Combat
- For the rogue specialization previously named "Combat", see Outlaw.
Combat refers to a basic game system World of Warcraft: a state in which the character is attacking a selected mob or enemy player. While in this state, the character is restricted from specific actions. To exit combat, either the character must die, escape, or kill their target.
Combat flag
When a character attacks or is attacked, they will be flagged by the game as being "in combat". This state is denoted to the player with an icon of two crossing swords next to their character portrait 
.
In PvP, a character will leave combat if they have not attacked or been attacked for six seconds, or if all enemy characters that have attacked them are killed.
Under most circumstances in PvE, once all monsters have lost interest in the character, they will be removed from combat.
Actions that cause a character to enter combat
- Attacking.
- Casting an offensive spell.
- Casting a buff or a healing spell on a unit that is in combat.
- Getting on a mob's aggro list.
- Certain bosses always put everyone in the group (or raid) in combat when engaged, regardless of their distance from the boss.
Actions restricted from combat
When in combat, several actions become unavailable including drinking, eating, mounting, and accepting a summon. In addition:
- General
- Resurrection abilities may not be used, including items that resurrect, except for battle resurrection effects that state their exemption in the tooltip.
- Drinking and eating are not possible while in combat.
[Portals] and Teleport spells may not be cast while a character is in combat. However, a character may still enter a portal that has already been created.
- Rogues cannot use
[Stealth] while in combat, although they can 
[Vanish] (see below). - Rogues may not
[Sap] a character that is in combat.
Abilities that allow a character to escape combat
Some classes have abilities that remove, or "drop", them from combat instantly. However, if they have a damage over Time effect on them they will usually be brought back into combat the next time they take damage. These abilities do not remove a character from combat during boss encounters unless they are the final living combatant.
- [Vanish] makes the rogue completely invisible for 3 seconds, then drops them into stealth.
[Feign Death], on a 30-second cooldown, removes the hunter from combat. In PvP, this is usually used to remove the hunter as a target and cancelling all incoming spellcasts. In PvE, it will cause mobs to forget about the hunter.
[Invisibility] causes the mage to become invisible, but it takes 3 seconds without action or damage received to become fully invisible and leave combat, unless replaced with 
[Greater Invisibility].
[Shadowmeld] can drop combat in a similar fashion to hunters' feign death.
General combat concepts
Threat
Mobs consider each person battling them to be of a certain threat, which dictates who they attack. Threat can be manipulated by another class (usually a tank character) using a taunt effect, or an effect like 
[Tricks of the Trade].
Health
Keep your Health above 0 while lowering your enemy's Health to 0. Works every time![1]
Combat roles
The choice between melee and ranged combat depends on a class's role and sub-role.
Magic
Classes that use magic use spells that might have a Cast time, during which they can be interrupted. If a character recieves damage while casting, the spell cast is delayed due to pushback.
Damage avoidance
Ways of avoiding damage in combat are miss, dodge, evade, parry, block, absorb, resist, immune, reflect, and deflect.
- Miss
- Only applicable to physical damage. Any physical attack, assuming that both attacker and attacked are the same level and have no modifiers to their hit rate, has a 5% chance to miss.
- Dodge
- Only applicable to melee attacks. A character's chance to dodge is increased by agility
- Parry
- Only applicable to melee attacks. Only certain classes can learn to parry, and only attacks from the front can be parried.
- Evade
- Applicable to any type of damage, or even non-damaging debuff. A mob that is in a position where the game believes players are using an exploit to avoid being damaged will go into Evade mode at which point it is effectively immune to all attacks.
- Absorb
- Applicable to any type of damage. This is usually the result of having a buff such as
[Power Word: Shield], which absorbs a limited amount of damage before failing.
- Resist
- Only applicable to magical damage. This is basically the magical version of a miss. A character's chance to resist a spell or other effect is based on their resistance to that element, as well as their level. Some spells can also be partially resisted, causing the character to take only 25%, 50%, or 75% of the normal damage.[citation needed]
- Immune
- Applicable to any type of damage. This is the result of a mob having a coded ability to be immune to certain attacks (i.e. Snares do not work on most bosses) or a player using some skill or item to protect them from damage (i.e. a Paladin's
[Blessing of Protection]). These are either permanent (mob immunity) or time-limited (Paladin blessing) and will not fail regardless of the amount of damage taken.
- Reflect
- Applicable to non-AoE spells only. A Reflected spell will bounce back to its caster, acting as if it was cast on them. A Reflect can be caused by Warriors'
[Spell Reflection], 
[Destructive Skyfire Diamond]'s proc, or certain mobs' innate abilities.
- Deflect
- This is an uncommon outcome where a spell is forced to miss.