Don’t give them ideas!
In the conceit of the story, she is. She is described objectively by Blizzard as being so, therefore she is.
Wasn’t Vol’jin’s only role in the whole expansion to just congratulate you for your garrison and name you commander, as a voice over in a cutscene?
I like to point to ME Kai Leng and say they are doing that with Sylvanas and her being a “tactician”. If she is never shown ingame/story to be a great mastermind tactical pro, but rather the oposite in alot of cases, yet the writers keep saying “Oh she is the best, she is so great.” then it clashes. Show, don’t tell.
Why, because Golden has to write that she is in Before the Storm? Nothing she has done in BFA screams “great tactician.” Even removing Derek’s free will was going to be a terrible idea as Jaina was ready to blow Derek to bits, and even if he is indeed a sleeper agent we’ll all have predicted that anyway when he does so to advance the plot.
1 Like
Did you know I already made a post on this in the past?
Technically this was about her being “cunning, ruthless and effective military mind” but it serves the same purpose. Just that some points are more on the ruthless side than tactician side.
-Ranger General of Silvermoon
-Effectively harried Arthas, only lost due to betrayal of by Darkhan.
-Using only a small initial force amassed an army significant enough to defeat Varimathras, Detheroc and Balnazzar and their Scourge army.
-Forced Lor’themar to commit to the Northrend campaign.
-One of the primary driving forces of the Horde in defeating the Scourge in Northrend.
-Lead the Horde offensive in Battle for Undercity, slew Varimathras
-Lead the incursion into the Frozen Halls, harried the Lich King himself.
-Succesfully forced the primary Alliance forces out of Gilneas through strategy, even if not military might.
-Identifies Galen as a way to claim Arathi and obtains Trol’kalar via him.
-Won the Battle for Andorhal from behind the scenes.
-Aimed to kill two birds with one stone in Stormheim, acquiring both the Aegis for the war with the Legion and the Val’kyr’s servitude for the Horde’s continued survival.
-And, well, we’ll see what BfA brings.
With the BElf heritage armour we already knew, but can add to it, that Lor’themar believes that Silvermoon would have entirely been lost if not for her.
Blizzard didn’t just make one throwaway comment on it and move on. You can disagree with some points above if you’d like, but she’s had a number of military moments both in life and death to show her as an effective tactical mind.
Chronicles 3, but keep wearing your biases on your sleeve.
1 Like
BTW it turns out that Sylvanas was 100% right about the cycle of hatred.
2 Likes
I forgot you didm but reading it again I do recall having seen it before yes. And I do agree to some extent. She in life she was shown to use cunning and tactic quite alot, and this was seen in warcraft 3 quite well. And in WoW in her undeath, you do point out some things that are quite clever.
My disagreement lies more with how she’s been portrayed in a couple of cases, particuarly BfA at this point and the handling of Teldrassil. Her original plan with that assault was tactical, what it ended up as was not at all and only fueled the war further and gave the elves and worgen a greater reason/inspiration to fight, which ended in the loss of her capitol city.
I personally feel like, her latest iterations have been less tactical and more crude, and sometimes frankly dumb. But to be fair on the character, this is an issue with Blizzard overall. Partially in Legion, but as off BfA, they seem unable to most of the times properly display any tactical capabilities, but instead have the character’s pull of random Deus ex machinas, such as “ENOUGH”, banshee scream teleport, flying ship etc.
An easy escape when the current writers probably aren’t very tactical themselves, and thus have a hard time to write characters being it.
2 Likes
??
You’re the most fervent Sylvanas fan on the AD forums from what I’ve seen and that’s fine. However don’t speak of bias when you are on one side of the coin yourself. I can indeed present counter-arguments to some of her “accomplishments” you mentioned but I want to stay on topic and narrow it down to BFA specifically here. Her character arc in BFA is a huge departure from the cunning, conniving leader she once was. I just don’t see in any shape, way or form how there’s any credence to her being a good strategist in BFA. She’s been more busy gloating, antagonizing and threatening rather than leading, and that’s probably the fault of the writing team again.
5 Likes
Even though I disagree with him on several matters & we bump heads sometimes, I don’t think he’s a “fervent sylvanas fan” that has a Sylvanas bodypillow IRL. He just sees the other side of the coin- Both of them, really. He doesn’t need to explain your side of the view because you provide it, and then he answers to it
2 Likes
I don’t mean for it to sound like an attack or a passive-aggressive slight. I like Elenthas. I just typically see him active in Sylvanas discussions, hence why I assumed so.
Her strategy for the War of Thorns was sound. It fell through a bit when Saurfang messed everything up and she had to hard pivot to plan B* sure, but people generally accept that the initial plan was fine.
