So, healers use the triforce of wisdom to channel their holy magiks DPS use the triforce of power to lay low their enemies Tanks use the triforce of courage to stand firm in the face of overwhelming foes. Well I guess it makes sense. Link uses sword and board, after all
+deenman23 It's happened to me as well. I forgot to use Tricks on a few boss pulls. Subtlety opener + Soul Capacitor. When the trinket exploded aggro snapped right onto me. Almost any pull I forgot to use Tricks on that would happen. Of course the Subtlety opener then uses Prep-Vanish and my aggro is wiped anyway. But it sure isn't impossible. I do outgear the rest of my raid by 15-20 ilvls, so it seems like the opening burst of 250-300k dps can do it.
+deenman23 No, there is no tank ingame that can hold of a combat rogue on thrashpulls. It just isn't possible to do anything against a dps doing 25 million dmg in 10 seconds (our hc geared rogue's spirit trinket exploded for 20 million dmg)
I started playing in BC and I loved how threat-efficient my Affliction Warlock was. I loved to see the dick-measuring DPS types get slaughtered then kicked in dungeons because they couldn't give a shit about aggro. I loved the tension of walking the fine edge of doing good DPS and not out-aggroing the tank. You had to have a functioning brain, because that's all you needed to have to get it right, not a doctorate in WoW game mechanics. In those days, you could pull off a dungeon with 3 warlocks and 2 druids, where all 5 were DPS. Sure, it meant 3 warlocks managing DPS, Voidwalker targeting and healing, and Fear-leashing all at once, as well as 2 druids doing damage and helping out with healing the tanking Voidwalkers and the warlocks as they inevitably picked up the aggro, but it was a mindblowing experience. I remember doing Frost spec tanking in WotLK, and my shock at seeing an entire blob of mobs sticking to me like glue in dungeons while the DPS were going apeshit on them. I felt superfluous many times. There was no such thing as "good tanking" anymore, only being a meatshield for ungrateful shits who aggro mobs left and right, and you, like a parent running after its retarded offspring, scrambled to keep them alive. These days, whenever I do my daily Heroic Dungeons, I just try to keep up with the retarded tank charging ahead like a bull on viagra, popping a few Corruptions to pretend I'm doing something because by the time I put my full set of DoTs on the target it's either dead or at 25% HP, and chances are that if I have an item-related quest in the dungeon I'm gonna miss out on the next bossfight because fuck waiting 10 seconds. So yeah, I miss aggro, or rather, the tactical aspect of the game, when DPS had more to do then pressing all their buttons, timing their various cooldowns, and having enough processing power left to avoid standing in flashy things. While I fully acknowledge that there should be a limit on how exclusive a game is, I'd like to point out that being too inclusive is just as bad, because it will cater to idiots instead of people who live without a brain tumour.
+Khorothis exactly my point: i always played as a dps, with the occasional healer, and i've always sustained one thing and only one: the best dps is not the one that deals more damage, it's the one who knows when to deal damage and how, to not get the aggro from the tank, it's the one that can walk the thin line of balance between max damage output and minimal threat generation
This stupidity of this whole thread now that we've replayed all these expacs again like tbc holding threat was pretty fucking easy aside from non stop seed of corruption in tbc and if dps aren't pulling threat from you as a frost dk but there going ape shit that just means the dps are shit
The main problem is that taking damage generates threat and a shield before a fight starts prevents some of that vital early threat. A shield before a fight has a not insignificant chance of leading to aggro being lost near the start, and the entire fight getting fucked up, all for a tiny bit more survivability that (if everyone does their job right) the warrior won't need.
I only recently discovered your channel, and now I'm watching all your videos whenever I have spare time. I loved the Legacy series especially. Keep it coming please! :D
*raises hand* I didn't play TBC long, but I did finish all the dungeon content. I was tanking as a warrior. I got literal guild invites because I could do these things. The part about being KNOWN when you were a good tank gets me in this video. I know its just flat out unrealistic for it to ever come back, but I miss that so much.
Threat was a fantastic aspect to the game. If anything I think the closest to perfection was LK. The lovely aspect of threat was that it required the entire raid group to work as a team. Instead of just tracking debuffs and zZzing I had to go HAM 24/7 and make sure I was in sync with the other tank ready for upcoming swaps or just loss of threat if it came to execute phase. The point was that you were constantly pushing your class to the limits and dancing with the game wondering if it should punish you or not. Threat alone is the reason CC was important in dungeons and is an element that is greatly lost. We only saw CC really be a thing at the start of Cata when we couldn't solve the problem with AOE or cleaving we were finally forced to consider CC. Lets be perfectly honest, you didn't have to be an amazing player to learn these mechanics and they made players better and far more accepting of failure or the time it took to complete dungeons or raids. Now we have the mentality of go go go. Yes it meant that dungeons were a gate to raiding but that was a good thing because it made me ready for a challenge. It forced you to learn how the core mechanics of your class and the game intertwined. Nowadays we just put our skills on our bars and queue up to a few dungeons then hit up LFR/Flex which is lazy and puts that back on the player encouraging them to do so. I know over the years I've become lazy. I suppose I really enjoyed Cata besides them ruining classes like Druid - Boomkin, Warrior - Prot & the infamous DS. Something I can say over the past few years is that Hunters seem to get better and better and better, I really don't understand how this class can keep improving. Aspects like cleave tanking are skills lost nowadays where you had to cycle through your targets and keep aggro on them all. Now you just spam AOE for days and gg, as long as you keep your defensives up the healer only has to heal the tank. Definitely sad days but I hope they can once again find a purpose for threat or something very similar in design but different name. If anything the changes to Prot Warriors just may be my second chance at love again. Ahhhh good times. Okay healers pulling threat was shitty but it still fun.
i miss threat....because it allowed classes like locks and rogues who did top DPS consistently to have to ease off the throttle or die horribly and fuck up a fight. now...hunters slam your face into the keyboard as hard as you can for max deeps and only punishment is a possible concussion.
As a long-time rogue player I really miss the times when balancing DPS and threat and riding on the edge of drawing aggro was the mark of a good player.
Dude that was a cool video and Im glad to have learned about the history of wow's combat system. Iv'e had a basic understanding of how threat worked, but I'm glad to know the changes and excatly how it was meant to be compared to the changes it went through. Keep on making good vids man, proud sub and big fan of yours. Keep on rockin dude! \m/
Final Fantasy XIV (A Realm Reborn and Heavensward) is the ideal way to handle threat imo. It's like a sweet spot between TBC and Wrath. Tanks need to use enmity generating abilities to keep aggro, which is easy enough, but to properly play their class to the fullest, they need to try and pump out respectable DPS with it, which results in a very good dynamic. In FF14, a good tank is a tank who uses his enmity generating abilities just enough to maintain aggro and puts the rest of his focus on maintaining high damage. Not as high as the DPS, mind you, but it's still something sought after. Also, taunting is on a much longer CD and isn't an instant aggro, it instead increases your enmity by a certain %. If you was 6th on the enmity meter and you use Provoke, you won't jump to 1st, you'll go to about 5th. It makes tank swaps far more engaging.
+The Ramos Online agreed. while a tank can pretty easily aggro-fight a dps if he desires, in progression a highly skilled tank will be dancing on the edge of being just above his dps'ers in aggro and trying to fit in as many low-threat-high-damage moves as possible to pass dps checks.
+The Ramos Online In WoW progression guilds thats exactly what happens I remember speccing full crit once I got enough defensive tanking gear to be easy enough for the healers to keep up in HoF in MoP just to get more DPS which of course helped with DPS check fights. Especially in fights like Garalon where threat wasnt a mechanic.
