Dear Blizzard, thank you for the buff of 50% more threat from Swipe. But you went the wrong way. You changed everything in 3.0 to make AoE tanking easy. And it's made the game significantly less fun. Please fix it.
Could you please nerf Swipe threat? Warrior, Paladin, and Death Knight AoE threat too. Keep our AoE damage up, that's kinda fun, but make it so mages, warlocks, hunters, rogues, paladins, death knights, priests, druids, and warrior out-threat us when they all go all-out AoE. Shamans, too, once you fix Magma Totem. Just reduce the threat multiplier on all our tanking abilities to 1.0 so the DPS out-threats us.
Every single class has been given a powerful AoE damage attack. Every single tanking class has been given a powerful AoE tanking ability. The result is that raiding has become significantly more mindless. Every single trash pull in every single instance is reduced to %26quot;tanks rush in, everyone AoE%26quot;. Focus fire isn't really important. They might as well have removed crowd control from the PvE game entirely.
Remember Shadow Labs? Those 6 pulls took a lot of careful play. Kill the imp without tanking it, crowd control two casters, then the poor bear has to control three other mobs. You couldn't Swipe: too dangerous around the CC and not enough threat. So lots of tab targeting, management of lacerates, and the DPS had to pay attention and attack the right target. Tanking and DPS required skill.
Remember Serpentshrine Cavern? Such tricky trash pulls: 4 tanks for 4 mobs, mind control the casters to DPS or tank. Or the big mess of giant murlocs where there was no way to really control the pull so people sheeped and tanks went nuts and once you'd done it a few weeks you could get through those groups without wiping. People bitched about the trash, but you felt proud once you learned how to beat it.
Remember Hyjal? Yeah, that trash was awful and boring. Paladin AoE tanks everything, DPS burned it down.
Remember Zul'aman? Beautiful trash design. Some straight up tanking on the bear trash, careful marking and a bit of CC. Some AoE tanking, particularly eagle and lynx trash, but DPS had to single target and had to be smart about it. And the tour-de-force of Dragonhawk trash, moving carefully through the troll camp taking out the godawful Flamecasters first and everyone moving fast and careful to avoid the patrols spawning behind them. CC and stuns on the fly, no time to plan, everyone had to learn to play together without discussion. So hard, particularly on the 45 minute timer, and so much fun.
What do we have now? Naxxramas, the centerpiece of raiding in Wrath of the Lich King, requires no crowd control. It requires no mob management. You just group up all the crap and AoE it down. Yeah, there's a couple of slimes you should probably kite although honestly it's not necessary. You should try to split out the whirlwinding Dark Touched Warrior to be nice to your melee DPS, although it's probably faster just to tell melee to make themselves a sandwich while the ranged AoE the groups down. Mostly the trash is just there to slow you down. Faster to pull two groups at once if your healers can keep up; AoE threat is unlimited, afterall.
It's terrible. The boss fights are still interesting, but the trash has gotten a lot stupider. And I don't see how it's going to get better. I'm sure new raids will be harder, but what will they do to bring back the thought that pre-Wrath trash required?