That is a change on Iceblock if it's true. Until now it has not functioned like that at all - the mob always returned to you as soon as the block ended, even if you did nothing and just stood there. Seen it happen far too many times over the past 2 years to possibly think it worked any other way - even back to the deaths of getting agggro on a core giant, dropping it using iceblock, and then regaining it the second iceblock ended because a tank had died.

If it worked as described here, then mages wouldn't have had any issues on Broodlord in BWL. Once you get aggro, drop it using iceblock and then just sit there and do nothing until ti'sa safe to go again. As we all know, that wasn;t the case, and that when the ice block faded he was going right back for the mage no matter what happened.

Raidbosses do zonewide pulses of 1 (or some other negligible number) hate to every person periodically to prevent OOC cheese. That tick brings the mob back to you. This explains both results without any change in game mechanics.

Wait what? I can't see how this is correct.
If I get feared by sanguinar, he doesn't come back until I battle shout.

This zonewide pulse existed on Gluth, and you could remove your debuff (and this works on bloodboil!) by simply not attacking between phases or fears, then hitting any single point of threat and he'll remember you.

This was a chance way before 2.0.

It was implemented to prevent invincibility pulling. So when a mage pulled a boss everyone got dragged in combat. He'd pop ice block and people would get into posistion before aggroing the boss.

After the change it was because everybody now had greater than 0 threat from the combat pulse, the boss would go for a random target rather than keep beating his invincible one as they all had a tiny amount of threat on him.

I recall when they made the change. I'm pretty sure you still have 0 threat, you're just in combat with the boss. Otherwise why do bosses ignore warriors after fears?

Mobs will kill players with 0 threat - just walk into one, thats a 0 threat death. Maybe it gives everyone 1 to start or something now, and thats the change. But I don't see it as INCREASING with each pulse - and I don't even see the need to increase your threat to even 1.

No, the change was made to prevent out-of-combat rezzing.

The pulse puts you in combat, but it doesn't affect your numeric threat level whatsoever, as should be obvious from the experiences of previous posters. After the change, "invincibility pulls" no longer worked because everyone was in combat with the boss, where they weren't before the change was made.

The combat pulse was before they changed Invincibility behaviour. As you've said, we also used to pull Razuvious with a Paladin + Bubble.
But a long time before this, we used a Paladin as an OOC rezzer on Geddon in MC, which was way before Naxxramas was even talked about.
Also, sometime later they changed the combat pulse in such a way that it made Vanish rather unreliable on bosses, so that they would come after you even if you stood in stealth and never take any action against the boss, which is still sometimes the case nowadays.
I can't remember if any guild were already up to C'Thun at that time, but I think not.

May have been another change later of course, which I didn't really notice.

I doubt it.

You can pull Morogrim without aggro'ing the entire raid. I've seen it done a number of times where some waterhead gets too close, pulls him by mistake, dies, and Morogrim resets.

Similarly, you can pull Karathress with an eye of Kil'rogg, start the encounter, the eye dies, you drop out of combat with no repurcussions. If there was 1 threat added to everyone, you'd expect him to leash or wipe the raid (depending on where you were).

Cryic's results are probably the result of him being "at range" and not being 30% above the current target when he's added back to the aggro list. You wouldn't expect aggro to come back to him if that's the case. The change is probably that it doesn't default back to the old aggro table when you're vulnerable again, but it recomputes the threat table with you back in it. If you aren't 30% above the current target, you won't get aggro immediately.

You can definitely aggro Morogrim without pulsing the entire raid into combat. One of our male Draenai shamans pulled him while trying to sneak by to Karathress's tunnel last night and got killed. Morogrim then reset and we were able to res him and prep for an actual Morogrim pull.

We routinely send someone in (typically a naked invis mage) to aggro Morogrim before the raid gets there, in order to despawn the murloc pack in the hall before him, and the naga pack in the hall behind him.

Warriors have no way to "drop off the chart"
Commanding shout is a buff and has some aggro component.
This aggro switching behavior is fairly well-trodden ground and you could probably uncover some tests in the archives if you have a lot of curiosity on the subject.

By 'dropping off the chart" I wasn't referring to a personal agro wipe, but a mob instituted one, such as the the skeletal ushers' ice tomb. As for the rest I think we're agreeing with each other.

Just out of curiousity, how is the gender of the shaman important for this encounter?

Male draenei have a bigger hitbox.

What I meant is that there's a world of difference in being off the threat list and at zero or minimal threat. It's a slight issue, and one of semantics, but someone searching threads later may see it.

It's not really of practical concern in any situation I can think of offhand. Maybe if a non-boss mob is body pulled by a non-warrior, you would need to make sure to initiate combat (get on the list) before shouting to pull with minimal threat or...? I've got nothing.

I hadn't really given it much thought, I'd just always assumed the combat pulse was done by giving everybody some negligible amount of hate - in retrospect, at least pre invuln pulling fix, this was clearly not the case.

The iceblock thing does suggest that there's a zonewide combat pulse modifying the mob's threat table, but the sanguir thing suggests the opposite... very odd.

You guys are thinking that Threat and being in Combat are the same numbers, in which they are most likely not.

Combat, yes=1(true), no=0(false).
Think of it this way, you have a face down deck of cards, 25 of them. Think of this as a 0.
When a zone wide pulse is done, all cards are flipped face up, and this is a 1. And all the pulses afterwards make sure Combat=1.
Then whenever a threat move is done, it is recorded onto the face of the card.
Don't do any threat moves, and you stay at 0 threat, but stay in combat.

Do you guys see it that way?

Just think of it as an array of people in the instance, or withing aggro range/combat. Soon as the pulse goes off, a selection of code runs off, changing all the Combat=0, to Combat=1.
And then from there, each character's threat is changed, independent from the Combat tag.

Sorry for the 4am pseudo-code, but I hope that'll get the idea across that being in combat doesn't mean you have to have made threat.

I definitly agree with the "someone does damage and everyone is put in combat"-theorie.
That this doesn't mean you got some thread should be obvious.

You can test it, well to some extent. Take some boss with a RST-ability, like gruul's cave in.

When we first startet there, we always got cave ins on the maintank every single pull. Then when we decided that some people should hit gruul with a lowdmg spell or ranged ability the cave ins during pulling got spread out.

But in the end only Blizz knows how exactly the "combat-pulse" system is working.

A few things I noticed in the last couple of days:
- Obsidian Warbeads drops in the caves in Nagrand are _way_ lower than before
- spellcasters in 2nd room in SL have some form of limited sap
- no chest after 1st boss in SL any longer (that, or I got a very lucky string of 10+ kills with the chest always there, and 3 kills since without chest)
- sapped mobs in auchenai crypts could summon or charm

On the combat pulse theory - we've had a smartass pull Hydross before with a bodypull and he continued to slaughter the raid after he had killed that person, so I really doubt it has anything to do with damage.

People used to body pull Vael embarassingly frequently in my guild. If Vael killed them in roughly one melee attack, he didn't aggro the rest of the raid. If he took a bit longer (because the person ran, or whatever) then everyone would get into combat. I think it's just a delay before the first zonewide pulse - similarly, I used to pull Chromaggus by sprinting towards the raid and hitting Vanish when he was almost on me. (The guild wasn't receptive to pet-pulling, still haven't figured out why.)

Alternatively:
Threat List=[playerA=430,playerB=0,playerC=null]
C is not on the list. B is on the list with no threat. A has threat.