Threat

From WoW: IncGamers World of Warcraft Wiki

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When you engage a Mob in combat, or if the mob engages you, every threatening thing you do will build up your "threat level" on that particular mob (and anyone else you are engaged in combat with). If there is more of you than one, all your actions against the mob, or beneficial actions against yourselves (such as healing) will increase your threat level to that mob.

The player with the highest threat level usually gets Aggro, which means that the monster focuses its attacks on that player.

Hitting a mob for 100 damage gives you 100 threat. Healing a friend for 100 damage gives you 50 threat. All the skills and spells you use against the monster, to improve yourself or your friends that also are engaged in combat will gain you different amounts of threat.

If a player have aggro, you will need to get 10% more threat than him to take aggro from him if you are hitting the mob in close combat (or keep yourself below that level to avoid it). If you are attacking from a distance (with spells or shooting/throwing), you need 30% more threat than the current aggro-holder to take aggro (or keep yourself below that level to avoid it).

There is currently no way to see your threat level in the game, but there is UI modifications that you can download to measure your threat level compared to others.

Scale

• HIGH Threat - Skills with significant threat, or specified to give more threat (for tanking).
• MODERATE Threat - Skills with normal threat generation, such as a hit, a heal, or a damaging spell without positive or negative threat modifiers.
• LOW Threat - Skills which have specifically lower threat than other, that do about the same thing (damage, CC or other).
• NEGLIGIBLE - Skills with no intention of threat, but have an extremely low threat value anyway. Most buffs go into this category, and most harmless debuffs.
• NONE - Skills that have no modifier at all on Threat.