No hope in groups 1-40?
 

Is it just me or do tanks mostly warriors that I've been grouped with have no concept of how taunt works? (don't spam the button doesn't do anything after you have aggro)
DPS just randomly zergs mobs because its hitting someone other than them(zero use of an assist macro) or because the tank doesn't have a "assist me on X target macro"

I am a bard and I AoE kited from 2-40 and I ended up tanking,slowing/snaring,mezzing up to 4 mobs because with two classes that could CC, they didn't want to assist in crowd controlling in a group last night...or am I just playing with a bunch of down syndrome wow fan boys that got into Everquest?:(

People are fairly responsive if you help them become better players in group.

"Hey, please assist X"

"Hey, Shadowknight tank. User disease cloud for snap agro."

"Hey, root classes. Please root for CC. Tank, stand on top of the mob for agro. Dps stand at max range."

A combination of two things.

#1 - Players are generally not good. As an example, most Shamans go Barbarian and then gear their character like a Druid (facepalm) and have no understanding of their class.

#2 - Bards do SO much in a group that it makes your group-mates look even worse. As a Bard, I'm getting 3-4 mobs locked down on mezz even though our Ranger or Pally puller could root park adds easily. I'm snaring runners even though we have 2 other classes in the group that can snare. I'm doing fair DPS meleeing and actually assisting the MT. I'm interupting spell casters even though that big race in our group can slam or Knight could bash interupt. Meanwhile, my mana song, heal song, or haste song hasn't dropped for one tick the entire time. Now, compare that amount of work to the average EQ player: A Druid in your group that's putting his DoTs on a mob that stays alive for 15 seconds, not snaring runners, who you have to remind to refresh DS, etc.

Tanks at lower levels keep aggro worse for a number of reasons:

- Mobs have lower HP so people don't want to wait for the tank to get a head start on threat
- Taunt is less effective because the skill cap is lower and because you fight more yellow and red monsters
- Squishy classes are less squishy so they care less about getting hit
- Many of the good threat weapons don't proc yet
- Non-twinked tanks are way behind twinked melee characters in terms of gear

At higher levels, all of these problems get better.

Edit: Note all this applies to warriors only, there is no excuse for a Paladin/SK/Ranger not to keep agro as long as they have mana

I tried to get the tank to get an assist macro, but I don't want to really push people to the point where I am looking like a Dbag, mostly as the dps/root class goes it was mostly they did not have mana to root because of chain nuking a mob from 15%-0...maybe it was just me but on live in Crushbone tanks were very firm on the assist me stuff on Prexus

Some don't understand how it works...

The bigger issue for warriors is that their aggro is essentially based on weapon quality/procs for most of the leveling content, not on their taunt ability (regardless of how well you use it/understand it). Classic EQ.

It's tricky, finding a balance between being helpful and people thinking you're just bossing the around. I don't manage to find the balance very often... :)

Spamming taunt is a problem if people do it, but the bigger issue at low levels is that:
1. Taunt won't work on a lot of the mobs you fight at lower levels.
2. Taunt fails plenty in general.
3. Weapons don't proc.
4. Twinks use weapons that untwinked tanks can't match threat on.

Like Math said, you should talk to the people if you want to see something different.

You were in a bad group. It can happen and it's relatively rare. Don't let it keep you down, you just rolled a 1 on your 'get a stable group' check a couple times.

Stinkum is not wrong. If it helps you any, I have to think that the level of play here is much higher than on live . . . .

That said as a Warrior it is extremely difficult to keep aggro off of a slowing bard without very good weapons (epic/botdbe/vp). My suggestion would be to just skip slow in your initial rotation.