David Macadam I actually quit WoW during MoP, so I know how the mechanics worked then. I had about 7 years experience in WoW. I did come back to try WoD, but FF14's combat mechanics were far superior, rewarding good players and teaching bad ones.
+The Ramos Online "Also, taunting is on a much longer CD and isn't an instant aggro, it instead increases your enmity by a certain %." Just a correction, that's not how Provoke works on FFXIV. It puts you to top threat +1 (like back in Cata?), so you need to start pumping threat asap or you'll lose it again to the 2nd on the aggro table.
Nudget Ted Oh, it's a whole +1? I haven't played a tank that much and I noticed that sometimes even after a Provoke I remain at the same position on the threat meter. I'm more of a healer myself :P
This was really fun to watch, I started in late TBC and really didn't a clue what was going on till wrath, so I love watching the vids about old mechanics!
+IKABOMB I know, right!? I sometimes catch myself thinking things like that and wishing for them to come back, but then I realise that it has had it's time and place and it can't really come back. I do wish for a bit more complexity again... Think of bringing back Armor Pen for example, but the whole threat management, while being fun at the time, is not meant to return I think :)
+kvloover Yup, was a time when a noname guildless scrub like me would get *instant* invitations when I logged in from people wanting a competent tank for 5man. I started too late to get into raiding though :
I loved threat. it was the most fun part for me in BC. lighting up at 2k+ tps. since I didn't show up on dps meters it was the mini competition that kept me going since the day a guildie tricked me into tanking and I found that I enjoyed it. thanks for this video man. I found your channel the other day and have been chain watching all the videos. makes me so nostalgic for that Era of my life again.
i love these legacy videos. I've started playing a year ago. I started with a DPS then move on to a tank. It is interesting to see how the vanilla differs with the current WoW. I like to think that i have become better at it. At first I was fearful. I was hesitant to roll a tank. I debated on what class I should roll. I ultimately chose a DK. I fell in love with it. I love the gameplay and rotation of a Blood DK. I watched some of your tanking guides and went straight for mob's faces. I love it. I want to become better. Currently I am at LFR level gear, but I want to move up to a raiding guild. I want to reach a higher level than my current one. It is tanks to your tanking/legacy videos that I have improved my game play. So keep up the good work and I hope to see more guides and legacy videos.
I think threat should return for a couple reasons: 1. Tanking has boiled down to basically 2 factors: Whether you can defend against the onslaught and having to face the boss a certain way. Other than that it's basically tank swapping and running around with an aoe debuff. Some stuff needs to change to make tanking more interesting. 2. Unlike in Vanilla and TBC, like you said, tanks have more aoe generating abilities than they used to. TC and Swipe no longer just hit 3 targets, which is good. But if all you need to hit those moves once to get everything on you until they die, then there's a problem. 3. Imagine as you like it, I don't see how a guy bashing a shield into your shin would generate more threat than a guy hurling massive fiery boulders at your face. I would love to see threat return as a way to keep people on their toes.
Really like this video, maybe you can upload more of this kind of videos while you make your regular content and prepare for making more big legacys, or maybe im asking too much. Anyways good vid
dude you need to read this you are smart you know what you are talking about you are funny and you share my feeling about this game and what it used to be i will advertise your channel to everybody i know hoping that some people will sub and you wont stop making these videos which make my day again and again
Thought I'd add my two cents from tanking. I want to take you guys all the way back to EverQuest in 1999 - 2000, classic to Kunark. Here's how aggro worked in general: Stuns > Strong Debuffs > Damage. That was it. Paladins and Shadowknights could tank up to level 50, and had an easy time with threat generation due to spells that stunned or debuffed the target. Neither was as beefy or had the tank cooldowns a warrior had past 50. So the only truly effective tanks were warriors. However, warriors couldn't outdamage the strongest DPS classes (rogues and monks). So the only way they could maintain aggro was by inflicting stuns and debuffs. However, warriors had no spells, nor any abilities that could stun the target besides bash (which barely produced aggro anyway). Warriors had taunt, but it basically didn't work. The result: the only way to tank properly was to dual wield weapons with a proc effect. What's a proc effect? A spell which is cast sometimes when a weapon hits a target. One popular tank weapon was Short Sword of the Ykesha, which produced an effect called Ykesha that decreased hitpoints and ministunned for high threat. Tanks would dual wield weapons like this, because they needed as many procs as possible to keep up their threat. Furthermore, you could increase the number of weapon procs you got by raising your dexterity. This was non obvious, as Sony never released explanations of what the stats did back then. But players figured it out, and so tanks grabbed as much dexterity, strength (for damage), and stamina as they could possibly find. And having weapons like the aforementioned SSY was the difference between being able to tank and not being able to do jack. Luckily, you didn't need a real tank until endgame anyway. Really, that was the secret to making EQ work at all. Casual players never needed to worry about tanking, because they weren't going to get to endgame raiding. Many different group combinations worked for leveling up and running basic dungeons, because the fights weren't numerically difficult. But a lot of coordination and planning was needed due to timed respawns and slow mana recovery. Even without tank management, the dungeons were difficult from that angle alone. You didn't need to worry about the details of real tanking unless you were a hardcore player, in which case you would do whatever it took to win anyway. So you never had groups sitting around for long periods of time waiting for a tank. Instead, the combination of players you had would determine your strategy. Got two necros? Fear everything and let your DPS chase it around hitting things from behind. Got a lot of casters? Use a lot of CC and mage pets for everything, or have an enchanter charm something to use for pulling and soaking hits. Party full of monks, rogues, and shadowknights? Use careful pulling and DPS-burst strategies. Got a party full of rangers? Lol, fuck off and reroll, scrubs. It wasn't the most balanced game, but it was always interesting. Just thought I'd share. With tanking falling by the wayside in many new MMOs, the holy trinity may become a thing of the past in the near future.
+JenoPaciano I loved some of these early strategies before everything become so standardised and fixed, where there's a real risk/reward nature to doing risky plays and working as a team to pull them off. In Vanilla WoW there were mountains of skills which had very limited or risky uses, most of which have now all been removed or dumbed down. For about the first 6 months of the game very few people even understood the basics of tanking and healing, so these strategies were often discussed in party chat to overcoming a dungeon or world group elite quest. Pulling mob packs into previous rooms, using mind soothe/sap to sneak past large groups, offtanking, kiting, fearing and threat bouncing to prevent the ridiculous damage elite mobs could do (tanking skills barely reduced damage back then). Creatively clearing a dungeon with weird and wonderful group compositions was damn fun, and I don't think we will ever see that come back to MMOs, people simply don't have the patience for that any more.
cattysplat A system like in EQ could work. You didn't need a tank or even a dedicated healer except for the hardest encounters, and every class did completely different things. Group composition was interesting because you seldom had the same exact combination of classes, and had to come up with strategies on the fly. A group with two necromancers and a druid might fear+snare kite the same group of mobs that a group of rogues and monks would burst down, or a group of mages would send their pets at and move each pet in and out to control which is tanking at a given time. Only sometimes did you even have a tank + healer, and when you did you could still wipe if people didn't adapt quickly enough when things went wrong. The only thing MMOs need to do is make sure every class plays completely differently and can do things that none of the other classes can do, or can do as well. That's literally all it takes to make the game interesting. Vanilla WoW was like that, classic EQ was like that, and D&D was like that. I don't know why that lesson has been forgotten.
Easily 1 of the best videos out there about threat in warcraft. It was annoying but fun, this was one of the things that made warcraft what it was, without it, never the same.
When they removed threat managment, i simply lost the intention to play tanks, but all things aside. That was the only things i loved about playing a tank. When it comes to dps managment, i hate managing a lot of thing, back in the day i just watch threat and try to choose between aoe and single target. So overall in middle of wrath, i lost all pleasure of playing a tank. In tbc i was considered a good tank, in wrath i was considered too slow. Everything is so fast now, i have no longer have fun in it.
