What happened to aggro?

[ponies]

I was just reading the thread where some guy was talking about being anxious about tanking and someone wrote "its not like you have to fight for aggro in wow" and it got me thinking. It's pretty true at the moment but it wasn't always like that.

I remember playing in tbc and wotlk where as a mage i would have to watch my aggro and as a tank i would often have to fight for it.

Now i go in spam swipe and i instantly have aggro as a tank and when I'm dps'ing i'm really not worried about pulling off the boss.
When did this all change?

[Pheros]

Was it a pally? Maybe he didn't have RF up?

[Qualia]

Years ago, they buffed agro gain for tank more than once, even. If a tank lose agro now it will be because either he didn't touch the mob, or he is bad.

[Jester Joe]

Was it a pally? Maybe he didn't have RF up?

RF is put on you by default now I believe when you swap to prot. I think it's just a fear that people have when they haven't tanked before, after seeing tanks get yelled at for "Not having aggro" and think it must be hard to hold everything then, when it reality, the tank probably just fell asleep and didn't hit the mob.

[ReVnX]

After TBC, tanking(in terms of aggro) got easier and easier with each expansion (especially AoE tanking, warrior was such a pain in terms of AoE back in the day). I noticed that big difference in the TBC-WotLK transition tbh

[Sosoulsu]

I was just reading the thread where some guy was talking about being anxious about tanking and someone wrote "its not like you have to fight for aggro in wow" and it got me thinking. It's pretty true at the moment but it wasn't always like that.

I remember playing in tbc and wotlk where as a mage i would have to watch my aggro and as a tank i would often have to fight for it.

Now i go in spam swipe and i instantly have aggro as a tank and when I'm dps'ing i'm really not worried about pulling off the boss.
When did this all change?

I think it was me who said it.
I miss having to think about aggro, myself - as a tank and as DPS.

FFXIV tanking is a lot more engaging because you actually have to think about Aggro, when you and your DPS have relatively equal gear. If a Black Mage goes full-on all-cooldowns DPS without Quelling Strikes (CD to reduce aggro), it's impossible to rip aggro back from them, even with a Taunt (which puts you 1-aggro above the current highest aggro target).
That's a lot of fun. Fighting for aggro makes tanking engaging. I find on current content that if I have too much off-target time as a tank, healers' aggro can overtake mine and I'll have to taunt coming out of a phase transition to start building it up again.

In WoW, tanking is incredibly simple and boring.

[Rabiddog]

Currently as a tank there is enough to worry about even without worrying about aggro. Back in TBC/Classic when raid bosses had as many mechnanics as current dungeon bosses have , aggro would have been interesting. But with the current mix of mechanics that tanks have to deal with , losing aggro as a raid mechanic doesnt count. If you think tanking is too easy , you've been doing content for which you are overgeared or doing lfr-rate raiding.

[TheWindWalker]

Blizzard decided that a tank's first responsibility was their own survivability and handling some mechanics directly rather than hoping their teammates don't use their 3m cooldowns on pull. I think it's a far better direction but even amongst my friends I've heard complaints. Those can be summed up as "I miss being able to generate threat, get it high enough, then afk" though.

[Daerio]

That's a lot of fun. Fighting for aggro makes tanking engaging.

Not being able to press buttons because your tank is bad is not fun or engaging for the DPS.

That leads to aggro drops, (feign, vanish) and some classes being left out in the cold, (because homogenization is bad derp derp) and more meaningless BS to deal with just so "some" tanks can play the aggro mini-game they enjoy.

I already spend 50% of heroic dungeons tanking mobs on my rogue with pug tanks.

[Wildtree]

idk..... I still have to use Misdirect and Feign Death on my hunter, all the time for AOE fights. Means, the aggro handling is not nearly as trivial as people sometimes try to make it sound to be.
It's a lot simpler nowadays, that much is true.. But it still requires the tank to pay at least a bit attention.

[sarecho]

I was just reading the thread where some guy was talking about being anxious about tanking and someone wrote "its not like you have to fight for aggro in wow" and it got me thinking. It's pretty true at the moment but it wasn't always like that.

I remember playing in tbc and wotlk where as a mage i would have to watch my aggro and as a tank i would often have to fight for it.

