stampy

It was my understanding that a mob will only target an immune (iceblock, ds) player if there is absolutely nobody else on the threat list regardless of number.

The combat pulse puts you on the threat list, but doesnt need to add any threat... even if the mage had a Detect My Own Impending Death spell that added a million threat, a mob will still rather go after a 0-threat player on his list that an iceblocked mage.

 

AndrewCarr

Just found one concerning exploration. Entering Hyjal now gives you a "No man's land" debuff, and after 6 seconds you are ported out. Reports say people are receiving 3 day bans/perma bans for this now.



No Man's Land - Wowhead Search

No Man's Land - WoWWiki, the Warcraft wiki

 

Grizlor

We used to pull all 3 BWL drakes with Eye of Kilrogg + Bloodrage

 

Gauss

I think half of those no man's land buffs were used to control where people went in the alpha/beta. I doubt they exist in game now. That is truly disheartening about the Hyjal one though. I remember way back when I first hit 60 I found it by accident. One of our resident priests levitated off the far western edge (which ended in a steep cliff with no boundaries about 3/4 the way up to the summit) and landed in the ocean past darkshore about 10 minutes later.

Noobing it up on Mal'Ganis since '06

 

• Fogbug

aw, now I'm never gonna get an arch sword

 

◊ Oggie

What interests me about this threat discussion (and I'm really suprised it hasn't come up) is that this mechanic already exists in game precisely as described, and that is the Fade one (to my understanding). Basically Fade vanishing doesn't cause a similar re-evaluation on loss of buff, but does when you buff/heal/renew tick.

So yeah, it just sounds (to me) like the whole system was standardized to the fear model (post debuff removal requiring a combat action to re evaluate threat). It's simple, it makes sense, and it's a bit odd but hey it's even a nice buff for mages.

Sorry to post on the derail but it hadn't been compared in any posts I saw, and it seemed relivant.

As to all the other weirdness is that perhaps the initial combat pulse is threatless, while secondary ones add non null threat (but somehow doesn't cause re-evaluation?). Or maybe if someone DCed before the pull, comes back in midway through mid wipe, and does zero threat moves will the boss insist on killing them, or simply reset if the rest of the raid is dead?

 

Gauss

You ever vanished/invised and hid in the far corner of the room? As long as no boss ability hits you they will ignore you and reset after everyone on the aggro table has been killed.

Noobing it up on Mal'Ganis since '06

 

sp00n

Unfortunately, not always.
I was used to vanish to spare me repair costs, this works only very unreliable for quite some patches now.
In about 50% of the fights (even used to be more), the boss will just chase you down before you have a chance to get out of combat.

 

Demi9OD

Patchwerk was one of the more interesting examples of combat pulses and leashing. Correct me if I am not remembering all of this correctly but...

He would zone wide combat pulse on pull, if you wiped and you had someone afk 200 yards away he would run over and kill them.
Vanishing within 1-~60 yards would have no effect on combat status, and he would chase you down and kill you after everyone else with positive threat had been killed.
Vanishing outside of 60 yards would also have no effect on combat status, but after everyone else had died he would reset to full health and leash rather than going after the rogue.

 

saiyajinmaster

Nope, that's exactly how Patchwerk operated. No clue why, but the combat pulse thing has been going on since way back in MC when they fixed it to prevent OOC rezzing. Then they changed it again at some point during Naxx (Originally, it would put everyone in combat but not cause everyone to gain any actual threat, so they'd still be on the invincible puller. We used pally pullers for ages). I remember the minor cries of annoyance because people couldn't pally or iceblock pull on Raz anymore after that change, because as soon as the bubble went up he'd peel off even if nobody did anything whereas previously despite being in combat nobody else had any threat so they stayed on the puller. Lends some credence to the '1 threat' thing. I don't think it's a continuous pulse of +1 though, rather just that everyone gets one threat when they enter combat.

 

Voley

Everyone in zone is just getting added to the boss threat list with each pulse, if he id already there nothing changes. No need to add 1 threat.

Twice Scarab Lord.
http://img123.imageshack.us/img123/5237/sigyt7.jpg

 

songster

Yeah. the peeling away from invulnerable mobs is a different mechanic - mobs will ignore anything that classes as an "invalid target", irrespective of threat levels. So even someone with zero threat will get aggro off an iceblocked mage, as long as they're on the threat list.

 

Tunch

There are most definitely two mechanics involved in dungeon combat pulses. One type will just put the player in combat while the mob is active, to prevent OOC rezzing and drinking and other such things. The second type puts you on the npc's threat list, likely with a "0" threat value.

Some bosses only put you in combat while they are active. Others actually put everyone in the area/zone on the threat list. Tidewalker is the first to come to mind lately that you can notice that, if someone accidentally agros him while trying to walk past, everyone is put into combat, but only the person who agro'd him (and possibly anyone else near if Tidewalker gets close to them) is on the threat list. He will smash that person, then reset. Once reset, everyone else's combat status is released.

As for the Ice Block / Divine Shield phenomenon, the mob will only peel off if the npc used a combat+threat pulse (which again, could possibly have to do with proximity on some npcs). Tidewalker, again, for instance, will not peel off to anyone else if a paladin just walks up to him and bubbles up. He'll beat on the immune paladin for 12 seconds before flattening him.

Most/all dungeon trash that I've seen has a short-range combat+threat pulse. Once it gets close to you, you are in combat status, and also populated on its threat list.

 

Jebraltar

Pretty much the same idea as my vanish pulling, I guess, without wasting a good threat dump.

Since the patch where they added combat pulses to raid bosses, this only happened for me if I was the last person targeted by the boss...which made me a very unpopular fellow when somebody nubbed it up on Firemaw. (Apparently, the Hunters don't like it when you stand on top of them and wait for everyone else to die so you can Vanish.) By Vanishing, I could get the boss to switch to someone else, giving me more time to run and try to leash the boss (or whatever), but I couldn't actually drop combat with it.

Actually, I think that was also the first patch where Vanish became completely useless against Ragnaros (although it always worked for me against other bosses).