Paladin of the Stars

Lore Story Forum
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Surely it’s not that difficult to create silver light effects for Paladin spells?

I’m no expert in game design but can’t you just… change the colour of something?

They don’t have to go too far with it and change the Wings into a Crescent Moon symbol or anything, but just change the colour of existing effects.

Bam, now you have Night Elf Elune Paladins and Void Elf Star Paladins ™ running around looking awesome.

Delas Moonfang has been in the game for a long time. As has Aeonara Dawnshade. Now Arator is combining the light and the void (or boy who saw that coming??). And Velen or Faol was talking about how people may different different faiths but all paths to the light are valid.

Maybe, hopefully, they announce Paladins for all races at Blizzcon.

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Been asking for this for awhile. Even just for Priest casing animations. Warlocks have the Green Fire thing, so it’s possible.

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Honestly as a general rule I’ve been wanting so-called “Class Skins” for years.

I don’t really think we should add new classes to the game, but there’s absent in universe classes that could be represented through simple different appearances. Could even be done through

E.g. imagine a necromancer “skin” for demonology warlock. Wild imps are replaced by skeletal mages, hand of Gul’dan becomes blight bomb, Felguard becomes an abomination or some such.

Or yeah more Elune-like effects for priests to give the vibe of Night Elf and Nightborne clergy. Paladins as you’ve suggested. Thalassamancer effect for frost mages making them more water wielding to fit Kul Tiran tidesages. Fire abilities for balance druids seeking to play druids of the Flame, and etc etc.

There’s a lot that can be done with current rotations to look a bit more fresh and fitting to more diverse characters.

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change it for sun walers too. More of fire color and instead of wing a circle halo to represent the sun.

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It is not really as simple as just adjusting a color slider. Spell effects are not just a single color. And they are can’t be just switched to another color set. They would have to be worked to make them look decent.

That said, it could be done. And it would 100% be worth the resource cost.

I think it could also be an answer for race/class combos that don’t really work from a lore point of view.

Examples:

  • Void Elf Paladin feels very wrong. But a Void Knight skin over a paladin would work.
  • Undead Druid is wrong one a few levels. Make a ‘Flesh Shaper’ undead class that works like druids (druid mechanics and balance).

You can get the look and give them a story that fits and doesn’t conflict with lore while giving class combos that otherwise shouldn’t exist.

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Everyday I hate void elves more and more, they’re the dumbest race imaginable and “no you can’t play the most popular class hehheh” is just another reason to hate their stupid lore

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There’s already a named Void Elf Paladin since Day 1 of them becoming an Allied Race. So I’m not sure why people are so upset with the concept of Velf Paladins.

We have had Forsaken Priests since Day 1 of Vanilla, so “yada yada Holy Light” arguments are moot and just arguments about personal preferences.

Blizzard has already shown that if they really want a race to have a class than they’d either not bother with a reason as to why or come up with something quick and dirty to justify why they’re doing so.

Personally, I think the only reason why Void Elves haven’t gotten Paladins yet is because of the fairly real concerns by Blizzard that Velf Paladins will effectively kill off the wider Alliance roster of races and leave the majority of servers 70%+ Void Elf.

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Short answer: A void saturated race being a light saturated class. The polar opposite cosmetic forces just hanging out together.

Sure they will. That doesn’t make it good. It would be far better to add classes to races in a lore friendly way (such as class skins) then just slam it in with a ‘quick and dirty’ justification.

That is just conspiratorial thinking. Void Elves have not taken over the Alliance roster on the classes they can be. For that to be a thing to worry about you would have to see them representing 70%+ of the classes they already can be. They don’t. So, that is not a thing.

The real reason paladin has not been added to all races is the same reason DH, Druid, Shaman have not been. All of those classes take extra art and animation assets to add the other classes did not. DH and Druid are the biggest with DH having unique combat movement and druids having unique forms. But Shaman have unique totems and Paladins have unique mounts/chargers.

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And there we are with the “give us paladins” theme again. It’s always paladins.

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“Stars save us!” Give us Nightborne Paladins as well!

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Which is why I mentioned the Forsaken and the named Velf paladin; Aeonara Dawnshade. The undead should not be able to wield the light in a canonical sense since they are antithetical to the Light’s very nature, but Blizzard went “Nah”.

Dawnshade actively uses normal paladin spells since her very inception so issues of the Void Elves being able to weild the Light due to their people being infused with the Void is dead as a doorknob.

The topic of whether or not a race should or shouldn’t be able to play a class because of the themes of their race has long been rendered pointless.

We’re well past the point of lore justifications for a race/class combo being “good” these days.

As far as class skins go. They aren’t going to do that because that’s going to eat way more time development time than something like giving Blood Elves druids. Blizzard would rather make a new race that only .00001% of the player population will play at the peak of its popularity and abandon immediately after it was introduced in order tomake a brand new “Who asked for this” race than to give players a long requested race/class combo like they have been doing for over a decade now.