Now i go in spam swipe and i instantly have aggro as a tank and when I'm dps'ing i'm really not worried about pulling off the boss.
When did this all change?

it's been true for half of wow's life now and no, you don't spam swipe as a tank because you don't have swipe, YOU THRASH SON

[Dariss]

Blizzard decided that a tank's first responsibility was their own survivability and handling some mechanics directly rather than hoping their teammates don't use their 3m cooldowns on pull. I think it's a far better direction but even amongst my friends I've heard complaints. Those can be summed up as "I miss being able to generate threat, get it high enough, then afk" though.

My trial run in Blackwing Lair as a dwarf priest was to let my tank go afk while I fear warded him the whole fight. He said If I could do that the whole time he would promote me. Tank mentality just isn't the same anymore.

I personally hated the fact that most of the MoP tanks loved DPSing so much, that they are utterly abysmal now or struggling really hard with the swap back to reality of survival.

[Deleted]

I was just reading the thread where some guy was talking about being anxious about tanking and someone wrote "its not like you have to fight for aggro in wow" and it got me thinking. It's pretty true at the moment but it wasn't always like that.

I remember playing in tbc and wotlk where as a mage i would have to watch my aggro and as a tank i would often have to fight for it.

Now i go in spam swipe and i instantly have aggro as a tank and when I'm dps'ing i'm really not worried about pulling off the boss.
When did this all change?

They buffed tank aggro by something stupid like 500% ages ago. They want tanks focusing on survival rather than keeping threat now it seems.

[Osmeric]

They tried making aggro relevant again in Cataclysm. It didn't work well.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

I was just reading the thread where some guy was talking about being anxious about tanking and someone wrote "its not like you have to fight for aggro in wow" and it got me thinking. It's pretty true at the moment but it wasn't always like that.

I remember playing in tbc and wotlk where as a mage i would have to watch my aggro and as a tank i would often have to fight for it.

Now i go in spam swipe and i instantly have aggro as a tank and when I'm dps'ing i'm really not worried about pulling off the boss.
When did this all change?

The model began switching around Wrath, and was officially binned in Cataclysm.
In classic, TBC, and some wrath the "tanks" job was to make sure he had the mob on him. It was the healers job to heal him through any damage.
In Cataclysm, MoP, and WoD, the tanks job was to keep himself alive.
Both models are actually really enjoyable, but I feel the shift was needed because of how Bosses work now.
Tanking five mans in the Threat model was probably more enjoyable, because of the dynamic of each pack, but tanking bosses was soooo boring, minus vael.
Now, tanking five mans is all about how much damage you can put out, and wisely cicling through CDs and active mitigation. Meanwhile, bosses are all about using your CDs at the precise right moment.

Way more engaging overall, despite some deviation from 5 man content.
Still CM tanking is my favorite thing I've ever done in the game.

[Ciddy]

I just know it sucked having to watch my threat like a damn hawk and throttle my DPS as a fury warrior back in the day, when my only threat reduction ability was a macro to drop what I was doing and /dance with the boss. Also sucked having to constantly beg paladins in the raid for a short-duration Salvation buff, because they used that one mod to manage buffs and gave all warriors in the raid (regardless of spec/role) the buff that increased healing taken. They apparently couldn't be bothered to take one second and manually give me my 10-minute Salv instead, so I had to beg for it between wipes or when it expired.

Wasn't really fun to me, so yeah, I'm kinda happy that threat is gone.

[Raugnaut]

When blizz introduced Active Mitigation, they didn't want tanks to have to worry about maximizing mitigation, all the tank things (Positioning, ect), their damage output, AND threat management. So they decided to cut one of those, and Threat generation got the cut (because honestly, having to throttle your damage because of a undergeared/bad tank isn't fun at all)

[MasterDinadan]

I remember playing rogue in vanilla and having to spam feint just so I could continue attacking. It wasn't very fun for all dps to sit around because they had 90% threat. The tanks threat translated into a hard cap on how much damage the raid could do, so there was no point in bringing great dps if you didn't have a great tank, and gearing tanks was a major priority.

[Sammonoske]

I never enjoyed fighting for threat. As a tank I should be focused on the boss/trash/adds, not if a dps is crawling up in threat. I hated the old days of asking dps to wait a few seconds for threat, start your full rotation after 3 sunders, or having botched pulls because you missed shield slam or sunder.

[Spiffums]

Remember the cloak enchant in TBC for reducing argo gen? Every caster in guild had to have it or we'd pull the boss off the tanks.