Guild Wars 2

From the most recent living world episode (EP3) we have confirmation that the different magics used by the Elder Dragons balance out one by one, and we’re also presented with the couples: Primordus (Fire) and Jormag (Ice) is pretty self-explanatory; Zhaitan (Death) and Mordremoth (Plant) could be a bit tricky to understand at first, but if we think that Zhaitan kills bodies to spread its influence while Mordremoth generates bodies to spread its influence, it’s easier to see; this would leave Kralkatorrik and Steve (the Deep-Sea Dragon) as the last couple.

When concerning Kralkatorrik, what we know is that it is referred to as the “Elder Crystal Dragon” and that its representative colour is purple (however, it could possibly have something to do with chaos magic); by opposition, we can then try to deduce the behaviour and the type of magic used by the Elder Deep-Sea Dragon.

If we assume their magic to be Crystal (for Kralkatorrik) and Water (for Steve) then the explanation could be that: too many crystals can form in and/or through water (water is often necessary for the formation of crystals), filling it up, while consequently too much water can flood crystals and dissolve them, undo them.

However, if we assume that Kralkatorrik uses chaos magic, viewed as some kind of disorganization, could Steve then use some kind of “order” magic (and water could cover this role, it being the element from which life formed; meaning it was essential to make order), organizing and forming tentacles out of water (“tentacles from water” is one of the only known things about Steve)? Meaning that Kralkatorrik would disorganize things with a form, while, in opposition, Steve would organize things without a form.

A final note on Kralkatorrik: it is often thought that it uses “crystal magic” (or something along those lines), but I doubt it actually is a thing, main reason being Jormag’s ice, which is a crystal in itself. So “crystal” could be the behavioural part of Kralkatorrik’s corruption, one of the ways its corruption gets displayed.

Zhaitan’s magic doesn’t kill. But you wouldn’t listen to me in the other thread about this so I don’t see why you will here.

Mordremoth’s magic also replaces flesh. See this post by Scott McGough. We also see it corrupting plants in Dry Top (vine bridge area, when the mordrem event begins the vine bridges become mordrem-ified before going away). But hey, if you won’t listen to a developer stating sylvari are Mordremoth’s minions I don’t see you listening here either.

Nothing relates Kralkatorrik to chaos. Despite common argument for such. Everything that is “chaotic” about it is no different than the sky magic Zephyrites got from Glint, just hostile.

Something else Konig’s pointed out elsewhere is that ice and fire disrupting each other is a bit weird because both are combined in elementalists. While at first glance it might appear as if the elementalist isn’t using both at once, there are ways to do it: Cleansing Fire, for instance, is instant-cast and can be used in the middle of casting an ice spell if you want, and the Burning Precision trait means that it’s possible to throw ice at someone and have the target be set on fire by the ice.

It’s possible – assuming that it’s Jormag and Primordus that oppose one another in the first place – that the opposition is not fire/ice but related to their other spheres. The two are opposites in another respect: Primordus very rarely corrupts creatures at all and forms his army independent of other creatures, while Jormag is the one dragon that accepts followers that retain their free will. There may be something in there.

Regarding Kralkatorrik and Steve: One possibility is that it’s a ‘heavens versus depths’ thing: Kralkatorrik being the dragon of the sky, Steve been a dragon of the ocean deeps. This outlook has a lot of problems, however.

Another possibility is that Kralkatorrik does have a connection to chaos. Some of the effects associated with Branded have similarities to mesmer effects in the chaos domain: the Noxious Branded Plants create chaos storm-like effects when attacked, for instance. Snaff’s experience in Kralkatorrik’s mind is described in Edge of Destiny as primordial chaos and destruction, which Snaff counters by being the opposite. So it’s possible that Steve does oppose Kralkatorrik by having some form of ‘order’ domain – although in Steve’s case, it’s unlikely to be altruistic.

