Guild Wars 2

Professions in GW2 are restricted to one armor class for no reason other than game balance, which is stupid and limits roleplaying, etc.

That said, is there any reason the scholar classes can’t wear armor? Can elementalists not train to be greatsword-wielding, armor-clad battlemages because the devs didn’t want to bother implementing the option, or is it because armor limits spellcasting somehow?

In a number of settings, spellcasters (those that cast spells without help from a god or something, anyway) are punished for wearing armor by making it harder to cast spells, the reasoning being that armor is heavy and restricts movement, making it difficult/impossible to meet the somatic requirements for spellcasting. Even so, these penalties can usually be mitigated/negated through training.

So, let’s think about this:

Q: Does armor create some kind of anti-magic field that prevents spellcasting?
A: No, otherwise just about any non-elemental spells would be useless, as armor would negate them. Also, guardians don’t have trouble with armor.

Q: Assuming spells have somatic components, does armor restrict movement too much to allow effective spellcasting?
A: Guardians aren’t divine spellcasters or anything, so even if it is an issue, it can apparently be overcome with training.

Q: Are the scholar classes restricted to light armor because wizards traditionally wear robes and stuff and the devs didn’t feel like providing more options?
A: Prolly.

I’d love it if someone could show me that there is a reason for scholar classes being restricted to light armor in the lore, but I don’t see one.

I believe it HAS been mentioned in one of the old interviews that guardian magic is generally simpler to execute and thus more compatible with soldier-style combat than the magic of the scholar professions. So while there isn’t an explicit divine/arcane split, guardian magic being usable in heavy armour does not necessarily mean that the magic of other schools are.

I don’t recall the mentioning drax said, but it may be that I didn’t see that interview. Though his statement about just because guardians can use magic through heavy armor doesn’t mean others can too.

That said, I do not believe there is any lore reason why casters cannot wear armor. We know that armor classes is fully mechanical as in Edge of Destiny, Logan is wearing leather armor (which would count as medium, not heavy). The same can likely go for weapons, though in lore (at least with recent magical usage in Sea of Sorrows) they are used as focii for spellcasters (and there is a one-time-mentioned statement that magic cannot be used without some form of focus – so supposedly the mechanical usage of utility skills etc. without a weapon equipped is not lore-wise possible).

It should be noted that in Sea of Sorrows, the elementalist (who’s name I cannot recall atm) did wear robes embroidered with magical runes to strengthen his magic. It’d be possible but harder to do the same to metal armor, so this may hold some baring on the situation (plus it’s possible that it must be on cloth for some reason).

Should also be mentioned that the same field of magic – at least same general field of magic – of the elementalists and mesmers can be used with leather armor. Rangers and elementalists as well as thieves and mesmers appear to use the same direction of magic – the former pair being Destruction (by the Bloodstones’ standards – elemental by thematic standards), and the latter pair being Denial (by the Bloodstones’ standards, again – deception, reality altering, and general mind screws by thematic standards). The adventurer professions in these cases use magic as supplementary though (thieves more so) and utilize tools primarily.

Logan was, essentially, “slumming it”, however – it’s a darn sight easier to trade down than up. When there are no mechanical advantages to doing so, however, it’s reasonable for ArenaNet to feel that there’s no benefit to offering warriors and guardians the ability to wear leather armour, even if there’s nothing to stop them from doing so except that for most warriors and guardians, metal armour is simply better.

I’d missed or forgotten the line about the rune-inscribed robes in SoS, but that would certainly be something else to put into the pile of possibilities.

On the ranger and thief – as you say, they use their magic at more of a supplemental level than as their primary armament. It’s probably reasonable to guess, then, that their magic is on a simple enough level, compared to full elementalists and mesmers, that they can get away with compromising on magic a little in exchange for protection.

Going back a bit, it is worth noting that in GW1 there were distinct advantages to spellcasters wearing lighter armour – the lighter armour of spellcasting classes was linked to their greater energy regeneration and capacity, such that most typical builds probably would prefer to keep cloth armour even if heavy armour was available. I think there was some talk early in GW2’s development about having all armour types available to all, but with penalties associated with heavy armour. The decision seems to have been one of putting all that “under the hood” – there are lore reasons for the armour preferences, but instead of being shown those reasons and having the opportunity to make our own call, the assumption has just been made that each profession chooses the armour set generally accepted as optimal for them. If I remember rightly, this decision was made at least partially to keep players reasonably recognisable by their armour.

