Strategically, keeping Anduin as High King where he can cripple the Alliance military is a fantastic idea. Every time the Alliance is winning he will pull them back and tell them “winning is mean” or some stupid crap like that.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a terrible mistake.” - Napoleon
Define “without effort”. How can you visibly show the effort of perceiving something? Him flexing his ears really hard to hear them?
The point is that the dude has been fighting for a long, long time, against a whole lot of types of enemies, so he’s used to a great number of tricks people use to get a one-up on the less experienced.
Wasn’t it infiltrated and almost burned to a crisp not so long ago?? By a small group no less??
I mean he used no magical means of detection yet spotted something that makes no noise and leaves no visible sign of being there? I don’t care how good a warrior you are that’s silly. It’s not like there’s a shimmer or something to spot them.
I mean, more seriously, it’s weird that they literally have invisibility imo. As far as I know, Rogue stealth is just supposed to represent how agile/sneaky they are. They don’t really know magic and they’re not supposed to have cloaking devices.
Everyone knows that in both D20 and Pathfinder 1.0 you max out your Perception bonus.
I mean, why would you?
Sylvanas is unrestrained by conventional morality. She is up against an opponent who willfully accepts restrains on his actions in the name of [moral concept here].
Nor has Anduin demonstrated any real talent for overall strategy. If, say, Wyrmbane, or perhaps Alleria or the like, were running the show entirely, she might well beat them, and not claiming otherwise, but they would be more focused on just winning.
A Genn or a Rodgers would likely lose, just because they’re generally more predictable and directly belligerent, but any of them would probably be more of a problem at times than Anduin’s (let’s face it, probably correct in story terms) goal of finding a peace with the Horde itself while removing Sylvanas.
It’s like Anduin is playing Civ on hard and going for a particular achieve, while the others would be like “ok, screw the achieve, I just don’t want to lose.”
Except they… did make noise. It was them rustling the wheat that got his attention, then you can hear their footsteps when they’re moving around during the fight.
They’re not ghosts.
Fighting Anduin is the best situation ever. Best case scenario: you win because he is a bumbling, predictable fool who will always do the “right” thing. Worst case scenario: you loose, he lectures you on how to not be mean in the future, makes you promise to behave and sends you on your way.
The dude also holy-shackled and obliterated a Dreadlord sent to assassinate him after giving it a stern talking-to.
I think one of the biggest mistakes is underestimating him because he’s young. If he thinks that you are irredeemable, he’ll vaporize you.
Edit: He also cratered that troll. I like how that one goes completely unexplained.
I remain unimpressed by him since he’s been outsmarted by Sylvanas at every turn. He’s lucky the other members of the Alliance haven’t called him out on his incompetence yet because his opening string of failures at the beginning of this expansion should have seen his position of High King stripped from him.
I stick to my guns in that Sylvanas radiates a Moron Aura, in that everyone who interacts with her becomes a blithering idiot when doing anything directly or indirectly involving her.
Because Blizzard can’t make her a real strategic genius (as it’s very difficult to write a character who is smarter than the writer), they make everyone phenomenally stupid so she’s super-duper smart in comparison.
Like, it’s not only Anduin who makes decisions. He has advisors. How is it that Genn Greymane, the guy who has been hunting her for the near-entirety of his time in World of Warcraft, would not predict that the Forsaken would Blight to defend their capital city? GOSH, WHO COULD HAVE SEEN IT COMING?
Some might also know this Moron Aura as “Plot Armor” by a different name. It may be more accurate to say it’s an Incompetence Aura, because it seems to have made the Night Warrior-ized Tyrande and the Archdruid Malfurion “I Held A Landmass Together By Sheer Will” Stormrage unable to stop a dead man armed with a bow and pithy remarks from raising two of their fallen heroes into “”“willing”"" service.
I mean you can call it that if you want, moron effect has been a thing in WoW way before Sylvanas took center stage. It doesn’t make Anduin’s failures non-canon either. Sylvanas has consistently ran circles around Anduin from the jump, which is why I called him a bumbling, predictable fool. He is not intimidating in the slightest to me, no matter how many times the writers try to hype him up (18 year old kid is stronger in the light than a Naaru 
)
True. She doesn’t need to be a tactical genius by our standards though. She just needs to be smarter than the other potatoes in the room.
Sylvanas is rather dependent on Anduin, though. So far her plans never actually work out in the end, or she hasn’t been able to predict what other people who aren’t Anduin would do. Or worse, her understanding of people was completely off the mark from the beginning and her ideas never would have even worked in the first place.
Sylvanas hasn’t killed Anduin for the same reason Anduin hasn’t killed Sylvanas. Together, they prolong this expansion’s story.
I think Anduin leading the Alliance is a mistake on their end, and I think Sylvanas is taking advantage of it where she can.
I think quite a few of her plans have worked out in some fashion, though they fail in others. Anduin flooding Org with spies because he wants her to know she’s being watched? She feeds his spies false information and attacks Ashenvale. Alliance attacks Undercity in retaliation? They would have died 2 times if not for Deus-ex-Jaina.
I think that Sylvanas’ flaw is that she doesn’t get people on an emotional level anymore. Her whole campaign to “destroy hope” is doomed to fail from the jump because you just can’t do it. She should know this honestly because she saw that her own people never lost hope after Arthas destroyed Quel’thalas. It’s a huge character flaw for her.
They definitely have worked out in some fashion, which is why my statement was about her plans never working out in the end.
That I agree with and was my over all point as well, yes.
Anduin is bad at tactics. Sylvanas is bad at people. Both fail for different reasons, but so far, neither are particularly good at what they’re doing.
Well we saw Shaw detect Valeera Sanguinar which he even mention could reach places his best agents couldn’t. It’s safe to assume he has some SI:7 or 7th Legionnaires watching his back or some sort of stealth detection mechanisms in the Keep.
Then who would be a better leader? Jaina? Tyrande? Malfurion?
my personally favorite would be muradin,alleria, or turalyon.
but i mean, literally anyone else, yes.
at least they have more years from experience in both military and combat.
But of course that would not stop blizzard writting them as morons if it is required for the plot because they are useless to write strategy.
Whats the point of killing a king?
another one will take it’s place.