After healing, DPSing (melee and ranged) and tanking raids, I'd say that tanking and healing are by far the more stressful jobs and tanking can be annoying as there tends to be only one or two points of failure (given there are only one or two tanks). Tanking, especially in 5-mans, tends to require a bit more awareness than anything else.
I'd have to agree about tanking being stressful at the start. You don't exactly know what to do, and as a tank you sort of set the pace/control of the situation. Your mistakes can cause a wipe faster than any one elses. I hated tanking the new instances at the launch of Cata because I wasn't accustom to the CC mechanics. I started tanking during WOTLK - which from what I'm told was just AoE everything.
Add in the new healing mechanics and suddenly pulling more than 3 mobs was fatal haha. Healing to me has been the most boring. The only excitement I get from healing is dodging Raid Leader aggro. Basically, the one time I went hardcore raider - my RL was a nut case who'd yell about anything. I'd love the "healers why did I just die" remarks.
DPSing to me is rather mindless. I personally don't get how some players struggle to perform good as a DPS.
Doesn't Vengeance fade after 10 seconds (or is it 5?)? The only class that can keep a stack up is a Warrior and that's with Vigilance.
Most fights the swap isn't that long (well I guess depending on your tanks and their avoidance.) It's usually on the first swap that I hold back just to let the other tank get aggro. After that - I want to make my DPS count for something. I'd usually pul 17K+ on as a tank on single targets. I remember in WOTLK when breaking 5K as a tank was considered impressive haha.
Speaking of gear, I'm in an interesting gear predicament on my Rogue. Here are my thoughts on trying to win gear...
I'm technically a substitute, so I really should avoid taking gear if it's needed by a main raider.
I need gear to be a proper substitute.
#1 and #2 tend to directly conflict with each other, and this happened to me on my Shaman in Firelands as well. My Shaman didn't even have a 378 ilevel (FL non-heroic ilevel) when I would sub in for heroics. Given my guildmates had between 385 and 390, I tended to fare a bit worse than them in performance. Ultimately, this makes me feel like a waste of a raid spot.
Tonight, I rolled on the T13 legs regardless of any other roll selections that I saw and won them. The vanquisher chestpiece dropped off of Ultraxion, and to not be a loot whore and follow #1, I passed on them to a Druid that had T12 heroic (ilevel 391).
I've been told that I should just ignore trying to be a "team player" and think about my own characters.
I'd say personally that falls on the Guild Master/Raid Leaders. The player should initially only be interested in their own progression as it is what will make them a addition to a team. Depending on your RLs and GMs, you might get overlooked because your not performing even say another person in the guild PUGs and thus has better gear. Of course, that shouldn't be the only metric a person's worth should be measured in.
I RL and an CO-GM in my guild. We have a rule set in place to NOT gear up alts. However, last night I veto'd the rule since we had one of our usual players come in on her healer. It was either she comes and heal or we don't raid (since on our server - PUGs are almost always a handicap haha.) So I gave her the token. The person she rolled against was a main who already had the Raid Finder version so I didn't see it as a huge loss.
However, we also had another non-regular and I didn't let him take the item he wanted because that was his first time with us in over 3-4 months. It wouldn't have been fair to the person who'd have lost.
Whatever your GMs/RLs decided you should stick to. And if you make yourself better - you might snag a permanent position.
This is where I am at to be honest. I've swapped down to a very casual guild. I really feel like theres tons of content for me to do still. I do my LFR I run through 25 dailies random BGs casual arenas. I feel like there is a lot of stuff to fill my time.
I've always had those up and downs of interest. My GF has them more often then me. I'd often just switch my focus. For example - this time around I put more focus on my Hunter. It has made me tolerate the instances/raids in hopes of securing better gear. During 4.2 my focus was on my Paladin Tank. During 4.0 I focused hard on my resto shaman.
With SW:TOR out now - I see myself only showing up for scheduled raids and scheduled events. I got my hunter to a happy place and I can do without having to VP cap on all three of my toons. Frankly the VP gear isn't even that good (in my opinion.)
Me and wife used to be extreme WoW players, thanks to my work which doesn't require me to leave my house.
Wife has 85 in each class, guildmaster etc..etc...i have two 85. My main is a lock. We spent the majority of our "life" on WoW in the past. (Yes, call us crazy).
Anyway...the LAST time i had really fun playing was LAST YEAR, exactly the time when cata came out this time last year. I didnt like cata in the beginning, but then discovered it was not THAT bad as thought, furthermore i made a SH*TLOAD of money farming whiptail.
I have to say, we are BOTH burnt out for various reasons.
On my wife's side i think it's more personal stuff with aholes in guild in raiding etc... and she didnt want to deal with all that stuff anymore...and on my side it's more a frustration with PvP...eg. Allies on my server are just idiots...2s are a fricking joke etc..etc..
So..now to make things even worse, we two are "older" and we simply cannot for the life of it get excited about that upcoming expansion with the Pandas. To be honest, i think this is the death of wow...at least for people older than 20..WTF Pandas?
You might disagree....and MAYBE there is a time when we have our "wow phase" again and play again...but right now we are looking at other games because we miss new and fun stuff..and not only frustration with raiding, DPS and complaining about the same flaws for years already like class imbalances etc..etc.. It's just getting old and blizz hasnt really addressed many of those issues. And i dont think (AT ALL!) that the upcoming Mists of Pandaren will give Wow the needed boost...although i hope....sigh.
It's amazing that my GF and I were in that same situation. She's the official GM of our Guild. We recently had a similar issue with people feeling entitled. She's more of a cold person while I'm more of the opposite.
To cater to an increase of new members (friends of friends) I switched over to 25man raiding. We pugged the holes and went on our way. Eventually the new people had issues with how we ran things. This lead to a lot of conflict which caused my GF to stress out. There were times she wanted to quit and shut down the guild.
As the PR person of the guild I basically had to resolve the issues. The result was - a lot of the people complaining left and found guilds that had more restrictions, more aggressive behaviors, and in the end didn't meet their desires and they wanted to come back. I, being the nice guy, let them back - but they lost all their previous status and thus bickered more. THis time I turned a deaf ear and slowly they left again on their own.
One of my longest running members (on and off member that is) pushed for us to switch to 25man. When I finally had enough members to sustain a roster I did so. A few weeks in he isn't happy with our progression (6/7 in 2 weeks - and he isn't happy?) so he put an ultimatum on the table. The guild voted against him, and he left wishing to find a better progressive 25man. Last I heard he started his own guild and is a 10man focused guild. Being a long time friend of his I healed on one of their runs (due to lack of roster) and was pretty much blown away buy the hypocriscy as this once elistist member of my guild turned GM/RL. He gave me hell because we had "under performers" in our 25man runs. And here I am sitting in his run with a healer who is doing 10-11K HPS in Dragon Soul. The other pugged healer and I basically carried their guild healer through. Now if it were in my guild and we had this situation I'd be receiving whispers about "kick him, he sucks" and what not.
SOrry to go on a long rant. But I feel for your wife and yourself. Keep it strong, whether you guys wish to leave - don't let jack-holes be the cause. Root them out. Fortify your loyal members, and play to have fun not reach some goal set by someone else who only cares about their iscore.
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