I very much enjoyed the nostalgia that this vid invoked. I agree with your conclusion that it should not return, but for a different reason. I think that it was a necessary part of the early game as there were far less mechanics. We instead focused on controlling our damage/healing versus the threat of the tank. Nowadays, we have mechanics bloody everywhere. Threat isn't needed to make an encounter intense. Anyone who's played since Vanilla or BC can tell you that mechanics have increased tenfold over the years. Threat was cool, but has become obsolete. Good times tossing a 10k shadowbolt and watching a boss come give me a hug in BC.
I also enjoyed having to manage my threat. It added a dynamic that was, for me, fun, and helped me feel more involved and more like I needed to pay attention to what I was doing (other than not standing in the proverbial fire :) ) And we had ability and trinket procs back then too, so not sure that they replaced the sense of added complexity managing threat brought to the game. I do think this is one of the things that give some veteran players a sense of simplification in WoW. That is probably the worst part of not having a real threat mechanic, in my opinion.
Preach, I absolutely love this Video. I brought back how much skill it took to even a "good" tank in Vanilla. Let alone a great one. Compared to now tanking is only making sure you don't die, instead of managing every bit of everything you do so your dps and healers don't get fucked in the ass by a dragon. (And not in the way some people have a fetish for)
So true about tanks becoming known across a server. My mate re-rolled a tank in TBC and he was unreal at it. I remember on boss, I can't remember which. His doorbell went. He checked his threat meter. And he was so far ahead, he went to answer the door mid boss fight (I think it was prince in Kara and we happened to get really lucky with the inferals) But he came back minutes later and still had agro.
+Animuldok tbc was awful from a tanks perspective, dps were used to consecration spamming paladins with no problem holding threat and would fuck up positional warrior pulls and tank loot dropped 300% less than it did in vanilla, plus paladins and warriors wore different gear so it was basically 6 times rarer than it should have been
Threat management was cool. It was an awesome way of responsibility for a damage dealers. It was all about synergy of the group! That who-do-you-think-you-are moment when you have enough DPS to pull aggro from your tank but you don't. If only majority of damage dealers were not too cool to manage it...
I would give anything to bring back the days of TBC threat, not only was it great fun, but as a prot warrior i was a genuinely valuable player to my guild and realm community. I loved the fact that i was measurably better than all the other people that were playing tank. The fact that I can now enter a heroic dungeon and probably tank the entire thing using only thunderclap is tragic and has completely watered down the experience to one that is in no way fun or rewarding. You have to admit that threat was a far more fun mechanic, you say that today is more about reacting to procs and cooldowns but it just results in the gaming becoming 'World of WeakAuras' with a giant icon telling you "press ability X now!!!!!" Also windfury and no unlimited heroism... fun times :D
+Outdoor Thor So in simpler words, you would like to suck the fun out of the dps players that because of threat could not give their 100% so you can get a boost to your ego.
Being a good tank was extremely rewarding back in the day especially as horde; it got me first bids on all raid loot, always had a spot, and eventually got me an officer & class leader spot in the guild. (I later realized this was an incentive to keep me from leaving but in reality I was never interested in ferrying to a top server guild since I liked my friends there) I'm not sure I believe that tanks were so specced in arms; all the Mts I remember were all very heavy in prot except for Off Tanks who had to spend part of the fight dealing damage. My rotation was was; 5 sunders; then shield block, shield slam, heroic strike,(later devastating), and last sunder in that order of priority. AOE taunt = MASS battle shouts in vanilla. Had a great time in TBC heroics as a result. Mark of a great tank? Stance dance tanking Ony and Nef with battle rage :)
I honestly haven't enjoyed tanking since threat diminished with 3.0 and beyond. It was my favorite aspect of tanking and made me feel like I was preforming well in my role. Yeah, I was one of those server renowned MTs ... and actually cleared Naxx pre BC. As a DPS, you said it exactly. Instead of managing threat, we go ham and have a lot more focus on procs and CDs. As well as of course, more mechanics.
As a point of illustration, as a BC/Wrath pally tank, in BC we had a 70 hunter tagging along our dungeon run, just to make clearing easier, and she was totally able to go full tilt against my 63 paladin. And she was progressing through SSC at the time, so considerably geared for the time. I really do miss spellpower tanking now and again.
I enjoyed threat in TBC. It was fun to measure my personal progression based on if I could pull aggro from my MT. I remember when the time came when I did have to hold back.. when I'd have to wait for the MT to establish threat and when my Soul Shatter button replaced SOC as a spell that was regularly used. Good times!
I think there should be some discussion regarding the continuous stream of changes that are imposed on all classes. Should classes start to stay the same, thereby creating room for new ones, or should they continue re-vamping things and tearing them back down continuously, thereby completely trivializing any debate on whether or not any system was superior. That's really at the heart of this discussion.
preach, at the start of cataclysm, blizz reduced threat generation considerably which changed it a bit but due to public outcry, increased it twice over small patches.
gosh do I love those vids:) maestro, may u be inclined of making some "the legacy of ...(class)" videos or of dungeons like the best dungeon in wow, Brd?
I still find myself playing Wow with those threat mechanics in mind. Starting attacks after 2+ seconds of the tank starting the pull, putting threat directing skills on the tank on CD. They probably aren't as needed in this age of random PUGs and LFD/LFR, every little bit helps prevent those "uh oh" moments.Another great piece Preach - fully worthy of the "Legacy of WoW" moniker in my opinion.
Oh man, vanilla Vael. I used to heal that as a SHADOW priest. Obviously out of shadow form, but I was missing most of the heal talents and had none of the aggro reduction talents. I swear doing that was one of the most challenging things in WoW I have ever done. I had to manage healing aggro significantly more than the actual healers. I could not use Prayer at all. I had to target swap-shield, renew and low rank heals with the occasional flash mixed in, and if I stopped this constant cycle even for a second, my group would die. It was utterly insane, and back then I didn't even realize what a sick feat I was actually pulling off. Good memories! Also, in all fairness, our tank was insanely good and no doubt a big part of what allowed me to do that.
I love these video's showing old content/gameplay. I would much rather watch this than any current WoD content as WoD bores me to fucking tears. Love you Preach, keep it up. :)
Good vid, was interesting to learn about threat before wrath, also satchels got buffed to 500 gold with 550 boa and stuff so they are trying to get more geared tanks to go into lfd but they probably are scared of making it too beneficial because yes tanks would que more but they would also all be rich and not have to pay actual money for sub.
As a DPS, i miss it; as a tank i REALLY miss it. It let me shine, to be able to micro manage adds and still keep a boss on me. There would always be the competitiveness in a guild when a DPS would try to pull threat from a tank, and actually have a chance at succeeding.
God now i miss my totems... So sad i cry every time! I would do about ANYTHING to get back my old totems... it's the biggest feature of the awesome class SHAMAN.
as broken as its been at times, threat has always been the most fun in the game for me. topping threat was way more fulfilling to me than topping dps meters! its more difficult, more rewarding, and most importantly... most critical to the success of the group!
I can still remember as a warrior in the burning crusade hated when a priest cast power word shield on me, because if you absorbed the damage you couldn't get rage which meant less threat. I was so glad that got fixed later but then it wasn't nessasary anymore.
threat is sometimes still a thing, like when I get good RNG on hellfire council pull and take one of the bosses off the tank xD really like the legacy videos and more videos like this would be cool :P
As someone who mained fury warrior from end of vanilla through wotlk, threat management was a nightmare. 0 abilities to reduce threat as fury, spamming heroic strike as a rage dump, recklessness+execute+deathwish spam, usually ended with death with the boss at like 5% because tanks just couldn't keep up lol. Even with that change to berzerker stance to reduce threat generation, it was a pain.
