Patch Changes (4.0.3)Follow

To be completely fair to both of you, tab targeting was never enough to maintain threat on a full pack in which the entire group was going balls to the wall with offensive aoe abilities, even "back in the day" when tabbing was standard practice.

Your aoe threat tools, perhaps with the occasional tab, were enough to keep a lead on your healer generating threat, but if your dps wasn't focusing on one target there was going to be issues, end of story. Heavy aoe was reserved for specific packs that warranted it (such as the arcane dudes in Nexus; 1-2 elites, lots of nonelite. The nonelite aren't going to kill your aoe folks if they hit them), usually because of some mechanic that demanded they all die together or that they simply needed to die without a lot of tank interaction (often because he can't effectively mitigate any of the damage from them for whatever reason).

So, I'm sort of in Mazra's camp on this; tanking is hell right now. The game doesn't warrant the use of heavy CC yet, and tabbing around doesn't produce reliable results when people can put out a large portion of their dps using buttons that deal extremely heavy damage to multiple targets simultaneously. You almost always feel like you're behind the curve. In a move that foreshadows the new expansion, aoe threat tools were heavily neutered to be a "maintenance" issue, and not a mode of attack. Extra tools are being provided at the cataclysm levels for general purposes not necessarily directly linked to aoe threat, but they serve that purpose in part nonetheless.

The dichotomy of the dungeon is expected to change, and people will be heavily encouraged to use their CC abilities. So in that regard, I agree with you, Xsarus; we're slowly going to go back to an age where tabbing between targets is a definitive part of the tanking experience. But that's in a week, and the period between the release of 4.0 and 4.0.3b or whatever has unquestionably fallen into a slight oversight with regards to the particular effect the new mechanical design would have on the current content experience.

People still do stuff on their 80s?

I thought everyone was busy leveling alts, trolling or finishing up raid stuff these days.

Level 78 will not open new Azeroth content, get to 80.

Just tanked a heroic with my bear to try out neutered Swipe.

It still packs a punch but with over zealous DPS exploding with AoE right away aggro was dicey. Tab targeting is now and always has been retarded. It loves to target mobs that aren't in the pack you are on.

That being said, everything dies so fast now so it really isn't an issue. But when I was moving through mobs to Lacerate/Mangle I did notice that if I didn't have aggro typically a single attack would get it back. Maybe two sometimes.

The issue isn't OMG WE CANT SWIPE/MAUL AND BE AWESOME, it is as Overlord Norellicus said, "the period between the release of 4.0 and 4.0.3b or whatever has unquestionably fallen into a slight oversight with regards to the particular effect the new mechanical design would have on the current content experience."

I still am in love with new Berserk, when DPS starts to FF again it will be deliciously OP. When I was tanking BPC the other day, not Keleseth but the other two guys, I saw an insane amount of procs. I can't wait to have three mobs to play with in a 5-man situation for Cata.

Mangle spam FTW.