Monks and Shamans - relationship with Elements

Lore Story Forum
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Everything that is, is alive.

The relationship between classes that uses some form of fire or water or wind attacks has been a matter of debate in a lot of topics, and the relation between monks and shaman is part of that. From people saying monks are a form of specialized shamans, and so on.

And here I am, to share my thoughts, from the cosmology chart, to in game pieces, to tweets and also pure speculation of my part and overthinking the skill list of the classes.

Monks use chi, that is the pandaren word for spirit, that spirit is also what shamans use to summon the power of the elements.
Dave Kosak, i don’t know his relation to wow lore nowadays, but a long time ago, tweeted about that, and also about how Monks can’t talk to the elements, while shaman can.
This seems clear right? Monks use spirit energy to empower themselves, Shaman use spirit energy to summon/talk with the elements. There is also some similarities in that both monks and shamans can summon objects to serve as beacons of power (totem/statues), and channel power through those, monks can also summon effigies of their patron august celestials and Shaman can summon elementals to fight besides them.

But things get weird, as monks have a lot of abilities that seem elemental in nature, or at least they look like it. And the windwalker artifact weapon was clearly an elemental weapon, so that let me to overthink a lot, based upon the lore we have.

So, the easy ones first.
Mistweaving: It looks like water, it is named mist, so water right? Well it is not the case, mistweaving seems like chi manipulation, and there is a NPC in the Peak of Serenity that says that she tried to heal using the light (priest) and water (shaman), but ended up mistweaving instead.
Wind attacks: ring of peace being the major example, can still be explained as chi manipulation.
Now let’s talk about the hard ones.

Fire breathing: There is nothing on the flavor text or visuals that say that fire breathing isn’t literal fire, on the contrary, it behaves like fire on every aspect, being a brewmaster skill, i could say is just lighting up alcohol on fire or something like that, but i honestly think that would be a big stretch, i’m just going to say that monks spit fire.
Storm, Earth and Fire: this one is even weirder, the signature move of Chen stormstout, but being a Windwalker cooldown in game. Chen even says: heed my call! When he uses that technique, so what is the deal?
I have a theory about that.

Reality, is in the center of the cosmology chart, from what i’ve seen, is where the living creatures stay. Thrall during the cataclysm, had his spirit divided into 4 parts that wandered the elemental planes.

So, what if, the living creatures of the World of Warcraft, possess elemental parts in their “fabric” let’s say? If the elements are what makes reality possible, if everything alive is tied to the elements is tied to the elements, could that be possible? With that in mind, fire breathing for brewmasters would be chi manipulation and elemental manipulation, but not of the elemental spirits in the world, but of your own “inner fire”? And maybe Storm, Earth and Fire is a technique that splits you into those 3 forms (the tooltip even says that part) because the characters in wow are made of all those elements, it even makes sense, as each elemental spirit of SEF is weaker than the complete body, and then it makes sense that is a technique that monks have and not shaman.
Thinking about how Shaman are about using their spirit to reach to the elements in the world, they could not reach what is inside of them, and monks are all about controlling their own inner self, their own inner spirit. But Chen still calls out the elementals, maybe is a personal mantra, maybe is for the cool factor, or maybe, SEF is a hybrid technique, something that taps into shamanism.

So, this was all theory, but i think is fair to say, that the core difference between monks and shamans are. Monks are about inner development, controlling their own chi. While shamans use their power to develop a relationship with the elements, summon, befriend and use the elemental powers, but that their teachings overlaps in a lot of ways, and I think both strive to achieve balance and power in their own way.

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I have a lot to say about this topic but it’s midnight here. I’ll post at length tomorrow.

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I was about to sleep when i posted, i actually had more to say. Haha

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The Orcs at the very least are descended from an Elemental Construct. However while the elements do feast off spirit (Azeroth’s Spirit Deficiency is what caused the elements to become such massive jerks) they aren’t the source of all life neccessarilly. On Draenor there was so much Spirit (Do to the fact there wasn’t a world soul) the Elements were basically eternally sleepy, this allowed the Evergrowth to emerge, a massive plant based hivemind that was a nigh unstoppable predator, with only winged beings (Rukmar, Sethe, and Anzu) able to escape it.

Spirit is basically it’s own element, but a weird one, being the element of Life. I beleive that in Alchemy the fifth element was Aether, which could be a rudimentry explination of it. What the Monks do is more use Spirit to augment their abilities, adding elemental properties and increasing their body strength.

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There’s a few things I want to say about this topic and it’s going to be a verbose response, be warned.

I think there is an obvious connection between Monk and the elements, not necessarily between Monk and Shaman. This can appear counterintuitive at first because we typically associate anything to do with the elements as being related to Shaman class, but I don’t believe that’s always the case. At the most basic level I think the Monk class functions quite differently from the Monk found in other games; the Warcraft iteration is a hodgepodge of ancient Pandaren brewing, weaponless combat, mastery over Chi (the fifth element, Spirit), the weaving of spiritual mists, and the invoking of various Wild Gods.

As you noted, many Monk abilities have a glaring elemental theme: Jade Lightning, Jade Wind, Windwalking, Storm, Earth, and Fire, and so on.

Here is where things get interesting. I would argue that each of the Celestials symbolically represents an element: Niuzao would be Earth (his temple is made of stone), Xuen would be Air (his temple is high in the mountains), Chi-Ji would be Water (his temple is on a beach), and Yu’lon (the dragon) represents Fire.

Monks clearly don’t call the elements the way a Shaman does, but at the same time, I can’t deny that there seems to be a subtle connection between the two.

My interpretation (opinion) of the connection is this: Monks have various elemental-themed abilities either because of their reverence, respect, and desire for harmony of the natural world; or because they are being lent the strength of the August Celestials. Or perhaps it’s a bit of both.

I do think it’s interesting how Chen was also after the Fist of Ra-den, and how Ma’ra Grimfang says “the elements will break you,” during the Battle of Dazar’alor. Subtleties all around. These are my thoughts.

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Those are really interesting views.

Ma’gra grimfang is the one in the jadefire masters encounter right?

The horde version is also distinct, as the draenei monk says something along the lines of “beware the dragon of the light”.

Orcs having a reverence to the elements could be a major factor in maghar monks.

About the artifacts, is quite funny, the WW artifact weapon received wind powers from an elemental, but don’t contain an elemental spirit itself, and from what i understood, the fist of ra-den was directly connected to the elemental planes, who knows if Chen could control it if he had won them instead of the shaman player, but Chen being a league on its own is also to be considered.

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Fist of Ra-den has a terrible, disappointing lore background. There are literally so many directions they could have gone in but they chose that SMH.

Edit: Erm, Fist of the Heavens*
<_<

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In the pearl of pandaria comic, chen’s friend say he is attuned to earth, unlike chen, that is attuned to storm, earth and fire. He is able to hear the earth and when he dies he becomes a piece of rock.

Really interesting, still unsure what means in general for monks, but i find that this might bring some insight here.

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