The snippet you posted, which goes hand-in-hand with the site update for Shadowlands is exactly what we talk about when we discuss Blizzard’s deliberate moves to exclude Shamans from the Shadowlands when they should have had a relevant role.
WoW Shamans draw inspiration from Witch Doctors, Shadow Hunters, Orcish Shaman, Farseers, Chieftains, and Spirit Walkers of Warcraft 3, and among them, the only Elemental abilities were the Shaman’s Lightning Shield and Orcish Far Seer’s Chain Lightning/Earthquake abilities.
Most of those classes were more support oriented. Stuff like Far Sight, Feral Spirit, Warstomp, Endurance Aura, Reincarnation, Healing Wave, Hex, Serpent Ward, Big Bad Voodoo, Sentry/Stasis/Healing wards, Purge and Bloodlust.
When they had to go Offensive, outside of the aforementioned Chain Lightning and Earthquake, all these units just hit stuff with their weapons. If you wanted units slinging around Fire and Ice magic and summoning elementals, you had to look at Alliance Mages.
And of course, we can’t forget the actual narrative surrounding Shamans at the time. It wasn’t their elementals that the Legion was impersonating to manipulate them. It was their ancestors. In Warcraft lore, the practices of Necromancy/Warlocks are natural extensions of the Orc’s former Shamanistic traditions, which dealt heavily with dealing with spirits/souls. Not dealing with elementals.
But when Vanilla came about, they gave Shamans more flash by giving them elemental magic. Similarly, their relationship with spirits was greatly expanded to extend to Elementals as well.
And it’s been from here on out that whenever they needed someone to deal with Elements/Elementals, the Shaman became their go to class.
But so many of the defining abilities that all Shamans still have in game, ARE related to spirituality, divinity and dealing with the boundary between life and death. As is much of their content.
Ghost Wolf, for instance, literally turns you into a ghost/spirit. Shamans can swap in between being a fully living mortal and a spirit at will.
Shamans can ressurrect themselves via Reincarnation. Again, showing their mastery with navigating the whole life/death divide.
The shaman resurrections spell is called Ancestral Spirit.
And that’s before you even get into all the actual narratives/quests that involve Shamanic rituals invoking visions or communion with spirits and ancestors. Again, I’ll point to the Tauren heritage armor quest, in which we participate in a Shamanic ritual to go into the Shadowlands to work with Cairne. This is before Sylvanas broke the helm and allowed everyone else to more easily travel in/out of the Shadowlands, mind you. Characters using Shaman continue to serve in the same places in the Horde’s narrative that those associated with Priests/Paladins facilitate in the Alliance’s.
The real problem here is Blizzard making a conscious effort to downplay the relevance of the Shaman’s -particularly their relationship with ancestors and the dead because it means they’d have to really feature Orc/Troll/Tauren and their culture as a central focus, which they seem less inclined to do when they could develop a Human/Elf characters and lore instead.
They have no problem, when writing Horde content for Shamans, for throwing in all kinds of references to ancestors and the importance of Shamans in the religious traditions of the various cultures of the Horde. But they don’t seem to want to make all that a thing that Alliance/general players have to experience.