There may be advantages to mages wearing light armor, but there are NPC’s that don’t follow those restrictions, so lore-wise I’d say they don’t exist. Ash Legion necros, for instance, wear medium armor, and Bria, also a necro, wore heavy armor in life.

I think the restrictons really are just down to the class archtype. e.g.: scholars won’t likely have trained to use heavy armor. So while we see that guardians (who really are just mages who use heavy armor) can use it, they are not just scholars, they are scholarly soldiers. So the class types really just serve to define general habits of the specific classes and there isn’t really magic rules that prevent them from using specific armor types.

Who would wear light armor outside of RP if they put it in? I see where you are coming from but there are no mechanics in the game to make someone want to wear light armor over heavy besides looks. If they were to do this they would have to add a LOT to the armor system. It would have to become like skyrim where robes often give you magic boosts etc. Which they COULD do, but I don’t see them doing that when they don’t seem to want to ever fix anything related to armor.
It would be a big change.

Aaron Ansari.1604:

There may be advantages to mages wearing light armor, but there are NPC’s that don’t follow those restrictions, so lore-wise I’d say they don’t exist. Ash Legion necros, for instance, wear medium armor, and Bria, also a necro, wore heavy armor in life.

That’s just saying that the restrictions aren’t hard limits, though, not that there aren’t drawbacks to wearing nontraditional armour – since they’re NPCs, we can’t see how their unusual choices have affected them.

I guess it’s mostly a cultural thing with a few random practical reasons here and there (such as the possibility of enchanting light armor, magic shields compensating for lack of armor and so on). The in-game restrictions would represent the most common cultural representation of each class.
What I mean by that is you could say “scholar” classes mostly live in safe cities for their studies and thus don’t need armor. “adventurer” classes need a bit of armor for various reasons (rangers live in the wild, thieves live among gangs in the streets and engineers handle dangerous materials) but have no use for the burden of a heavy armor (especially if they travel a lot). And then “soldier” classes are commonly associated with the military and thus wear heavy armor for battle.

But of course if we were to be realistic, no one would wear heavy armor outside of big battles (and they would need a squire to put it on), plate isn’t really appropriate for travels. Every class would wear light armor as town clothes, medium armor for travels and heavy armor (more or less heavy depending on your combat style) for when you’re going into a large battle. But the game doesn’t work like that, you don’t plan a large battle with an opposing kingdom where you bring your armoured knights, you just travel the world and hop in whatever fight you come across.

So, what you see in-game is just based on archetypes. It’s up to you to fill in the blanks while roleplaying.

Well, it should also be noted than a level 80 robe armor offers better protection than a level 1 metal armor.

I always trying to explain this by saying that what players wear at max level is more similar to an exoskeleton than to a suit of armor. Knowing this, armors might become complex structures that require knowledge to control. So only warriors and guardians can move into heavy armor.

It might be like the heavier the armor, the more you have to rely to the magic and the enhancement coming from it, as if it was a machine. And that also might explain why most of our stats come from gear.

And why asura warriors are as strong as norns: armors are made in a way than your original strenght is insignificant.

Chaosky.5276:

Professions in GW2 are restricted to one armor class for no reason other than game balance, which is stupid and limits roleplaying, etc.

Game balance is stupid and secondary to your roleplaying fantasies. Right.

Chaosky.5276:

Professions in GW2 are restricted to one armor class for no reason other than game balance, which is stupid and limits roleplaying, etc.

Can elementalists not train to be greatsword-wielding, armor-clad battlemages because the devs didn’t want to bother implementing the option...

Dat entitlement. If you like the lore so much, let’s start at the part where when your character dies, it stays dead.

Guys, what happened is that I’d grown really upset with the state and direction of the game to the point that I wasn’t willing to put up with the little things, and I wanted to know why I couldn’t wear heavy armor. I’d always figured it was a somatic thing, but I couldn’t actually find a reason, so I asked/vented here.

See, I like the setting enough that I’d like to keep playing and hope for a better future, but if my character concept doesn’t really work it’s just not worth it for me.

I got my answer, I’m gone, let the thread die unless you have information to add.

Chaosky, I agree with you in some sense. Back in the day (GW1) my necro had some actual metal armor that didn’t look half bad on him. I wish there was more variety within the armor sets, or if there was just the ability to wear whatever look you wanted, but they haven’t ever allowed this. I do not know why honestly. They do not have issues with stuff players call immersion breaking.