Her plan with Derek, pretty much the only other thing she’s been involved in for BfA** is foreshadowed for success in a number of ways, and is exactly the cunning, conniving strategy you’d expect from her. She’s removed a potential Horde leader that stands against her under the guise of him betraying the Horde while also having Derek exactly where she wanted him to be in the manner she wanted him to be in. How is the Derek plot and it’s execution thus far not classic Sylvanas skullduggery?
*To touch on what Vixi said above, regarding it “fueling the war further”, that is what happened, but it’s not exactly outside of Sylvanas’ desires if you’ll recall A Good War. Plan A was utter domination to force the Alliance into capitulation, to end the war before it began but Plan B was always to start the war now rather than years down the line where a faction war would kill everything on the planet with giant azerite bombs or whatever.
For the long-lived like elves and draenei who measure lifetimes in thousands or tens of thousands of years, the Plan B war is disinfecting a wound rather than letting it fester. Painful, but necessary.
**This is dumb and done solely so Blizzard can play coy with her plans/intentions with their wait-and-see BS which I hate and argh why do they have so many important conversations offscreen.
2 Likes
Yes, but again, Jaina expected as much and was ready to erratically destroy Derek right then and there. Even if he is still a sleeper agent, this is falling through as it’s implied Derek is going to be brought to Calia and that’ll probably undo any mental conditioning imposed unto him, if there even is any as it’s too utterly predictable.
Because she openly declares her intentions to rob Derek of his free will which once separated her from the Lich King. She does this while all the other Horde leaders know of it and obviously most are deeply disturbed by this turn of events with dissent only growing after Baine’s imprisonment. She’s antagonizing her allies and the conniving Sylvanas would have orchestrated the Derek thing in secret rather than out in the open.
7 Likes
Yeah, as I said, I found the plan A to be quite clever and a tactical approach that is just that. And even if Saurfang threw things aside, jumping to plan B instead of altering plan A would, atleast to me have worked better. I disagree with plan B, because the war can very well lead to the horde losing, she had no afterthought on that, or thats how it comes across to me.
To be fair though, it is a sneaky move that is very Sylvanas-y and throwsback to her subterfuge tactics in wc3, both as alive and dark ranger. However, my biggest gripe playing through that quest horde side is that it was so obviously written as chaotic evil action. When that cutscene played for me, the music was booming and dark, and Derek’s darth vader like “Noooooo!” at the end while Sylvanas gloats smugly of her intentions made it so stupidly villianous.
Then of course there is the fact that she was breaking the main rule of the forsaken she set up herself, the whole free will thing, by denying him it completly. Not allowing to choose between life or death, but to also mind control/brainwash.
But the tactic itself wasn’t out of her character, even though it was written -very- villianously, and on the nose.
2 Likes
I’m not saying it was. I’m saying the way she went about it isn’t Sylvanas. She is aware the Horde races and its leaders bar the Forsaken look down upon resurrecting the dead, seeing it as an affront. Openly declaring she’ll resurrect Derek and intending to strip away his free will isn’t therefore a “brilliant, tactical” decision. The pre-WOTLK Sylvanas would have gone about it differently.
7 Likes
It feels more like her wc3 days before forming the forsaken, than the WoW Sylvanas, atleast pre-wotlk like you say.
1 Like
Nevertheless it almost feels like Blizzard have forgotten their own lore yet again. The Forsaken were allowed into the Horde because of the Tauren’s endorsement, sympathizing with their Undead state and declaring to Thrall that they deserve compassion because they all have free will. They probably have as it isn’t brought up by Baine so far.
4 Likes
I agree, in my opinion, the depressed, sad Sylvanas who was really sad of being “slaves to this torment” of undeath, wouldn’t really want to cause the torment on others…
That’s why i say, Sylvanas for me died at Wotlk
She is according to history. She took Arthas through hell defending Silvermoon, almost killed him with Banshees but revenge tooke her victory because she wanted slow death. There is Gilneas and take control of Lordaeron. Lordaeron would be defended if is not there Jaina .Also she would killed Anduin and Alleria if is not there again Jaina to rescue the day. Burning tree is her instinctive act.
Even if she have some personal agenda she is committed to Horde in her own way. She will do anything to win don’t choose resources. Many in Horde have their own meaning of honor, what is it. I really don’t like how some leaders in Horde r represented now. It is no matter who started war, only matters future events which will mark and define Horde. For now Horde looks like group kids who started to play together and after some time start to fight.
1 Like
All this discussion reminds me of a webcomic subreddit that had to have a character discussion quarantine because every thread would devolve into The Discourse about how good/bad she was.
Anyway, I’m excited for 8.2. Nazjatar looks cool, Mechagon looks fun, and I’m cautiously optimistic about the new azerite changes.
1 Like