Who Should have Won LK VS Sylvanas

[keyboardshinobi]

Other than the boat and occasionally teleporting people away she hadnt done much to change overall story in the way Sylvanas is. Heck while she unleashes some quite crazy spells in BoD she doesnt employ half of those in actual real world. So maybe shes got power close to Sylvanas but she doesnt employ it that much and drive the whole narrative.

Oh so you mean that they are two different characters with completely different motivations that lead them to use their powers in very different ways that lead to differing outcomes based on the individual choices they make?

[Muajin76]

In reality? Bolvar.

But we all know why Sylvanas won. They need to push her relevance, and if Bolvar can beat her, then that probably takes care of about half of Shadowlands' story/issues. They could've made it look a bit less trivial.

And also they need to work on how they frame stuff. The way they had the camera set up was how you would do it if you wanted to paint Sylvanas as a sympathetic underdog character. She isn't either of those.

Newly empowered sylvy would turn bolvar into a lifeless husk. There is no way he'd win against her.

[Vampyrr]

Oh so you mean that they are two different characters with completely different motivations that lead them to use their powers in very different ways that lead to differing outcomes based on the individual choices they make?

Its who drives the story. There were similar complaints to "Green Jesus" Thrall when he was the primary driving force of the Cataclysm expansion. If Jaina was the driving force wed be complaining about her. Blizzard team doesn't write solo story characters well in a way that is enjoyable to the player base. Anduin got some screen time too and as he was not written well either he got a lot of flack. Its more if the story is just about poorly written <Insert Character here> it is not enjoyable to be part of that story. And if Blizzard doubles down on their story its all the more glaring.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

This Jailer power shit is honestly just a cop-out.
As of now, he is such a nebulous asspulled entity that we have no idea what he could do, how much of his power Sylvanas has, how much her actions to fill up the Maw contribute to her own power gain. Like, how much power does she get per soul? Yet we need to stretch our suspension of disbelief because "yeah dude there is this mean looking dude and he gives her powers so shes like super powerful."

Pretty weak writing.

edit: I know this'll prompt a lot of "but dudes any new lore is 'asspulled' and "the fact that you don't know about the Jailer is why you need to wait and see." But honestly, if Anduin came out of the blue, started driving the plot with oneshot holy powers with which he kills Thrall and other characters without breaking a sweat with the weak justification that "Oh yeah, he's being empowered by a powerful Light figure we haven't seen before," it'd be just as irksome.

The same thing could be said about the litch king who also gets power forms the more souls he has. The only real difference is that sylvanas is getting the power from the jailer who has some where souls can’t get out of and the lichking is getting power from the helm who has been losing souls left and right since wrath.

[Vampyrr]

The biggest issue is there has been no build up to the Jailer. In a well written book, Sylvanas would be getting power-ups but would hide it better. Other characters would also be getting Jailer power ups and would come out to do his bidding by attacking whatever. We would stop them but more and more would come that would be more and more powerful to the point where we are like where are these guys coming from and who is sending them at us? Sylvanas would still be doing her HvA thing that we would be dealing with at the same time. Then we get to the reveal of her powers and that shes ALSO working for the unnamed entity and the players would then have an "Oh shit that's not good" moment. Now there's precedent and buildup of her powers, we have an idea of what shes capable of and the Bolvar fight makes a ton more sense.

For the anime nerds out there think of DBZ with Yamu and Spopovich at the Tournament. Spopovich was established already as an okay fighter but then comes out of the gate with these crazy powers. Everyone knows something is up but cannot figure out how, but they wouldn't be able to wreck like Piccolo or Gohan out of the gate like we have in BFA. They didnt jump straight into Evil Buu at the start. You have to establish the enemy to get people invested, Blizzard skipped that step and it shows.

[Yarathir]

Newly empowered sylvy would turn bolvar into a lifeless husk. There is no way he'd win against her.

Ah yes. All the true fanatics know Sylvanas would use the enigmatic power of the almighty, unexplained Jailer to tear the life out of Bolvar with ease because Blizzard said so.

[Kumorii]

The late great Stan Lee has an answer:

Gold!

/10

[MrLachyG]

The biggest issue is there has been no build up to the Jailer. In a well written book, Sylvanas would be getting power-ups but would hide it better. Other characters would also be getting Jailer power ups and would come out to do his bidding by attacking whatever. We would stop them but more and more would come that would be more and more powerful to the point where we are like where are these guys coming from and who is sending them at us? Sylvanas would still be doing her HvA thing that we would be dealing with at the same time. Then we get to the reveal of her powers and that shes ALSO working for the unnamed entity and the players would then have an "Oh shit that's not good" moment. Now there's precedent and buildup of her powers, we have an idea of what shes capable of and the Bolvar fight makes a ton more sense.