I still get the bosses "attention" from time to time with my arcane mage, not during the pull but usually during the rebursting phase about a minute into the fight and/or to the end of the fight when fewer of my fellow raiders are left standing
This totally brings up BC memories for me.....Oh Leotheras......I remember doing the fight with my totally casual guild (1 raid a week....yes,you read that right...1 RAID PER WEEK!) and finally being called in to dps on my warlock...so i hook myself up with tons of consumables,pile on those soul shards for all the firestones and healthstones and whatnot and check out Stego's how to : Leotheras the Blind back in the old days of youtube(remember that guy anyone? Explaining boss tactics with great trance/electro music in the background to sped up footage?). So in the end he says "at last phase you have 2 choices-1.) You keep controling the fight and dps him down. 2.) You nuke the shit out of him and kill him before him and the demon kill your raid. So naturally i went with option 1. at first....but whirlwind after whirlwind killing packs of people i decided "fuck it,let's nuke the fucking bastard!". So i went as hard as humanly possible on my 3 button (shadowbolt,duh...) with all the pots and stuff consumed.....screen flashes red....Ob(the warrior maintank) desperately runs after him....i soulshatter before he gets to me,so he turns to the second person on the threatmeter-NOT THE TANK.....gets to him,1 shots him......goes to the third person....1 shots him....and so on until he destroys the entire raid at 2% health left. Naturally they throw ALL the blame on me and perma-bench me,to which i left the guild soon after. I admit it,yes....i was guilty of nuking the shit out of a boss on low % in a desperate attempt to get the bastard down....but it seems i wasn't the only one,was i? You'd be wrong....i'm to blame for the rest of the guild doing the same thing and essentially playing hot potato with the boss while our MT was running around like a headless chicken trying to get the boss.
TBC was the sweet spot. I just found it funny most of the time when higher tier gear players would pull agro and id haft to taunt it back. But also often they then were so high dps that the mob died soon anyway before killing them, on trash atleast. (And sometimes they would die.. no biggie.. they learn and you res them) Threat was the mechanic that added the most realism to fights I think... those who are the highest threat are those who are in danger. It also made you feel more powerful in ways.. that you were so strong you had to hold back.. and kept tanks of their toes. + a sense of more danger. It should come back. Buff tanks threat a lot, but not so that it is impossible to lose.
A few issues: The dps making more threat than tanks: Non-Issue with Thunderfury, except when DPS has one as well. Even without Thunderfury only an issue with skilled tanks past the T2 stage of gear. Which leads to the next thing: Gear, once past t2, (well actually even in just good full blues) it was always an option to order your dps to play with some mobs alone while you started to tank the hard hitting melee mobs. This mechanic became very prominent became integral part of the tb heroic instance design, going so far the some mobs were not intended to get tanked by a tank, but instead kited or bursted by dps alone. Especially enemy casters damage could reduce to near zero with interrupting, which traditional was a dd job. And you seem to have missed demo-shout and thunderclap. IIRC in vanilla was thunderclap agro efficient with 3 or 4 mobs and demo shout aggro efficient to spam away with 6 or more mobs, giving even warriors the ability to tank large groups without much trouble when tabbing and spreading the love of your heroic strikes around. Lastly: Aggro gear. Not as important in vanilla, but even there having aggro related gear choices could have decent impact on your dds ability to do damage. In TB the different became huge and aggro gear assured that your dds could go all out most of time. (outside of threat mechanics in the encounter themselves. Naturally this leads to me preferring the TB agro mechanics because it combined the joys of a dd (doing perfect rotations, having the biggest bar, managing your aggro in multi tank scenarios, etc) together with the need for situational awareness that comes mainly with the healer positions. The class simply was one incredible fun to play that way on a high level. Does not mean that this would be the best for the game itself, though I bet it would be less damaging to the player community than the introduction of the LFG / LFR tools, which can not be undone anymore, but at the same time lead to a complete different atmosphere on server communities.
While there are some aspects of the old threat system I miss, I won't shed any tears over leaving the days when 90% of tanks were awful and a single crit heal would pull aggro from an entire room.
I started playing during BC but never "fell in love" with the game until Cata so I'm not too familiar with the difficulties of threat handling, but doesn't the removal of threat remove some of the teamwork or the feeling that your actions affects others? I still play the game and enjoy it alot but the main issue I have with the game and the direction the game is going is the multiplayer aspect. It feels like the developers are separating players more and more to make it easier to enjoy the game solo. Even though you are playing in a group more and more things are becoming individual (prime example is loot). Awesome content as always Preach!
DPS SLOWLY, AND WHEN I SAY SLOW, I MEAN FUCKING SLOW!
more dots
MINUS FIFTY DKP
CcReap3r Wait till 3 stacks of Sunder Armor!
Okay stop dots
THAT'S A FUCKING 50 DKP MINUS!
i still can't get over him pronouncing buffet like he's about to dig into a meal....
I know, right?
Immediately sent me looking for this comment.
So, healers use the triforce of wisdom to channel their holy magiks
DPS use the triforce of power to lay low their enemies
Tanks use the triforce of courage to stand firm in the face of overwhelming foes.
Well I guess it makes sense. Link uses sword and board, after all
I remember getting threat in HFC with a soul capacitor proc and I was like whoa, that shit hasn't happened in 7 years
+Laurits M Your tanks must be not good ;p
+Anshi Lies i am a tank myself, and its impossible to take aggro from me. Even as an arcane mage with Hero, ring and CDs
+Anshi Lies besides, isnt this trinket meele only?
+deenman23 It's happened to me as well. I forgot to use Tricks on a few boss pulls. Subtlety opener + Soul Capacitor. When the trinket exploded aggro snapped right onto me. Almost any pull I forgot to use Tricks on that would happen. Of course the Subtlety opener then uses Prep-Vanish and my aggro is wiped anyway. But it sure isn't impossible. I do outgear the rest of my raid by 15-20 ilvls, so it seems like the opening burst of 250-300k dps can do it.
+deenman23 No, there is no tank ingame that can hold of a combat rogue on thrashpulls.
It just isn't possible to do anything against a dps doing 25 million dmg in 10 seconds (our hc geared rogue's spirit trinket exploded for 20 million dmg)
I started playing in BC and I loved how threat-efficient my Affliction Warlock was. I loved to see the dick-measuring DPS types get slaughtered then kicked in dungeons because they couldn't give a shit about aggro. I loved the tension of walking the fine edge of doing good DPS and not out-aggroing the tank. You had to have a functioning brain, because that's all you needed to have to get it right, not a doctorate in WoW game mechanics. In those days, you could pull off a dungeon with 3 warlocks and 2 druids, where all 5 were DPS. Sure, it meant 3 warlocks managing DPS, Voidwalker targeting and healing, and Fear-leashing all at once, as well as 2 druids doing damage and helping out with healing the tanking Voidwalkers and the warlocks as they inevitably picked up the aggro, but it was a mindblowing experience.
I remember doing Frost spec tanking in WotLK, and my shock at seeing an entire blob of mobs sticking to me like glue in dungeons while the DPS were going apeshit on them. I felt superfluous many times. There was no such thing as "good tanking" anymore, only being a meatshield for ungrateful shits who aggro mobs left and right, and you, like a parent running after its retarded offspring, scrambled to keep them alive.