It’s worth noting that if Taimi is right and she isn’t missing anything, then theoretically every branch of magic available to mortals should be part of one of the twelve domains of the dragons (the reverse is not necessarily true, since the breaking of the Bloodstones may have left some domains still locked up). At the moment, however, we’re not seeing this. Necromancer lines up to Zhaitan, elementalist is smeared across several dragons, mesmer arguably links to Mordremoth and Kralkatorrik… but we haven’t seen any dragon bestowing monk/guardian-like powers to its minions. Putrifiers have guardian-like skills, but these are probably based on skills the Orrians had in life rather than being granted by Zhaitan.

That said, it’s also possible that there is a thirteenth (or additional) domain that the dragons weren’t able to touch – the incorruptible magic of the Forgotten, for instance.

@drax

Schools don’t regress, ele didn’t lose all its recharge/cast modification abilities, they just don’t use the glyphs.

Burning precision is a variance of the glyph of immolation. And cantrips are the glyph of essence etc.

It’s not simultaneous. It’s mechanics. Especially because glyphs could affect the magic of other schools in Gw1.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@drax

It’s not simultaneous. It’s mechanics. Especially because glyphs could affect the magic of other schools in Gw1.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boil (fire+water)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Meteor_Shower (earth+fire)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Soothing_Mist (water+air)
you get the idea

Djahlat.9610:

Daniel Handler.4816:

@drax

It’s not simultaneous. It’s mechanics. Especially because glyphs could affect the magic of other schools in Gw1.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Boil (fire+water)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Meteor_Shower (earth+fire)
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Soothing_Mist (water+air)
you get the idea

I have no idea what you are trying to say. Boil is done underwater. And the other two fit with the Tyrian concept of fire and water. Fire includes lava and meteors, water includes its vapor, liquid, and solid forms. Earth magic is restricted to magnetism/seismology/geology, and air magic is restricted to electricity/wind

You can’t just decide that it is the “Tyrian concept” for lava to be strictly related to fire and not earth. Yes, Boil is done underwater, so what? The caster essentially heats up the water around his foe, which is essentially a spell of Hydromancy quality (just like freezing water), yet it is under Fire magic. You can’t deny that a Meteor Shower is clearly a spell that requires the caster to use both geomancy AND pyromancy.

@draxynnic

The catastrophe would occur if one type is present in quantities considerably different than the other: the icebrood unstable abomination (encountered in “The Bitter Cold” story step) is actually imbued with both plant and death magic but it’s still standing, “unexploded”, meaning the magics are in equilibrium; sudden bursts of one or another would damage the host, breaking the equilibrium. Theoretically then, one being alone could be able to absorb every single aspect of magic if strong and willing enough, as long as they are maintained in equilibrium and as long as the host maintains its physical form uncorrupted by any kind of magic (unlike the Elder Dragons did, who got corrupted physically and are slaves of themselves, meaning they are now dependent to magic).

The explanation to why Braham’s enchanted arrow was able to crack Jormag’s tooth while typical elementalist’s fire magic couldn’t (or wouldn’t) is not a case of lore inconsistency: the scroll infused Eir’s bow with pure fire magic; it’s like as if elementalists use fire magic “merely” to generate and control actual physical flames, but Eir’s bow is permeated with pure fire magic. After all, the origin of the scroll has to be accounted to the Jotun (supposedly), whom once were a race of powerful spellcasters (and hence had magical knowledge superior to modern scholars).

