. if I stand next to my pet I'm more likely to get hit than if I stand back and cast the same spells from range while the pet stays in melee range of the mob. At any rate, if you can find hate reduction gear or adornments use them. There are some MC weapons that reduce threat when you attack from behind so those might be useful if you can be mindful of your position. You should also have some tools to reduce your threat (my warden has Sandstorm and Willow Wisp for example) so check your spell descriptions.
My simple understanding is this: 1.) All threat decays over time. 2.) Heals generate less than 1 point of threat per 1 point of damage healed; fighters generate more than 1 point of threat per 1 point of damage dealt. I'm not sure if this is some sort of passive mechanic or if it's simply a product of the +/- hate mod buffs or items that multiple classes have access to. 3.) There is no ranged based threat mechanic that I know of aside from standing next to a rooted mob.
Yes, pre-casting can get you aggro but any tank should be able to deal with it. Only time I am careful is if the tank says he's going to run around and aggro a whole room or something. In that case you want to be careful with healing aggro. Otherwise healing should almost never really generate enough threat to get you aggro.
I agree with most players that it is really all up to the Tank to maintain their hate position over healers. Typically I am at the bottom of the hate list with experienced tanks, although when I run a PuG group I can be higher on the hate list. Generally, if a healer is in a group with a Tank that just can't hold agro for whatever reason, then the healer needs to get resourceful. Sometimes I send a tell to the Chanter asking them to help me out and lockdown any mobs that go after me. I believe most healers also have a deagro spell they can cast. My Mystic can drop around 20,000 hate on eight mobs within 5 meters with it. There are three FD items you can use if you learned Tinkering, although they will come back to you once you pop back up. Debuffs and interrupts help a bit also. Another Tinkering item you can use is the Behavioral Modificatinator Stereopticon. It drops your hate on a single mob by around 10,000 points.
Soft wrote: No, distance does not matter at all. Overloaded Heals, and any other healproc will cause just as much threat as a real heal that would have healed for the same amount. Hard to get real numbers on this. As far as I can recall, the last thing said by devs about this is that 2 points of healing cause as much threat as 1 point of damage would do. Yes, heals cause threat to all mobs that are engaged by the target of your heal. If a tank body pulls, he'll be on the hate-list but at 0 hate. So any healing you do between the tank agroing the mob and the tank using some skills to get more hate will cause you to get agro. This includes wards getting used and reactives triggering, as will landing a heal/ward/reactve/buff on the tank during that period. If you ward the tank before he agro's the mob, then the mob will go to the tank until the mob actually hits the tank and uses a part of the ward. At that point, you will get agro. Decent tanks will have sufficient agro on the mob by that time to hold it though. If you ward the tank while the mob is running towards the tank it will come straight to you though. DPS numbers are a lot higher than heal numbers these days. Unless the mob is memwiping, you're casting spells while the tank is body pulling, or the group is getting more adds than the tank can hit, you should never get agro.
I've got a 90 Zerker and a 90 Templar and have seen both sides of this issue. As others have said, when the tank is body pulling, it really comes down to the experience of the tank. Here's the situation: Lets use a group of mobs as an example. The tank has targeted one mob of a group encounter and is going to body pull so he doesn't get more than one group. The tank runs up to aggro range of the targeted mob and starts running back. The tank is using one hand to run back to the group and notices that the mob he targeted took several steps and then stopped to cast something. A different mob is running towards the group. With his other hand, the tank targets the incoming mob instead. Once the group encounter is far enough away from the other mobs, he starts taunting, autoattacking, and throwing combat arts while turning the mobs around to prevent frontals and to allow the scouts to get in their backstabs. So, all at once, the tank is targeting, running, taunting, and turning, while keeping an eye on the aggro meter and making sure none of them run off towards another group member. Once you get the hang of this, it becomes second nature and some tanks forget that there is actually a bit of skill involved and a bit of a learning curve. Some tanks can handle pulling the mobs and turning them but don't manage to start taunting until they get them positioned. This is bad. This is one of the things that causes healers to get and keep aggro. As soon as the mobs being body pulled are clear of the other groups/mobs, the taunts/autoattacks/arrows/CAs should begin. So basically, it comes down to tanks who haven't quite gotten everything down right. If you're healing and pulling aggro, and the tank can't handle it, the tank needs to get better or you're in a very specific situation where not much can be done. If that's the case then you'll know that this is something special and different because of that encounter. But in general, as a tank, if the healer is getting aggro on pull, it's not going to last long enough for the mob to reach the healer so I don't worry about it.
I don't want to echo everyone else, so I'll keep my advice short. If your tank is good he probably won't need the preheal, and if you do preheal he'll be better at handling it anyway. If your tank is bad you have to decide whether or not to preheal based on each pull individually. If you know only one encounter is coming then you can probably preheal, if there's a chance of a 2nd you might not want to preheal. If you feel like the tank needs the preheal for surviveability, maybe preheal yourself as well as the tank and keep your deaggro ready.
FROM A TANK PERSPECTIVE StaticLex wrote: 1. It does decay; but the decay rate is so small it doesn't matter too much - I think the decay rate is like 1-5% every few seconds by which time most mobs are already dead. 2. Tanks only generate more than 1 point of threat per taunt/DPS due to +hate mods - which increase hate by 50%, the reverse is also true with -hate 10,000 DPS+Threat with 50% hate GAIN is 15,000 threat/second 10,000 DPS+Threat with 50% hate LOSS is 5,000 threat/second 3. If the mob is rooted and the mob can;t reach their most hated target (i.e. the tank) they will cycle through the entire group. If someone is stupid enough to stand next to a rooted mob the mob will hit them. i.e. if mob self roots and tank is knocked back the tank will seem to "loose agro" but in reality he's just not close enough to the mob -------- Heal generate I *think* 30-50% of the amount healed this woudl be in line with the aborted fighter changed where paladins got 300% additional hate with heals and put our threat/heal gained to either each to taunts or heals = 1.5x value healed. Pre Heals Pre heal all the time. There are mobs which stun/disarm a tank; and there are mobs which you may need to body-pull; its very rare both of these happen at the same time. if they do have a scout body pull and the tank rescue off. 99% of the time unless the tank is unlucky with a string of misses/resists the tank will have the mobs under control before the mob reaches the group and worst case senerio the healer gets punted; good thing you pre healed then The only time this will happen consistantly is on the key mobs... which if you are worried about then have the scout pull them. There is nothing more embarrasing then going up to a mob and pulling only to get "one shotted" as you didn't have any wards/reactives on - sure its funny the first time but after the 5th or 6th it'll start to wear a bit thin; in raids are tougher herioc instances the mob will often AoE as soon as he is pulled and you NEED to get heals on yoru group before this occurs. Hope this helps
Hey thanx all for the info on hate gain in reguards to healing compared to damage/taunts , Ive been wondering about it for awhile. And I guess the reasons for max distance would be just for AOE's and to have a 1 or 2 seconds before the mob actually deals the dmg upon agro switch? One thing I wanted to add , since the OP asked about it .... was that with HOT's ,.the hate happens over time compared to the directs , giving more time for someone else to be higher on the hate list. I know seems obvious , but thought worth mentioning.
This is just an academical question. No healer needs to worry about their hate if their tank is able to push buttons.
