One of the key skills required for success in a group or raid for any damage dealing class is the capability of the player to manage their own threat levels and this is a skill best learned early on in your gameplay.

When you start out in early instances such as Deadmines and Wailing Caverns, mobs don’t have a huge amount of punch to them and so the penalty for poor threat management is low. However as your progress through higher-end content you will quickly find out one simple fact: if you pull aggro, chances are you will die and in the process may take other players to the graveyard with you; obviously this is something best avoided.

Luckily threat management is a simple skill to pick up, and there are numerous things you can do to ensure you do not pull aggro, ever!

The first measure any player should take is to install a threat meter into their UI, there are several out there but most rely on the other players in your raid or group to have the same meter installed for it to work properly. The best advice here is to ask other players in your guild or server what addon they use and then choose the most common one.

Failing that my personal favorite is Omen, which can be downloaded at http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/9101/

What a threat meter will do is provide an accurate visual representation as to how close you are to pulling aggro from a mob.

At its most basic, threat management is simply making sure you never exceed the tanks’ threat on your meter but in reality that can cause your DPS to drop should you reach the point where you must stop nuking to avoid the buildup of threat.

As such there are various tips and tricks you can do to give you an easier time of controlling your threat till you feel confident that you don’t even need to look at your threat meter anymore.

The first trick is to think carefully about what spells and abilities you open up with against a mob; using an attack which causes a large amount of instant damage as your opening spell is a very bad idea!

A much better idea is to open up with DoT attacks and debuffs, for instance I tend to open up with insect swarm. This way you can still deal a large amount of damage right from the start of a fight but you delay the threat from it until your tank has had time to build up a decent amount of threat himself.

A second trick is to bring a paladin along with you, they can give you a buff called blessing of salvation that will reduce all threat you produce by 30%, it is quite rare to be able to pull aggro with salvation on unless you are deliberately attempting to do so.

The third trick is to utilize threat reducing talents and skills such as feign. However this measure should only be undertaken after trying a few instances without such threat reduction.

Talent choices for threat reduction or spending time actively reducing your threat will reduce your DPS and so should only be done as a last resort. It is much more preferable to manage your threat through other means.

Finally, certain classes get methods to completely reset their aggro. Mages can ice block or turn invisible, Rogues can Vanish and hunters can feign death. If you find yourself climbing the meters or actually pulling aggro from the tank then do not hesitate to use either one of these skills.

With these simple tricks you can ensure the ability for you to DPS mobs down without fear of reprisal, allowing smooth dominating runs throughout any instance in the game!

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