I was actually mulling over how I feel when I dps in a PUG heroic. Except I never stress over getting aggro, I kind of expect to pull aggro and die a couple of times in a PUG as a geared dps warrior (the exceptions are where the tank and healer are really on top of things) — I could be more cautious but where’s the fun in that.

Sadly true, and whether or not you intended to include me in your description, it’s worryingly accurate!

I think part of the barrier to new tanks is that the old ones seem almost godly in comparison. You fool around in a new spec for a bit, fumbling around to remember what buttons cause what abilities and so on, loose a few mobs to DPS amusing themselves; and then compare yourself to someone who can tank 4 separate mobs each being DPSed by a different person. Even though you know that that person’s been tanking on their main for two years, but can’t DPS for toffee, it’s still disheartening.

So you wind up with a group with 2-3 superb tanks, and similarly for healing, but no-one else feels confident enough to join the club. I certainly feel like that with healing, even though I know logically that with a few weeks of practice I’d be able to hold my end up just fine.

There’s a second thing that came up a number of times in tanking discussions in Wrath – when the DPS fail, they die, life goes on. When the tank screws up, chances are the raid will wipe. That means that everyone tends to be reasonably keen to take the easy route and have the experienced tanks keep doing their job, and not go back to wiping to trivial content to teach the new guy.

I’m not sure the solution is just to develop a thick skin – but an attitude “bugger, I wiped ‘em again. Well, here we go again, but remember to use the trinket in time” is essential, if slow to develop.

“for all intensive purposes”

It’s supposed to be “for all intents and purposes.”

I actually would love to see a feature in the game called “Wipe Analyzer”.. and anytime your party wiped the Analyzer could be like “healer did not cast heal on you for 17 seconds, too long” or “rogue stood in puddle of crap”…

Recount already does this – set it to show Deaths, then when you click a person’s name on the list it’ll tell you what happened to them during the last few seconds of their life.

Apologies in advance if HTML fails; there’s no way to know in advance whether it will or not :-/

But I guess it mostly goes to show that one person’s “This game is great it doesn’t force you to depend on people” is another person’s “I’m new to this game and don’t know anyone and I’m lonely/ wish I could find a guild/ etc.”

But yes, it could be more transparent.

Zone to that area. BOOM. Guarantee you group request spam. =)

And these are the places where I get groups, when I’m feeling social.

Though obviously, it needs a certain amount of playing before you realise that this is how it works, rather than a central interface whereby you find a group across the entire server.

Grouping isn’t really by choice when most people aren’t interested in grouping.