In which Coreus offers his help to a noob.

Last night a Warrior whose name contained the words "tank" and "heal" and special characters posted in Trade requesting a Prot Warrior whisper him for advice. In a not unpredictable [for me] response, I wrote that I would love to help, but that his name strongly suggested he wasn't worth talking to.

There was a brief back and forth in which he whispered me;

"Nice insult, bro."

To which I replied;

"Cheers."

He posted his request for advice again but this time he offered gold in return for help. So I whispered him again to ask him what he needed to know.

He said he was having issues with AoE threat after the patch, and that he was losing aggro to DPS, even to an Imp, which is pretty fail on the Warlock's part if you ask me, but I heard him out. His gear was mostly T9 level, he had a few misplaced talents and was using a dodge trinket, but he had a solid grasp of the fundamentals, so I took him through the rotation I use for AoE threat, recommended a couple of talent changes and showed him what glyphs I was using, and reminded him that him that fail DPS is fail and it's not his job to compensate for their terribleness. And he slipped me 40g after all was done, thanked me and remarked that you can't judge a book by its cover. I didn't really feel like correcting him.

The reason I find this story interesting is that it's a real example of a real person who is dealing with his small piece of the paradigm-shift that the game is undergoing. I've long ago come to the conclusion that the DPS' threat is always, always their own responsibility*, but this opinion is not pervasive among less-skilled players, and it going to be a tough pill to swallow for some people.

*For that matter as a healer I take the opinion that if someone dies, it's always their own fault for taking "unhealable" damage. -- Do you think I'm standing here with my thumb up my arse? If I could have healed that damage, I would have. Therefore the damage was unhealable.