As much as I would normally agree, somehow I one-shotted it my first time in (with a PuG) and proceeded to have a wipefest the following week with my guild (took us an hour and a half to down him).

This worries me.

Did you ever actually do Archavon? That fight required taunting too, in case you didn't notice, and most PUGs managed it fine. This will be no different.

RE: Most pugs could handle taunts. Not really. Most of my pugs, my mage would end up dying to Archavon, as I was typically just under the tank in threat. Tank got picked up, Archavon runs over and 1-shots me before the other tank either taunts or bothers to get threat, if I didn't hit ice block or invis in time. I've already sat at top aggro through an ice block and *still* had aggro on Arch by the time it faded. So yeah. Never underestimate the potential fail of PUG tanks. Emalon was where the most fail occured though.

But the pugs weren't all bad, you do get good ones as well as the bad ones. Bad ones are just easier to remember.