Is progressive content or the community to blame for player skill gap?

[LineageRazor]

I very much question the assumption that "some players don't want to learn and just want to be carried" as any kind of significant portion of the population. I seriously doubt there's any players out there who are honestly satisfied with being bad. Rather, they don't believe that they are bad in the first place. The ones who dismiss advice from others do so because they believe they are doing just fine, and don't want to change their habits just because some stranger they met in an instance tells them so - especially if that stranger is condescending or rude about it (or they perceive that player to be condescending or rude).

Players want to succeed at the instances they run. Players want to be valuable contributors at the instances they run. The disconnect occurs when you run into players that BELIEVE they are valuable contributors, when they actually aren't. These are the toughest people to teach, because they believe they do not need to be taught. But players that consciously decide to slickly coast through the system, riding on the coat-tails of better players? They do not exist. Or, if they do, are extremely rare. Don't assume that players that repeatedly fail mechanics that you see as easy as not caring. Obviously, they care - they wouldn't be in the instance if they didn't want to win.

Many people also forget that raid awareness is a learned and practiced skill, and that we were all n00bz at one point.

A lot of good advice in this link - though I'll admit I was a bit bemused that around a third or more of it was dedicated to lecturing on having the right mods and how to tune them. The author seems to take it at a given that all raiders will be using mods to alert them to various game mechanics. It's not even, "Oh, hey, you should be using mods to alert you," but rather "Well, obviously you're using mods, but here's how to use them right." Honestly, I find that pretty sad, and I hope that this game never reaches that state. I've never played WoW, but if it requires reliance on such things to be successful in endgame, that speaks pretty poorly, either of the game design, or of the players.

[Zojha]

I've never played WoW, but if it requires reliance on such things to be successful in endgame, that speaks pretty poorly, either of the game design, or of the players.

I am preeetty sure a great many people are already using the trigger warnings for A11S optical sights, so you can react before you can see the balls.
Right now, it's not standard to use it because, well...it's technically forbidden! But the moment official AddOn support is granted, the floodgates are more or less open and in the end, content designers will design their encounters around these AddOns.

[Kosmos992k]

I am preeetty sure a great many people are already using the trigger warnings for A11S optical sights, so you can react before you can see the balls.
Right now, it's not standard to use it because, well...it's technically forbidden! But the moment official AddOn support is granted, the floodgates are more or less open and in the end, content designers will design their encounters around these AddOns.

I hope not, the designers should never design to functions that are not part of their own game. That disadvantages players without those add-ons by making them (the add-ons) in effect mandatory.