On Confidence

For my inaugural blog, I am going to tackle something that I think every good tank must have. Confidence.

You can study all the best theorycrafting, and you can have all the talent in the world. These will make you a good tank. But when you add confidence, you become a great tank. You see, if you are unsure about yourself, you will doubt your decision making skills, which will inevitably delay your making a decision on a course of action and executing it.

For example…Let’s say you and another tank are off-tanking in a boss fight (say tanking constructs on Ignis). Suddenly, your other offtank drops. You gotta grab that construct before he goes and one-shots a healer. It is now up to you to tank multiple constructs at once. Without confidence, you will hesitate, leaving a pissed construct running toward your healer. That will, most likely, spell your healer’s demise. If your healer dies, then there is undue stress put on the other healers to pickup healing on you (especially since you’re most likely tanking two constructs at a time now), which means that they are not healing others as much. Now DPS’ers start dying to AOE because they are not getting heals (you are getting their heals instead). With the DPS’ers dying, the whole fight lasts longer than it would have with all 25 (or 10) people up because the boss lives longer, hence further taxing the limited mana pools of the healers.

You get the point…it’s all bad.

Now Success breeds confidence. Example…last night, we got to Kologarn-25 when the main tank (a Prot warrior) and myself realized that we didn’t have a third tank for the adds. Bad news, right? We have always use three tanks on Kologarn-25. So we had to improvise. We just had me start on Kolo until I got 2xCrush, then the warrior taunted off of me. At that moment, I ran under the arm just in time to lay a consecrate for the rubble to spawn in. I tanked them until they were dead, and then ran over and taunted Kolo off of the warrior just as he got to 2xCrush himself. Rinse. Repeat three or four times (I don’t remember now) and you got a dead Kolo. 2 months ago, I would not have been able to handle this kind of demand on my attention, but now, it’s not a problem (and was actually kinda fun!). Mostly because of the confidence that I have gained by stepping into a 25-man raiding guild and being able to contribute (even though I was severely under geared for Ulduar).
I am by no means trying to say that I am a great tank. I think I am adequate. Maybe even good. But not great. I have seen a great tank in action, and it is something to behold, let me tell you.

If success breeds confidence then failure breeds un-confidence (is that even a word?). But, even worse than that is the fact that un-confidence (there’s that non-word again) breeds failure. So you can see how someone could get caught in a spiraling circle of failure and un-confidence (hey…if un-birthday works for Disney, then un-confidence can work for me). So if you are not confident in your abilities, you will tend to fail more, and the more you fail, the less confident you are in your abilities. Sucks, doesn’t it?

So how can we break this endless circle of fail?

First, research the boss fights inside and out. If any of you haven’t heard of (or haven’t been to) www.tankspot.com, then you are missing out on one of the greatest resources for a raiding tank in this game. One of the things I find the most helpful to my confidence is knowing that I will not be surprised in a boss fight. Once you are comfortable with the fight and its mechanics, you are free to relax a little bit and get into the “zone”.

Second, take a step back and honestly analyze your strengths and weaknesses as a tank. Make a short questionnaire and have some trusted guildies fill it out (as well as filling it out yourself). See how you rank in their eyes versus where you think you are. I know, that I am my own worst critic. Everyone tells me that I am better than I think I am (not just in WoW, but in lots of stuff). If you’re not sure what weaknesses you have, then go pug a Heroic. There is nothing like running an instance with four complete strangers to bring out your weaknesses (and strengths for that matter). The fact of the matter is, that your guildies (or whomever you run with regularly) will compensate for your weaknesses (whether you or they realize it or not).

Once you’ve gotten your weaknesses identified, go into a heroic or Naxx and purposely put yourself in situations that force you to deal with your weaknesses. Practice really does make perfect. As Veneretio said in his blog a while back…” Once you’re comfortable, Overwhelm yourself”.

Well…I think I have rambled on enough for one day.