ShieldTax

Track the hidden gold cost of Shield Block.

Warriors pay a per-press tax on their core active mitigation that no other tank class does. Every time you block, your shield has a chance to lose durability — costing you roughly 25 gold per M+ dungeon just for pressing Shield Block.

ShieldTax makes this invisible cost visible (and audible) with a running gold counter and a sound alert every time your shield takes the hit.

Background

Inspired by Kersplode's r/wow post testing 20,000 damage instances to prove warriors pay ~25g extra per dungeon for pressing Shield Block — a finding covered by PC Gamer. ShieldTax makes that invisible cost visible.

Features

• Real-time shield durability tracking during combat
• Accurate gold cost via WoW Tooltip API (C_TooltipInfo) with formula fallback
• Sound effects when your shield loses durability (coin jingle, money bag, auction, level up, or mute)
• On-screen display with Shield Tax title, current content cost, and lifetime total
• Content-type tracking — see your cost breakdown by M+, Raid, Dungeon, and Open World
• Content display filters — toggle which content types show on the frame and count toward the displayed total (data always records)
• Death Tax tracked separately — deaths don't inflate your Shield Block cost
• Dungeon auto-detection with per-dungeon history (last 50)
• Chat reporting — share your Shield Tax with humorous randomized messages
• Milestone announcements at real gold sink thresholds (Master Riding, Wooly Mammoth, Tundra Mammoth, Yak, Brutosaur)
• Minimap button via LibDataBroker (left-click toggles display, right-click for help)
• Data persists through /reload — resets on fresh login
• Warrior-only — silently inactive on other classes
• 12.0 (Midnight) compatible — no CLEU dependency

Future (v2.0.0 — Tank Tax)

• Expand to all tank specs (Paladin, DK, DH, Druid, Monk)
• Track total tanking durability cost across all armor slots
• Cross-class comparison

Installation

1. Download from CurseForge or GitHub Releases
2. Copy the ShieldTax/ folder to your World of Warcraft/_retail_/Interface/AddOns/ directory
3. Log in on a Warrior character — the addon activates automatically

Releases are automatically packaged and uploaded when a version tag is pushed.

Commands

Command	Action
/st	Toggle display frame
/st sound [coin|money_open|auction|levelup|none]	Set sound effect
/st sound test	Play current sound
/st lifetime	Lifetime stats with content breakdown
/st content [type]	View/toggle content-type display filter
/st stats	Shield Tax by content type
/st report [party|guild|say]	Share Shield Tax in chat
/st history	Last 5 dungeon costs
/st reset	Reset current content counter
/st reset all	Reset ALL data
/st move / /st lock	Unlock/lock display position
/st minimap	Toggle minimap icon
/st version	Show addon version
/st help	List all commands

How It Works

ShieldTax monitors your shield's durability via the UPDATE_INVENTORY_DURABILITY event. When durability decreases while you're in combat (and you haven't just died), it reads the exact repair cost from the game's Tooltip API (C_TooltipInfo.GetInventoryItem), plays a sound, and adds the cost to your running tally.

Cost calculation: The addon snapshots your shield's repair cost before and after each durability change, then takes the delta. This gives the exact gold cost that the game would charge you at a vendor.

Note: If the Tooltip API is unavailable, the addon falls back to an armor-based formula estimate. Reputation discounts at vendors are not factored in.

Development

Requirements

• Lua 5.1 (included in the LuaRocks win32 package)
• busted (test framework)
• Visual Studio Build Tools (for compiling busted's native dependencies)

Setup (Windows)

1. Install Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with the "Desktop development with C++" workload
2. Download the LuaRocks win32 legacy package (includes Lua 5.1)
3. Extract and run install.bat /L from a Developer Command Prompt for VS 2022 (Run as Administrator)
4. luarocks install busted

Running Tests

cd shield-tax
busted

Project Structure

shield-tax/
├── ShieldTax/           # WoW addon (copy this to Interface/AddOns/)
│   ├── ShieldTax.toc    # Addon manifest
│   ├── Core.lua         # Init, class guard, slash commands
│   ├── Tracker.lua      # Durability monitoring + combat state + content detection
│   ├── CostCalculator.lua  # Repair cost via Tooltip API + formula fallback
│   ├── SoundManager.lua # Sound effects + throttle
│   ├── Stats.lua        # Session/dungeon/lifetime stats (persisted)
│   ├── Display.lua      # On-screen gold counter frame
│   ├── ChatReporter.lua # Chat reports + milestones
│   └── MinimapButton.lua # LibDataBroker minimap icon
├── tests/               # busted tests (not included in addon)
│   ├── wow_api_mock.lua
│   ├── test_tracker.lua
│   ├── test_cost_calculator.lua
│   ├── test_sound_manager.lua
│   ├── test_stats.lua
│   ├── test_display.lua
│   ├── test_core.lua
│   ├── test_chat_reporter.lua
│   └── test_content_types.lua
├── pkgmeta.yaml         # CurseForge packager config
├── CHANGELOG.md
└── README.md

License

MIT

Version

1.0.6