Whitemane

Sally Whitemane, the High Inquisitor, is a Healer Hero from the Warcraft universe. As the High Inquisitor of the Scarlet Crusade, Sally Whitemane zealously leads her champions in a neverending war against the undead. Under her guiding Light, all who have been touched by the plague of death will be purged by her cleansing flame... no matter how much they protest.

Whitemane is a versatile Healer who heals her allies by smiting her foes.

Background
At a young age, witnessed her family succumbing to the 's plague of undeath while they were traveling through Lordaeron. She was forced to destroy her own parents and siblings when they rose as mindless undead, and since that day she found fulfillment only in the destruction of undead. She became a priestess of the Light and joined the, a religious order dedicated to the eradication of the undead from. Though they believed that their mission of cleansing the world of undead was a noble one, the crusaders soon grew intolerant of all non-human races and came to believe that anyone who was not a part of their order was infected by the Scourge's plague of undeath and had to be tortured or eradicated. Along with, who had been given the rank of Scarlet Commander, Whitemane oversaw operations in the. However, while Mograine commanded the military forces in the area, the fearsome Whitemane, who had the ability to resurrect her comrades after death, was the true master of the Monastery.

Alliance and Horde ordered Sally's death, but this was not the end as the High Inquisitor returned years later. According to, "the problem with the Scarlet Crusade is that they keep coming back, even after death. Behind those resurrections is High Inquisitor Whitemane. With her death, so goes the Crusade." To give Whitemane a final rest, Alliance and Horde adventurers retrieved two anointed blades known as and the. They then confronted and slew Whitemane. The adventurers plunged the blades into Whitemane's corpse, seemingly putting a final end to the Scarlet Crusade's tyranny.

Ironically, Sally Whitemane was later raised as an undead by and the Deathlord to serve as the third member of the new. While death rid her of her madness, her strong spirit remained.

Gameplay
Whitemane is an aggressive Ranged Healer, that bolsters healing to her allies by dealing with her enemies.

Strength

 * Flexible Healing Style
 * Debuffs and Disruption

Weaknesses

 * Costly Burst Healing
 * No Escape

Abilities

 * See Data Page for a table of scaled values at key levels.

Development
Whitemane was considered for Heroes of the Storm because she is a iconic character from World of Warcraft. Scarlet Monastery was a staple of the leveling experience for many years, with Whitemane and her fancy hat as the ultimate boss. To this day, the developers see cosplayers coming to BlizzCon in Whitemane costumes.

She also gave the developers the opportunity to bring another "dark" Support to the game. They felt this worked really well with Stukov, and they wanted to explore that space more. Where someone like Uther uses the Light in a warm and comforting way and embraces themes like salvation and redemption, Whitemane's version of wielding the Light is twisted and just a bit uncomfortable. She has themes like punishment, zealotry, fanaticism—a priest she may be, but a nice person she is not.

In terms of spec inspiration, the developers discussed ideas for how she could lean more toward Shadow or Holy Priest as the primary inspiration, but they ultimately leaned toward a more Discipline-inspired kit as the best fit for her character. They knew early on that we wanted to explore her design from the perspective of, "What does a priest kit look like through the lens of the Scarlet Crusade?" They’re a group of fanatics who show no mercy and stop at nothing to accomplish their goal, and they saw an opportunity to have her abilities reflect that while still feeling familiar due to their basis in WoW’s priest class.

Whitemane had an ability called Mass Resurrection in her World of Warcraft appearance, where she would summon Scarlet Monastary warriors to aide her. Players initially start the encounter by attacking Commander Durand, and once he dies, she chants out the famous lines, "Arise, my champion!" and ressurects the warrior.

Resurrecting dead allies was off the table pretty much immediately, because the gameplay is fraught with challenges in a MOBA context, and the developers were still trying to make Auriel's Resurrect competitive. Just for fun they did try a variation on Mass resurrection just to see what would happen, but as expected it made her want to stay out of fights to be an out of character rez bot. She got lots of nostalgia, but was not very engaging to play.

They tried out a heroic ability where Whitemane could designate an ally as a "champion" to give them bonuses, then channel to resurrect them if they died, placing the ability on cooldown. Sort of a hybrid between Auriel's trait and Kharazims Divine Palm. Having a restriction on the resurrect made it even more situational than normal, and the extra passive bonus didn't feel impactful enough to make up for that. Another thing they tried was a level 20 talent that allowed Whitemane to resurrect the "spirits" of fallen allies with timed life and bonus stats, similar to an Abathur clone. This was cool from a flavor perspective, but even at this level of power the outcome was wildly inconsistent. The benefit relied on allies dying, and more specifically dying before Whitemane, in order for her to get any real value out of it. It ended up being something you'd pick at 20 and be left feeling like it hadn’t actually done anything for you most of the time.

The developers did play with alternative variations where she could "resurrect" (summon) a Scarlet Crusader "pet", but it pretty much felt like a rehash of Nazeebos Gargantuan and felt very out of place in her kit.

Their alternative approach to hitting that fantasy came with Scarlet Aegis - it's still a mass inspire for your allies and great for turning a fight around. It just doesn't have the extra complication of requiring them to die first.

Trivia

 * Whitemane made her debut in  (November 2004).
 * Her book debut was four years later, in (December 2008).
 * Whitemane is voiced by Kath Souice in World of Warcraft; by singer-songwriter Grey DeLisle in  (September 2012); and by Erica Lindbeck in Heroes of the Storm.
 * Whitemane was first teased on Twitter: The first tweet showed a very ornate gold-handled door. The second image was much clearer and showed the altar that Whitemane stands in front of before you fight her in World of Warcraft. In the third and final teaser tweet, Whitemane herself was shown seated on her throne with a fearsome scowl.
 * Whitemane is the second priest hero in the game, the first being Tyrande Whisperwind and the third being the young king Anduin Llane Wrynn.
 * She is also the first hero to represent the priest class, the second being Anduin.
 * Some of Whitemane's abilities mechanically resemble Discipline priest spells: Zeal resembles, Desperate Plea resembles , and Inquisition resembles.
 * Purge the Wicked shares its name with, though its effect is different.
 * The Twilight Whitemane skin resembles a priest of any rank in the.
 * The Lordaeron Whitemane skin resembles a priest of the.
 * The Warpspace Whitemane skin appears to reference Lady Ragyo from the anime Kill la Kill (October 2014).
 * Whitemane's dance animation uses choreography from Britney Spears' "I'm A Slave 4 U."