Q'Anilia
Exiled Master Jedi
The reason I say it's not canon is because what defines Thaddius in the raids he has been part of, is his polarity charge. That's what has made him famous, and in a canon encounter with Thaddius, he not only doesn't show any sign of having this ability. The only ability Thaddius use, is a magnetic pull which deals no damage at all.
For the entire duration of the fight, Darion was able to not only effortlessly avoid harm from Thaddius, but he could kill him in a single slash.
What you are saying, is that we should instead of using the canon version of Thaddius use a gameplay version from a game which is notorious for its TERRIBLE interpretation and description of lore. The same game that has over and over again shown to not give the actual canon story of an encounter.
The game that has been acknowledged by Blizzard employees as well as Chris Metzen to not be accurate in terms of lore. The scaling is beyond terrible, both size-wise and power-wise.
There's at least ten books that has revised lore as it is encountered in the Warcraft games, and more are coming. World of Warcraft isn't lore accurate. Take Molten Core and Ragnaros for example: According to canon, Ragnaros is awake and Molten Core has not been disruted by Horde nor Alliance.
Then there's Onyxia: In canon, when she is revealed to be someone else than Lady Prestor, she takes Anduin Wrynn with her.
There are many examples of this.
But let's take Thaddius "power" in consideration then. It only stretches for the near vicinity of his presence. People at a certain distance, not actually very far away won't be affected by it. Given how frail Thaddius is in canon, I'll go ahead and list a few characters that could SOLO him:
- Sylvanas (Stomp)
- Tyrande
- Varian (Stomp)
- Korialstrasz (Stomp)
- Thrall (Stomp)
- Alleria
- Vereesa
- Rhonin
and more.
So lets again take Thaddius in consideration. What do you think the Azerothian people are? Idiots? If people die in the presence of Thaddius, they won't be sending more people on him.
There are three reasons why even if he had polarity shift, he'd be useless:
1. Thaddius is charged up by Naxxramas. He'd run out of power soon enough. When encountered, he draw electricity from nearby electronic devices in order to activate. He was powered down when they first noticed him, as well as when you encounter him in the game: This would mean that there's a limitation to his powersource.
2. Thaddius is incredibly slow. This can be noted in both game as well as canon appearance.
3. His polarity shift has incredibly short range. If you're on the other side of the room you fight him in during your raid, polarity effects doesn't apply to you.
So given the scale difference in World of Warcraft in comparison to true lore, and taken both the raid encounter and the canon encounter in consideration (The room in which they fight), I'd estimate the maximum range of his polarity shift to be around twenty meters. Maybe thirty. Fourty is a stretch, but not unreasonable.
The distance required between two people then if under the influence of this ability would be roughly five meters.
NOTE: Thaddius was killed by a young HUMAN with no notable powers. Soloed really. I'll also point out that if only one person fight Thaddius, his polarity shift is USELESS. The only strength that Polarity Shift really has, is that it can create destruction amongst the enemies of Thaddius. The lesser the enemies, the lower the risk that the ability is harmless.
Another note would be that if you're alone, polarity shift doesn't effect you at all.
A third note would be that Thaddius would kill his own, since polarity shift is a passive ability with no implications of being intelligent. It applies to people within his vicinity, and has shown no ability to tell enemy apart from friend.
Bottom line:
Thaddius is useless with, or without polarity shift. With, or without gameplay. With, or without World of Warcraft boss mechanics. With, or without his canon appearance in consideration.
He's pathetic really.
But no, given how in his canon appearance Thaddius did not have a polarity shift worth noting, I'm not going to take it in consideration for this thread, even if Thaddius is as useless with, as without.