Yeah I thought about it being Dk for a moment, but Dk is more ‘greater-good with a high tollerance for pissing off others’. And comes from the perspective of undead veterans with amplified/dampened negative/positive emotions, respectively
Shadow priests have many less enabling factors for their dubious choices and still make them haha.
On the plus side, I think DKs are one of the few classes, lorewise, that are immune to Shadow Priests’ and their mind games and mind control and whatever else.
Because their willpower is beyond any mortal being’s, or something like that.
I know Saronite drives people mad? But DKs are immune to it, and make weapons out of it.
I think of warlocks as shadow priests that lost themselves in the darkness. DKs are on a path of redemption.
My Night Elf shadow priest is in no way evil or twisted. The shadows don’t represent the absence of light, rather they glorify the power of Elune to manipulate the interplay of magical energy.
You can absolutely lose yourself in the shadows, be corrupted by the fel, wander too far from Elune’s grace, but you can also master that power, repurpose it in ways that strengthen the light. The shadows are gifts, a dance between light and dark. It’s the absolute darkness you want to avoid.
Anyway, there’s a reason my Night Elf priest is on Classic. On retail I don’t think about the lore any more.
Exactly, their lore and “priest” roleplay identity seems to be –
– by extreme proportions: Lacking …
Heck one could say it’s even in the opposite direction, thanks to the Shadowlands expansion’s whole “lore” depicting that priests & the powers they play or contend with have absolutely NO RELEVANCE WHATSOEVER to any of the Shadowlands realms whatsoever 
Big slimy spit to the face of their “spirituality” aspect …
What’s more is the Priest orderhall was rather insulting as it depicted that discipline & holy priests as the low-life preliminary class, before being able to ascend to the mightier form of that path … The Paladin.
I suppose at least with the void in the Orderhall, our artifact weapon Xal’atath made it feel a bit more priestly by wielding the powers of old gods and pouring dedication into her power to increase your own — It felt culty and cool from a particular perspective. 
Ultimately:I feel it would restore some agency & awe to the class, along with give greater potential to factions in the future that carry influence from such notions and related entities. 
What’s that? The class that is always being saved by paladins needs something? Is it more paladins?
Coloring books have too many pages, already lost interest
Agreed. I agree with everything u said. The dagger was def what blizzard spent the most time on ( and def loved the cult vibes with it), but yeah idk I think putting shadow priests together with priests def doesn’t fit. Maybe they should make a fourth fully light dps. Even disc priests who use both light and shadow mostly use light, they use like shadow fiend / mind blast snd shadow covenant but it’s minor and mostly light. 
I often find the extremes to be boring: Holy is the do-gooder 'be kind and don’t fight but if you do i’ll keep you up 
" and Shadow is the 'rawr i have void magics that are extremely dangerous but apparently not for me anyway here’s a giant void ball ". There’s really not too much in the way of flexibility with those.
Discipline, though? It’s a very delicate balancing act as they utilize aspects of both schools, and they balance it out with nothing but sheer willpower as opposed to bowing to either extreme. In my eyes this makes them exceptionally powerful.
Benedictus worked because while he was an agent of the Old Gods, he was able to successfully pose as Stormwind’s Arch Bishop for ages. As he puts it, “There is no good, no evil. No Light. There is only POWAH!”
This worked because he started to question if Shadow magic was as evil as he was lead to believe, as many of Stormwind’s clergy are. That the Light demanded absolute perfect order, or it will abandon those in time of need as it has done on numerous occasions.
He even had the opportunity to wield Xal’atath, but he knew the cost, especially if he failed. He maintained full control until his last, which was his ultimate goal: A future where no one would be bound to faiths, but be able to forge their own paths.
Discipline embodies this, and still does to this day I believe.
No, just because you dont value them doesnt mean theyre any less represented. My point is 3 faction leaders are cannonically listed as priests. I dont think any other class has that except loosely hunter (tyrande though even she is technically a PRIESTESS of the moon, alleria, sylvannas) Your claim is that priests are undeprepresented in the lore. So I counter to say, when 3 of the big heros are priests, and the main villain is a priest, I can’t agree with you.
Edit-
Isnt Telanji technically a priest, and dont forget Callia Menethil, the sucessssor to the most lore prominent family in warcraft.
So take my claim of 3 faction leaders, add tyrande, telanji and callia, that takes us to 6 racial leaders. So, no, we are not underrepresented.
This is what “all classes on all races” leads to.
When a class has to be watered down enough to work for everyone, it means it will never see story relevance or development again.
This is what you all wanted.
It’s not just me — The story doesn’t value them.
Especially in comparison to other heroes …
My ultimate claim is that ultimately they’re undervalued — in the lore.
What presentation that is met with them, again save-except Velen — is significantly poor.
Out of the “three faction leaders” on the Alliance – You keep mentioning, I’ve already mentioned the faults of two of them; which you seemed to conveniently gloss over.
Congratulations …
So my earlier claim that you didn’t actually read the thread or grasp its context feels rather validated now.
I would disagree again, even now.
Id argue Tyrande who with the night warrior (ultimate embodiment of a head priestess) having a huge story arc dedicated to it in SL is a big value.
Id also say the future of the lorderon people -the wc3 humans- and origins of the undead plague running through every expansion is pretty relevant and big.
Id argue that several of the allies races added are all pretty significant and relevant.
Also since you love velen so much, you dont think he’s going to play a role with beledar and the midnight saga later?
Plus then theres still xalatath, threatening all of existance, more powwrful than any other old god, stronger than the lich king, greatest threat to azeroth since like galakrond. Shes front and center, box cover, in every key, near every cutscene and the focus of THREE expansions… How is THAT not relevant for you?
Go look at the cover banners for wow on battlenet RIGHT NOW, theres ONE class represented… And its PRIEST. Its pretty hard to be literally on the cover and front page of the entire game for months, and be undervalued
So… no im not missing the point of your thread, you just dont like what I have to say about it.
Where’s my priest war glaives
I would 100% play a light casting DPS spec. It is all I want to hit the “fear my pope like powers” itch that hasn’t been scratched.
Shadow priest does scratch that, high priest of the cuthullu cult, itch that I get sometimes.
Bingo, the amount of people that want to throw lore into the waste basket just for ever race, ever class is mind boggling. Do we really want another case of lightforged warlocks?
Like that one Draenei priest in Honor Hold who performs a literal exorcism. It’s such a cool quest.
Priests were the first class to lose their identity due to gameplay mechanics.
Trolls, Forsaken (Fairbanks is special, Cataclysm turning all of the Scarlet Crusade into Forsaken was bad lore) and Night Elves weren’t using the Holy Light to heal people…and therein is the issue with Priests lore.
Shadow/Void has flip flopped on what exactly it is through Warcraft’s history, the Light has additionally lost its identity entirely, etc.
So much could be solved with class skins.
Indeed. But they probably won’t ever do it : (
Being a void elf, it probably seems odd that i don’t like void spec. This is due to both dark lore and looking like a dark blob. I have been a disc priest most of the game since vanilla. While i never really mained a priest, i did get my vanilla priest to lieutenant commander, so that was a fair bit of BG grinding. I wish priest could be a holy dps, or make disc talent options extreme to the point where DPS is nearly in line with a dps class. This is my second priest = remix.