Gasp! Nabe taking the hard stance

I logged in today and the MoTD said to vote on the Forums for Manbull's poll.  So I thought, ok I'll go have a look...

Manbull wanted to do more heroics.  However, he doesn't tank optimally and doesn't really take advice... but that's ok, if that's how he wants to play, then it's easier to let him do normals than have us vent our frustration in heroic.  Fue did explain to him why we hadn't included him in heroics yet and did consider letting him do heroic this week.

But quiet ol' Nabe had something to say:

...Normal's are on the easy side now I agree, But I don't think we have enough players ready for 2 heroic teams yet. I think having 2 heroic teams atm will cause more headaches and be rather slow on progress...
...not everyone is upto heroics, dps needs to be on the high side, healers need to be able to pump out the heals and be quick, also tanks need to keep up debuffs and time the use of cool downs a little more then normal mode...
...there is still the problem of people getting hit by things they should be able to avoid, on normal those things slow fights down or wipe it depending on the persons task in the raid. On heroic modes those things are more likely to wipe it, either from the lose of a dps, bringing us to the enrage timer of the boss, if its a healer its probably make things a little tricky to keep everyone up and if its a tank well it will be a wipe depending on the boss...

But he ended up making a subsequent post and I was a bit surprised.  He blatantly told Manbull that his tanking needs improvement before he could start tanking heroic raids.  His lack of use of certain abilities that make it easier for healers to keep him alive was brought up (eg demo roar) and his lack of a dps spec or attempt to build gear for one.

I was stunned.  Fue has often told Manbull why his tanking has been lacking, but it has been on a whisper level, not out in the open to see.  I guess Nabe is kinda slow to irritate but once he's irritated he just lets loose, but then feels a bit sheepish about it.  However, I have to say, I think that he did that right thing by saying it outright in the forums, as posting about heroics (because he was trying to draw attention to him not being taken to heroics) was probably not the best thing for Manbull to do, since he had spoken to Fue about it already, and Fue had made it clear to him why he wasn't going to heroics.  Maybe it was best said out loud.  Perhaps Manbull didn't realise there was an issue with his tanking in a raid and needed to hear it from more than one person.  I know he thinks he doesn't have an agro problem (he said once in guild that he never had an agro problem and often would alt tab tank Halfus - and that fight was a nightmare for dps as they used to pull agro all the time and had to hold back for a good 10 seconds for him to get agro on a mob), and perhaps that is a lack of insight, but I hope that Manbull takes it in a good way and tries to improve rather than huff and puff and sulk and not turn up to raid.

I just hope that there won't be a flurry of abusive replies, as I will have the be the bad person again and edit out bad comments in forums and be the Nazi of the Freedom of Speech.

But this brings up the dilemma of how do you deal with the underperforming player?  Whose responsibility is it?  Unfortunately for Fue, as guild leader, I think a lot of it falls to him.  However, when it comes to healers, at least I can take that responsibility.  Our last underperforming healer knew she wasn't very good, and I did counsel her about it and encourage her to look at techniques to improve.  And I knew where her deficits were - she didn't use the full complement of her spells, and perhaps did not have an understanding of what her spells and cooldowns did.  She probably played it one way and found that it worked that way for her and she continued to play like that.

I asked her to look at how Shnaptim set up his gear, and encouraged her to look at World of Logs to see what spells the other paladins wers using.  I don't know if she did or not, but she didn't improve.  I figured out that the best way to utilise her was to give her a simple task in healing, but nothing too complicated requiring movement or thought, and at least she didn't drag us down too much.

I wonder how others deal with their underperformers?