How powerful is Fandral Staghelm?

[TJ]

After seeing Fandral numerous times in Darnassus i never really thought of him as anything substantially powerful, but last night i was bored and read up on some lore about how him and his armies fought back the silithid for a large period of time.
Taking into account how many silithids there are in Silithus i thought either he must be very powerful, or his armies are full of jackie chans. I assume he is powerful (although i want to believe the army of jackie chans).
Also in Cata when he is imprisoned in the dens, the quest says the cultists would be after him because of the "immense power" he posseses. The use of immense got me thinking about how strong he actually is.
So how powerful is Fandral Staghelm? and what is he compared to lets say Malfurion or Thrall?

[xepheroth5026]

well... according to the book "stormrage" he kinda went off the deep end and was killing the world tree... so presumably he is very powerful and well respected to convice other druids to help him. sooo... not as strong as malfurion or thrall, but very strong nonetheless

[Niter]

Fandral Staghelm is incredibly strong and knowledgeable. He fought the Silithid thousands of years ago, he was capable of mustering enough druids to grow Teldrassil, he was even capable of, after being corrupted, spreading corruption through the entire tree. He was able to keep Malfurion from waking up, which is no small feat. He is so strong that his prison is attacked, he is seen as formidable foe and could be used against the forces defending Azeroth. Staghelm is also fairly experienced, very old, and have commanded the Cenarion Circle for a while.

He is definitely far less strong than Malfurion, that is for sure. As for Thrall, we honestly do not know. Fandral could be more knowledgeable than Thrall, he could more powerful (and it kind of makes sense, Fandral is several thousands years older than Thrall), that is kind of hard to say. Thrall only shows something very remarkable to us in Cataclysm, holding the Maelstrom together and all that. Prior to that, he won a few good fights, but nothing to the magnitude of what Fandral could have faced a millennia ago. It is very hard to say.

Having said that, I tend to believe that age, knowledge and all that equals power. That is why I believe that no race can have individuals that are as strong as the High Elves, Blood Elves and Night Elves. Living for a long time, with proper time to experience, discover and learn a lot of things, fighting quite a bit... Whenever somebody says that Thrall, Wrynn, Garrosh, Magni, Vol'Jin or whatever are stronger than the oldest elves or even Velen, I think that does not make sense and a part of me thinks: "Blizzard is just trying to create a new hero, it is their way to manipulate lore to suit their intentions best". But as a long time roleplayer, older and more experienced means power that races that live far less are not able to achieve. Of course, the oldest and most powerful will need quite a bit of time before attaining such great powers, they grow AT A MUCH SLOWER RATE, but once they have it, they cannot be compared to individuals that lived far less, especially those who are not even in their 50s.

[TJ]

Could a mod please move this to general discussions? just realised i posted it in the wrong forum.