Am I Ready?

This is a question that gets asked a lot over at Maintankadin. Usually, the posters are people who genuinely don't have confidence in their gear or abilities.

To these my answer is this: get confident or stop tanking. The most commonly-referenced comparison to the Tank in Wow is the Quarterback in American Football. Now, despite a brief affection for the Redskins that I shared with my father some 20 years ago, I have little practical knowledge of the sport. From what I've heard however, Quarterbacks aren't renowned for their shy, deferential nature.

Confident doesn't mean being an asshole either though (although many folks confuse the two). In fact if you're confident enough to know you can tank in any given situation, it actually frees you from needing to prove it all the time. In raids these days, I'm generally ambivalent about who does what tank-wise, and I mostly settle who's tanking what on a /roll with the other MTs.

Here are some things to check to bolster your confidence early on.

*Be Imba - Ignore it's hit/expertise obsession and the fact that it hasn't yet got an overview of the Protection spec for Pallies. Scroll down to the "Suggested Instances" part. This tells you where the next upgrades to your current gear is. If this is later in the game than your current content, then you're fine. If it's the same, you should be ok, but you'll want to buff up religiously before each boss fight.

*What killed me? If you're dying a lot in content you're technically geared for, this may help:

1. If you're dying to massive spike damage, gear for more Stamina to absorb it.
1.1 If you've maxed your Stamina and still dying to massive spike damage, then either your healer isn't up to it, or they're being distracted healing other targets.
2. If you're dying because your healer is going OOM, then equip some more avoidance.
2.1 If you've maxed your avoidance and your healer is still going OOM, then they're either undergeared or the DPS isn't putting out enough damage to kill the target in a reasonable length of time.

For the record, about 90% of Tank death isn't the Tank's fault. It's a team game and it takes 5, 10 or even 25 people working together to screw it up.