Shield Mechanics and ThreatFollow

The reason you shouldn't Shield a tank is that all three tank classes needs to be hit to perform their best. Warriors and Druids get Rage from it and Paladins need more healing which means more mana regen. Rage or Mana is crucial to their Threat Generation. Take away incoming hits, and it might be just enough to lower their TPS for a little while.

Shielding DPS classes that gained aggro for a sec can be a lifesaver, but I rarely use it myself. Not that I heal all that often, but still.

What about Priest Threat - Is this simply a high threat generating tool? I understand the tanking mechanics better now, but what about my simple agro management? Would a quick heal, or single HoT be more threat efficient than shielding a DPS?


Example: Mage's Sheep breaks and heads at him. (Frost mage = assume normal mage damage mitigation is up/available) Would shielding the mage so he can resheep cause a lot of threat for me, or would letting his shield break and healing him for the 1 to 2 hits he's going to take be more threat to me.

As far as I know, shield follows the same threat mechanics as healing, it's just that it's frontloaded because it's instant. Healing threat is half of all healing done, when it's done, split between every available mob.
For example, you could shield for 2500, flash heal for 2500, or renew for 2500, and there's five mobs up. Shielding gives 250 threat to every mob, immediately (because it's instant), flash heal gives 250 threat per mob but only when the heal lands, while renew gives 250 threat per mob but it's split up between ticks.
*If* he's got a shield, I'd probably just let him take it and throw Renew. If he doesn't, I'd shield him to keep the cast from interrupting, OR I'd steal aggro off him and give him and extra second or two to get Poly off. Keep in mind Fade is now a *good* threat reduction for the duration instead of a sh*tty one - having 90 million less threat for 10 seconds means there's no way it'll stay on you.
EDIT: Hmm, it's have the threat of healing? I don't remember that...

EDIT2: The myth about being "high-threat" is that most priests use it right as the tank is pulling if they use it, before the tank has a chance to grab any aggro, and therefore all the mobs will rush at the priest. You either want to pre-cast it before the pull, or just save it for when it's really needed (timable spike damage, etc).

Edited, Oct 28th 2008 5:08pm by lsfreak

Threat and rage generation are not a problem like they used to be, but why would you use a shield over a heal? Shields are less efficient in terms of mana and heal/sec if you take into account the global cd (OK I'm not sure of my facts post 3.0.2 but I'm assuming thats still the case?). For hard-hitting pulls where healers will be running into position there might be some argument to send a tank in with a shield on, its not likely to harm the tanks threat generation much now and it causes no threat to the priest if cast before pulling.

Shields are very nice on casters taking damage, as casting is uninterrupted with a shield on. Say some crowd control breaks and that mob starts attacking the crowd controller - a shield is perfect here as it protects instantly helping the crowd control to be reapplied fast. Also very good on casters doing AoE (we're so lucky Holy Nova causes no threat).

Slightly misleading. In this example, each of the mobs gets the full 500 aggro. It isn't divided among them.

Yea it is. Healing threat is spread out evenly among every mob whose aggro table you're on.

For why you would shield: If you know the tank's going to take spike damage at a certain time. It would be similar to getting all HoT's rolling on a tank before a raid-wide stun. You cast shield and then wind up a Gheal, knowing the shield will take off some of the bite and the Gheal will get the rest. Also useful as a shadow priest, to try and save the tank if he spiked down or something.

On threat: Shields do make an impact on threat, depending on the gear. Tanks who are undergeared in terms of threat boosts (i.e. someone running heroics in full blues, with lots of defense stats but little for threat), or those overgeared with avoidance (full T6 + Sunwell in heroics and stuff), it can have a noticeable impact on threat when they're trying to first pick up a mob. The warrior I usually do heroics with yells at me when I shield him pre-pull in heroics or Kara, because less than 25% of attacks hit him and actually do damage (50% pure avoidance, 25% block with just under 1000 value).

I thought they changed it so that tanks now generate rage from the damage the shield takes.