*Ignore the fact that he’s in two different sets of gear, these screenshots were taken over a short period of time.

Upon visiting the site you’ll see a form to input your region, realm, and character data. If you want to register for an account (its free) you can get a few extra benefits including guild and group reports, as well as forcing an update from the armory (avoiding cached data). After you’ve got your character in there, hit the Query Report button and it’ll fetch your character and process its (currently equipped) gear.

After the site has fetched your character, and “had its way with it”, it will display a quick summary of the gear and enchants near the top of the page. This will contain a quick overview of issues with the character, and the gear they are wearing. Right below that information is a list of the enchants, and any suggestions or upgrades that might be available.

By clicking on the “accepted”, “missing”, or (hope not) “improper” enchants heading, you can reveal a list of all the non-ideal enchants on your character, and by clicking the “…” after an enchant that needs improvement, you will be given options for upgrades. Please look at this information with a smart mind, sometimes they aren’t always good choices (particularly for weapon enchants). One particular thing to watch out for is Titanium Weapon Chain. While it does offer hit rating, disarm reduction obviously isn’t useful at all in PvE, therefore if you need the hit Accuracy is a much better option, however Berserking or Mighty Spellpower are usually better options (for dps or healing).

Right below that section you’ll see the gem breakdown, this will let you know what stats you’ve gemmed for, any missed socket bonuses (that you may or may not care about), low quality (“green”) gems in your gear, and finally and empty sockets that you have.

Now to move on to the Gear-O-Meter (which I have conveniently switched characters for). In this shot you’ll see what instances are “recommended” for you character in your current set up. This again should be taken with a bit of leniency, as what instances a person can run is largely dependent on the rest of the group. However this will give you a good idea of where your upgrades are going to be available from.

Finally is the characters raid history. This section provides a few pie charts (mmm pie) of your characters raiding history. I find this section more useful when I’m looking at new recruits for my guild, as I can see where they’ve been, how far they’ve gotten, and how many times they’ve done that.

When you hover over a raid instance, you get the breakdown of all the bosses, as well as how many kills your character has for those.

They haven’t added 3.3 support yet, so hopefully we’ll see that soon.

I’ll be posting a followup to this soon with an addon that has some what similar functionality, I’m just not at a computer with WoW installed at the moment.

Mechanics like this test the spacial awareness of your entire raid. The reason these are such strong factors to go by is that for other mechanics (fire and similar effects), is that if your person isn’t paying attention and doesn’t move out of the way, a healer can usually save them if they are going above and beyond their call of duty. When JoeWarlock decides to stand in the fire on Razorscale, FurryMcDruid can save him by diverting a good chunk of his attention away long enough for him to realize he’s burning alive, however in Mimiron if you don’t move for a Rocket Strike, you’re dead.

This is especially important in a 10 man raid environment. In a 25 man raid, if one player dies, that is a loss of 4% to your raid size. In 10 man its a 10% loss overall, but could be one third of your healer team or 50% of your tank team. Losses like this are hard to tolerate in a small raid and are the cause of a fair amount of wipes. For progression content its absolutely necessary to bring your first string raiders. In situations like this its better to bring your more competent raiders (with awareness and fight knowledge) than your uber DPS that can’t seem to stay alive.

In the World of Warcraft, there are varying degrees of players. The variables are many and not really of our concern, but you will come in to groups with people that are better than you, and worse than you. Again obvious, but people pay to play. This makes them feel entitled to play the game the way they want to play. So when you get in a group people are expecting you to play the same way they are, so that they can accomplish their goals. However, as I stated, players don’t always play at the same performance level.

This is a major issue in progression content (large raid PvE). I will touch on this in my next post!

In my WoW career, I’ve played every class and every role, some more than others. With two out of three of my level-capped characters being hybrids this isn’t a big surprise. My shaman was leveled mostly out of necessity for healers. I’ve played caster dps, melee dps, healing, and tanking, but in the end, tanking fits me the best.

I enjoy tanking for many reasons. When you are the tank you have a very heavy responsibility on your shoulders. From a five man group to a 25 man raid, the entire group looks to you for many things. You control the flow of the instance, the mood of the group, and many other aspects of the experience. In the five person dungeon scenario, the tank is generally the designated “group leader” meaning he is in charge of setting up the marks for kill order, croud control, and anything else that needs to be done.

Another aspect of the necessity side, is just that. You are always needed. Tanks are generally in short supply, particularly good tanks. How many timeshave you seen in trade chat “LF1M tank”. You can very quickly build a name for yourself by pugging a few runs in heroics or kara. As long as you perform well, aren’t too hard to heal, and aren’t an asshole, most people will remember you and probably put you on their friends list.

Now to shift the discussion more to what separates the good tanks from the bad. As with any statistic or assumption, there is always a degree of error, and in the end this is my opinion so think what you may.

You may say that “every group also needs a healer”, and while that is true, tanking obviously has a much different feel to it. While both equally important, tanking is much more involving and exciting. You have a much more active role in the encounter, between threat generation, boss positioning, mitigation management, among others.

For most of TBC raiding, skill > gear, and sadly enough 9/10 skill = “don’t stand in the fire”. But for tanks you have to have the gear and the skills to utilize your entire toolset to be a great tank. Sure anybody in plate can strap on a shield and put themselves in front of an enemy, and count on the healer to keep then alive, or the dps to CC the mob they didn’t pay attention to. However a good tank is going to know how much he can handle, and more importantly, what his healer can handle, as well as the competency of his dps/cc (if needed). Just because you came in here with a BT geared healer and AoE tanked the room before doesn’t mean that you can do the same with every other group. Maybe the healer and dps were just so strong that your group could muscle their way through, or maybe you have decent gear and the healer was able to keep up. A good tank will be able to know the difference.