A faster, better, stronger threatmeter
by Mike Schramm 
Jul 3rd 2007 at 1:00PM
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.
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Guilds, Add-Ons, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Quoi Jul 3rd 2007 1:15PM
Omen is TEH HAWTNESS. One thing to keep in mind, though: the author updates this mod VERY often, sometimes several times a day. To keep your version current, I'd suggest downloading the newest version every night. Alternatively, you could get AceUpdater, which can update all your Ace2 addons with a couple of clicks.
Corrodias Jul 3rd 2007 1:28PM
Well, you don't need to get too worked up if your build is just a few hundred revisions old. :) But just like all your addons, it's better to keep it up to date as much as is convenient for you.
I'm in love with Omen (which is just the frontend to the Threat library, which handles all the calculations and communication, as far as i'm aware).
Corrodias Jul 3rd 2007 1:29PM
Er, i should say -a- frontend. There are others, but i'm not aware of them. Omen is the most publicized. I think i overheard that Violation may be one, too.
Chris Heald Jul 3rd 2007 1:30PM
Hi there!
I'm the author of Omen, and project lead on Threat-1.0
I'd just like to caution people that Omen is still development software, and I haven't made an official 1.0 release yet; as such, it has several check-ins per day, things are still changing and breaking, and there are small pieces still left unfinished (mostly related to pets). If you do choose to use Omen, be aware of its status as beta software, and update often! If you're the kind of user that doesn't update often, then I'd recommend that you wait until an official 1.0 release is made so you can be assured that your copy is stable and relatively bug-free.
That said, since this is all still in development, now's the perfect time for feedback and suggestions!
(To head it off at the pass, no, you can't distinguish different mobs of the same name by raid icon. ;)
Tridus Jul 3rd 2007 1:33PM
I just made the switch last night, this mod is awesome. Its biggest selling point for me is that it actually handles multiple mobs (with different names), which KTM can't do. On boss fights with multiple mobs, this makes the meters actually useful for every mob (unlike KTM, where the best you can do is have a master target and no threat meters on the other mobs at all).
The KTM author deserves a lot of praise for what he's done, his work was pioneering and allowed Omen to be possible.
Venkman90 Jul 3rd 2007 1:37PM
Our guild just switched, its so much better ;)
Prester John Jul 3rd 2007 1:37PM
"and there are small pieces still left unfinished (mostly related to pets)"
Hi Chris - if you see this, would you mind elaborating on this a bit? At the moment I'm spending most of my time leveling a warlock, and I find a threat meter invaluable in making sure I don't pull mobs off my minion.
Now, I've had my own share of problems with KTM, so I'd love to be able to switch over, but if Omen isn't reading pets correctly yet I'd hold off for now.
Thanks!
Chris Heald Jul 3rd 2007 1:41PM
Prester:
Warlock pet scaling is currently not working, meaning that at high levels of spell power, warlock pets are under-reporting the threat they're doing. My testing showed that the conventional algorithm didn't work at lower levels, so I've been working on deriving a new formula to describe pet scaling. I'm hoping to have that knocked out sometime this week, thought that is, of course, subject to my actually being able to come up with useful data :)
(Note that at no/low levels of spell power, the current implementation is pretty accurate, though)
Corrodias Jul 3rd 2007 1:49PM
Another example, at level 57, my hunter has to outthreat the pet by something like at least 50% (rather than 30%) to pull aggro, on the meter. I just keep that in mind for now.
Tigraine Jul 3rd 2007 1:58PM
We also switched.
It's just so mutch better
Shefki Jul 3rd 2007 2:01PM
I think it's premature to switch over to Omen. It has a lot of promise but we tried it one night a few weeks ago and it wasn't accurate. It looks like it will be very nice in the end though. Just needs more work on the formulas to calculate threat.
I think we'll be waiting for a 1.0 release here.
Baluki Jul 3rd 2007 2:08PM
Wow, that sounds like a great mod. I'm always looking for ways to slim down my mod memory usage (I don't have the cash to upgrade my machine at the moment), and to be able to do that AND use an even better mod, well I just couldn't ask for more.
KTM is definitely an amazing mod, and will be the standard in threat tracking for a long time yet. So it's great to hear that Omen works with it. Just to clarify...will Omen both send AND receive threat data? If I'm using Omen and someone else is using KTM, will they think I'm using KTM too? And vice versa?
I'm also very impressed by all of the Ace mods. I've been using various others for a while now, and I keep switching to the Ace versions/replacements. I think I'll even switch over to Fubar (from Titan Bar) as soon as they come up with their own version of Itemized Deductions (which helps you get more bag space by showing you what the cheapest stuff is to destroy).
mark Jul 3rd 2007 2:09PM
I've been following the progress of Omen/Threat very closely and I'm so excited for the 1.0 release. But as a raid leader and someone who has to harass members to just go the guild website and sign up for raids- getting an addon that needs to be updated daily just doesn't seem worth it.
Waiting for 1.0 here!
tynk Jul 3rd 2007 2:43PM
@13
check out garbageFu, works great and lets you customize how and what kind of things are dumped along with adding a "sell all grey's" button to your vendor windows. been using it for about 4 months now.
http://www.wowace.com/wiki/FuBar_GarbageFu
thunder Jul 3rd 2007 3:01PM
I stumbled upon Omen a couple days ago... Thanks for being on the cutting edge of new addons!
sablak Jul 3rd 2007 3:04PM
I'm also interested in whether or not Omen will both ***send*** AND receive threat data. This question is not addressed anywhere in the Omen faq's or anywhere on its information pages.
Will people who run KTM think i am too, even if I don't ALSO run ktm?
There is little point in upgrading to Omen to save processor power if I also have to run KTM for all the people who run that instead.
Now if I can ditch KTM, and it will send data to KTM users, and if other Omen users are around it works even better, then heck, i'm sold. But only if it ****SENDS**** data to KTM.
Tridus Jul 3rd 2007 3:13PM
@17:
AFAIK, the current version of Omen (threat-1.0 actually) will send data to KTM, impersonating as KTM 19.18.
This has caused the KTM author to get rather annoyed, to put it mildly. Read the comments in the KTM page on Curse, there's like five pages of it, and he doesn't come off very well in any of them.
(Short version: Omen's author talked to him about adding a "user agent" to the KTM protocol, so Omen could call itself Omen and KTM could tell it apart. The KTM author refused, so to make things work properly, Omen impersonates a version of KTM. The KTM author still refuses, and now seems to be doing weird convolutions around the problem, because he doesn't want to implement the very obvious and simple fix of allowing a user agents.)
sablak Jul 3rd 2007 3:44PM
well heck. thanks Tridus. I'm an open standards lover. So The whole threat 1.0 thing sounds brilliant to me. Locking people into using one tool for threat tracking is silly. KTM should be smart and just use Threat 1.0 imho.
Yet one more reason to use Omen!
Freehugz Jul 3rd 2007 4:21PM
I hear good things about this mod, but I also hear that its not 100% yet. I'll definitely be switching over once its ready to go.
AndyF Jul 3rd 2007 4:41PM
Omen seemed great, but it failed on me just now during a Nightbane attempt - completely failed to measure my own threat properly, for some reason.