If yes, how did you go about it? Mage, Priest, Shaman, or other for your class? What’s your character story?
Considering the spectrum of abilities the Tidesages have, along with their general depiction, seems to cover all three somewhat evenly (at least in my opinion) I’d say it mostly just boils down to what you prefer mechanically and aesthetically. Obviously it would be easier to obtain an authentic transmog with a cloth wearer, however Shaman arguably has the most visuals appropriate for the role at their disposal.
In summary, at least in regards to class choice, I don’t think it matters that much since they don’t entirely fall into any single one we currently have; the closest two perhaps being Shaman and Mage, in terms of capabilities.
I currently don’t have a Tidesage myself. I had a concept for one that I was going to use a Warrior for but the idea was meant to be somewhat atypical.
On the off chance you were looking for tips my server’s forums has a guide someone wrote…
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Get the appropriate armor and you can even do it with Warrior.
Yes, for sure. I was hoping my ‘rp-nerdism’ would be satisfied by people responding to the prompt with tales of their Tidesage RP haha.
When I was introduced to tidesages, as a shaman , i felt a connection with Tidesages as the Restoration Shaman’s healing spells are water based. I do a lot of Solo RP in my mind i have a continuous story and I thought about making my character look more sage like but i felt it was a direction suited more towards mages. But I definetly feel a connection to the tidesage as a resto shaman
All of the above are actually suitable routes. Tidesages have been observed as having vastly different abilities by individuals.
I never bought the Tidesages as Shaman, honestly. The way they used the elementals’ powers was much closer to Mages than Shaman.
The only thing that really made them resemble Shaman was having totems, but we’ve seen all kinds of magic users employ totems. They’re only really exclusive to Shaman in mechanics.
That frustration aside, prior to BfA, I was actually RPing a character as something of a water-centric Shaman. I used Frost Mage (mechanically) for it.
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I would probably go resto shaman myself, but it is an interesting thing. They don’t fit neatly into one class.
Their religious rituals and talk of the Tidemother don’t really fit scholarly mages. They honesly struck me as being water and maybe wind to an extent focused shamans in terms of how their power works. They’re too…reverent of the sea for it to just be mages.
The way I see it, they’re basically…cloth wearing sea shamans. And I feel the shaman part is bolstered by blizzard giving them access to the shaman class as a nod to this.
As far as how RP goes, I feel that resto shaman or frost mage are the best ways to go about it in terms of choosing a class, but because they don’t fit enitrely neatly into one or the other there’s definitely some flexibility there.
Tidesages culturally have little to do with the Earthen Ring model of shaman so I’d say that Frost Mage with the attendant water elemental is visually the closest.
There are even two Water Elemental glyphs that will make your elemental into one of the two types seen with Tide Sages. (From what I’ve seen the Water Elemental spell has the most glyph options of any spell, including the Unbound glyph from Cataclysm.)
It’s not just the totems IMO, but their rituals and prayers etc. It feels much more like they revere the sea as a priest or shaman would, than a mage. Like when you’re doing that ritual in Stormsong to free the souls you’ve collected at one of the quest hubs etc, or the ship blessing etc.
I think going with frost mage to RP one is perfectly viable, but they really seem to me more like water/sea based shamans in their rituals than mages.
And from a lore angle, consider that they gave Kul’Tirans shamans with no fuss but only added Kul’tiran mages because of player feedback. IMO that says a good deal right there.
They are scholarly though. Their worship is towards something called the “Tidemother”, which isn’t really clearly identified yet. Some speculation pointing to maybe a wild god or Azshara.
Yes there’s a scholarly element to them, but their rituals have strong religious tones to them. They have that monestary place you visit before heading to Stormsong proper but when I see them in action they seem much more like water priests/shaman to me in what they do, rather than acting like mage characters like Jaina or Khadgar. And the fact that Blizzard nearly didn’t give them access to the mage class, a class that post cataclysm almost every race has at this point, really stands out to me as tide sages not being mages, but something else. Combined with giving them shamans, it really strongly points to tide sages being shamans focused on the sea. Though as I said I think a frost mage is a perfectly fine class to use as a tide sage character, I just think in lore in what they actually do and how they go about their rituals they come across much more as religious than scholarly even if they do have a scholarly aspect to them in their headquarters. But unlike say the Kirin Tor that seems to be a background element and not the core of their practices.
I don’t think any story consideration went into that. It was more of game balance consideration of “If we give these Humans Druids and Shaman, what do we take out?” Story considerations were how mages got back in.
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I disagree, story considerations go into class/race combos a lot, and when they add an unusual combo like zandalari paladin, draenei shaman etc, they usually add lore to go with it.
The tide sage rituals we see along with their reverence for the tidemother to me seem much more like a shaman lore wise than a mage. And if tide sages aren’t meant to represent shamans, it’s a rather odd combination for them to add in without any lore to go with it.
To me it makes way more sense that tide sages are a type of shaman communicating with water elementals in the sea, explaining the shaman class, than it does to say ‘no there’s no story reason for this otherwise strange class/race combo when they usually add explanations for them in the lore.’
Night elf mages, tauren paladins, worgen druids, kul’tiran druids, zandalari paladins, draenei shamans all have lore explanations. It would be very weird for shamans to just be there for no reason especially since dark irons added another shaman option for the Alliance not long ago.
And again, I think frost mage is a good way to go about RPing one, as tide sages don’t fit perfectly into the shaman class particuarly with the npcs wearing cloth instead of mail. But lore wise they seem much more like shamans to me.