Recovering from nearly a month offline has proved a bit difficult for me. While I still love Aelys and the warrior class, the radio silence on Moonglade whenever I log in has been depressing. And yes, yes, when I first got back to her I was new to the Horde side of the server and happy to hurl myself into things, but now I have epics and they feel hollow without the people who helped me gain them beside me.
Yes, I openly admit it. I'm a sentimental nutcase. I would be happier with my current situation on Moonglade if I had shitty blues and was fighting for respect once more. Thus is the mind of the raving madwoman.
Actually, I'm probably being a little hard on myself. See, while I enjoy the gameplay in WoW and I appreciate the pretty little details in Northrend and the interesting questlines and the overarching lore of the whole shibang, I mostly play to have fun with other people. People geographically distant, with a spread of ethnicities and hobbies I'm hard pressed to match IRL, even now that I'm back at uni and rocking with a whole load of nifty students. I like making friends I know I wouldn't meet if not for the game, and logging onto a whole list of alts made by people who transferred to other servers in my absence, knowing I may as well just remove the whole lot, makes me melancholy.
Again, yes, sentimental nutcase.
Well.
It just so happens the WoW Ladies were in the midst of starting up a new version of Daughters of the Horde on the European servers when I was getting back, and naturally this caught my attention. “Why not?” thought I. “I can roll a new character and hang out with them, and if it seems to be going well, I can transfer Aelys over and hey presto, new home.” 
I rolled an orc shaman to start out with, because orcs are hot and I've never levelled a shaman past forty. She, uh, didn't stick. A stick, however, did. Oh yes, my new alt is a blood elf. A blood elf paladin.
The immediate response to this from a fellow warrior tank was "I now class you as scum", which wasn't very nice. I reassured him it was all in the name of research, to which he said "I now class you as lab-coat-wearing scum." He is lovely like that.
Nevertheless, I do count little Allévansis as something of an experiment even now that she's sitting at 60, a high level for an alt of mine. I find that, in gameplay terms, I enjoy playing her for the opposite reason I enjoy playing Aelys: it is incredibly easy to be a very solid player as a paladin without really knowing a great deal about the class.
I have not researched my role as retridin like I did with warrior, but I cleanly top the charts in every instance - and that's not including trash, where Consecration and Seal of Command cleave things into oblivion. I've had to tank a lot in instances while levelling up, as well, which has proved very easy. As a retridin I hold aggro even when I forget to use Righteous Fury, so god alone knows what threat generation must be like for someone actually specced to tank, complete with shield of pwnage. There is little challenge in survival and threat generation, so I can focus most of my efforts on the little things. Speedy marking, snagging patrols, seamless pulling, my healer's mana and, of course, idle banter. For someone used to mashing Heroic Strike every second and generally being rendered mute during combat, it's all relaxing and refreshing.
Obviously this is all low-level stuff. I have not played paladin at eighty, let alone tanked a raid as one, so I really can't comment on end game at all, yet the difference between off-spec tanking as a paladin and off-spec tanking as a warrior while levelling up is extremely clear. Paladin is just effortlessly better; a warrior would have to be very skilled indeed to compete.
This doesn't make me resentful, however. Yes, a paladin can have one tanking spec that covers both high threat talents and high survivability talents; yes, they're more durable than us at the moment; yes, they can be decent tanks even in the hands of the foolish and noobish; and yes, they're fun. But the differences between their static, glowing variation of tanking and our active, gritty one don't undermine or cheapen either side. I believe we complement one another nicely, and am simply glad to have the choice of going either way when I log in nowadays.
Anyway, I'm aware I've gone through tangents like Simon Cowel through tooth-whitening treatments. My main points are:
1. I'm still alive.
2. Other people are cool.
3. Aelys should soon have a new home and I will be posting about her again.4. Interclass orgies are go.
Much love, thine recently absent skinny tank,
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