The burly, faithful man inside demands justice!

Sometime after I left my old raiding guild, Ebon Order and rejoined my original guild Order of the White Lion, I made a Paladin. His name was Alixander. I created him around the time it was really accepted that Paladins were made for healing. I could have made a Druid, but I've never been overly enthused with the idea of playing a Druid, or a Night Elf for that matter. I could also have made a Priest, but that idea made me grimace, since I'd already done the "wearing cloth and dying a lot" thing once as Kaziel. Instead I decided to roll a Paladin for teh leet healz (mind you this was all pre-tBC so Shamans weren't an option). Anyway, I leveled Alix up to 60 and enjoyed it as an alternative to my Mage since he was decked out in a mix of MC and BWL epics, so pretty much anything from the level 60 5-mans were steps down.

Then the expansion came! *dun dun dun* Suddenly Paladins aren't just pure healbots anymore! They can respectably tank now. *le gasp* This called for a respec. Mind you, I was still fully Holy specced, but my remaining 20~ points got tossed into Protection instead of Retribution, giving me the ability to tank some of the basic 5 mans if we needed to, and additionally the ability to switch to offtanking fairly painlessly. So I get Alix up to around 66 leveling with my then SO, when our quasi-relationship ended, and we stop leveling.

So at this point I decide to focus fully on Kaz, and let Alix just kinda do nothing for a month or two. Got to 70, and I decided it was epic flying mount time and specifically Netherdrake. Since I could easily predict that it would take already having 300 riding skill, I began working my way towards the imposing 5,200g I would need to buy and fly an armored Gryphon (and eventually my Netherdrake). I finished up most of the quests available to Kaz, netting me an impressive 2,500g (after training and buying my flying mount) just from the post 70 quest rewards (also this is before 2.1 so I'll have even more quests to do after the patch!). Only about half way there, I made some investments in purchasing some rare recipes that sell decently, that have already made up their value in returns, but still needed more. So I started farming Fire Elementals for Motes of Fire. Decent money, but boring and slow.

Then something clicked in my brain... the best money you can make is from questing at 70. I have a Paladin who's 66. Four levels is easily doable. So I pulled Alix out of storage, and got back to the quest grind. I also figure having another 70 healer, and one who's actually playing in the guild would be immensely helpful. So since Friday or so I've been leveling Alix (save for most of Saturday when I was questing in Nagrand with my group).

On Sunday did two Underbog runs as Alix, one with two guildies and two PUGers, and one full guild run. The full guild run I picked up the Warrior D1 repaint shoulders from the Underbog. Good defense, and a couple of gem slots helping me continue to work on my currently craptastic tanking armor set. I also offtanked a good 2/3rds of the run... only to realize something. Tanking as a paladin? Tons o' fun!

So I spent the rest of Sunday night and most of Monday mulling over thoughts of becoming a Tankadin full time... Honestly, it made me really happy. I probably had more fun tanking as a Paladin than I've had playing my Mage in a while. Mind you, I've had tons of fun playing WoW, but the actual gameplay of playing Kaz was kinda meh. Not bad, mind you, but not really fun either. Playing as Alix-tank was.

Well, last night I decided to start working on it, getting the gear, and seeing about respeccing after 2.1 (no point now with the fairly big potential changes being made to the Prot tree after the expansion). I don't want to jump fully into this only to find out that I've wasted tons of money and time in something that was just an "Oh hey, something new" thing instead of something I really enjoy.