One of the great things about the standard Blizzard UI is the portraits given to your toon. Back in TBC, what I liked to do was show my helm for one gear set, my cloak for another and neither for a third. It made it easy to tell what set of gear I was in and as a result, I never found myself accidentally running into an encounter unprepared.

These days though, I never show my helm.

Last post, I talked about consistency and the reasoning behind this decision is no different. When your fellow tanks see your face beside a mob, they let you keep it. When they see some unknown face, they taunt. It’s not a coincidence that when you pick up a new helm all of a sudden the other tanks are taunting off of you left and right.

They don’t recognize you.

A lot of tanks have really quick trigger fingers when it comes to taunting. It’s an instinct instilled in us very quickly as tanks when we learn time and time again just how fast the frailer folk in our parties die when they “tank” a mob.

No Portrait, No Problem?

A number of popular non-standard UIs and add-ons simply don’t show your face to save space, to make things look nicer and to allow you to put your targeting information in the middle of your screen. The trade-off here is that you never build a mental relationship with the portrait of your character. So, you won’t suddenly freak out when you or a tank teammate gets a new helmet, but at the same time, you don’t have anything to visually jump start your gut tanking instinct.

What’s in a UI?

There certainly is an advantage to the different types of information that custom UIs can offer. Being able to significantly reduce screen clutter as well as organize/customize elements in a manner that is easier for you personally to process is a big advantage too. But, the most important thing will always be familiarity more than anything else.

If you never give yourself a chance to become familiar with your UI, you can never take advantage of what your UI has to offer. Basically, stop mucking with it everyday. It’s not helping.

If you’ve never mucked though…

…it’s time to start. Long ago, I wrote “Once you’re comfortable, overwhelm yourself.” I’d like to think this same principle applies to UIs. After all, if you’ve never tweaked your UI then how can you know if you’re utilizing the best UI for you possible. Which is where you guys come in because I’ve never tweaked my UI. (not in any way significant anyway)

Tell me about your UI.

• What do you love about it?
• What do you hate about it?
• What do you wish you could do?

The Ultimate Goal

I want to have a rock solid Tank UI compilation ready for Cataclysm. (Which means you can expect a lot more UI posts here than usual as I embark on this journey)

During the leveling process for WotLK, I went from a hybrid player to someone who utilizes full keybindings. During the leveling process for Cataclysm, I want to be able to share with you my new, tried and tested UI specifically catered to tanking. My hope is that those of you that are using the boring, old Blizzard UI like me will give it a try.

Finally, for those of you wondering… where do I even find UI compilations? Tankspot has a great section of complete UIs from some of it’s best members.