A potential fix: let any armor be equipped in town clothes slots, to only be used visually and under the same rules as town clothes (only out of combat).

…And I’m back because I’m too darn attached to this game, I’ll justify it by going with the “guardian magic is easier to use” thing.

I’m just going to slip out the back door before you start laughing.

From a RP/Lore perspective there is no reason why there’d be any restrictions. Any race could put some kind of metal/leather/cloth armor or pick up any weapon and whack someone with it. They probably would be less effective, since metal armor is too heavy for some and might restrict movements necessary for casting spells, but simply using them shouldn’t be a problem.
From the perspective of a video game developer however, this change would only be of use for a tiny % of the playerbase and would in turn take too much effort, change other aspects of the game negatively…
This is why small gripes like Why does the LS event work towards the Heart Quests? Why are bandits not fighting krait? are on the very bottom of Anet’s priority list.

zelrok.3546:

A potential fix: let any armor be equipped in town clothes slots, to only be used visually and under the same rules as town clothes (only out of combat).

Strongly agree. Or, at least let us use transmutation stones to give town clothing items the appearance of normal armor items. Light and medium armor sets have a lot of options for sensible-looking casual outfits. Granted: Some people will use this system to make their characters look worse, but I strongly doubt that Guild Wars 2 characters in aggregate could possibly look any worse than they already do.

Then ill ask why is hp backed on occupation and not race. Makes no sence that an Asura and Norn have same hp then. Really who do you expect to win in a bar fight while we are trying to make things more realistic. While all races where sending armies to fight Abbadon the norn where like ya 4 should be enough. 1 norn fought jormag in a one on one fight and punched out his tooth<-so want this fotm more then any other. Norn are so underpowered in the game the lore suggests they are should the game be completely unbalanced. Maybe spell caster training doesn’t give them mussels to move in heavy armor read books not train mussels is enough of reason to not need the change you suggest. Considering mobs do percent damage I think armor in the game is less then useless.

If you really want more toughness you can run a toughness build

There are a lot of points like that Fafnir. Although I would like to point out that according to some norn, at points in time there were thousands of Norn fighting Jormag simultaneously and he took them all out with a single swipe. So we aren’t looking at the norm when looking at Aesgir, we are looking at an exceptional Norn. Another instance like this found would be Queen Jennah. She was able to create a massive mesmer fabrication which convinced an army of branded to leave. She immobilized her army, made them appear as branded, and then created a huge projection of an Elder Dragon which was believable enough to convince the branded to leave the city and follow after it. How many mesmers in game can produce this kind of illusion? Does this mean mesmers were brought low in power in order to “balance” the game? The answer is, Of Course! The game needs to be fair to everyone, otherwise a warrior charging an elementalist will be immolated before reaching them, or a norn could trounce an asura just by staring at them.

I feel that the armor weight restrictions and the cloth/leather/plate design limitations of armor are just left over elements that directly relate to the trinity. Had Anet chosen to fully remove the trinity from GW2, as they seem to believe they have, then these other elements of RPGs would also need to go as they only exist because of the trinity. These restrictions to armor types able to be worn by different classes, and the limitations on creative designs of armors, no longer apply or belong in a non-trinity mmorpg.

There’s also GW1. Although GW1 professions were never explicitely stated to have certain types of armor, the armor stats on the equipment, the materials used to craft them and their visual style was pretty much a light-medium-heavy classification.
They couldn’t keep their approach of having armor styles linked to professions in GW2 because of races, so they limited it to armor class.

But yeah, in the end GW1 was also borrowing some of these trinity-based RPGs archetypes.

The first solution that came to my mindis transmute stone and some design. Since you can transmute the look and stat the system has to be just expanded. The problem can be that the other armors are designed for the classes that are using the armor now, that’s where design comes in.

Another solution would be the costume system of GW1. Needs a little expansion though to wear actual armor over an armor or just put a skin into costume slot so you could keep the current armor stat but you’d have the look of the costume slots.

Lorewise it’s good. If I remember well, Logan wore leather armor(not sure) before joining the seraph and used a hammer which is a warrior(or heavy class weapon now) weapon. But a special NPC like him can do anything so these are just suggestions.

Magic classes protect themselves using Magic and therefore have little need to carry around heavy, often uncomfortable and cumbersome suits of armour.