So I know the Elements grant Shamans their powers through various forms of prayer. But how do the Elements determine who gets what of say, an evil-aligned Shaman goes up against a good-aligned shaman; wouldn’t the Elements take away the powers of the evil one? How do they determine who gets what powers?
Like how would Shamans (us) fight the Primalists in DF if the Primalists are Shamans too, essentially?
The elements grant power through standard blessings, agreed contracts and benefits, bindings, this for that situations and through being shackled and forced. Not to include many other forms as well.
The elements care less on a shaman’s alignment and more on what they the elements get out of it in return.
Shamans don’t just deal with the elements as an abstract force, they make pacts with specific elementals for power. (There used to be quests as you leveled a shaman to get each of your elemental totems.) We have our elementals backing us up; the Primalists have their own.
Well, the Elementals do not have a single unified consciousness. Elements are as different as the humanoids that live on Azeroth and as such their needs and wants are also different. Shaman is nothing more than a clan’s representative to the elementals, and as to how much power the shaman gets always depends on what the Elements need, as long as what the shaman asks is reasonable. Maybe the Elementals don’t want deforestation in Ashenvale, in return Elements will redirect snowmelt around the shaman’s camp. You know why I think Goblins make the best shamans? Because Goblins are masters of making deals, and everyone needs something, even Elementals.
It depends what they want to use the power for. Two shamans each saying to the elements, “Yo, I gotta fight this dude. You got my back?” is very different to “Yo, I wanna wipe out this entire town with a flood. You down?” They probably have both their backs because they’re both shamans, who praise and revere the elements.
The whole point of the dark shaman in Garrosh’s true horde was that they wanted to use the elements for ill purposes against the will of the elemental spirits. So they twisted and broke the elemental spirits and forced them to obey. There was no friendly arrangement there.
In fact above all else, there are a lot of elemental spirits. They aren’t all necessarily of one mind. One might grant their blessing where another would not.
So the Elemental forces aren’t just one big thing like The Light, and the Shamans gain power from individual elementals rather than the forces themselves?
Pretty much. I don’t think there’s like a specific elemental spirit per shaman. More just that they can put out a general call to the spirits for their assistance. There are a lot of elemental beings of varying levels of power. They have societal hierarchies and everything. Like when Ragnaros the firelord was killed, another fire elemental became the top dog.
First, define “evil”. You would (hopefully) consider burning an orphanage down to be evil, to the element of fire that’s just what it does, burn things. The elements have a completely different idea of right and wrong.
Secondly, it is possible for shaman to force obedience from the elements. Guess which side does this.