These days, whenever I do my daily Heroic Dungeons, I just try to keep up with the retarded tank charging ahead like a bull on viagra, popping a few Corruptions to pretend I'm doing something because by the time I put my full set of DoTs on the target it's either dead or at 25% HP, and chances are that if I have an item-related quest in the dungeon I'm gonna miss out on the next bossfight because fuck waiting 10 seconds.
So yeah, I miss aggro, or rather, the tactical aspect of the game, when DPS had more to do then pressing all their buttons, timing their various cooldowns, and having enough processing power left to avoid standing in flashy things. While I fully acknowledge that there should be a limit on how exclusive a game is, I'd like to point out that being too inclusive is just as bad, because it will cater to idiots instead of people who live without a brain tumour.
+Khorothis exactly my point: i always played as a dps, with the occasional healer, and i've always sustained one thing and only one: the best dps is not the one that deals more damage, it's the one who knows when to deal damage and how, to not get the aggro from the tank, it's the one that can walk the thin line of balance between max damage output and minimal threat generation
+Khorothis SOOOO MUCH THIS
This stupidity of this whole thread now that we've replayed all these expacs again like tbc holding threat was pretty fucking easy aside from non stop seed of corruption in tbc and if dps aren't pulling threat from you as a frost dk but there going ape shit that just means the dps are shit
I remember warriors raging at priests using shields on them haha, they needed the rage so bad.
The main problem is that taking damage generates threat and a shield before a fight starts prevents some of that vital early threat. A shield before a fight has a not insignificant chance of leading to aggro being lost near the start, and the entire fight getting fucked up, all for a tiny bit more survivability that (if everyone does their job right) the warrior won't need.
Why you have to remind me of old talent tree :(
I miss it so much.
+deenman23 satire?
The old talent tree could be improved but stay the same so you get a talent point every level, it was way more satisfying.
+deenman23 exactly, and i played since vanilla. New talents are way better. and i know they will improve even more with Legion
play a private sv , see the old skill tree , remember how shit it was, logg off
+deenman23 At max level you had barely any less choice (that matters) than the new one, but it was way better while leveling.
So yeah :(
I only recently discovered your channel, and now I'm watching all your videos whenever I have spare time. I loved the Legacy series especially. Keep it coming please! :D
Wish you showed footage of non-paladin tanking in Shattered Halls. If you cleared that in one go you could do anything.
*raises hand*
I didn't play TBC long, but I did finish all the dungeon content. I was tanking as a warrior. I got literal guild invites because I could do these things.
The part about being KNOWN when you were a good tank gets me in this video. I know its just flat out unrealistic for it to ever come back, but I miss that so much.
Threat was a fantastic aspect to the game. If anything I think the closest to perfection was LK. The lovely aspect of threat was that it required the entire raid group to work as a team. Instead of just tracking debuffs and zZzing I had to go HAM 24/7 and make sure I was in sync with the other tank ready for upcoming swaps or just loss of threat if it came to execute phase. The point was that you were constantly pushing your class to the limits and dancing with the game wondering if it should punish you or not. Threat alone is the reason CC was important in dungeons and is an element that is greatly lost. We only saw CC really be a thing at the start of Cata when we couldn't solve the problem with AOE or cleaving we were finally forced to consider CC.
Lets be perfectly honest, you didn't have to be an amazing player to learn these mechanics and they made players better and far more accepting of failure or the time it took to complete dungeons or raids. Now we have the mentality of go go go. Yes it meant that dungeons were a gate to raiding but that was a good thing because it made me ready for a challenge. It forced you to learn how the core mechanics of your class and the game intertwined. Nowadays we just put our skills on our bars and queue up to a few dungeons then hit up LFR/Flex which is lazy and puts that back on the player encouraging them to do so.
I know over the years I've become lazy. I suppose I really enjoyed Cata besides them ruining classes like Druid - Boomkin, Warrior - Prot & the infamous DS. Something I can say over the past few years is that Hunters seem to get better and better and better, I really don't understand how this class can keep improving.
Aspects like cleave tanking are skills lost nowadays where you had to cycle through your targets and keep aggro on them all. Now you just spam AOE for days and gg, as long as you keep your defensives up the healer only has to heal the tank.
Definitely sad days but I hope they can once again find a purpose for threat or something very similar in design but different name. If anything the changes to Prot Warriors just may be my second chance at love again. Ahhhh good times. Okay healers pulling threat was shitty but it still fun.
Ahhh, the good ol'Wing Buff-ayyyyyyyyylmao.
+Steve Brown I was getting ready to post this if no one else had. Good jorb.
+Steve Brown In his Drama Fridays/PG Shows he still says Buffet (Buff-Ay). People are gonna start raging at him soon.
Lulz, he's prolly just doing it to piss people off now.
Wing Buffet, so spicy, so delicous !
i miss threat....because it allowed classes like locks and rogues who did top DPS consistently to have to ease off the throttle or die horribly and fuck up a fight. now...hunters slam your face into the keyboard as hard as you can for max deeps and only punishment is a possible concussion.
As a long-time rogue player I really miss the times when balancing DPS and threat and riding on the edge of drawing aggro was the mark of a good player.
what about those rare occasions when the OT was an insanely geared rogue popping evasion until a real tank could build enough threat?
Pfft says the class with feint. Lmao.
@@DecayedPony and vanish lol
Dude that was a cool video and Im glad to have learned about the history of wow's combat system. Iv'e had a basic understanding of how threat worked, but I'm glad to know the changes and excatly how it was meant to be compared to the changes it went through. Keep on making good vids man, proud sub and big fan of yours. Keep on rockin dude! \m/
Lol, footage of a vanilla prot pally aoe tanking in BWL. Love it.
"TO ALL THE NON-BELIEVERS!!"
Preach, you should do a Legacy of Healing video.
I played WoW from Vanilla up to just before ... The Pandas ... And this was a nice trip down memory lane !
Final Fantasy XIV (A Realm Reborn and Heavensward) is the ideal way to handle threat imo.
It's like a sweet spot between TBC and Wrath.
Tanks need to use enmity generating abilities to keep aggro, which is easy enough, but to properly play their class to the fullest, they need to try and pump out respectable DPS with it, which results in a very good dynamic.
In FF14, a good tank is a tank who uses his enmity generating abilities just enough to maintain aggro and puts the rest of his focus on maintaining high damage. Not as high as the DPS, mind you, but it's still something sought after.
Also, taunting is on a much longer CD and isn't an instant aggro, it instead increases your enmity by a certain %. If you was 6th on the enmity meter and you use Provoke, you won't jump to 1st, you'll go to about 5th. It makes tank swaps far more engaging.
+The Ramos Online agreed. while a tank can pretty easily aggro-fight a dps if he desires, in progression a highly skilled tank will be dancing on the edge of being just above his dps'ers in aggro and trying to fit in as many low-threat-high-damage moves as possible to pass dps checks.
+The Ramos Online In WoW progression guilds thats exactly what happens I remember speccing full crit once I got enough defensive tanking gear to be easy enough for the healers to keep up in HoF in MoP just to get more DPS which of course helped with DPS check fights. Especially in fights like Garalon where threat wasnt a mechanic.
David Macadam I actually quit WoW during MoP, so I know how the mechanics worked then. I had about 7 years experience in WoW.
I did come back to try WoD, but FF14's combat mechanics were far superior, rewarding good players and teaching bad ones.
+The Ramos Online "Also, taunting is on a much longer CD and isn't an instant aggro, it
instead increases your enmity by a certain %."
Just a correction, that's not how Provoke works on FFXIV. It puts you to top threat +1 (like back in Cata?), so you need to start pumping threat asap or you'll lose it again to the 2nd on the aggro table.
Nudget Ted Oh, it's a whole +1? I haven't played a tank that much and I noticed that sometimes even after a Provoke I remain at the same position on the threat meter.
