Greatest Bank Alt of All Time!

My paladin Sindell was made back in the vanilla days. Patch 1.0 for those of you keeping count. I was pretty OCD about mining and gathering, so he was elected to keep all of my ore and excess herbs. He had a ton of 16 slot bags and spend a number of years in Stormind. As BC approached, he came out of retirement and leveled up to 60. For the next year, he sat in Ironforge guarding a mailbox. During the Lich King Era, he faithfully kept all the crafting materials and amassed a staggering amount of Saronite and Titanium. I leveled him up to 72 on those odd times where I was looking for a change. He leveled blacksmithing to 450 in Dalarn just crafting things for my other Toons. Sindell was there for paladin buffs and to trade at the Auction House. Extra items I crafted or BoE blue plate gear, went into his bank for later use. I’d get to use it, eventually. Over the months, Sindell sat patiently.

Cataclysm struck, and the 80 level cap was lifted. I got my Shaman, DK, and Hunter up to 85 exploring new content and questing. Even soloed a rare drake, while leveling. ( Aeonaxx is MINE suckas! ) Then I maxxed out my Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing, and Alchemy. Eventually, I was talking to my son about ways to improve his paladin. His holy gear was mediocre. The ret set is also very average. His tank set has a lot of holes. He was running OOM during heroics and struggling with retro raids with his guild as a healer. During WotLK, he was never a Raider and geared enough to top the ret DPS charts. He’s young and very mercurial. He’d never play one character too long and always started up a new one. To his credit, he’s also BIG into Paladin PvP and nigh un-killable 1 on 1. He also has a couple other Horde characters he’s leveled as well. One blood elf paladin was a level 70 mirror of my Prot/Holy Paladin, Sindell. He was having a great time and crushing the PvE group encounters.

I figured I’d give my Paladin another lease on life. Man is levelling easy with 6 pieces of Relic gear and a 45% bonus to earned XP. Every quest and instance was a breeze. I also had a full set crafted armor, weapons, Blacksmith sockets, and gems waiting for me. Due to the glut of old world enchants and herbs, I was dominating solo content. I tried to Pug instances as a Tank and got non-stop instant ques. When you’re triple the health of your group members and doing double their DPS, you realize…. Dam Paladins are overpowered! I had every possible numerical advantage and WotLK content was nerfed to hell. Plus, this was my third plate tank class. At level 74, I had 24k health and could self-heal thru every trash pull. The damage mitigation was huge.

Crushed thru content up to level 80 and then ditched the Relic gear for Obsidian Plate forged armor. An hour later, I was back in instances and on par with healers/casters in 264 Tier 10 gear. I hit the Cataclysm dungeons at 56k and skipped up thru Hyjal, Deepholm, Vash’jir, Uldum, and Twilight. I was soon at 140k and poised to hit heroics.

Paladin tanking isn’t easy to learn but great fun when you do. I’ve taken as much advice as the EJ forums, wowpopular, and paladin Blogs can contribute. Plus, I pulled a Darth Vader on my son’s Obi-wan Kenobi advice on Paladins. Now I was showing him what to do and which glyph to pick. Arrogant, definitely. An improvement, maybe. I researched everything and tried to absorb every last tactic and strategy.

I hit 346 gearscore with my Tank set and started to even things up with my Holy gear. Instant ques are amazing. I was level 72 only three weeks ago. The big negative being a Paladin tank is that with my shaman - I got to finish all of my daily quests in a zone between ques. No such opportunity as a tank. I’m hurting for some factions, especially Tol Barad. The solution is to dedicate time to quest and ignore instance loot.

Other than that, my Heroic dungeon experience and tactics have never been sharper. I’m doing great on health and pushing mitigation to reach towards 102.5% avoidance. I worked my faction to exalted with Hyjal, and Ramkahen. Now moving onto Threzane and Wildhammer tabards. My son commented, “Dad, you know this paladin of yours now has a 350 iLevel? He’s now the greatest bank character of all time.”

Maybe I should assign some other toon to stand in Stormwind next to the mailbox and AH?