I have been playing WoW for about 2 years now and I'm just learning how to play here. I'm used to tanks taunting to hold aggro while more fragile classes DPS it. We are duoing with a HE and most likely a BD, what is the proper strategy.. starting from low level with just two fighters, one will be using a bow and the other a sword.
theres a skill all tanks get called "aggression" and aura of hate.
aggression is built up via damage. the more you do, the more aggro you pull off, and the more the mob tends to attack you.
nukers deal the highest damage in the game, and almost always manage to pull aggro away from tanks no matter what raid boss you fight.
aura of hate is an AOE version of the aggression skill but at a higher MP cost, and always a higher risk. if youre AOEing, and you get a load of mobs, youre gonna have a hard time keeping HP up without a healer.
Yes, but you won't get higher levels of it as a BD. BDs are an offensive support/ dd hybrid class. They aren't tanks. They don't learn aggression/ defensive skills/ heavy armour masteries. No.. that would make them overpowered.
In the end, a BD/HE combo doesn't need to manage their aggro that much. Neither is all that fragile, and your damage will be sufficient to take out monsters before they hurt you much. In a larger party, you'd have a real tank like an SK, TK, Paladin, or DA. A bounty hunter works in a pinch, though an archer crit will probably pull aggro.
Generally, having a real tank in the party is usually unneeded unless you're in an area designed for larger groups; the solo/small group areas tend to be perfectly managable without one. You probably would have the BD run first and melee attack monsters, then have the HE start after a second or two. If the monster pulls to the HE, the BD can just ignore it and start on a new monster; the mob will generally be dead before it reaches the HE.
Oh yeah, whoever gets first hit on a monster seems to get bonus hate. I (a summoner) party with a bounty hunter. My summon's damage is better than the BH's, but even without spoil, if the BH gets first hit in, the monster rarely pulls to my summon.
Any agression action toward mob or mob's friend (in case mob type is social with others) increases mob hate level of the mob.
Any helpful action toward those in hate list of the mob increase your hate level as well.
So any buff, heal, recharge etc. is potentially dangerous. If you overdo this you become a target.
Crits and skills tend to add more aggro value. Other than that aggro is proportional to total damage.
Sometimes mobs have special behavior. For example, some mobs attack lowest level character standing nearby (on random). Some mobs use spells on random character nearby.
Note that you are put in hate list as far as you do something toward that particular mob or toward his friends. After mob loses current target due to death, recall or target switching skill (like sleep, stun etc.), it switches to next target standing not so far and having max hate level in its hate list .
You can outrun mob, but you should take care of its targetting or run really far away.
Mobs running outside of their spawn area become passive. Once they lose their target, they will forfeit the chase.
Just as an addition. there are some special considerations to make about holding a mobs attention. Most mobs tend to draw more aggro from burst damage than total damage. So while that make nuking it for 500hp a hit will irritate it, an archer critting it for 1.4k will almost instantly draw aggro. A tank would then have to re-hate the target in order to get it back. If the hate (it has a power rating if you look at the skill description) is not enough to out do the hate generated byt hat burst damage, you will have to hate it multiple times. You don't see this all that often with normal mobs, but it is very visible when you see a raid boss start getting out of hand.
Also, there are group social mobs which I see no one has mentioned.. for the most part they work like this. The main mob will aggro on anything hitting it's subordinates, and it's subordinates will hit anything attacking the main mob. The job of a tank is to make sure they have both, many tanks will hate one of the subordinates, then focus their attack on the main mob. The issue with group mobs is that when the main mob dies, all the subordinates will retain their last aggro no matter how much you use hate, they are basically "locked". This can be very bad if it's on a healer/buffer or a mage... all depends on situation.
Other than that however.. it's just up to who the mob dislikes the most. Bd's dance, warcrier/overlords buffs, etc will accumulate aggro just as much (and often times more) than many DD's.
As for your duo group.. I agree with the previous statement, have the bd run off and aggro, then run back towards the he. If you are fighting single mobs, it's effective to "ping pong" a mob by having the bd aggro it and attack a ways away from the he who can then attack it while it tries to run towards them. As a bd, you may also want ot invest in a bow in this case, dance>switch to bow, then attack (for when you are not up close and personal).