When you play a character you are playing one that is part of the general society of that race. Normal Draenei society doesn’t accept Warlocks in any way.
Undead don’t have a reason to commune with the elements to become shamans.
That’s another things. Races only get access to classes when it’s necessary to their society or when circumstances push them to it.
Light and Void being a duality has always existed, they aren’t going to split the specs into new classes.
Personally I’m for tighter race/class restrictions myself due to deserve to preserve racial identities. I wouldn’t have given out quite so many new classes as got handed out in Cata for instance. One more class each, but not two, so like ‘yes’ to Tauren Paladins but not priests; ‘yes’ to dwarf shaman but not warlocks; ‘yes’ to troll druids but not warlocks (not trying to pick on warlocks btw). I’d definitely never allow Undead Paladins, Druids, or Shaman.
Race/class restrictions help to define lore and also keep everyone from just rolling the same race. You think Blood Elves make up a lot of the Horde now, wait until they can be Shamans.
That said, there are some pretty obvious ones they could open up that would work with lore and for some reason they haven’t. Tauren Rogues, Draenei Rogues, Night Elf Paladins are what spring to mind.
There are several combinations which should be added as many of them got teased over the years.
Orc druids - We have one of them standing in Warspear.
Draenei rogues - Part of the Rangari.
Blood elven druids - We have one of them in the Botanica, and while the aspect has been downplayed blood elves still had a pretty decent connection to nature even during the beginning of BC.
Night elf paladins - Yeah we got them in Legion.
Goblin/Worgen - Monks…it is time Blizzard. The new starting zone also avoids the problem with ‘lore’. (Not that that matters.)
(And orc paladins…but that’s personal bias because female orcs look badass AF in paladin armor.)
Some of them are definitely stupider than others. Like yeah, there isn’t any “hard lore” contradiction for Tauren to be Paladins, it’s just that the Paladin “Holy Knight of Ye Olden Dayes” aesthetic clashes pretty hard with the Tauren aesthetic.
You can go on and on about An’She as much as you like but Tauren Paladins are never going to stop being a meme for this reason.
All you need to keep in line with the Forsaken racial identity is to make sure it looks okay in black with either purple or green off coloring. And that it can be affixed with either a skull or eerie light.
And as BFA gave us that in 8.2 with both the PvP Darkshore set and Battle For Dazar’Alor Heroic set pretty much everything’s kosher. Just hand em one of those mogs when they get off the boot and they’re good to go.
This would all work a lot easier if Blizzard invested in more unique animations for certain race / class combos, or adding in more glyph like effects that can give new animations to an ability.
I mean, as per new graphic work designing a new spell effect for players gives a lot more mileage than designing a unique animation for a boss for a single raid. Since players are likely to cast said ability, even the longest CD ones, thousands, if not tens of thousands of times a day in total. For shorter more staple spells, I’d not be surprised if the number of casts per day was in the millions.
So if they started to add new animations for certain classes (‘Death Druid’ animations inspired by the Drust, Sun/Moon motifs for Cleric / Paladin spells, etc then they could then use that to easily jump into justifying new Race / Class combos. Like NE / Forsaken Paladin, or more classes using Shaman / Mage classes.
If offering the classes to everyone involves such fantastical lore leaps and explanations to justify it, then it’s best left alone. The reasoning should make sense.
Fungal nature magic and even thornspeaker magic at its core is still nature magic of a different flavor. The undead have no natural connection to nature therfore accessing that power doesn’t seem logical.
Also, the dust magic I believe you’re referring to is not what the thornspeakers use. You’re taking about the dark stuff associated with Gor’ak Tul.
Mushroom men and their magic seems naturally occurring in Maldraxxus. Which is a giant ball of corpse stitched together with necromancy. If it works there, I figure an undead can wield it.
New class-combos that could exist.
Night elf Shaman
Gnome Paladin
Gnome Shaman
Draenei Druid
Pandaren Druid
HMT Priest
Actual class combos that should NOT exist
Dwarf Warlock
Orc Mage
Tauren Paladins (if they had a thematic change they could work as actual sunwalkers, right now, sunwalkers are just justificatin to give wings to tauren)
Goblin Priest
Nightborne Priest
Class combos that dont exist and should never exist
Night elf Paladin
Draenei Warlock
Void Elf Paladin
LFD Warlock
Orc Priest and Druid
Undead Druid
What one can do in Maldraxxus is not the same thing as doing it on Azeroth. And the mushroom men in Maldraxxus are their own sentient beings. They were obviously created but not by the hand of some spell caster, just like the royal funguards in Ardenweald. They are beings that are a part of the Shadowlands.
The point is I think decay, entropy and death itself are also part and parcel to nature. They’re symbiotic neighbors in a way the other diametrically partners aren’t.
Yeah the brighter the light the darker the shadow, yadda yadda, but one drives the other out. And while too much order or chaos might inspire a demand for the other, they’re still antithetical concepts.
Life and Death are kinda needed for eachother’s coexistence. So there being a bridge between that gap tracks.
Assuming we are still talking about the Forsaken and thornspeaker magic…
Life and death are a part of the natural cycle. The Forsaken exist outside of that balance. They are undead, ripped from death and given life by unnatural means. Their very existence is an affront to the natural order. Thornspeaker magic may include death but not undeath, which necromancy. That is outside the bounds of a practitioner of nature magic, or any magic that exists with in natural order of life and death.
Not really. Maldraxxus predates Azeroth, and the Forsaken are just undead humans. Which are robots who got Cthulu skin cancer. So they now have more in common with the natural order of the universe than before.
Plus there’s the Winter Queen referring to the Primus as her friend. And if Elune isn’t her sister some other extremely powerful life primordial is. So I feel like you’re short changing how ‘natural’ undeath is in this setting.
Is a real of death, one of countless realms of death. One guess on there is different to what happens in the land of the living. Everyone there is already dead.
You say this like Ardenweald doesn’t exist. What are trees, moths and big cats also some part of this realm of death who’s presence on Azeroth we can merely speculate at?
Those are creatures and plants are a part of the Shadowlands. Ardenweald has trees and animals. Maldraxxus has plague monsters. What point are you trying to make?
