Saw another thread in GD a while back discussing the topic of Blademasters, nothing too special. This particular instance led me to the following inquiry, as the title goes, out of pure curiosity:
Of the classes currently present in WoW, which do you folks think come closest to emulating them?
I’ve always been among that believe Warriors, particularly Arms spec, comes the closest in ability and theme. The Presence of Bladestorm is part of it but also Mortal Strike, as it could be interpreted as an active version of Critical Strike.
I also recall several opinions likening to Monks, I presume based on a preconceived misconception that Warriors are clunky and slow.
…I’m anticipating chaos…also maybe pop culture poisoned references to samurai that will harm my soul, but mostly chaos.
Addendum:
Also why are Blademaster described as ‘masters of stealth’ in the Warcraft 3 manual? Literally nothing about them is stealthy; even the one ability they have that could be considered stealth, Wind Walk, is described more like a form of super speed than any deliberate obfuscation or sneaking.
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I always thought of it like 80% warrior 20% shaman
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I thought of them as like… 70% warrior, 20% rogue, 10% monk, and -100% eyes
Wait, no, they’re not blind. What am I thinking of?
They can be blind. Many are. It’s not necessary though
I feel like that is what should have been a class in vanilla, like demon hunter. I remember they at one point wanted to have demon hunter as more of a speedy rogue that does arcane damage. Imagine how fun blade master based off of the Warcraft rts would have been. Cloth armor, agility for the main stat. In the actual game tho, attack wise, I think is an arms warrior. Visually, 100% monk.
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There were the blind blademasters under Garrosh in Siege of Orgrimmar. Could be what you’re thinking of maybe. But it’s definitely not a blademaster specific thing.
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They carried this forward into HoTS with Samuro, too, and made wind walk an actual stealth granting ability. Samuro’s like a beefed up 2h illusionist rogue there, but I don’t really remember any other blademasters using something like Mirror Image besides that one guy in the Hellfire Citadel council fight.
Grom’mash Hellscream had the ‘split into three shadow clones’ and ‘whirlwind’ abilities in the RTS, not sure where the stealth thing got added in, but if we’re talking classes in WoW as they exist right now.
Warrior, Monk and Hunter can all work well.
Warrior, naturally enough, for being a heck-off big boi with a sodding great weapon, whirlwind and being able to zip around like an anime protag.
Monk works well, but Windwalker’s big damage, the Flurry of Blows/Fists of Fury doesn’t use your weapon. You still get the Shadow Clones, however.
Survival Hunter can definitely pull off the look, and with a lot of what they can do class-wise, can fit most of the abilities of a Blade Master into their bag, barring the shadow clones and the whirlwind ability.
Warriors- think they share the same abilities too
As someone who plays a Blademaster, I personally think Fury Warrior fits the best. As Fury you’re a never ending whirlwind of blows and that seems to match more. Arms has Bladestorm but the the ability flow of it has always felt more Hulk smash than graceful samurai, with the focus always being on one giant blow. Also, Fury spell effects are fire colored.
Fury is probably the most hulk smash spec there is though lol
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