Aggro: Do we miss it?

Or enmity I suppose. I’ve been reflecting lately on the dev’s design decisions in terms of job changes. I think one change that has been absolutely enormous as it pertains to every role, not just tanks, is the simplification of aggro. I was a noob back before ShB so back then I understood why they wanted to simplify how aggro worked. In retrospect, I think it was a tad too punishing given that even DPS who were just doing their rotations had to spam diversion(?) on cooldown for tanks to keep aggro.
The addition of a tutorial would have been a better step imo. I think the outright removal of it was way too far and ended up making things boring for a lot of players. For instance, healers never need to worry about spot healing a greedy samurai anymore. The fact that the healer reworks happened at the same time as the aggro rework seems to have taken a lot of fun out of the game for tanks and healers alike. I mean yes, it’s still in the game but the whole aspect requires zero thought or management aside from tankswaps in ex and savage. My main problem is they took it away and didn’t add anything to replace it. Lowering all tanks’ base defense and having the old aggro combos generate a passive defense buff or something. What do you all think? Miss aggro? Couldn’t be happier it’s gone?

No, I do not. I miss some of the engagement that came with it, sure, but the mechanic itself was pretty terrible. It didn't add much of anything to tank gameplay and it the right party comps (or just playing WAR) effectively removed it as a mechanic entirely. It's not good or interesting design to have a mechanic not be a mechanic under certain circumstances and it was a big part of what made certain comps and jobs far stronger than they should've been. It's also not cool when the tiniest bit of game knowledge and confidence is all it takes to suddenly gain 15-25% damage.

Aggro management used to be a team efford. That being said, I do not miss it. In random groups you had DPS that constantly forced you to turtle the encounter because they never heard of "Diversion", "Shadewalker" etc.
It worked fine in statics but was mostly neglectable for tanks there aswell because a good group knew how to manage aggro so the tank could sit outside of their Tank stance pretty much full time.
WAR had the easiest time with their Unchained Butchers Block opener to get a huge lead in aggro. I do miss stance dancing on WAR it was fun.

If anything DPS had to manage aggro more than tanks did. At least in a good group.

I'll never miss it, it was just an annoying gimmick that added no actual value.

When aggro management was a thing, in particular in the context of SB 4.x series, as a RDM I could run an Omega story difficulty raid and do the following:

1. Pre-pull Diversion.
2. Lucid Dreaming after opener.
3. Use both Diversion and Dreaming on cooldown thereafter.
4. Pull aggro off a tank 7 minutes into the fight and die.

It was just as easy to pull aggro off tanks in alliance raids despite using my aggro management tools.

No, I do not miss aggro management.

aggro was a team effort, which was good until you didnt know your team and the ninja took umbrage with you telling them to keybind shadewalker
i miss the concept of aggro, i do not miss the execution

Snap enmity generation was the only real aggro challenge historically. The classic example was the Shadow of Meracydia adds in T13, where they would oneshot your healer if not promptly picked up. You can still do this in encounter design, but it's just a spawn point memorization check (if that, given enmity generation through self-healing effects like Equilibrium).

Since we're revisiting historical bad ideas just for the nostalgia, why don't we also talk about Parry and Accuracy stats and VIT-only tank gear while we're at it? If we're going to revisit this same topic every few months, we might as well have a bit of variety with it.

I miss it. Putting slightly more effort into something or having to communicate every now and again is what makes MMOs fun. Now there is no aggro, no healing, no talking.

The old system was just punishing, rather than rewarding. If you have a DPS that doesn't use Diversion? Tank takes the DPS loss. The Monk that does use Diversion, but since it doesn't line up with their burst, still took aggro anyway? Tank takes the hit. Gear not up to par so you can't effectively use DPS stance? You take the hit for less damage ontop of your already lowered damage. Your reward? The tank doing the damage they should be doing anyway.

As for something they should have done to replace it, they gave every tank the ability to stun/interrupt, give tanks more reason to use them.

I miss it.