A brief lesson on this skills. In the early days of gaming/online gaming, dungeons and areas you could wander around were separated into small rooms. However there wasn't much you could do in these rooms; there weren't grids or maps. This made combat a problem if you wanted to protect someone... you couldn't get in the way, form a wall, block something off etc.

That's how provokes came about.

Fast forward to today. You can move around. You can position yourself. Squishes can kite and do if they know what they are doing. In other words, the genre has evolved over the last 30 years.

So I suggest a novel idea: get rid of skills that build hate and actually make players kite/position themselves correctly. Likewise change the AI a little accordingly. If a player gets in a mobs way it'll either:

1. Switch targets to the player that is in the way.
2. Go around.
3. Switch to ranged attacks if possible.
4. Try to find an easier target to get to.

Basically make the mobs act like a player in a PvP setting in how a player would pick and change targets. For example if a player has lost health from another mob, the first mob might abandon its target (if it's smart enough, dumb ones might not) and go after the weaker player. If a player just got healed or a defensive buff, the mob might try to find easier pickings.

I think that this is a good idea for two reasons:
1. Gets rid of an outdated mechanic.
2. Teaches players to act and position themselves more like they would in a pvp environment where you can't just count on the tanks to build hate all day.