In terms of lore, is void magic the most powerful form of magic?
I would think it beats arcane, and nature magic by a long shot. Probably beats light as well. Does it beat fel magic though?
Fel is pretty strong, but sargeras formed the legion because of the Old God’s and whatnot. So can fel beat void? Or does void just consume everything?
Idk why I even started thinking about this, but it’s been bugging me for 2 days now 
Void is just one of the 6 greater cosmic forces. Light, Life (Nature), Chaos (Fel), Death, Void, and Order (Arcane).
Void magic is nothing.
Quite literally, it’s the concept of negative space. Negative space is everywhere. Depending on how you look at that, that makes void magic hella strong - everything has some negative space/concept of nothing to it. The void, due to that nothingness, makes it a force of consumption and hoarding - But is it still void if it eats and then becomes something?
Fel, by it’s nature, destroys and burns life for fuel. If Void is a compulsive hoarder and gets power from it’s ability to steal and hoard and break apart, then Fel magic causes problems because…well, can’t eat whats been destroyed, right?
It’s dubious if you want to say Void is the strongest thing, since that’s all about perspective, but I imagine it might have problems dealing with Fel magic, since, well, as I explained above. It’d also take issue with Death - because once something dies, it goes to fuel Life, when something dies it becomes repurposed - which is sort of what Void does, but then Void can’t hoard that.
Magic is very strange and metaphorical - it’s probably not a sliding scale of power, just depends on the context of what you’re using it for.
I preferred it when it was just Shadow, before they added the Void stuff.
It rips, it tears, it is boundless, and eternal… Or at least that’s what Dia says in Hellfire Citadel.
I actually have been thinking about this lately, as I was wondering what the most powerful classes are lore-wise.
Is void powerful? Sure.
But shadow priests aren’t. Perhaps because caution is needed, void can only be used in small amounts. If we define powerful as able to make widespread changes in a very short period of time (wiping out cities, resurrecting an army, etc.) No void priest has ever done anything on that scale.
Sure, you can mind control a king or somesuch and make widespread change, but that is both slow and reliant on another person’s power, a king’s authority, in this case. Additionally, it is incredibly dangerous.
So while the void is, in theory, very strong, no one has been able to harness its power in widespread ways just yet, especially compared to other classes.
Meanwhile we have a mage who, using the power of a magic item or no, was about to drown an entire city, but was stopped by a shaman who repelled the giant wave by himself. So… yea.
OP, I just feel the need to point out… if Void magic was more powerful, then the Void would have already consumed everything. It hasn’t.
I think magic is as strong as the source for example if you have a source of light and a source of void that are equal the forces are the same, but if you have a stronger source of light then it would beat the void etc. as mentioned above there are 6 major sources of magic in wow universe and to my knowledge blizz has them equal
Shadow is still a thing. The void is where shadow comes from.
Originally, I thought Shadow only existed because of the Light. (I will attempt to find a Lore citation for that, certain I read it somewhere…)
Yes the void is part of shadows but not synonymous… A good metaphor is think of the power of the sun, the sun is the light… The void is the same as that but in reverse, so like a black hole it consumes light and sucks it in like a vacuum. surely without the balance in nature, if void was more powerful it would consume the light. think of the ying and yang there has to be the balance. As for the threat on Azeroth the void kin are becoming apparent, and which is why Locus Walker has come into the picture to warn of potential void amalgams becoming inharmonious with the balance ( aka L’ura). So it is not a question of what magic is most powerful but rather the magicians strength.
The idea if the type of magic not mattering but the person’s strength being the main focus is just something I think I tell myself while playing my shadow priest so I feel better, lol.
There is a dramatic difference in power between the magic types. If there was not, then this whole “power at a price” that Blizzard absolutely loves to the point of annoyance would not be a thing. Like, why would I ever be a warlock if there was a safer, more effective alternative? Well, I wouldn’t, unless I just wanted to be edgy for some reason.
The only magic that seems to be safe in WoW is shamanism (which requires you stay on good terms with the elements) and Mistweaving, which is of questionable power level, since we have only seen one major use of it: the shrouding of Pandaria. Even druidism has a danger of the dream being corrupted, or using forces beyond mortal control (ex. Worgen curse).
Because no practitioners of void magic have ever done anything terribly powerful, I think for now it is ranked lower in power level. Who knows how that will turn out by the end of BfA, though, with the focus being on void and all.
Mages, on the other hand, are unquestionably far more powerful. Teleporting entire armies, clearing an entire battlefield of blight, etc., and all for the low, low price of risking horrifying addiction every time you use it.
Void magic hasn’t shown any widespread power from a single practitioner (that didn’t go crazy or turn horrible evil) like mages have.
You could consider the Old Gods to be very powerful void magic practitioners, and in terms doing irreparable damage to Azeroth and its population they would definitely win by a landslide.
Yea, that’s a tricky case. They aren’t really “characters” so much as they are the embodiment of the void. It’d be like saying Elune is a character that has shown the power of druidism or lunar magic. That’s sorta true, but also sorta not because they are not mortal, playable or common races, etc. Additionally, we have never seen what would happen if the two went head to head because that would be a boring story for us as players.
I’m actually quite interested in seeing if this gets more detail over the course of this expansion. Azshara might really show us what a void mage can do, and then we would have more data. Does Jaina’s ability to drown an entire city pale in comparison to the naga queens shadow powers (we must ignore her arcane might, if she uses it, for a fair comparison). I hope we get to find out.
Still, the void is responsible for the curse of flesh, it’s responsible for the destruction and devouring of countless world’s. It’s the reason sageras formed the legion, it’s also the reason the old God’s are imprisoned on azeroth.
What have the light, or nature magic done? I’ve never read anything about them changing or destroying world’s. Or altering entire species forever
When I asked if void was the most powerful, I meant in it’s purest form. Like if you put pure light against the void, who wins? I think the void would just swallow everything around it, because it’s nothing. It can never be anything, no matter how much it devours. How do you destroy nothing?
In that context, ignoring what a person could do with it and just as a raw force, that is probably true.