A Raid Saga

Last night was my guild's first attempt at Sartherion with 3 drakes up, and since it was on a night that I didn't have to play Mom's taxi, I got to go. Bear in mind that I have only seen Sarth with 1 drake once, and have only killed him without any drakes.
To say that the fight was a sensory overload was an understatement. The intense colors, sounds, and flashing warnings were overwhelming to me. I died to firewalls or void zones on my first 3 or 4 attempts. The next attempt, I lived until the MT died which, in my world, is huge.
After that, our main healer came online and I had to be replaced. I wish I could say that when I got the tell, I happily left in very good spirits. I didn't; I was angry and feeling like I was slowly being pushed out as a raider, and I expressed my disappointment at being replaced just when I was starting to get it to my GM/Raid Leader. Dev's reply was, "Keep fighting, girl, you'll get it." If anyone wants to know why I stay in a guild where I so obviously don't belong from a dps standpoint, this is why.
So I signed off vent and went back to working on getting the permanent Peddlefeet pet :-(, and leveling jewelcrafting, which I dropped tailoring to pick up (32 SP gems FTW). A little while later, I noticed that a raid member dc'd and didn't come back on. I had shed my tears and calmed down, so I got back on vent and flew to Wyrmrest, deciding to do the daily and get some gold, if nothing else. I guess when I logged onto vent the officers decided it was safe to ask me to come in, because I got a tell from Boom asking me if I would come back in. I did, for one attempt, then someone else logged on and I got to leave again, this time, not quite as unhappily.
As I left the instance and did the daily, I got a tell from one of the guys in the guild telling me he saw me leave, come in, and leave again, and appreciated what an awesome sport I was to do it. I needed to hear that from someone I don't normally talk to unless we're running something, and I never confide in. I needed to know that my guildies did not see me in a negative light.
As I told Boom last night, I rolled a Warlock to be the answer to my difficulties. I'm so frustrated that I'm still having problems with it. After speaking with him, I decided to try learning to control my movements entirely with the mouse, and use the gamepad for casting. Self-buffed, using the gamepad on the target dummies, I was up to 2400 dps, which is what I should be doing. I just need to figure out why it isn't translating to running instances and raiding.