Maybe it was just an aesthetic choice, but in WCII and WCIII, paladins almost exclusively used Warhammers instead of swords or some other weapon. This tendency had fallen off by the time of WoW, but was there ever any lore reason for why they used to prefer Warhammers?
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I would guess meta reason as oppose to lore reason. Metzen’s drawing of a paladin(which I assume is the first one) in Warcraft 2 is one wielding a hammer and a shield.
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I can’t think of any lore reason, it’s likely just because swords are more traditional. If you look at my guys profile, I rock the warhammer.
You also mentioned shields. Notice how pretty much no major characters use a shield?
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Shields aren’t heroic. Or something.
I love shields. Frankly I’m bummed that they are so tied to tanking. Only shamans get DPS shields. I went tanking on my warrior in WoD/Legion solely so I could use a shield. More lore characters need shields.
Mekkatorque and Lor’themar used to use shield but after they became lore relevant they lost them.
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I long for a day where any Warrior spec can transmog any weapon they want regardless of spec.
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My understanding of the cliche fantasy paladin, which if not a sword then generally uses a hammer or mace, is that they generally fight the undead, which are generally depicted as resistant to cutting damage (no blood to spill or muscles to sever) but vulnerable to blunt damage.
Probably has something to do with the aesthetic choice, if not the actual in-canon practical reason.
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I may be speaking out of my rear here, but I think there are two main reasons why traditional fantasy paladins/clerics used hammers and maces.
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It thematically fits. Gavel, hammer of justice, judging others, etc.
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I remember reading somewhere that the traditional aesthetic of the “holy warrior” using maces and other blunt force weapons started with real life religious military orders that had a tenet against “spilling blood”, and hammers were a loophole they came up with as a way to circumvent this. If you’ve crushed someone’s ribcage you can still kill them without necessarily “spilling their blood” like you would with a sword or axe. Not sure how true that is but its definitely interesting.
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I feel like there was some mention in regards to why Uther and Arthas used warhammers, then Arthas switched to a sword when he took up Frostmourne. Think there’s meant to be a symbolism.
As for why it is less relevant now is because it probably just doesn’t get focused on. Though Bolvar does use a mace for some reason.
I just assumed that it extended from WC2, where they knights->paladins used hammers that looked to me like the sort of weapon developed to counter plate armor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_hammer
Not that the link is news to anyone, but just for completeness. Honestly, I always thought it was slightly goofy that footmen never used spears. I know it’s a tangent, but what the crap. Even before ogres, Azeroth is full of things with a reach advantage on baseline human, even super mutant space viking robot genetic humans that we have.
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Because philosophically, hammers are tools used to build things A hammer is wielded in war out of necessity, not from it’s prime design.
For a moment I though you wanted the paladins be more like their warhammer counterpart.
In topic I think the meta reason was to make the paladin unit look slightly different from other heroes that were using already an sword(which btw like 60% of them use a kind of sword) and years later to give some lore backstory. They invented the human paladin order has their roots from the order of the guard of Tyr and said Titanic Watcher had a hammer for weapon which likely his followers tried to imitate
Because Blizzard are edgelords who think that “Armor and Protection is for chumps, I’ll just be fast enough to never get hit”
Shields are fun
That and I’m wielding a weapon the size of your body.
There’s a show about forging the weapons of Warcraft, and the forgers said that Doomhammer as speced would weigh about 200 lbs.
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@OP - originally posted this in the wrong thread.
I think it mainly comes down to branding. Paladins and warriors look pretty much alike, so they are differentiated by hammers vs. swords. As many have pointed out, hammers were probably chosen for paladins because the D&D aesthetic of clerics using weapons that don’t spill blood (hammers and maces not spilling blood is absurd but whatever), and WoW paladins are basically half clerics (more than half, in Vanilla WoW).
I was so ticked off when they resized weapons on Blood Elf females by scaling them up so they too would have ridiculously oversized FF-style weapons like everyone else.
Stupidly huge weapons is one of my biggest aesthetic annoyances in this game. It just reeks of adolescent power fantasy.
Edit: now I want to do the math to figure out how much force a Frostmourne-scale weapon would actually:
A) require to lift and swing.
B) produce on the person swinging it.
C) impart on the target.
My hypothesis is that you would need super strength to swing the damn thing, your arms would be pulled out of your sockets when you did so, and anything struck by it would react as if hit by a small car moving at significant speed.
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That is not totally true. They did give HoTS Varian a shield/showed that Varian is a competent shield user. And they were at least force to make two shield based Artifacts.
Oh god, I feel that. I just want a normal sword and shield, for god’s sake! (Just give us a scale slider, Blizz, and everyone can be happy.)
Ashbringer probably was a big contribution to paladins and the giant sword association.
I do think the paladin Warhammer looks more iconic though.
Stupidly huge weapons is one of my biggest aesthetic annoyances in this game. It just reeks of adolescent power fantasy.
I’d agree with you if the graphics weren’t so cartoony. As they are now oversized weapons covered in skulls and spikes and all that nonsense seems a lot more fitting.
As an aside, this entire game is an adolescent power fantasy. If you want gritty and grim and realistic, this is not the game for that. Its borderline anime levels of ridiculous.
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I think we’ve crossed that line a few patches back.