Something I noticed from all the Shaman backstories is that it’s always the spirits of the wind that whisper to Shamans setting them on their path to understanding the elements.
Some of the classic shaman quest seem to suggest Wind is rather powerful and wise, and is always around you unlike the other elements. In every breath you breath, akin to the force from Starwars.
It’s not like one is immersed in Earth ever and Water is only a regular spot inhabited by Fish-People while Fire needs Air to fuel it.
Air is everywhere there are Land-dwellers and is essential to life. Earth is literally the stepping stones they walk on or under they don’t need to breath it to survive.
It’s probably a thematic flair in that the wind speaks to new shamans first and via actual whispers because air is the medium by which sound carries to our ears. It takes additional training and discipline for them to start recognizing and understanding the sort of communion that allows them to hear and speak with all four spirits directly from within their souls.
Yes. But only because we routinely decide to confront bosses on platforms above bottomless pits instead of literally anywhere else.
Yes, but only when it’s broken. 
But they still lost when the Fire Nation attacked.
To be fair that was mostly due to their pacifism. Gyatsu deciding to abandon it at the cost of his life took out an entire room of them by asphyxiating them and himself and preventing them from firebending in a vacuum.
Air just tends to get paired with calmer personalities in fiction. And aside from the elements cracking it with the user you could theoretically encase somebody’s head in water or pull the air out of their lungs in the same way.
Interesting that that question of Gyatsu’s death would not be answered until a sequel series.
Less “most powerful” and more “most talkative.”
Depending on which foods you eat, wind can be VERY powerful.
We have a whole group of people that heard the fire elementals… probably not good hearing them when making decisions.
I was replaying Uldum recently and some of the verbiage was interesting, Skywall is refered to being holy and they talked about being cast down to Deepholm. Does that mean Skywall is elemental heaven and Deepholm is elemental Hell?
To an air elemental? Sure, it possible. Just like I would think an earth elemental would think the opposite to be true for them.
On one hand I am glad they are moving away from the term ‘holy’ to refer to the Light. I think it’s just a relic from a time where Devs really didn’t understand what they were doing with the cosmology. I want them to expand on Skywall to include the Anemoi. Skywall was the most pathetic of all the elemental planes i hope they elaborate it more in the future because it’s actually beautiful and my favorite dungeon/raid.
The new cosmic chart has Air in the same sphere as Light, in case anyone wants to speculate more on that in relation to the topic.
One of the new 10.2 Emerald Dream books talks about the West wind and how it calls forth doom. I think that’s interesting because the Anemoi west wind is named Zephyrus, (wow has a killable elemental of the same name in Durnhold Keep) some truly wasted potential there.
I’m sure people speculated that was what he did even before LoK confirmed the possibility.
People would do the same in WoW if the elements weren’t much more finnicky about how they were used. Hell I’m pretty sure Malfurion drags a guy to his death under the ground in the Darkshore cinematic.
He most certainly does… Or to be more accurate he has a tree do so with it’s roots.
I actually love the cliche ancient Arabian theme Blizzard did with the Air Elementals.
I like how they used Babylonian names like Siamat. I’m not opposed to air elementals having eastern themes. Al’Akir was an underrated and underused character.
I honestly dont understand how the elements and elementals work.
Like, all elementals are evil and violent, but shamans that commune with said elements are mostly chill dudes.
Is the earth itself an elemental? Or elementals control the earth? Is the air characters breathe all the time elementals or are the elementals specific beings made of air, when a shaman uses wind, is said shaman controlling the wind directly, or the wind js alive and he is asking it for help or is the wind just wind, but a wind elemental can control it and the shaman asks the wind elemental to move the wind?
Youd think fire was given how much attention the element gets from Blizzard.
In their naturally balanced state, the elements are calm and invested in preserving said balance. These are the spirits with which shamans usually interact.
On Azeroth in particular, the elements were thrown out of balance by the planet’s titan World-Soul hogging the available Spirit energy, which is why Primordial Azeroth was dominated by rampaging elementals seeking to conquer one another and why many (though not all) elemental spirits there are still fractious and hostile
When we fight hostile elementals, it’s usually either remnants of those elemental armies or local elemental spirits who’ve been put out of balance and/or driven mad by some form of external disruption.