I'm more of a healer myself :P
This was really fun to watch, I started in late TBC and really didn't a clue what was going on till wrath, so I love watching the vids about old mechanics!
went through entire vanilla with sunder armor and stance dancing, got nothing but praise :d
+kvloover I miss stance dancing in a weird nostalgia way lol.
+IKABOMB I know, right!? I sometimes catch myself thinking things like that and wishing for them to come back, but then I realise that it has had it's time and place and it can't really come back. I do wish for a bit more complexity again... Think of bringing back Armor Pen for example, but the whole threat management, while being fun at the time, is not meant to return I think :)
+kvloover
Yup, was a time when a noname guildless scrub like me would get *instant* invitations when I logged in from people wanting a competent tank for 5man. I started too late to get into raiding though :
+Dm Gray It was a good time to be a good tank. Just took a couple pugs to find a few players who wanted to be your best friend in the game.
I remember occasionally seeing the big bad turn towards me after a big heal; thank God for fade
I loved threat. it was the most fun part for me in BC. lighting up at 2k+ tps. since I didn't show up on dps meters it was the mini competition that kept me going since the day a guildie tricked me into tanking and I found that I enjoyed it. thanks for this video man. I found your channel the other day and have been chain watching all the videos. makes me so nostalgic for that Era of my life again.
Wait? Threat isn't the same as it was in Vanilla? Damn, been a healer for too long.
Videos aren't the same without that funny song in the background. Still love u tho
Agreed
+RIP Frost Mage Lulz i was just about to make a comment about it :D
Great video, one of the better ones this year. Made me look back at Vanilla, TBC and WotLK too so that;s bonus points :)
love these videos, reminds me too much of olden days
i love these legacy videos. I've started playing a year ago. I started with a DPS then move on to a tank. It is interesting to see how the vanilla differs with the current WoW. I like to think that i have become better at it. At first I was fearful. I was hesitant to roll a tank. I debated on what class I should roll. I ultimately chose a DK. I fell in love with it. I love the gameplay and rotation of a Blood DK. I watched some of your tanking guides and went straight for mob's faces. I love it. I want to become better. Currently I am at LFR level gear, but I want to move up to a raiding guild. I want to reach a higher level than my current one. It is tanks to your tanking/legacy videos that I have improved my game play. So keep up the good work and I hope to see more guides and legacy videos.
Loved it Preach. Added to my favorite videos.
I had this video in my autofill, for a second I thought someone sent threats to preach.
I think threat should return for a couple reasons:
1. Tanking has boiled down to basically 2 factors: Whether you can defend against the onslaught and having to face the boss a certain way. Other than that it's basically tank swapping and running around with an aoe debuff. Some stuff needs to change to make tanking more interesting.
2. Unlike in Vanilla and TBC, like you said, tanks have more aoe generating abilities than they used to. TC and Swipe no longer just hit 3 targets, which is good. But if all you need to hit those moves once to get everything on you until they die, then there's a problem.
3. Imagine as you like it, I don't see how a guy bashing a shield into your shin would generate more threat than a guy hurling massive fiery boulders at your face. I would love to see threat return as a way to keep people on their toes.
Another great legacy video! GJ mate!
Really like this video, maybe you can upload more of this kind of videos while you make your regular content and prepare for making more big legacys, or maybe im asking too much. Anyways good vid
11:18 stroke?
+Aar “on” Teesa holy fukk dieing
great video. i do miss the old days of threat. then again, i also miss the old song you used to tie in with your videos. bring it back!
Great video as always Preach! Thanks
Another great and informative video Preach!
dude you need to read this
you are smart
you know what you are talking about
you are funny
and you share my feeling about this game and what it used to be i will advertise your channel to everybody i know hoping that some people will sub and you wont stop making these videos which make my day again and again
Thought I'd add my two cents from tanking. I want to take you guys all the way back to EverQuest in 1999 - 2000, classic to Kunark. Here's how aggro worked in general: Stuns > Strong Debuffs > Damage. That was it. Paladins and Shadowknights could tank up to level 50, and had an easy time with threat generation due to spells that stunned or debuffed the target. Neither was as beefy or had the tank cooldowns a warrior had past 50. So the only truly effective tanks were warriors.
However, warriors couldn't outdamage the strongest DPS classes (rogues and monks). So the only way they could maintain aggro was by inflicting stuns and debuffs. However, warriors had no spells, nor any abilities that could stun the target besides bash (which barely produced aggro anyway). Warriors had taunt, but it basically didn't work. The result: the only way to tank properly was to dual wield weapons with a proc effect.
What's a proc effect? A spell which is cast sometimes when a weapon hits a target. One popular tank weapon was Short Sword of the Ykesha, which produced an effect called Ykesha that decreased hitpoints and ministunned for high threat. Tanks would dual wield weapons like this, because they needed as many procs as possible to keep up their threat.
Furthermore, you could increase the number of weapon procs you got by raising your dexterity. This was non obvious, as Sony never released explanations of what the stats did back then. But players figured it out, and so tanks grabbed as much dexterity, strength (for damage), and stamina as they could possibly find. And having weapons like the aforementioned SSY was the difference between being able to tank and not being able to do jack.
Luckily, you didn't need a real tank until endgame anyway. Really, that was the secret to making EQ work at all. Casual players never needed to worry about tanking, because they weren't going to get to endgame raiding. Many different group combinations worked for leveling up and running basic dungeons, because the fights weren't numerically difficult. But a lot of coordination and planning was needed due to timed respawns and slow mana recovery. Even without tank management, the dungeons were difficult from that angle alone. You didn't need to worry about the details of real tanking unless you were a hardcore player, in which case you would do whatever it took to win anyway.
So you never had groups sitting around for long periods of time waiting for a tank. Instead, the combination of players you had would determine your strategy. Got two necros? Fear everything and let your DPS chase it around hitting things from behind. Got a lot of casters? Use a lot of CC and mage pets for everything, or have an enchanter charm something to use for pulling and soaking hits. Party full of monks, rogues, and shadowknights? Use careful pulling and DPS-burst strategies. Got a party full of rangers? Lol, fuck off and reroll, scrubs. It wasn't the most balanced game, but it was always interesting.
Just thought I'd share. With tanking falling by the wayside in many new MMOs, the holy trinity may become a thing of the past in the near future.
+JenoPaciano I loved some of these early strategies before everything become so standardised and fixed, where there's a real risk/reward nature to doing risky plays and working as a team to pull them off. In Vanilla WoW there were mountains of skills which had very limited or risky uses, most of which have now all been removed or dumbed down. For about the first 6 months of the game very few people even understood the basics of tanking and healing, so these strategies were often discussed in party chat to overcoming a dungeon or world group elite quest. Pulling mob packs into previous rooms, using mind soothe/sap to sneak past large groups, offtanking, kiting, fearing and threat bouncing to prevent the ridiculous damage elite mobs could do (tanking skills barely reduced damage back then). Creatively clearing a dungeon with weird and wonderful group compositions was damn fun, and I don't think we will ever see that come back to MMOs, people simply don't have the patience for that any more.
cattysplat A system like in EQ could work. You didn't need a tank or even a dedicated healer except for the hardest encounters, and every class did completely different things. Group composition was interesting because you seldom had the same exact combination of classes, and had to come up with strategies on the fly. A group with two necromancers and a druid might fear+snare kite the same group of mobs that a group of rogues and monks would burst down, or a group of mages would send their pets at and move each pet in and out to control which is tanking at a given time. Only sometimes did you even have a tank + healer, and when you did you could still wipe if people didn't adapt quickly enough when things went wrong.
