Ive seen spells like soothe and taunt and i want to know. What is the threat on target?
Threat is a way for the computer to rate who to attack. I believe that the initial setting is the creatures you brought into the battle have a high threat rating for you. example: Bob and Ted are fighting evil snowmen. Bob initiates the fight, so gets the first two snowmen attacking him, and Ted gets the third.
Once combat starts, each time you throw a damaging spell, you change the threat ratings, as does casting a heal. I am still not sure how DoT spells affect, as they don't seem to generate the same threat. example: Ted tosses a Vampire spell. This is a major threat, and so most of the remaining snowmen would focus on him.
Simply, Taunt gets the attention of the NPC enemies (by taunting/harassing/teasing them) and encourages them to attack the caster instead of other members of the party.
Soothe attempts to do the opposite: it tries to encourage the enemies to attack somebody else.
Neither has any effect if you're soloing, and of course it has no effect on other players in PvP.