Do you remember how groups assigned different tasks and priorities in the raids and dungeons of WoW 20 years ago?
How was this done back then? In many dungeons and raid instances from Vanilla-WoW and the first expansion The Burning Crusade, it was essential – especially with mixed gear – to control certain enemies from large trash groups while damage dealers focused on overwhelming the first one or two targets without drawing aggro.
For this to work effectively (that is, without long explanations and assignments before each pull) not just within organized teams but also in randomly formed groups, a standard distribution for CC abilities (CC meaning Crowd Control, thus controlling enemies with certain abilities) and priorities has developed over time across guilds and servers.
In WoW Classic, “CC” is important again, especially on hardcore servers:
Nostalgic Journey to the Past
What was the distribution like? WoW fan FlexFridayTV recalls with a graphic on Reddit how the distribution might have looked in most groups back then:
- Skull: The first target to die.
- Red Cross: The second target to die.
- Dark Blue Square: The enemy goes into a Hunter’s Ice Trap.
- Light Blue Moon: This enemy gets transformed by a Mage.
- Green Triangle: This opponent is put to sleep.
- Purple Diamond: This target receives a Fear spell.
- Orange Circle: A Rogue attempts to use a Headbutt here.
Which CCs were used on which trash group depended not only on the group composition but also on the types of enemies. Druids, for example, can only put beasts and draconic kin to sleep. Headbutt, on the other hand, only works on humanoids.
Especially in raid instances, it also occurred that the raid had to put several nasty enemies to sleep or transform them into sheep. The standard distribution would then of course be broken and the symbols adjusted accordingly.
Alternatively, it occasionally happened back then that specific characters from the raid were marked with a symbol to dictate certain positioning or movement patterns, or to make them easier to identify in the chaos of battle.
Here is the mentioned image from FlexFridayTV – ah, memories!
The community remembers: Over the weekend, the post garnered more than 5,500 upvotes and over 850 comments. Many players are addressing the question posed by the thread creator: Does this distribution still apply today, in 2025?
- bctg1 summarizes on Reddit how the symbols are used today: “Tank Icon, Tank Icon, Tank Icon, Tank Icon, Tank Icon, Tank Icon, Tank Icon, Tank Icon.”
- Timekeeper98 jokes on Reddit: “Everyone knows that skull means to ignore this target until the end and take out everything else first.”
- og_slin remembers on Reddit a saying from back then, which still holds true today: “Take the damn condom off my head.” This refers to the orange circle, by the way.
- powerinthebeard writes on Reddit: “The first two symbols are still used today, the rest is nostalgia from 2005.”
- CardiologistNo9474 explains on Reddit the reason: “We don’t really use CC anymore in 2025.”
Various other players report that there are still applications for certain CC effects in today’s WoW, such as with specific affixes in the Mythic Plus area.
So how about it: Do you miss the time when it was important to eliminate particularly dangerous targets with CC in almost every trash group? Or do you prefer to pull everything together and bomb it away? Share your thoughts in the comments! More WoW nostalgia can be found here: Players starting anew with WoW, immediately fulfilling (almost) all clichés – Community is proud of the newcomers