The only thing MMOs need to do is make sure every class plays completely differently and can do things that none of the other classes can do, or can do as well. That's literally all it takes to make the game interesting. Vanilla WoW was like that, classic EQ was like that, and D&D was like that. I don't know why that lesson has been forgotten.
Easily 1 of the best videos out there about threat in warcraft. It was annoying but fun, this was one of the things that made warcraft what it was, without it, never the same.
When they removed threat managment, i simply lost the intention to play tanks, but all things aside. That was the only things i loved about playing a tank.
When it comes to dps managment, i hate managing a lot of thing, back in the day i just watch threat and try to choose between aoe and single target.
So overall in middle of wrath, i lost all pleasure of playing a tank.
In tbc i was considered a good tank, in wrath i was considered too slow.
Everything is so fast now, i have no longer have fun in it.
Loved this vid, thanks Mike!
I think this is your best video yet.
Great vid, Preach, hope to see more micro-legacy videos in the future.
The Intro is pure gold!
Dark Light! My old guild! So fun to see videos from back then!
hope you're all doing well!
I very much enjoyed the nostalgia that this vid invoked.
I agree with your conclusion that it should not return, but for a different reason. I think that it was a necessary part of the early game as there were far less mechanics. We instead focused on controlling our damage/healing versus the threat of the tank. Nowadays, we have mechanics bloody everywhere. Threat isn't needed to make an encounter intense. Anyone who's played since Vanilla or BC can tell you that mechanics have increased tenfold over the years.
Threat was cool, but has become obsolete.
Good times tossing a 10k shadowbolt and watching a boss come give me a hug in BC.
I also enjoyed having to manage my threat. It added a dynamic that was, for me, fun, and helped me feel more involved and more like I needed to pay attention to what I was doing (other than not standing in the proverbial fire :) ) And we had ability and trinket procs back then too, so not sure that they replaced the sense of added complexity managing threat brought to the game.
I do think this is one of the things that give some veteran players a sense of simplification in WoW. That is probably the worst part of not having a real threat mechanic, in my opinion.
Preach, I absolutely love this Video. I brought back how much skill it took to even a "good" tank in Vanilla. Let alone a great one. Compared to now tanking is only making sure you don't die, instead of managing every bit of everything you do so your dps and healers don't get fucked in the ass by a dragon. (And not in the way some people have a fetish for)
So true about tanks becoming known across a server. My mate re-rolled a tank in TBC and he was unreal at it. I remember on boss, I can't remember which. His doorbell went. He checked his threat meter. And he was so far ahead, he went to answer the door mid boss fight (I think it was prince in Kara and we happened to get really lucky with the inferals) But he came back minutes later and still had agro.
love that kind of video. Great job :) I played vanilla but never came that far that threat would mater :D
Good use of that cut-scene from Wind Waker, Preach!
Crisp video Mr Preach, would love to see a legacy on priest :) keep up the good work.
As a DPS, I enjoyed threat management in tBC, then again, we did have a great tank.
I played moonkin and hunter... no wand.
deenman23 No, as I said... tBC (the Burning Crusade)
+Animuldok tbc was awful from a tanks perspective, dps were used to consecration spamming paladins with no problem holding threat and would fuck up positional warrior pulls and tank loot dropped 300% less than it did in vanilla, plus paladins and warriors wore different gear so it was basically 6 times rarer than it should have been
Nice stuff, almost what i was looking for
Threat management was cool. It was an awesome way of responsibility for a damage dealers. It was all about synergy of the group! That who-do-you-think-you-are moment when you have enough DPS to pull aggro from your tank but you don't. If only majority of damage dealers were not too cool to manage it...
nice vid. i started playing right around the time threat was becoming a non issue and i like hearin stories about when it was a thing.
Haven't even watched the video yet but that beginning was extremely powerful literally summarizing PvE in MMORPGs in general. Fantastic.
I would give anything to bring back the days of TBC threat, not only was it great fun, but as a prot warrior i was a genuinely valuable player to my guild and realm community. I loved the fact that i was measurably better than all the other people that were playing tank. The fact that I can now enter a heroic dungeon and probably tank the entire thing using only thunderclap is tragic and has completely watered down the experience to one that is in no way fun or rewarding. You have to admit that threat was a far more fun mechanic, you say that today is more about reacting to procs and cooldowns but it just results in the gaming becoming 'World of WeakAuras' with a giant icon telling you "press ability X now!!!!!" Also windfury and no unlimited heroism... fun times :D
+Outdoor Thor So in simpler words, you would like to suck the fun out of the dps players that because of threat could not give their 100% so you can get a boost to your ego.
the best video by far thank you
Nice video, thanks for sharing!
Being a good tank was extremely rewarding back in the day especially as horde; it got me first bids on all raid loot, always had a spot, and eventually got me an officer & class leader spot in the guild. (I later realized this was an incentive to keep me from leaving but in reality I was never interested in ferrying to a top server guild since I liked my friends there)
I'm not sure I believe that tanks were so specced in arms; all the Mts I remember were all very heavy in prot except for Off Tanks who had to spend part of the fight dealing damage. My rotation was was; 5 sunders; then shield block, shield slam, heroic strike,(later devastating), and last sunder in that order of priority. AOE taunt = MASS battle shouts in vanilla. Had a great time in TBC heroics as a result.
Mark of a great tank? Stance dance tanking Ony and Nef with battle rage :)
I honestly haven't enjoyed tanking since threat diminished with 3.0 and beyond. It was my favorite aspect of tanking and made me feel like I was preforming well in my role. Yeah, I was one of those server renowned MTs ... and actually cleared Naxx pre BC. As a DPS, you said it exactly. Instead of managing threat, we go ham and have a lot more focus on procs and CDs. As well as of course, more mechanics.
As a point of illustration, as a BC/Wrath pally tank, in BC we had a 70 hunter tagging along our dungeon run, just to make clearing easier, and she was totally able to go full tilt against my 63 paladin. And she was progressing through SSC at the time, so considerably geared for the time.
I really do miss spellpower tanking now and again.
I enjoyed threat in TBC. It was fun to measure my personal progression based on if I could pull aggro from my MT. I remember when the time came when I did have to hold back.. when I'd have to wait for the MT to establish threat and when my Soul Shatter button replaced SOC as a spell that was regularly used.
Good times!
I think there should be some discussion regarding the continuous stream of changes that are imposed on all classes. Should classes start to stay the same, thereby creating room for new ones, or should they continue re-vamping things and tearing them back down continuously, thereby completely trivializing any debate on whether or not any system was superior. That's really at the heart of this discussion.
threat was one of the things that made things interesting it needs to be in there!
preach, at the start of cataclysm, blizz reduced threat generation considerably which changed it a bit but due to public outcry, increased it twice over small patches.
That windfury totem hehehe yeah I remember that as well, that was a time of The Horde. Epic times + like
I feel like this video's conclusion deserves revisiting, given the obvious joy Preach has felt while tanking in the Classic beta.
gosh do I love those vids:) maestro, may u be inclined of making some "the legacy of ...(class)" videos or of dungeons like the best dungeon in wow, Brd?
I still find myself playing Wow with those threat mechanics in mind. Starting attacks after 2+ seconds of the tank starting the pull, putting threat directing skills on the tank on CD. They probably aren't as needed in this age of random PUGs and LFD/LFR, every little bit helps prevent those "uh oh" moments.Another great piece Preach - fully worthy of the "Legacy of WoW" moniker in my opinion.
ye i always wait for the tank befor attacking mobs.my bro taught me that long ago and lil old me will never do anything else
Gotta say my favorite part (aside the actual good info) is you just popping up saying "nope" lol
Oh man, vanilla Vael. I used to heal that as a SHADOW priest. Obviously out of shadow form, but I was missing most of the heal talents and had none of the aggro reduction talents. I swear doing that was one of the most challenging things in WoW I have ever done. I had to manage healing aggro significantly more than the actual healers. I could not use Prayer at all. I had to target swap-shield, renew and low rank heals with the occasional flash mixed in, and if I stopped this constant cycle even for a second, my group would die. It was utterly insane, and back then I didn't even realize what a sick feat I was actually pulling off. Good memories!
