Stuff like demon hunter and evoker are obvious exceptions to the rule, but I’m only really talking about ‘non-hero’ classes, so the Vanilla classes plus monk.
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This already happened in-lore with forsaken forces mistaking worgen druids for actual bears so I’d buy it.
To be honest, and this isn’t to put down players who like shamans, but I think they are by far the strangest class to categorize. You have nature stuff, you have the ancestor stuff, but then you also have the turning people into frogs thing, summoning ghostly wolves, smacking people with wind weapons like, what is the main thing that draws people to a shaman class fantasy to begin with?
I guess the one upside of shamans having such a wide range of inspiration and variety is that you can push them to all races just by focusing on the one aspect of them but if you ask different people what they think the point of a shaman is, you’re going to get wildly different answers in a way that you don’t with other classes.
(Also my own personal answer to what a shaman is or does or represents is just being a big source of lightnign because I think that’s the coolest part of them)
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To be honest. For shamans. I would see them as hexxing, jinxes, curses, poisons, voodoo/minions, relics and totems, and such.
Then again, WoW Shaman is very wide spread but they are not really “nature” in my book, but elemental driven. And I don’t really see the Tauren/Troll/Orc having the same connection to that of the Kul Tiran with their Decay, Death, Regrowth, and Dream stuff (Drust magic)
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This is the sad boon of the class homogenization, with the ideas from many different traditions available to everyone. The main thing is listening to the spirits, and which kinds of them to work with and how to do it is up to the shaman’s racial/faction tradition or personal preferences. It’s what RP is about, after all.
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RIP Shadowmend, you were a cool thematic ability and I will continue to use you IC despite the fact I can no longer actually physically cast you.
But I feel even with class homogenization shamans still have it worse than most classes. Death Knights and Mages are pretty well defined - they wield death and the arcane respectively, and those two sources of magic are split into three fairly distinct themes - death but cold, death but bloody, death but pestillency; and arcane but cold, arcane but hot, and arcane but… uh, arcane-y. And I know technically our characters aren’t limited -a death knight can probably use whichever they want to some extent, and learning to cast frostbolt as a mage doesn’t lock you out of using a fireblast etc.
Anyway I am in favour of worgen shamans because, well, I’ve already had a worgen of every other class (DK excluded) and I see no reason to stop that tradition now, but really when I think about what actually drives people to play (and especially RP) a shaman I find myself stumped for a single answer that ties everyone together.
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When there’s a canonical murloc demon hunter, hard to argue against other races getting it too.
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Night Elven Shamans can be explained away in three different ways;
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There are Druids who feel closer to the Elements, then they do to a certain Wild-God, doubling down on their connection to the Elements as Druids and thus becoming, effectively, Shamans!
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Night Elven Primalist or Druid of the Flames who rejoined society, but kept their connection to the Elements.
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Night Elves trained by Furbolg Shamans/Druids. In Furbolg tradition, Shamans and Druids mean the same thing, so a Night Elf Druid going for training to the Furbolg might pick up on Shamanism to compliment, or even replace, their Druidic training!
Personally, I would like them to openen up Shamans to Night Elves alongside a new skin color or 2 for Druids of the Flame! Ofcourse I would not mind Night Elven Paladins either!
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There’s room to wangle the classes in some sort of broader filter; that isn’t a worgen shaman. He’s a geomancer.
Edit: I don’t really think that, narratively, the classes should be as restrictive as they are in gameplay.
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The problem with the spirits of Kalimdor is that they are far from the nicest around. Both tauren and furbolg shamanism imply revering the elements as well as the nature’s deities. Elven civilization, however emphacizing on the nature’s balance, would hardly worship what doesn’t deserve it, like the elements with their many quirks, and the same traits would make the druids want to use something less prone to running wild. The Primalist approach, focusing on direct control and bending the spirits to one’s will, suited them far better, and I do wish we could get a set of glyphs for their totems and spell looks for all the races.
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Interestingly, and I know it’s a gameplay thing so it’s not hard canon lore or anything, but the Druids of the Fang in Wailing Caverns all cast lightning bolt!
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It’s in the same regard as the monk’s jade lightning, I’d say. The same effect, but without true communion with the elements.
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Chronicles describes Harvest-Witches as originally using a crude form of druidism and shamanism, it doesn’t feel too far-fetched to say that some developed one half a little further.
Just re-read it (big dumbo) and it’s the pre-Arathor tribes that used it, though the Harvest-Witches whole stick is descended from that, so some of it could have just stuck around, surely?
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Worgen shouldn’t have either.
But either way, like Elenthas said, they overlap a lot in the lore. We see druids weave the elements and shaman bond with nature and animals. The distinction between Druid and Shaman is more a matter of culture and discipline. If a culture fosters druidism, they are capable of fostering shamanism and vice versa.
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Worgens would have a good reason to have Paladins being connected back to the Alliance, and the Stormwind Kingdom, living under their training and rule for a long time till Gilneas was reclaimed. In that time, the act of taking the light with you and fight as it, should’ve been easily transitioned to the people of Gilneas, considering they had a strong connection to the Light in the first place, together with that of the Nauture - which in connection, since they have a strong bond with Nature, they were able to become full fledged Druids.
It’s not about culture or faith, but about whether or not worgen are capable of becoming Paladins. The long and the short of it leans towards the answer being “No” and that there’s a reason why we’ve never seen one. Paladin with a capital P a la Silver Hand requires more than just faith in the Light; they are not just priests in armour.
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There is a hearthstone paladin worgen card - the Lightfang Enforcer.
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/hearthstone_gamepedia/images/c/c0/Lightfang_Enforcer_full.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200328112221
It’s ‘hearthstone’ canon but they’ve pulled stuff from HS before.
We have seen that you can equally serve the Light being brutal as well. So, why can’t a Worgen? Then again, not all Gilneans were Worgens either. And no, we have not seen any in other organizations because they have not added them in? Yet, we have seen vicious, murderous people, being able to still be infused by the Light.
Not to mention the Silver Hand being present in Gilneas during the Second War and some time after. There at least were Gilnean paladins in the past, and as said, not everyone there became a worgen.
Well. Hearthstone is canon to the game as well. So, the creators have either gotten the idea from somewhere, or brewed up a ‘what if’ moments.
Do not even need to count the Silver Hand. I mean. We lived on the main Alliance ground until reclamation. Worgens went to Teldrassil, Stormwind, or spread out and made small villages.
We even went through a transition to keep ourselves in control of the Worgen curse.