The Zandalari Paladins have nothing to do with Human paladins, actually no other race would be similar to âPaladinsâ we know in game except the Humans and Dwarves. The rest have their own way of harnessing the power of Light - none of other races are called Paladins lorewise
Blood Elve Blood Knights have direct source of light to call upon when needed. Its similar to how would they use Arcane magics.
Draenei Vindicators are their own thing.
Tauren are simply followers of Anâshe so their powers comes from the Sun not the Light we know as such.
Zandalari Prelates get their powers from warshipping Loa. Its more of cult worshipping. If the Loa is strong their powers increase and so forth.
While Human and Dwarven culture is more religious thing. Their powers comes from faith and belief in Light⌠The origin was the priesthood itself. Tyrion was good example of that after getting stripped of his titles⌠Or Arthas losing his faith in Light⌠you get the idea.
So every Paladin should know that they are playing Human version of the class!
There was some time ago, some particularly elaborated fanart regarding how racial armour couldâve looked, if we also had had it differentiated by class.
I am not saying classic human-ish paladin knight fantasy should be the only one, but I am saying Zandalari paladin thing definitely didnât work.Didnât fit in good.
Itâs just silly overall, since itâs not supported and will never get lore/visual variance support, bound to cast generic paladin spells and stuck with generic pala tier sets.I cringe every time I see a full plate set with open giant troll toes too, makes no sense they canât wear sabatons.It justâŚdoesnât scream as paladin.They just didnât tried hard enough to blend them in, if it was even possible.Zandalari prelates were not right class fit for the paladin.Themes didnât match.Tauren was unorthodox choice too, but no way wasnât this bad.Itâs waay better actually then Zandalari will ever be, theme wise.
That post is silly beyond any measure.
Zandalari are made to wear plate, they fit in literally everything.
Zandalari DO fit the Paladin theme for following reasons:
Theyâre incredibly religious race,
they literally live in city that is temple complex, it was about to be expected that super devout race would have their own holy warriors
Zandalari are raised from early childhood to become warriors, they have to prove that they possess both martial prowess AND theyâre blessed by the loa, making Prelates the most elite soldiers.
-theyâre protectors of royal family
they fight the undead (because they upset the Bwonsamdi)
they purge the heretics (the blood trolls)
theyâre perfectly capable of being religious zealot
their aesthetics is to be cladded in gold all the time, they even have golden body paint and wear their empire symbols on their body
they are militaristic society
They fit the best out of entire Horde, and what is even better is that unlike belves they donât try to parrot humans. They have their own thing and they totally rock with it!
To summ it up I can ride a holy dino your argument is invalid.
And really youâre wearing blackrock orcish set, so itâs hilarious that you judge trolls for wearing something you find inappropirate.
It does match. They fit all the criteria of what makes a paladin. You need to be more specific of what doesnâg match other than âI donât like itâ. It is fine to not like their looks but claiming that they donât fit paladin class is another story.
Itâs not ââmeââ thing, more like blizzard thing.The whole the paladin spells, spell icons, generally how paladin tier sets looks like, wording etc. etc. screams as generic fantasy paladin.Not exactly a Zandalari ââthingââ.
If you say zandalari troll makes sense in most well known paladin tier sets, I would doubt it.
While yes, the Paladin set of skills/spells is indeed âgenericâ, Blizzard added Tauren Sunwalkers and Zandalari prelates as an out of the box sort of Paladin.
However, as pointed out already, both check all the boxes as to what a Paladin is supposed to be.
As for the tier sets, neither do Tauren.
But itâs irrelevant really. Because the best known Paladins were and are Human, then came Blood Elves (Lady Liadrin).
The Tauren Sunwalkers are a relatively recent development as that order is now only a few years old.
The Zandalari prelates however are an ancient order from times even before Human/Elf paladins. The reason they donât get to claim any big names is 1. Obviously, Blizzard never saw fit to add more lore to them up untill now.
2. The Zandalari Empire was a mostly faraway and mysterious civilization up untill BFA.
3. They werenât playable up untill mid BFA.
Iâm certainly not alone in hoping that both Sunwalkers and Prelates get their due justice, their own lore, their own sets and hopefully in a near future their own spells and skills with unique effects for their respective orders/cultures.
I get that, and if I had faith in blizzard would deliver on building anything on Sunwalker order or Zandalari Prelates, it would be a different case.
But usually this is not what blizzard does, despite having a nice theme, they didnât even bother working Blood Knight since all the way back to the TBC.They didnât even touch that stuff in Paladin class halls in legion with the perfect chance.Same goes for Draenei.
So here I am saying what hope there is in fleshing out Sunwalker / Zandalari themes which are way harder to do then other races.
They do make sense in a lot of sets. And really transmog is very weak excuse to deny race a combo because otherwise a lot of races shouldnât be allowed to play certain class.
We have a transmog for a reason, and some time ago I had fun trying to make Loa-themed sets.
And for Gral : https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/569230673404231681/611981613315784859/graal.png
All you need is some imagination and initiative.
With spells, that is something I also wish that was done, andnot just to Paladin class, but itâs also not that big of a problem.
Paladin spells have yellow/golden reflexes so it fits Zandas alot. Even the healing animation where they summon book fits them because Zandalari are lorekeepers, scholars and they have books.
The only thing Iâd do would be to make the wings to be more Aztec stylized and toreplace super dated angel model to Zandalari spectre model (the one that has two massive swords) . And theyâre perfect imo.
One of the things Blizzard shouldâve done the second they started anew with their âMake classes iconicâ, shouldâve been to create customisation options for spells, icons, and sets.
They took a tiny step in said direction with certain glyphs, but they lacked the willingness to take it to the next logical level.
People should bear in mind, that few classes carry the exact same âfantasyâ across different races. Most are dumped under the same roof because otherwise we would have 50 or so different classes to juggle with.
Paladins mean differently for humans and Zandalari/Tauren.
Much like priests do likewise when you compare a Forsaken, a Human or a Magâhar one.
The fact that they work under the same class tag, doesnât mean they are effectively the same thing. And Blizzards laziness/unwillingness to reflect visually their discrepancies doesnât negate the above.
Even if it doesnât negate like you say, it certainly doesnât help to build it either.Often, you are forced to work something out yourself.
Kinda sucks.Especially considering they will never bother in future either with their mindset unless it changes, so those ââsubââ-paladin classes like Zandalari Prelate or Tauren Sunwalker will always end up as the redheaded step-child of the class.
Not that I am happy with Blood elves and how they handled the paladin either, I would much rather to have Blood Knight Themed Abilities, wording, visuals etc. etc., but they are lazy to bother giving it race specific identity.
Too late for that. Velen took everything interesting about blood elves and flushed it down the sunwell in 2.4. Enjoy beeing a human copy with the atrocity that is Liadrin as a leader.
Yeah stuck with Liadrin and meh uninteresting theme, ruined potential.
And if Blood elves are like this, thinking they would do slight bit of anything interesting for anything Zandalari & Tauren paladin related is a dream.Exactly why I am saying these two got it worse then anyone else, which results in even harder player effort to make them even slightly fit to the current generic paladin tools.
Actually now that they finally realized how dreadfull the customization options are, now would be the perfect time or follow up to work on some class/race specific themes.
the lightforged are maniacs ,the alliance light worhsipers are boring like all alliance lore ,and zandalari see the light through their loaâs no problem
it would be better if each faction had a class specific to the faction and itâs lore but the kids will start to cry and blizzard is too lazy to do such a thing anyway
