Dire Maul East. Same rant - different actors.

My levelling healer Foostorm (L56) has hooked up with a warrior (L60) who has just become a tank.  As he has just converted from DPS to Tank, he wanted a friendly face to run instances with.  This works for me (queueing with a tank at mid levels is still insta-queue - just like at 80).  He has occasionally tanked before on other toons but has untill now runs as DPS.

As we have a level difference, we need to choose dungeons.  We did BRD (upper levels) and that worked fairly well, but he got no benefit out of it.  So - we insta-queue for Dire Maul East (DiM E).  DPS are two pallies and a mage.  There are 3 things about DiM E:
* The imp to the west as you first start needs to be talked to on several occasions and followed.
* The mobs are packed together, making it far too easy to pull mulitple groups
* There are lots of stealthed mobs


The DPS mage is given might by a DPS pally.  Two DPS have gogogo as a starting greeting.  It's DiM E,  so of course the DPS head east (away from the imp) and pull.  Our tank grabs agro back and all is ok, and I 'start' the imp.  Moving along we pick up too many mobs, with agro flying every where and I have a dirt nap.  Someone asks what went wrong and our tank fesses up that he pulled too much. 

A little later, I call /oom and start am drinking. As we are not gogogo'ing one of the DPS pull.  Annoying, and but tank again picks up agro.  The tank again follows the imp, and I'm following the healer we move on, or most of us do.  The DPS are somewhere off waiting for something I have no idea what.  In fairness, we should have ensured they were with us, but since when does Mr&Mrs Gogogo fall be tank?   The DPS finally catch up, the tank takes a dirt nap, but it's ok.

By now it's been at least 5 minutes and the DPS are starting to get bored.  DPS walking way in front of the tank, while I am drinking, finding stealhed mobs and dying.  DPS pulling groups behind me,  just after the tank pulled in front of me.  This is made worse by my not remembering/seeing where the imp went so we did optional bosses.  The frost mage thought he could solo a frost immune boss, while healer is drinking. 

This is an uncomfortable run, with too many stupid deaths, and our ability to tank/heal is called into question.  Finally we find one of the alternative exits to DiM E, and the 3 DPS leave us.  So the tank asks do we want to try to solo one boss.  Why not?  My confidence is a little low as it has been so difficult, but I like nothing better than a good wipe - it means that I am trying my abilities.

However we don't wipe, dont die, and have no problems.  In the instance which was part cleared with 5 people with great difficulty, it became a cake walk with just 2.  Sure, the mobs took a little longer to kill, and I kept doing stupid things like walking first into stealthed mobs, but I ran back to the tank and all was good.

In conclusion, DiM E - even with a learning tank wasn't hard, the DPS we took with us were.