Aye, the earthen ring vs the primalists would have been some good story telling. Totally ignored
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That’s actually a dagger… or at least I’ve seen daggers that look like that, based on the picture on the page.
The rule he actually broke was being Enhancement and being able to use a Dagger mog… which is totally in keeping with Blizzard’s “rules for you, but not for me.” hypocrisy.
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Drek has been using swords since forever.
Is mine really the one that is broken? The irony that I wouldnt understand it when I am simply giving a deadpan factual reply with its own little hint of sarcastic eye roll that this has never been just an Anduin thing and predates it since Vanilla. That lore characters have always broken the mold of the classes.
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Interesting…
That said it’s a moot point. Blizzard loves to give their NPC’s abilities or gear the players can’t have. The fact that he’s using warrior abilities as well is rather telling regarding his actual class combination. Namely that he’s at least a Warrior/Shaman multi class… if not just a full-on dual class npc. If anything, this at least explains why Thrall can use plate armor and likes to throw his weapons.
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Blizzard just needs to make a single player game rpg in the warcraft universe. With the ability to mix and match powers since the class thing is a wow only thing.
A Warcraft game in the style of Baldur’s Gate 3 or the Pathfinder video games would be amazing. Unfortunately, Blizzard does not even entertain the notion of making games that aren’t multiplayer GAAS titles anymore.
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Heck, can you imagine a game as a paladin person in W3 before Arthas fell and it takes you through segments of the rise and fall of the paladin order and you finally becoming a Death Knight under Arthas. All played like a third person action slasher game.
If you picked up any of those Shaman sets from Pandaria, are Human or Blood Elf, or any other race come to think of it, and have done the heritage quests, you’ve got options. (The Timewalker event was an opportunity to go on a mad transmog shopping spree… better than trips to the Mall!)
There’s also the Stormrider sers w hich are also univeral.
On the other hand if you want a really sexy bathrobe, there’s the Darkmoon Faire version of the Magister set.
I use the Darkmoon Lightforged set to give my Lightforged Dramei Warrior her Paladin vibes.
In Stormwind the clerics are very famous and it was one of the kingdom’s main forces against the Horde at the time of the First War. The very invisibility spell that Dalaran wizards began to use was learned from them.
As a kind of warrior priest, clerics fight in the middle of the battlefield, so it is plausible that they wear heavier armor for greater protection.
Anduin, therefore, could be this specific type of priest that is very popular in Stormwind, adopting a more active stance in the midst of battle, rather than remaining in the rearguard. And being further ahead of the battlefield, he could adopt heavier armor, as unlike wizards, priests do not need greater freedom of movement to cast their spells.
Personally, I hate that.
Particularly for the lore of priests – priest players and their roleplay 
I know it’s “the lore” and all, but I extremely dislike how it’s presented as priests ‘upgrade’ into paladins … 
The only culture where priests can still be held in higher reverence than Paladins is the Draenei, but literally everything else shoehorns priests into being pathetic subhumanoid fodder for the Paladins to rescue or ascend into said-Paladins 
Part of why I made my whole thread – Priest Lore rant 
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That statement only held during the RTS; from Burning Crusade on, we’ve had Paladins with no connection to the Church of Stormwind or Lordaeron.
We even had one branch of Paladins who got their powers from sucking on an enslaved Narru. Zandalari Paladins get their gifts from Loa.
The Paladins that were one time priests were only those of Uther’s generation and Anduin who, like Tyrande and Sylvannas is a multi-classed Hero.
But he uses shadow magic too… I would say he’s more of a warrior priest ( it’s actually very different from the paladin’s we play.
Anduin has been shown many times in game and in the novels using priest abilities.
In MoP, there is a quest where he mind controls a dwarf to get out of his custody. During the Battle for Lordaeron, we see him casting penance. And in the Shadows Rising novel, he was channeling shadow magic as he was about to cast a spell on Sira Moonwarden.
A direct quote from the novel:
Anduin made a soft sound of disgust and stood, hovering over her, considering her for a long and tense spell. A wisp of purple energy traveled down his arm, gathering in his palm. It happened in a blink, coming and going, dissipating before Mathias could see for certain what the king had done.
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Paladins would involve a libram, auras, blessings, and oaths to a holy order if we were still in the olden times. I think a combination of class streamlining and adding unique paladin types to increasingly more cultures/races has kinda boiled that down to “Plate + Light”
Paladin is a very specific term that goes beyond just a combo of priest and warrior. They go through rituals and blessings to make themselves physically more powerful and able to resist things like disease. Also their auras that allow them to push back dark magic in canon, since the original Knights of the Silver Hand were created specifically to counter first generation Death Knights.
Anduin’s not a paladin, he’s a priest who lifts. A clerist would be the most apt label.
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He also used Psychic Scream when you fought him in SW.
But these days he’s wearing plate and wielding a sword. So he might as well be a Pally even if he isn’t one officially.
Which is a shame. Priests only have the ability to grant life, reave sanity and manipulate the very cosmic forces of entropy and creation themselves. Simultaneously.
Better ignore all that in favor of thwacking people with a hunk of pointed metal. That’s way more interesting than wielding the primordial forces of existence.
I can appreciate that Anduin’s arc is trying to be Varian and figuring out he needs to stand on his own. That arc might even be interesting if Anduin weren’t a narrative singularity.
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That was supposed to be his arc in BfA, but supposedly he’s resolved it by now.
I mean, it’s hard to say if he’s resolved it, because he’s still attempting to LARP as Varian. We got another round of his identity struggle in ‘tries to jump off ship in a heroic act of self-sacrifice, fails, tries to connect with people, succeeds.’
Which is why I suspect they’ll never say he’s a paladin. Because once his daddy issues arc is truly over, the plate is coming off. Also probably why Turalyon’s safe in the long-term, because they know for a certain subset of fans, they need to have at least one grizzled human paladin with a beard and shiny armor in the main cast.
He outright says it during Thrall’s peptalk in Khaz Algar. That Varian’s last lesson to him was the greatest gift he’d ever given.