It remains to be seen what he can do, but I do have a feeling that he will be relying on his physical strength a bit more. That being said, odds are he was either with Drek’thar or Greatmother Geyah … and in either case they are massive repositories of Shamanistic teaching. It may simply be a matter of Thrall having to learn a new way to manipulate the elements (so rather than an Elemental shaman playing at Enhancement, perhaps he’s more traditional Enhance now).
Also, do you have a source of his weapon? I’d like to check it out.
By only one i mean there are no other important shaman’s. Muln is the leader of the earthen ring after all, but the fact they went to a character who had no notable appearances outside the comics kinda shows how i feel about blizzards treatments of shaman’s in lore.
While i know Ion mains a shaman, i feel the lore team just doesnt really care about writing shamans into being a decent importance. Which is a shame because Shamanism is my favorite magic type, but in general fiction tends to do lip service to the four elements.
As for actual weapon images, i don’t have posting rights by blizzard, i swear way to much to get to a decent trust level.
I mean, if they gave him this super generic looking axe that I assume didn’t require a lot of work to model, then wouldn’t that infer that they might be setting him up with something he can easily discard so that he can go get a better and more distinctive weapon in his upcoming arc?
Well, Thrall needed to get back in fighting trim, anyhow. He was the baddest gladiator on the planet back in his day, but after switching to full-time shamaning he really lost his edge. Garrosh pwned him in the physical fight.
I will say that I found the fact that the Firelands Patch back in Cata had literally no shaman of any note involved really strange. It would be like having a major patch involving fighting the Emerald Nightmare and having no druids involved and the whole thing about Paladins instead.
Depending on how you feel about the tidesages, they are the current notable shaman of BfA. Also, apperently Rastakhan is considered a shaman.
If anything, I’d say it is more like Horde shaman that get less of the spotlight sans Thrall. Really, as someone who follow shaman lore(considering my main) I have made sure to note when shaman end up being important. Hell, it was a draenei shaman who helped discover the human’s origin and Vanessa Vancleef. During Cata, Twilight Highlands was a fairly shaman intensive zone. As a rule, if the Alliance needed draenei footsoldiers, it was usually shaman or paladins coming into the scene.
That is partial due to the fact shaman were quite a presence back in the other Cata zones. Namely, Twilight Highland and Deepholme. Not to mention a good chunk of them end up getting killed off so Thrall can deliver the Dragon Soul, ugh.
I can get the logic. I just found it pretty damn jarring. If nothing else it would have made sense to have one there to provide advice and oversight since a bunch of Druids running around the Firelands could cause god knows what issue with the elemental balance. As I said, it would be like Paladins running around the Emerald Dream and fighting the Emerald Nightmare with no Druid oversight. It isn’t like one class has had a dominant theme in an expansion before. Wrath was very Paladin and Death Knight centric.
But yeah, killing a bunch of them off was pretty damn annoying.
I know you wont like this but I am putting some blame on Thrall on that one. He was part of the elemental bond quest, which occured in Hyjal and Ragnaros did talk to him directly in the Firelands trailer precisely because he was a shaman. Also, lorewise the Earthen Ring was in Hyjal working with the Circle to try and reinvogorate/protect the world tree.
It would really be flabbergasting if Blizzard took the one Horde character who was ever capable of matching the God-tier Alliance characters and busted him back down to a simple warrior. God knows the Horde has enough of those.
Normally I’d agree. But this is also the expansion that revealed the Alliance’s most god tier character can be dropped with an axe to the back. So… might be more to do with an overall pattern of reducing NPC power levels.
I don’t think that is unfair. Thrall has tended to be a narrative hog when it comes to the Horde story. So has Sylvanas.
I feel the Horde needs better representation but I will happily admit I would like a bit more diversity in that representation. One thing the Firelands did that I liked is give Hamuul a decent presence in the story, even if Malfurion was in charge.