Are others being unrealistic or am I being over-sensitive?

[Erendis]

People suck. The best advice I can give is to make friends with a healer or two and make your own groups.

[Worldie]

Why i never get refused to tank heroics in pugs, i want to tell that kind of stories also

I'm too much famous on my server ffs, i must change name on my char.

[Galoheart]

I often PuG Heroics on my server often its with random people or with the many friends on my friends list that are in other guilds. Often I PuG just because I'm farming Badges. I always make up my own groups always. Never do I get anyone questioning my gear or anything like that. A few times I've had a word or Two with the healers who don't know how to heal for Heroics who want to question my gear but its them who don't know how to heal.

As a Tank always make and stack your own group. You should always be the leader on hour runs. You gona find idiots who don't know any better always. Just don't take it personal when you meet them.

[luminum]

I've given up pugin' heroics for reasons just like these. I often find too that a lot of the worse healers make me look bad, when in matter of fact its them not healing properly. In heroic AC yesterday, and i ended up looking like a chump because i didn't want to spend ages marking each individual mob. I kinda hoped most people would understand generally what their role is, as i know mine!

Needless to say it was too hard for the priest to move out of the focus zone on the first boss, and to not try to cast greater heals!

[Egtheridon]

Its a pug and can't expect much from them, what i ussually do is run a ton of heroics and anyone who acts like an idiot or says some comment I don't like, after the run is done i add them to my ignore list, but i just keep running heroics and as you gear gets better and people actually notice that you know what your doing you'll start to get more invites to groups, cause generally the same people play at the same time and over the course of time people remember that one run that went smooth that you were tanking.

Once you get to that point every time you log on you get invited to heroics and if you see that person you added to your ignore list in the group you just decline and find another group, cause generally tanks are the hardest component to find when looking for a group.

[Thanehand]

Next time instead of saying, "Sure" ask if the healer is wearing any PvP gear. If they don't know, ask their name and Armory them.

It's much more fun when you're doing the rejecting.

This.

Regardless of anything else, you have to make them think that they want you, rather than you want to join their group.

If I may pick your original reply apart (OP):

"Pretty well geared. Mostly blues, a few epics. I've got 14.6K HP and 14 K armor. "

My inital response to this is "This guy is not too confident in what he's doing, and possibly liable to make mistakes". Remember, they're judging you on that sentance alone.

My advice would be make your response more like this:

"More than enough, thanks. 14k+ unbuffed HP, 14k armour, uncrittable. How's your healer's gear and your dps? I've AoE'd this place before."

Be confident. Be forward. Most of all never mention "Blue" or "Epic". Those are relative terms, and actually mean nothing, save for getting you rejected due to "Shiney Syndrome"

[Blowhole]

I don't think you're being too sensitive. I get pretty pissed when I get asked about my gear especially when I know the Armory is working. If someone cares that much, they can take the 20 secs it takes to alt + tab out and look it up. Like someone else has said, flip the questioning on them.

I've had this scenario happen for a god damned heroic UB group:

Group Leader: How's your gear?
Me: I've tanked this place more times than I can count. If you want to know my gear just look at the armory
5 seconds later
GL: Ooohh cool you can come
*You get invited to group*
GL: You coming?
Me: No I'm looking up your gear
GL: No it's cool you have plenty of health and your gear is great
Me: No I'm not coming... I can't believe someone wearing a level 62 blue item and a quest item green is asking people about their gear. You should just be happy to find any tank. Go find someone else
GL: Really sorry, we've just had bad luck with groups *yadda yadda bullshit*

You've got to start being stiff with these people. DPS is everywhere, tanks and heals aren't. Remember they need us, not the other way around.

Maybe I just have a hard time tolerating laziness when they could seriously not whisper people and just look them up. It wastes my time to answer everyone interested and I refuse to be rejected by some scrubs when I know I can tank any heroic.

[Jikozani]

I find the key to getting to a group is to be humble. Don't overwhelm people with your stats or how many times you 've done it. Not only they 're probably unable to grasp your stats, but it puts them into unconciously thinking "hey this guy is trying to convince me to invite him". You don't want that. You want people to feel they want you.

I 've pugged a lot, really really a lot. I 've tanked 5-mans way before tbc or patch 2.0. Nowadays I pug as retri, because it's a hell lot of fun.
Whenever I see a message that interests me, my standard whisper is "May I?". "May I tank it?" "May I be the random?". Very few people will flat out reject this whisper. It usually gets them curious, who is this paladin who suggests he can be tank or dps. And it usually nets an invite. Sometimes they 'll ask about my gear then, but I still won't give out much details to them, only a generic answer like "it should be fine".
Of course there are still people who are still too stubborn. But then again, I don't blame them, there *are* many terrible pugs out there and quite a few prot and ret palas that don't do any favors to our reputation.

[Riyan]

I'd shrug, put the guy on /ignore (because he's an ass for not even bothering to discuss/ask further) and then go back to /lfg Tank LFG any heroic.

[Tunos]

14.6k hp is plenty to tank heroics. I'm impressed you have that much as I only have 14.5k (unbuffed of course) in a Mix of Kara/Badge/Heroic gear and I regularly tank in Gruul, SSC and TK. So yea, group leader was newb.

In regards to the t6 warrior who got turned down... he'd have probably been rage starved anyway.

[Aloette]

Next time instead of saying, "Sure" ask if the healer is wearing any PvP gear. If they don't know, ask their name and Armory them.

It's much more fun when you're doing the rejecting.

This.

Back in the day I assumed other people knew what they were capable of doing with their gear, and I didn't both to inspect/armory healers before I PUGed. Sadly that has changed, as I had the misfortune of being told by a resto Shaman wearing spelldamage and enhancement gear that I 'took too much damage' and was 'too hard too keep alive'.

As others said, as a Tank you should be running the show. The most important person in the group to the tank is the healer. A great healer can make any tank look amazing, while a bad healer can make an amazing tank look like a chump. No single DPS class has the same effect on a tank. Make friends with a few good healers, and you'll generally be set for whatever instances you and your healer friends decide to do. DPS/CC is much easier to come by, and isn't nearly as important to the success of a tank.

Quite often after a PUG that goes smoothly, the healer will whisper me and ask if it's okay to add me to friends and message me when he/she is going to be instancing to see if I want to be his/her tank. Most healers also understand the 'tank/healer' relationship and will be just as willing to make friends with a good tank as you want to make friends with a good healer.

[Willy-Willy]

Just make friends with your server's PUG healers and then it'll be you picking who gets to go and who doesn't.

QFT... And, may I add, befriend some *skilled* mages as well (crowd control, AoE sidekick and water vendor - sounds like a 3 in 1 Espresso). If there's one thing PUGing has thought me, that is that having the central core - tank, healer, CC - made up of people who worked with one another a few times can make up (to some degree) to lack of gear or clumsiness of the other DPS... Otherwise, you'll get kicked out of a heroic UB because you consecrated a poly casted when the target was within less than 5yds of me, just like yours truly