Maybe its just luck of the draw and more than likely has to do with the fact that Midnight is the “elf expansion”, but for all of Midnight the leveling dungeons that I have been in were either majority elf or entirely all elves (largely Void Elves for the most part, but Night Elves were present for a decent number of these majority/all elf groups) whenever I leveled a new character on the Alliance. Horde-side, it was more diverse but there was still a noticable uptick in Elf-majority/elf-only dungeon groups.

While the 70% bit was definitely hyperbolic, I do legitimately think that Blizzard is concerned with whether or not a playable race becomes too popular and starts to dominate a faction.

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So, we just throw up our hands and say ‘they did it poorly once, so every future one has to be done poorly as well?’

Now there is the benefit of hind sight. That alone should help lower the chance of repeating the same mistake. And there are new tools already in game. Add in that class skins solve a lot of things and open up giving players the options they want. On top of the other things they could also help do future new class/race combos better. It would be wins all the way around.

And that is way better than just giving up and saying ‘nothing should be done better than the past.’

We are not past the point of them doing future ones better. What has already been done would be harder to fix, but the future combos are fully open.

No they wouldn’t. Making a new race druids is basically making a new druid class skin. It would just be explaining the lore a bit differently.

There are a couple things likely playing a part here.

It is possible you are just getting the ‘luck of the draw’ and are legitimately seeing more of them than are representative of the population.

Though I suspect a lot of it is actually perception bias. Between you expecting that most are Void Elves and the expac highlighting elves you are noticing them more. When you expect something, it is easy to feel like you see that thing more than you do. A kind of confirmation bias.

Could be either of those, or a solid combination of both.

The actual stats for Alliance races have Void Elves at 4th, below Dwarves. They are less than half the number of humans. And around 1/4 the Night Elves. And this is during an expac that favors their themes. There is basically no chance of them taking over even if a Paladin class was added.

If that was the case they would have been trying to limit Blood Elves and Night Elves for a LONG time. They very much dominate the respective factions.

And think about the last race/class combo added. It was a Void Elf one. And that is going into an Elf themed expac. And it was the class with the least combos, making it the one most likely to have people switch for. If they were even kind of worried about Void Elves taking over they would not have added Void Elf Demon Hunters.

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Arator too. Just because it doesn’t make sense in your personal headcanon doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense, aeonara dawnshade is a paladin. it takes faith to be a paladin. nothing about being a void elf means you lose faith in the light. and so long as a race has priests/warriors, they should have paladins as well.

So talk all you want about "mistake” but they doubled down with Arator, so suck it haha.

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I don’t think you know what head cannon means.

We are not talking about some obscure thing that anyone ‘thinks’ happened. We are talking about a possible choice Blizzard could make in the future. There is no cannon, head or otherwise, to debate here.

And you claim I have head cannon.

Arator is not a Void Elf. Arator does not use the void. His light and void tattoos are there to honor his parents. That is it, nothing beyond that. Arator is a Blood Elf. And we have only ever seen him use light magic.

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https://warcraft.wiki.gg/wiki/Aeonara_Dawnshade

If you are referring to her she was added in Dragonflight.

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More than likely they will break them out a bit at a time. That way they maximize the amount of buzz they get for development work…

…especially since they’ve slashed the number of developers TO DO the work in order to boost stock share prices.

As far as I am concerned my Night Elf Paladin will be….. a Moon Knight. :slight_smile:

A series I recommend as it as the cutest Divine Hippotamus that anyone can hope for.

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Who wants to bet such a Paladin quest will be akin to the Warlock quest in Darkmoon Faire - only it will be Vindicator Boros telling everyone how “the Light has guided them to this point.”

You watch - it’ll be the same slop like the Warlock questline and nothing will be interesting, barring the Night Elf and Nightborne “Charger” Saber Mounts

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I’m not going to say you are wrong, but cynicism is the easy out to take.

I’m just not going to give it any thought until it happens.

My thoughts these days are what is coming up with the housing changes and how I hope to be able to swap out my house layouts like I do transmog sets.

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Hold expectations low and then the bitter pill isn’t too hard to swallow…mind you, when Zerith Mortis’ developer interview video dropped for 9.2, my expectations were still low and I was still disappointed with what I saw :rofl:

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Nah. The reason will be because they will take a while to do the art/animation work because…

That slows down all the nice extras that would make the game so much better.

Sadly, that is a distinct possibility. But they could do so much better. The hope is that if players keep reminding them of the better ways that maybe, just maybe, they will do better.

I don’t think anyone is confident they will do better. We just know they could and hope they will.

Expectations and hope are not the same thing. Sure, expect little. But hope for a lot.

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