For the anime nerds out there think of DBZ with Yamu and Spopovich at the Tournament. Spopovich was established already as an okay fighter but then comes out of the gate with these crazy powers. Everyone knows something is up but cannot figure out how, but they wouldn't be able to wreck like Piccolo or Gohan out of the gate like we have in BFA. They didnt jump straight into Evil Buu at the start. You have to establish the enemy to get people invested, Blizzard skipped that step and it shows.

I think we will get clues in 8.3 and 8.3.5, as well as the prepatch and while levelling. that is when the build up will happen.

[Samuraijake]

How is she more legit? Where did Jaina get her power? Blizz gave us a actual reason to Sylvanis but Jaina is powerful just cuz.

she got powers around the kirin tor mages.

[Caprias]

Gold!

/10

Obviously the script writer, in this case Blizzard, decides who will win but that doesn't automatically mean it is well written.

I honestly don't care who wins as long as it makes sense within the rules and boundaries of the universe it is set in, if a character bends those quite often like we saw with rey in sw you got a mary sue and or bad writing

Now i won't say that sylvanas is a mary sue but the obscurity that the writers try to transform into "haha we did genius 4d chess with your expectations!" just feels like bad writing.

Buuuuuuuuuuut in the end it's just a video game and i can imagine that the idea of writers/game devs clash quite often, if i want to immerse myself into really great storys i will read a good fantasy/sci-fi book.

[Zora-Prime]

she got powers around the kirin tor mages.

Ah yes, the arcane cannon gunship floating, plague dissipating, zone wide frost nova casting, Kirin Tor teachings.

[huth]

Ah yes, the arcane cannon gunship floating, plague dissipating, zone wide frost nova casting, Kirin Tor teachings.

The latter two are just high-powered frost spells. Strong, but not out of the ordinary otherwise.

The ship... well, that one explicitly isn't. Based on what she says about it, it is some kind of Kul Tiran secret spell.

[zhero]

Anybody else feel like the pace of the fight was too slow? Like Bolvar and Sylvanas had negative haste stat? I almost feel like it would have been better if they just ran the fight scenes at a higher speed.

sylvanas had jet lag and bolvar just stood up after a long sit on a frozen throne, they did what they could.

[Oxford Kama]

Lich King should have won, obviously.

Alternatively, if they really insisted on going through this route, Sylvanas should have at the very least lost something. Instead, everything went perfectly and she came out of the fight completely unscathed. If she had been been scorched or if one or two of her Val'kyrs died, I would've been more okay with Bolvar losing.

Since you're literally sigging this, why do you think Sylvanas should have lost?

She was Ranger General of Silvermoon at her absolute weakest and still felt confident enough to fight Arthas when the Scourge first came.

She later on ambushed Arthas as a wraith and conceivably could have killed him if the plan hadn't fallen through.

In the Halls of Reflection in Wrath, she dueled Arthas for a third time and held her own where other characters had been oneshot.

Bolvar is absolutely not stronger than Arthas.

Roided-up Sylvanas is absolutely stronger than Pre-Buff/Suicide Sylvanas that went toe to toe with Arthas willingly over and over again.

What doesn't make sense here?

I'm dying to hear your take.

[Trollokdamus]

can't wait for these lore noobs play WC3 and see Sylvanas almost kill Arthas 3 times.

Yeah, back when Arthas was a mere DK and Ner'zhul was bleeding power. Why don't you bring up their more recent Halls of Reflection fight?

In reality? Bolvar.

Why though? Bolvar is just an undead dude with Helm of Domination while Sylvanas is empowered by the Jailer, who is in turn empowered with all the souls fed to him during the Fourth War and the war with N'zoth. Sure, the Jailer is a new figure, but one can say that the entirety of BfA was a lead-up to his introduction.

[BossManRoth]

Yeah, back when Arthas was a mere DK and Ner'zhul was bleeding power. Why don't you bring up their more recent Halls of Reflection fight?

because arthas was more powerful than bolvar when he was a "mere" DK. Sylvanas has always been a skilled and powerful fighter. Bolvar is/was, never could be as powerful as a fully powered Arthas Lich King, which is the only time she ran from him, BEFORE she was juicing with death magic.

[Snowbatt]

As much as I despise Sylvanas, she was supposed to win. Bolvar didn't have Frostmourne

[bloodmoth13]

It wasn’t idiotic. It was actually a pretty great moment for Sylvanas given her history with the Lich King and her lack of appearance for Arthas’ death in favor of a bunch of human paladins. Very cathartic to see her destroy it.

This. I swear the people bitching about sylv only know her from cataclysm onward and dont have a clue about anything else about her.

[Samuraijake]

Ah yes, the arcane cannon gunship floating, plague dissipating, zone wide frost nova casting, Kirin Tor teachings.

Jaina obtained power... from there shes able to make her own things.

[shadowmatrix]

Why is it the more I read of this thread the more it seems that some posters are trying to explain why the Lich King should be an unbeatable Gary Sue? How long till they also start using the prep time argument?