Yup. One can basically just disregard all of it, or at least consider it to be from an unreliable narrator. Wack.
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Is this true? Are most human mages rivaling elven or Draenei mages? I think that’s more an exception than a rule, to be honest.
I don’t think there are enough examples to make this claim.
To answer the thread question though, there isn’t really a universal answer to which magic cancels out which. It all depends on the plot, the characters involved etc. However, we do see that shadowmagic is quite useful to conceal magic and/or things, like we see in the Warcampaign with Umbric hiding Jaina’s portal with void magic.
I think that since most notable mages in lore are humans (helped by Dalaran’s human-centric population) it definitely comes across that way - though the nightborne are helping to balance the scales of big names between Elisande, Thalyssra, and Oculeth. Yeah you’ve got Kael and Azshara for sure, but none are ever quite as omni-present as Khadgar or Jaina (unfortunately, in the latter case). Medivh and Aegwynn are exceptions since neither ended up as normal humans but they’re still human.
Draenei mages basically don’t exist. Their arcane mastery lore isn’t reflected at all in their characters. The only named draenei mage I know of that isn’t a class trainer or a garrison follower is Y’mera, who’s not even a basic draenei, she’s a Lightforged (and her dialogue notes that “few among” them practice arcane magic anymore).
While they might have had an arcane culture at one point, the lack of any prominent mages these days says it’s fallen out of favour with the draenei in favour of priests/paladins, which isn’t surprising. If you wanna have your draenei mage be really cool and powerful then sure, but there’s no draenei culture around arcane magic, not anymore. It’s chandeliers top to bottom. Well, that and the broken shaman that the ‘pure’ draenei are racist against.
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I think instead there’s not really any examples to counter this claim.
There’s not really any indication that elves are able to reach mega-higher skill levels. End of the day, no matter how many years you have, a brain can only know so many things.
Being a thousand year old elf mage doesn’t mean you’ll wipe the floor with a human mage by any metric.
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I definitely won’t argue with that. But they are still relatively small in number. At least when it comes to named, important npcs. But I never got the idea that the general human mage npcs in Dalaran or beyond are really that impressive.
I wish there were more prominent Draenei characters. Though I think WoD at least offered a decent look at how arcane was still fairly ingrained in their culture.
While true, I think that, taking into account how elves came to be, magic seems to be something way more intimate to them than most other races.
You could point at the origin of Human’s, and it probably helps, but I don’t think Vrykul were ever world’s greatest spellcasters.
Yeah, I agree.
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there’s an epidemic of stupid people playing smart characters and it’s very upsetting
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Are you talking about that time when the elves got all their magical advancement by copying troll tribes?
Because that’s kinda a thing that happened
Poor Zanza 
Never said that. All forces have potential to be powerful, it’s more like the way how Arcane is presented sometimes as most versatile and how mages can pretty much do anything they want with it, especially against more ordinary types.
Definitely they can if they are skilled, like I said, a seasoned mage - doesn’t even have to be 10k+ years old highborne or draenei! The point was, when an apprentice or young char decides to track down a skilled shadow user without asking if it’s okay to go about it like that, instead of let’s say discussing if there’s an alternative without having to argue OOCly whether a rogue can protect themselves against it or not lore-wise. Unless both agree to roll.
Ideally everyone would compromise. But when you go out there and actually RP, interact with people, how often do you meet that ideal of all meeting in the middle? Or if someone bent their char for the other person let’s say once, twice, a bit more, but the other person wouldn’t allow anything done to their char, would you actually feel like both parties were willing to compromise?
Obviously, not all mages… not even all players, that can happen regardless of class. My original question was mostly answered already, but I’m always open to hear more views on using magic in RP and boundaries of it.
I’m more referring to elves coming into existence through a well of pure magic, and all major subspecies (kaldorei, shal’dorei, high elves and blood elves) being sustained by wells of magic.
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Do you have examples where the average highborne outperforms an elder wizard, or something like that? Usually most human mages are perfectly capable of standing their own ground against their opponents.
They learn the arcane very quickly, to the point they wiped entire amani armies with arcane magic alongside the elves after a few years of training.
As others have said, we do: human mages have quite the popular depiction in lore, having their paragons above the likes of most elven mages,
I never got the idea that most generic highborne/draenei NPCs are either, tbh.
Eh, it’s a bit of a random point, especially considering how ogres learned and perfected the arcane due to their titan heritage.
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This is unironically the reason why I am afraid to RP anyone who’s meant to be turbo smart. What if I am an idiot without realizing it!?
