I have my doubts. A lot of the Alliance complaining about pvp comes from the basis of Horde racials, not the shamans > paladins debate. Will of the Forsaken and War Stomp and orcish stun resist spring to mind. Especially since Shadowmeld was changed. My feeling is that if Horde got paladins and Alliance got shamans, Alliance would then see their main advantage (easier PVE) as gone. I play Alliance because I think the only good looking races are Tauren and Humans, and the whole Amerindian Guilt flavour of Tauren puts me off them. If Blood Elves came out, and could be Paladins, I'd reroll Horde in a heartbeat (although not as a paladin).

I can't believe you all want to be paladins, the class seems so utterly boring to me. Unless you really like your cleanse button, of course.

As far as "Greater Totem" complaints go, why not? In WC3 the Tauren Hero used to run around with a big totem on his back all the time, why not just make it an "aura" (say, 30 yards) rather than a totem itself, and perhaps even use the ranged slot as a sacrifice for a "raid totem"?

But humans look so much better as paladins than blood elves. :(

As an aside, the expansion really takes away from the whole Alliance Manginas vs. Hunched-Over Horde thing.

better butter battle > all

It'd be as much of a cop out as horde getting paladins in my opinion.

I've heard the idea stated of being able to "pick your shaman" and I like that. It'd still be range dependent, but it's flavorful (shaman are the horde's spiritual leaders right?) and can make things interesting.

I'll let the shaman mains come up with what they need though.

But then elf paladins will steal our flameguard gauntlets

Oh I totally understand priests and shaman wanting to be Paladin, but the Mages/Rogues surprised me!

True, but he conned green to a paladin player.

That's the stupid thing. Dranai had a crapton of units that we would consider Shaman in WC3. If they are going to retcon something, it should be the game that is not out, not the game that is already released. But the chances of that happening are pretty low.

They get priests. Then of course there are troll/undead priests. What a race should be for balance apparently trumps what they should be for lore.

Somebody will probably bite the bullet. And even if they are undergeared, they can still buff just fine.

No such thing as undergeared in six months. Hit 60+ --> Naxx attunement --> Naxx clear --> 8/9 Redemption

Dibs

I could see it making sense if they did something like "Well here's a faction of Blood Elves who have embraced the Light to sate their hungers instead of consuming regular old magic like their bretheren so yeah Paladins" but then again that would be splitting hairs like playable Draenei vs corrupted Draenei.

The new Alliance race is Worgen.

We're gonna need you to run to the store and get some headlight fluid and some elbow grease.

You do know where the store is, right?

It's spelled Draenei.

I can see it in most horde member's posts that they are excited about these POTENTIAL (but probably unlikely) changes. (That being said... the grapevine tends to be right more often than you might imagine... not that I could personally comment here, oh wait... yeah damn NDA - vanguard sucks?)

The ones who are against it are the lore nazis. Give the lore a rest, and realize that when you're smacking patchwerk in the balls no one gives a damn about whether your night elf grandfather plucked the pube feather off some green dragon and therefore was turned into a beautiful gnome princess named svetlana, who in turn targetted the interdimensional blood elf phasers to hit some tree that was really big and in trouble.
Lore is lame.

Fix the balance problems. This would be an awesome change to WoW... I just cry tears of happiness thinking of the possibilities. I think praetorian's healing breakdown is good (4 shm / 4 priest / 4 druid / 3 paladins)
(Personally I'd go 5/5/2 (or 3?)/3 (or 4?)). Number wise things don't change a lot for raid composition... and obviously with such a drastic level change, the key here is just tuning the new design to new content... and not caring so much about the old. I think this would solve a lot of issues, and honestly I'm sure most horde are excited at the idea.

I also don't see much of a problem with going with raid wides totems. Forget the "greater totem or click on someone to carry a stick" type of thing. Just make them affect the whole raid with a flag. If some totems are problematic you either give shamans 2 versions of the same totems or go with a simple version of having some totem raid wides and some totems not.

If they feel mana tide would be too powerfull raid wide then keep it to 5 man, tranquil air cause problems in theory, keep it to 5 man, resistances totems can be kept to 5 man, etc.

But the bread and butter, agi, wf, soe, stoneskin, healing stream, mana spring, all full raid AE. You still have the range to take into account.

People also need to realise that even with everyone with those buffs, alliance still got it better and we still don't have king and no armor aura but the difference would be greatly reduced.

You still have to take into account groups a bit for some totems in theory in some fights but you can finally group hunters with melee for trueshot and everyone is happy.

Here, it wasn't that hard and we didn't even have to invent some new "complex" mechanic and we still have the concept of totems, with range, types, etc and after something like this I would not feel like a 2nd class raiding citizen.

I want more diversity.

Your analogy doesn't make sense either... maybe if you say what if every street fighter had the option of playing Ryu... uhm, okay.

Every other raid gets class A, the other gets class B... you're now adding B to A... Ignore the lore and the change makes a lot of sense. Lore master says the vorpal dagger of win +12 is shimmering off the flowing green fields, where angry bugbears roam, in agreement. I roll my dice, I am drunk... Lore is still stupid. People accept interdimensional ships... but class changeover - UNACCEPTABLE!

I think Draenei would make better Shamans than Paladins anyways. Paladin always seemed kind of forced upon them. And Blood Elves can be the Scarlet Crusade-esque zealot type Paladins.

Lore be damned. I don't think Kaplan has a say in balancing game mechanics at all. If they want to switch it, they will. And I will accept why they say they will and be happy with increased raid ability.

Considering you have no option of playing paladins as horde as it stands now, how is having the option of playing them not adding diversity?

Unless by diversity you mean the factions should be unbalanced, and you prefer this. How is having a unique class you will never see in your instance at all changing your gaming experience? How is that more diverse? I'm arguing semantics perhaps?

No I'm implying that both sides are "equal". It would be boring. I'm not saying they won't or can't do it, but I enjoy the flavor of not having Frost Shock and Earthbind on Alliance and no Blessing of Freedom and Plate healing on Horde, but having another tradeoff. It's merely my sense of taste, and it would suit my ideals better if they actually attempted to balance Shaman in the expansion rather than cop out. I think they have the ability to keep the balance pretty relative, even if slight trade offs are given.