Once upon a time: the end is the beginning?

Once upon a time, there was a guy named Fish. His coworkers played this game called "world of warcraft" and were encouraging him to play too. He bought the game, installed it on his system, but was undecided as to what to play. His friend Ruhtra stepped in and said "retribution paladins are awesome, you should play one", so he did. He named his paladin Leshif and set off to conquer Azeroth. Fish eventually became dissatisfied with Leshif and sent him off to the corner while he played with new characters of different classes, specs, and even affiliations (while Fish would make many alts, and re-uses many of the same names on Horde and Alliance servers, Leshif, as the first is special to him and will never be re-used).

After much experience in the game, Fish decided to change Leshif to a Holy paladin, a change Leshif did not entirely embrace. This was clearly not a path to power. One day, whilest browsing the internet, Fish stumbled on a concept called AoE grinding where one character could take on swarms of enemies at a time. This seemed like a grand idea so Leshif was called to action yet again, his talents changed for the third time.

Leshif finally felt powerful! Not against other players, who were strangely immune and unphased by his new powers, but that weakness only fueled his desire to kill more and more mobs. This seemed to be what he was meant for, fighting 3-8 mobs at a time, leaving trails of corpses in his wake, his health and mana barely taxed at all. Before he knew it, Leshif had reached the level cap, and killing mobs no longer served to increase his power.

Fish was at a loss. He didn't know what to do. He tried using Leshif as a tank in instances. Leshif did not care for this activity at all. Mobs in heroic instances hit much harder than outside (good thing they're stuck there, otherwise players might have some real problems on their hands!) and 5 of them at a time made quick work of the poor paladin. Fish's friend Ruhtra proposed a solution yet again. "Try retribution" he said.

So Fish re-trained Leshif back to his old path to find a new source of power and found it not the retribution he remembered at all. It also was nothing like protection, his trained reactions were useless, it required much more thought and consideration and all the time spent on acquiring sturdy tanking gear was for nought.

Fish was tempted to send Leshif back to the corner, retired except for his skills as a jewelcrafter. A provider for his other characters. However, in consideration, this was not a worthy end for Leshif, his first character, on whom he had spent hundreds of hours. Leshif deserved a second chance to prove that he could become powerful and bring Fish a joy like he had when he had first embraced the art of protection. That day, Fish dedicated Leshif fully to the discipline of Retribution, his Protection duties and abilities would be put on hold until Leshif was able to fulfill his new role: Bringer of Pain. Not just regular amounts of non-elite mob pain. Serious, prolonged, extended, crit fueled, chest pumping, Boss slaying PAIN.

As is often the case, the end turned out to be the beginning.