Another situation that is hard for druids is healing a tank in a caster situation. If the mobs are spread around the room you can hot the tank he takes damage from the melee mobs and the caster mobs all go ‘DRUID!’

Since druids ‘mostly’ have to pre hot its definatly a situation where a fade would be excellent and indeed its no ones fault.

As someone who is mad about priests, fade is my favourite spell and I certainly wouldnt begrudge it being given to my druid friends especially since it means they wont get squashed when I fade… sorry! *hides*

Can always toss some moonfires for kiting.

> http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=586
>
> Apply Aura: Mod Total Threat (Fade)
> Value: -90000000

When you cast Fade it reduces your threat by 90000000.

When Fade fades, it increases your threat by 90000000.

That means:
a) Unless you’re 90000000 ahead of your tank, you will loose threat as soon as you cast fade.
b) When you are faded you can continue casting and your threat goes up as normal. But because your total threat is reduced by 90000000 you have a negative threat value and you will never ever be able to produce 90000000 threat with healing or damage.
c) When Fade ends your tank has better used the time to build up more threat than you have during the duration of fade. Otherwise the mob comes back to you.

Now, what I don’t know is if you can pull aggro from freshly spawned mobs whiled faded.

Example:

You cast Flash Heal for 2000 -> 1000 threat total
You cast Flash Heal for 2000 -> 2000 threat total
You cast Fade -> -89998000 threat total
You cast Flash Heal for 2000 -> -89997000 threat total
Fade ends -> 3000 threat total

Keeva´s last blog ..Tauren trees & aggro – are we getting the short end of the uh.. stick?

I was informed over lunch that unlike what I beleived, Fade doesn’t suppress your threat generation while active, so really its pretty much the same as Shadowmeld except that you can move and continue to cast (and it won’t break you from combat).

Also, if you read the part that I wrote about Cower – I explained that it only works on single mobs, so it’s useless if a pack of adds is charging over to stomp on your face. Plus, they have to be right up on you to do that – so anything heavy-hitting will probably one-shot you, particularly if your War Stomp timing is off. What I really would like to see is a *proactive* threat reduction tool. As a resto druid (or boomkin), you can’t use Cower proactively (nor War Stomp or anything else that we have – it’s all reactive.)

I want personal control over my threat – and really, the only way we can control it (if it’s high) is to stop healing. That isn’t always very practical. Other than that, all we can do is react when things go wrong. I don’t want to react, I want to *act*.

Abi: interesting! I didn’t think of adding something to Barkskin. I like it. Although Barkskin already does quite a bit, so Blizzard might be hesitant to make it a one-stop-shop for damage *and* aggro reduction.. might be seen as a little greedy Interesting idea though!

Perrin: great post, thanks for sharing your testing! I think I see Shadowmeld more of a “stick your head in the sand for a second until the tank can grab the mob” kinda deal (oh, and hope you don’t get any splash AOE damage, etc). As a lot of people have said.. it’s not amazing, but it can be handy.

I don’t want people to focus too heavily on the NE vs Tauren aspect. It’s not about races or racial envy. The only reason I bring race into it is because NEs do have a bit of an option – but I do still believe that *all* of us should have some kind of threat dump or reduction ability – even if it’s just a buff to our existing Cower to make it not so crummy!
Keeva´s last blog ..Tauren trees & aggro – are we getting the short end of the uh.. stick?

If you are ‘not in combat’ and HoT someone, then all active HoTs are considered the healing of the recipient *until you join combat*.

If you are ‘in combat’ (regardless of LoS etc), then all cast HoTs will be correctly attributed.

Pre-HoTting works great for Trash as there’s no combat pulse so you aren’t in combat for a bit while the tank is.

Pre-HoTTing the tank on bosses will still get you aggro if the tank isn’t on Full Health before they hit the boss, but the group has engaged (and therefore everyone’s in combat). HoT’s don’t cause aggro if they tick for full overheal.

At least this was the result of the testing I did just after the Wrath release.

Secondly:

Shadowmeld is not a threat reducer, it is a threat suppressor. Unlike Fade though, you can’t continue to perform actions or it will break, returning you to whatever threat you had. Therefore, unless you actually have ‘aggro’ (i.e. the mob is targetting you), Shadowmeld is no more effective than standing still. Unlike Fade, HoTs on your target will continue to rack up threat, it simply won’t be visible until you break Shadowmeld.

Overall, I’d be all for getting a threat dumper, or active thread suppressor (like Fade), but the difference between a NE and Tauren druid is that the NE can be slightly slacker and suppress aggro once every two minutes.

It should be noted that unless a mob ’sees’ you cast a HoT, the ticks won’t count as your threat. Basically, they think the target with the HoT is healing itself.
(This is why pre-HoTing before the pull works.)

So new spawns won’t run to you just because HoTs are already ticking. As soon as you cast a heal on their target after they spawn, however…

My suggestion is to change Barkskin to reduce your threat by X% in every form but bear and dire bear form. I know a few kitty Druids have aggro issues as well and granted, they have cower, but popping Barkskin to drop aggro isn’t a bad idea I think.
Abi´s last blog ..The Icecrown Citadel Progression Plan.