(I'm aware that Blood is the main spec for raid tanking nowadays and will be the standard in the next expansion, however I'm doing this with the immediate future in mind)
Background:
A couple weeks ago I decided that my "alt" (Landriana, Elemental Shaman) had quite surpassed my main (Raevn, Frost Death Knight) to the point of humiliation and shame in regards to gear and instances completed. To where technically Raevn should have been considered as my alt.
I'll admit that it was easy to let myself slide. It's not that I didn't like tanking or my Death Knight, it was just that it's WAY easier to come along in instances as a DPS. When something goes wrong it's not the DPS that is blamed (rarely, even when it IS their fault) and I basically get to sit back, shut up and just follow along killing things. It's much more pleasant than running ahead marking mobs (which I'm really slow to do because of the drop down menu and my inability to move my mouse in a straight line, along with the fact that I keep forgetting to keybind the "skull" mark) while having some asshole keep yelling "Go! go!" at you.
So one day I decided to at least do my daily heroic to get some frost & triumph emblems, my gear wasn't (nor is it currently) the best, and didn't even include full tier 9. I felt pretty comfortable with tanking, the day I stopped playing my tank so much I was considered as "up there in gear"... however, the day I decided to resume gearing I found out just how much I was in everyone's dust.