Know your limits

Last night, we were short a healer for some random 5mans. We had helped a guild member who is currently leveling her DK and needed some help with the Amphitheater of Anguish and Gundrak on normal mode. We queued up and ran through DTK (again, ugh) with the help of a nicely geared Paladin. He left after the run and our shaman was griping that he wasn't getting any upgrades lately so we went in for a Forge of Souls run. We pulled in a Priest, which I love. For some reason, Priests are usually my favorite healers while tanking. Not any real reason why.
Immediately after joining up with us, he told us he was somewhat apprehensive about running Forge of Souls because he had never healed it and didn't know if he would be able to do it but wanted the chance anyway. We pulled through the trash up to the first boss and before engaging, he told us that he was going to drop group as he was having trouble keeping up with healing. We thanked him and found someone else and after wiping a few times on the first boss and once on the second, we were able to clear.
Knowing your limits is greatly important for anyone involved with a support role. Tanks should always know their limits as should healers. This particular Priest was confident in his abilities and he knew when he was under geared. It impressed us all that he understood that he would not be able to keep up with the healing as we progressed and rather than hold us back, he dropped group to find something more suitable. To us, it was a very classy act on his part.
Too often, it's easier to pass the blame off on someone else, especially in the anonymity of the internet, for your own shortcomings. As the saying goes: If the tank dies, it's the healers fault. If the healer dies, it's the tanks fault. And of course, if the mage dies, it's his own damn fault. I love that line.
In all seriousness though, it's easy to pass off the blame. It's easy to say "OMG you guys are the worst group ever, I hope you all fail even more." However, at least in my experience, someone new comes in and everything goes smoothly. Sometimes, play styles may clash and the group has issues. More often than not it seems, the person who is causing the issue is under geared and/or under skilled. Typically these are the people who complain the loudest when things are going wrong. Case in point...
The last time we fielded enough people to run a 10 man instance, we were short 2 people, the healers. We pugged in 2 healers, a Shaman and a Druid. We decided to go to VOA, just because we had been there before and knew the fights. However, this was shortly after the release of Koralon and we decided to give him a shot. We wiped a couple times and the Druid start yelling "OMG why are we wiping?! This is EASY! Why can't you guys do this!" We ignored him at first and gave it another shot. I was tanking, though I was still rather new to it. I had set my Damage Meter to watch the healing charts. The Druid was below the Shaman. By a lot. After we got together for one more attempt, I inspected his gear. This guy was in quest blues, greens and a couple heroic blues. I called him out on it. He said his gear wasn't important, he knew what he was doing. The Shaman decided he'd had enough and decided to drop group. He thanked us for the run and left. The Druid continued to complain until we booted him from group and broke off to do some 5 mans.
It comes down to knowing your role, knowing your limits and taking responsibility for yourself in a group. You may not be concerned with making it a smooth run but chances are, the other 4 people are.

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