Also, in all fairness, our tank was insanely good and no doubt a big part of what allowed me to do that.
This brings back MEMORIES of Vanila! Oh yes yes.. Gooooood Video Preach! :P
I love these video's showing old content/gameplay. I would much rather watch this than any current WoD content as WoD bores me to fucking tears. Love you Preach, keep it up. :)
Good vid, was interesting to learn about threat before wrath, also satchels got buffed to 500 gold with 550 boa and stuff so they are trying to get more geared tanks to go into lfd but they probably are scared of making it too beneficial because yes tanks would que more but they would also all be rich and not have to pay actual money for sub.
As a DPS, i miss it; as a tank i REALLY miss it. It let me shine, to be able to micro manage adds and still keep a boss on me. There would always be the competitiveness in a guild when a DPS would try to pull threat from a tank, and actually have a chance at succeeding.
R.I.P Windfury totem you were the best of us taken to soon. We will meet again one day
As a vanilla combat rogue this video makes my balls ache for the great old days.
God now i miss my totems... So sad i cry every time! I would do about ANYTHING to get back my old totems... it's the biggest feature of the awesome class SHAMAN.
as broken as its been at times, threat has always been the most fun in the game for me. topping threat was way more fulfilling to me than topping dps meters! its more difficult, more rewarding, and most importantly... most critical to the success of the group!
Great "Nope" Voice acting!
TBC times - entering instance on my shaman- instant whispers from warriors and rogues "wf totem please"
I can still remember as a warrior in the burning crusade hated when a priest cast power word shield on me, because if you absorbed the damage you couldn't get rage which meant less threat. I was so glad that got fixed later but then it wasn't nessasary anymore.
moar legacy videos!!!
Dat glorious Wind Waker opening O_O
fade is my favorite priest spell to this day because of threat
threat is sometimes still a thing, like when I get good RNG on hellfire council pull and take one of the bosses off the tank xD
really like the legacy videos and more videos like this would be cool :P
As someone who mained fury warrior from end of vanilla through wotlk, threat management was a nightmare. 0 abilities to reduce threat as fury, spamming heroic strike as a rage dump, recklessness+execute+deathwish spam, usually ended with death with the boss at like 5% because tanks just couldn't keep up lol. Even with that change to berzerker stance to reduce threat generation, it was a pain.
I still get the bosses "attention" from time to time with my arcane mage, not during the pull but usually during the rebursting phase about a minute into the fight and/or to the end of the fight when fewer of my fellow raiders are left standing
This totally brings up BC memories for me.....Oh Leotheras......I remember doing the fight with my totally casual guild (1 raid a week....yes,you read that right...1 RAID PER WEEK!) and finally being called in to dps on my warlock...so i hook myself up with tons of consumables,pile on those soul shards for all the firestones and healthstones and whatnot and check out Stego's how to : Leotheras the Blind back in the old days of youtube(remember that guy anyone? Explaining boss tactics with great trance/electro music in the background to sped up footage?). So in the end he says "at last phase you have 2 choices-1.) You keep controling the fight and dps him down. 2.) You nuke the shit out of him and kill him before him and the demon kill your raid.
So naturally i went with option 1. at first....but whirlwind after whirlwind killing packs of people i decided "fuck it,let's nuke the fucking bastard!". So i went as hard as humanly possible on my 3 button (shadowbolt,duh...) with all the pots and stuff consumed.....screen flashes red....Ob(the warrior maintank) desperately runs after him....i soulshatter before he gets to me,so he turns to the second person on the threatmeter-NOT THE TANK.....gets to him,1 shots him......goes to the third person....1 shots him....and so on until he destroys the entire raid at 2% health left. Naturally they throw ALL the blame on me and perma-bench me,to which i left the guild soon after.
I admit it,yes....i was guilty of nuking the shit out of a boss on low % in a desperate attempt to get the bastard down....but it seems i wasn't the only one,was i? You'd be wrong....i'm to blame for the rest of the guild doing the same thing and essentially playing hot potato with the boss while our MT was running around like a headless chicken trying to get the boss.
Damn, I remember having to wait for sunder armour before nuking haha! I'd forgot about it
TBC was the sweet spot. I just found it funny most of the time when higher tier gear players would pull agro and id haft to taunt it back. But also often they then were so high dps that the mob died soon anyway before killing them, on trash atleast. (And sometimes they would die.. no biggie.. they learn and you res them)
Threat was the mechanic that added the most realism to fights I think... those who are the highest threat are those who are in danger.
It also made you feel more powerful in ways.. that you were so strong you had to hold back.. and kept tanks of their toes.
+ a sense of more danger.
It should come back. Buff tanks threat a lot, but not so that it is impossible to lose.
great vid ! now pls make a legacy of the shaman D:
Good old times of pre-nerf Rolling Ignite Fire Mages aggroing Patchwerk in Vanilla Naxx and wiping everyone... I still miss those times :(
A few issues:
The dps making more threat than tanks:
Non-Issue with Thunderfury, except when DPS has one as well.
Even without Thunderfury only an issue with skilled tanks past the T2 stage of gear.
Which leads to the next thing: Gear, once past t2, (well actually even in just good full blues) it was always an option to order your dps to play with some mobs alone while you started to tank the hard hitting melee mobs. This mechanic became very prominent became integral part of the tb heroic instance design, going so far the some mobs were not intended to get tanked by a tank, but instead kited or bursted by dps alone. Especially enemy casters damage could reduce to near zero with interrupting, which traditional was a dd job.
And you seem to have missed demo-shout and thunderclap. IIRC in vanilla was thunderclap agro efficient with 3 or 4 mobs and demo shout aggro efficient to spam away with 6 or more mobs, giving even warriors the ability to tank large groups without much trouble when tabbing and spreading the love of your heroic strikes around.
Lastly: Aggro gear. Not as important in vanilla, but even there having aggro related gear choices could have decent impact on your dds ability to do damage. In TB the different became huge and aggro gear assured that your dds could go all out most of time. (outside of threat mechanics in the encounter themselves.
Naturally this leads to me preferring the TB agro mechanics because it combined the joys of a dd (doing perfect rotations, having the biggest bar, managing your aggro in multi tank scenarios, etc) together with the need for situational awareness that comes mainly with the healer positions. The class simply was one incredible fun to play that way on a high level.
Does not mean that this would be the best for the game itself, though I bet it would be less damaging to the player community than the introduction of the LFG / LFR tools, which can not be undone anymore, but at the same time lead to a complete different atmosphere on server communities.
While there are some aspects of the old threat system I miss, I won't shed any tears over leaving the days when 90% of tanks were awful and a single crit heal would pull aggro from an entire room.
UUUGGHH...That keyboard turning druid..
I started playing during BC but never "fell in love" with the game until Cata so I'm not too familiar with the difficulties of threat handling, but doesn't the removal of threat remove some of the teamwork or the feeling that your actions affects others? I still play the game and enjoy it alot but the main issue I have with the game and the direction the game is going is the multiplayer aspect. It feels like the developers are separating players more and more to make it easier to enjoy the game solo. Even though you are playing in a group more and more things are becoming individual (prime example is loot).
Awesome content as always Preach!
Mmm MMM! Gotta love tucking in to that Wing Buffet!
Gotta love overused jokes as well.