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Sadly I don’t. To my knowledge, we haven’t seen an instance where the two were pitted against each other.
But again I don’t know where most comes from. There aren’t too many instances were average mage x takes on average mage y that I can recall right now.
Yeah, and they’re paragons. Even better, they are also main characters.
Was there a lot of competition on Draenor, though?
But only important lore characters so. And even then, Jaina, in her most recent depiction, used mostly frost, with a few arcane spells mixed it.
But the spotlight on the main characters is, most of the time, a way to understand wider dynamics. Not only they represent a token example for their race but we have informations like Rhonin believing the highborne overestimate their magical talent (it’s still his opinion but it makes sense according to what we know).
The issue isn’t the amount of time it takes for characters to learn magic, it’s more a general issue with people disregarding specializations/talents and pretending that class A can at the same time use the palettes of all their specializations.
This is of course less of an issue for a warrior (sure thing, it’s fair to be able to use a shield and switch to two-handed at will). And classes where the difference is the biggest it is handled appropriately (you don’t see holy/shadow mixed for priests; they have a talent for that where both are weaker).
Issue arises where the lines are blurred and people have the ability to blur it further and pretend they are three specs in one. Ironically, it isn’t mages where I see this done the most - it’s paladins. Too many time do I see paladins in RP wield the full spectrum of protection & retribution - then switch to a convenient healer at the end of the fight. Mages come next.
That is to say, on the topic at hand - void can and can’t counter arcane spell, it is wholly situational. They are not “opposites”, neither are they similar cosmic powers. A shadow used should be able to penetrate into a mage’s mind as much as anybody else’s, and they should be able to silence a mage similarly. Same, a mage should be able to dispel/counterspell shadow magic as well, and protect themselves with a strong-enough arcane barrier.
I like to believe that all dispells and counterspells work based on mana, and not the cosmic force they manifest. This is how I explain the cross-capability of all dispell classes able to dispell the other. That is, imagine drawing your mana and condensing it into a shadow bolt - when a mage counters this spell, they don’t really work against shadow, but simply drain the mana powering the spell.
The greater endemic of people plucking a “lady” or “lord” ahead of their whatever-race character’s name and acting like peasants, high-school children or uneducated oafs.
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This was unironically true at least in some time during Medieval era. It wasn´t seen as manly and proper for good, strong warrior noble to be some bookish wimp, so they refused to learn how to read (although in this case, it might have meant reading Latin, which was official language, rather than refusing to remember how letters looked).
While Stormwind nobility is in no way based on Medieval nobles, noble that behaves like a brute isn´t some impossible thing. They are people after all.
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Seems like someone watched one too many Hollywood movies.
And there goes my drink on the computer screen.
Quote me some from history friend. For every brute/weirdo you’ll find two dozen shrewd politicians who were diplomatically inclined, well-mannered and well-read.
Some human nobles in WoW do not incorporate the gracious noble trope (just think of Blackmoore or Falamar in the mage comic). On the other hand these guys are written off to be unpleasant, so there’s that to consider if you create such a character.
so you’re agreeing with him that there are indeed brutes/weirdoes, just more that aren’t that.
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Shadow magic in general is very powerful against most forms of magic because many of the spells affect the -mind- of the individual. Think about it.
Mind flay.
Mind blast.
Mind sear.
Mind control.
And using arcane magic is, as we know from the books, like mathematics in a sense that it requires precision, quantities and a lot of thought put into it. This is not to say that other magic forms (e.g. holy light, shaman elements) don’t take concentration either, but arcane draws from order and logic. The point is that shadow spells have a knack of affecting the mind of the individual, which is directly what other casters use to draw and use their spells with. So it is not a big surprise that you might think that void “counters” other forms of magic (it doesn’t though, but more on that later).
Priests also in general have a lot of counters to magic users- Namely dispel and mass dispel, which is the only dispel powerful enough to remove even divine shield. Further, they can outright silence other spellcasters briefly, and as of Shadowlands priests can completely distort the reality of their enemies with Mindgames (causes your enemy’s attacks to hurt their target and heals on their targets to damage them) or outright steal thoughts (spells) from their minds.
Now that essay being said does that mean that shadow magic is somehow a counter to arcane magic? No. You can hinder and make a casters life difficult, but it doesn’t “counter” it, like something such as the ogres in high maul can do.
Yeah human mages unironically are the true bwlls of the mage circle, and elven mages even outright admit it. It is because of the…
Drum roll.
Human potential.
Thats simple. Just be oblivious AF about it. Like me, the unofficial shadowgoku dubbed by the entire PCU (true).
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