Introducing a “new” (but already used) weapon type and restricting it to only one class was, and still is, dumb. So here’s the ones I think it should be opened up to, and why.
Warrior - Pretty straightforward, they already can equip everything except wands. They’re weaponmasters.
Rogue - Because this was literally what people pretending to be Demon Hunters were before they were a playable class, and the Warglaives were iconically used by the Rogue class.
Monk - Similar reasons to the Rogue.
Shaman - Now this is a bit of a stretch, but bear with me here.
In Warcraft 3, we were introduced to the Shadow Hunter hero class. They used Glaives (in fact, Vol’jin’s canon weapon in lore is a glaive he forged in Pandaria). Shadow Hunters are most similar to the Shaman class. 3/4 of their abilities became Shaman abilities (or very similar). So long as Glaives are going to be listed as different from Swords, I think they should be given to Shaman.
Maybe Hunter too, though they wouldn’t be able to use them unless Survival was changed. Some of the Hunter abilities are similar to the Night Elf Sentinel abilities (and they used glaives).
Nah, apparently even though Rogues and Warriors were equipping Warglaives before DH’s were even a gleam in daddy blizzard’s eye, new hotness had to go and hog them pixels.
Just reclassify them back to one handed swords and let anyone who can use a one handed sword use them. They should have never have made them their own weapon type in the first place.
I agree BUT, if they stayed their own class, they could be opened up to Shaman (and closed to casters which, honestly, isn’t that much of a loss, they can’t equip the offhands anyway).
If they were to keep them their own class I would give them to Priests over Shaman. Since Nelf priests actually use them in lore and I’d like to think if they ever added Shadow Hunters they would be their own class and not just a spec or subclass of Shaman.
If they added Shadow Hunters, they would only be for two races on one faction… and I honestly think the limitations of Demon Hunters is incredibly disastrous.
Plus, introducing Shadow Hunters would mean gutting the Shaman class for abilities like Hex or Chain Heal… not to mention offensive totems.
Which was what Demon Hunters did to Warlocks, and we saw how that went over when Blizzard nerfed a spec into the ground to get people to stop playing it in preparation.
I’m not saying “no” to priest though. If wielding a 1h glaive is something priests do in lore, it’s not going to hurt to allow them to.
If they ever did it, I’d like to think they would do it in such a way that it would open it up to more races. Possibility even all races the same way they did with Monks. Since it’s really only the Darkspear that have them. I don’t believe the Zandalari have a tradition of being Shadow Hunters. They could easily have an expac that revolves around us meeting a lost tribe of Dark Trolls that ally with both factions.
This doesn’t necessarily need to happen. The Shadow Hunter in lore is as much a Rogue as it is Shaman. And really I believe the Shadow Hunters in WC3 got Shaman abilities mainly because they didn’t want to create a whole new and unique class for one or two characters so they just copied the Shaman. The same way that Palladins were just upgraded Warriors.
There really isn’t much lore in the game about Shadow Hunters. They could treat it as a blank slate and create whatever they want and get away with it.
The player class Shaman is actually less of an exact class so much as a combination of (mostly Orcish Horde) units from Warcraft 3.
Primary influences:
Thrall (obviously)
Farseer unit
Witchdoctor unit
But less obviously, we also had abilities from the Shadow Hunter hero unit/Rohkan and the Spirit Walker unit. There’s even an ability taken from certain hero units like Cairne. There may have been one or two also taken from some of the creeps like quilboar, but I can’t remember.
In many ways, the “Shaman” class of WoW is a catchall for many different subclasses taken from the Warcraft 3 units, almost all of whom were in the Horde.
People say this, but after playing WC3 I honestly don’t see it at all. In WoW we see Shadow Hunters sometimes use stealth, but that’s the extent of it.
You can’t really go by the RTS games for classes. Like I said in WC2 Palladins were just the last upgrade of the melee/warrior unit.
As well Farseeers are Shaman, Witchdoctors are just what they called Troll Shaman and Spirit Walkers are just what they called Tauren Shaman. And like I said they based the Shadow Hunter units around the base Shaman unit because it was more efficient to do that than design an entirely new class.
As for the Rogue part, that I think has been added more recently to better differentiate Shadow Hunters from Shaman. Look at Rokhan now. He far more resembles a Rogue than a Shaman.