Again, its not new players that are the problem. Its lazy players. Sometimes they are new too, which can make things, interesting.

I had an issue in the Aery about 2 months ago. Literally the only issue I've had since I came back. Except I was the new player and the healer. I made sure the group knew that fact. They seemed fine with it.

First boss, no one tells me the mechanics. I don't remember getting tethered, and well I just did what every healer should do, keep everyone alive and dodge AoE's. Fight was uneventful. Course I didn't learn anything since no one explained it (that was another run later that someone told me the mechanics).

Second boss. That got interesting. I stayed out of the poison clouds and like before. Kept everyone alive. As best I could. For some reason one of the DPS was stepping in poison. To this day I dunno how a machinist does that. I couldn't keep him alive. He kept standing in poison. So he died. The mechanics were screwy because of that so stacks went out. I kept the tank and other DPS alive and we got the boss down.

No big deal right? The dead DPS went on this ranting tirade about how the fight went slower than it 'should have', simply because I didn't rez him during combat. Well because of him damage was stupid and I had to work to keep the tank up, I didn't have the time nor the MP to rez him. He also went on another rant about how I didn't cure the poison (poison was incurable, disease wasn't, which I was curing off as soon as it popped up).

From that point onward, he complained. Didn't do any damage and let the other three of us carry him. We get to Nidhogg and he goes on about how we're going to wipe on the boss because of me. At that point my patience, which was unneccessarily lengthy that day, had run out. I told the group, "I'm booting this jerk." Vote kick immediately goes through and he's gone. Tank says something along the lines of "finally someone booted him."

Issue there wasn't the new player (I was effectively new since I hadn't played since 2.4 and didn't know the HW fights). But a lazy vet who was an absolute screw up, inept, and used new players as a scapegoat to hide their own weaknesses. When I read these forums and some players complain about newbies, you can see there are others like this. Not saying anyone in this thread so far is like that. But its sometimes easy to lose track of the real issues.

Simply put new players aren't always bad players. They simply don't know the mechanics. Many are easily instructed and become vets instantly thereafter once they get the hang of things. 2 months ago I didn't know any of the HW content. Now I can speed run with the best of them and quickly getting some of the raids down pat.

With that said though. I do support making leveling content more challenging. Baptisms by Fire do work. So long as they are in group oriented content and not brick walls for people to get stuck in Solo content. I don't really care how easy Solo content is. It teaches nothing for group stuff. People go on and one about how we need class quests to teach people stuff. You're not going to learn anything in a solo duty. Just memorizing keypresses, but not application. In groups you have to be able to react intuitively, not through muscle memory like in solo content. That only comes with experience from grouping with others.