*party member. I blame ghosts.

Yes!

This happens to me ALL THE TIME, and since I'm DPS it means I have to wait at least another five minutes.

I used to hate that ghost 3rd DPS as a tank. Just recently I built a DPS set out of spare Emblems and realized why it happens. On my tank or healer queues are never longer than 30 seconds. When I queue as DPS it's upwards of 15-20 minutes. The first time I queue'd DPS I almost missed my spot because I was loading laundry when it came up. Now I just feel sorry for that 3rd DPS that lost their place in the queue.

God yes - worst run so far was 7 AFK dps in a run

I have.

I can only assume this is because for many DPS, even getting a group in a random can take a significant amount of time; on the order of 15 to 40 minutes during peak times.

That said, I shamelessly admit that I've been the tard gone afk at least a few times, hoping that perhaps I could quickly grab a beverage or take a bio break while waiting...

Alas, I was wrong. =)

well, numerically it makes sense... if there was an equal probability of any class roll going AFK during queueing, you'd still see a lot more "that last dps won't accept!" situations just due to the fact that there are 3 dps...

add in that someone is more likely to AFK during a longer queue, and that dps have the longest queues of anyone, and it makes sense...