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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsUsing the new ingame Aggro Warning
by Mike Schramm 
Oct 14th 2008 at 11:45AM
Today's patch will bring with it a long awaited feature: an ingame Aggro Warning. Almost since launch, addons like Threatmeter and Omen have warned raiders and other folks that mobs are incoming (pulling aggro means that you've attracted the attention of some monsters by doing a little too much damage or healing), and the functionality has been so widespread that Blizzard has finally implemented it in the official UI.According to what we saw on the PTR, it should come default whenever you head into an instance, but if you want to see aggro all the time, you can go to the Interface options, and flip "Display Aggro Warning" to always. Checking "Show Aggro Percentages" will give you a little percentage at the top of the target frame, showing just how much aggro you're getting from whatever you've got targeted.
If you've used a threatmeter before, you know that if you do pull aggro, you'll want to a) stop healing or doing damage immediately, and b) pop any aggro-reducing trinkets, abilities or talents you happen to have, like Feint or Disengage. Of course, if you have used an addon like Omen in the past, odds are you shouldn't get rid of it -- the ingame Aggro Warning is pretty thin, so odds are that your guild will still require Omen anyway for high level raiding. But as a simple heads up when you've got monsters about to come your way, the Aggro Warning does its job.
Patch 3.0.2 "Echoes of Doom" has landed and WoW Insider has you covered. From patch notes to talent guides for every class to fixing your addons to 5 easy achievements you can snag right now. Make sure to check out the latest news.Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, Add-Ons, Instances
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
darren Oct 14th 2008 12:56PM
You can now use the focus window (which had an API before but now has a direct UI component) to keep the mob targeted (providing threat info) and heal the rest of the group using the focus window. Not sure how viable this really is, and I tend to agree that the best part of the threat feature is the new API to aid in the threat mods.
Morrigahn Oct 18th 2008 1:24PM
You might be interested in my mod: http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info10151-AggroNotifier.html.
As long as at least one person or pet in your party or raid is targeting a mob that is aggro'd on you then you'll get a customizable visual and/or audio warning that you have aggro. It also pays attention to anything you've set as your focus target.
I'm a healer and made the mod because I wanted that instant "oh crap" warning. It is certainly not a replacement for a real threat meter, but it is perfect for any class that doesn't want aggro and needs instant (and obvious) info about when they gain and lose aggro.
Voinic Oct 14th 2008 12:46PM
From the Omen 3 beta changelog:
[quote]
How is Omen3 different from Omen2?
Omen3 relies completely on the Blizzard threat API and threat events. It does not attempt to calculate or extrapolate threat unlike Omen2.
Omen2 used what we called the Threat-2.0 library. This library was responsible for monitoring the combat log, spellcasting, buffs, debuffs, stances, talents and gear modifiers for calculating each individuals threat. Threat was calculated based on what was known or approximated from observed behaviors. Many abilities such as knockbacks were just assumed (to be a 50% threat reduction) as they were mostly impossible to confirm.
The Threat-2.0 library also included addon communication to broadcast your threat to the rest of the raid as long as they were also using Threat-2.0. This data was then used to provide a raid wide display of threat information.
Since patch 3.0.2, Omen no longer does any of these things and the need for a threat library is no longer necessary. Omen3 uses Blizzard's new in-built threat monitor to obtain exact values of every members threat. This means Omen3 has no need for synchronisation of data, combat log parsing or guessing, resulting in a significant increase in performance with regards to network traffic, CPU time and memory used. The implementation of boss modules for specific threat events (such as Nightbane wiping threat on landing) are also no longer necessary.
Further benefits of this new implementation include the addition of NPC threat on a mob (eg, Human Kalecgos). However, there are some drawbacks; frequency of updates are much slower, threat details cannot be obtained unless somebody in your party/raid are targetting the mob and it is also not possible to obtain threat from a mob you are not in direct combat with.
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Brandon Tilley Oct 14th 2008 1:51PM
Check out http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=10972144177&pageNo=1&sid=1#0 for information on how to use the actual built in METERS (as in, bar graph) that was turned off by Blizzard.