And regarding the elementalists, I’ll put forward an idea (even though a whole thread could be opened on this): they don’t actually use magical natural elements (as to say fire magic, air magic etc.), but just arcane magic: they “simply” manipulate the natural elemental forces (such as physical water, physical flames etc); they’re after all stated to “channel [by attuning] elemental forces, making fire, air, earth, and water do their bidding”. Also, there’s no mention of magic in the attunements’ description (also early concepts, if I recall correctly, had us stand in actual water pools to use water related spells, and they actually are intended to carry “gems” of their favourite element, which they’d wear). So, they’d use this so called arcane magic to “simply” manipulate, for example, actual physical flames, and control those, unlike the infused Eir’s bow, which uses actual pure fire magic. To further validate this, consider elementals: high concentrations of magic are stated to make them spawn; minds will spawn which, depending on the environment, will make use of the materials around them to form their physical body: not only we witness fire, air, water and earth elementals, but also lava, tar and even bloodstone ones to name a few (and Anomalies are supposed to be made of pure magic); I doubt there’s tar magic. With this however I’m not implying there’s no such things as the natural fire magic, water magic and/or air magic (but earth magic is suspicious), and elementalists might use those in some extents. But I’m digressing, this part was a whole big parenthesis.

—CONTINUES—

Regarding the double spheres of the Dragons, I doubt every single one can be related to an actual magical aspect; let’s consider the human gods too (and I’m not trying to make any link between them and the Dragons here, if anything they might share the basic natural magical aspects): every single entity has a personal identity, when they absorb high magical powers it will be reflected in their actions: Balthazar is identified with War, an aspect derived by his personality and his personal actions (it’s said that he actually walked in Tyria with the actual head of his father in his hand, implying he could have absorbed the powers from him), things that naturally brought him to choose fire magic; I doubt there’s something like “war magic”. Similarly, the Elder Dragons as we know them came to be from simple entities: each Dragon was originally driven to the magical aspect which best suited their environment and/or their personalities (for example, the DSD was a species of dragon living underwater and Primordus was a species of dragon living near fiery environments); I’m starting to doubt there’s actually “shadow magic” or “mind magic” (Mordremoth is able, after all, to affect the mind of just plant material; just like any other Elder Dragon would do with their respective magical “sphere”).

Guardians, among the properties of monks, share properties with ritualists, who originally used something other than proper magic as we know it, an ancient technique which actually channel spirits from the Mists (probably a power similar to and/or shared with that of the Envoys probably). So, if anything, for now we haven’t witnessed the “healing” aspect of magic (restoration magic) in any dragon yet, and Steve would be a good candidate (and I agree in saying that he isn’t altruistic; “order” does not imply “good” afterall).

Also, regarding the “Divine Fire”, I view it as an agglomeration of all magical aspects of the gods (it appears white afterall), since the human gods are, unlike the Elder Dragons, a united group, they tend to work together as a whole (so the human gods are beings who are in great harmony with magic, and possess great abilities in controlling it). Also, back in GW1, monks had a direct conduit to all the human gods, not just one (divine favor), they made use of what I believe to be their combined magical powers.

Regarding Kralkatorrik and Steve, while the “sky and oceanic-deeps dichotomy” would be indeed nice, it has problems, as you said. Given that you embrace the view of Kralkatorrik using “chaos” and Steve using “order”, what do you think of the idea that Steve could use some kind of restoration and/or healing magic (which is associated to water magic to some extent afterall)?

In addition, I agree on Primordus and Jormag not using Fire and Ice per se, that’s just the names with which we refer to those magical aspects. For example, Jormag seems to make use of air magic to some extent: the natural Spirit related to its magic could be the Spirit of Cold (or something along those lines). Luckily I explained myself clearly.

@Konig Des Todes

It wasn’t my intention to mix threads here, nor was this intended in any way to be a continuation of anything – don’t make this personal, because I wasn’t.

With Zhaitan and Mordremoth I was trying to stress the fact that the former actually needs bodies to spread corruption, it can’t generate neither flesh nor bone, while the latter isn’t contrained by bodies, and can instead inherently (given the magic used) generate bodies (the wolves’ minds for example will migrate to their new plant body, letting Mordremoth able to control them, and we don’t really know if Zhaitan magic plays a role in keeping the wolves “alive” in the process). Even though Mordremoth gets identified as the “Mind Dragon”, it can ultimately only control (corrupt) beings impacted by plant magic (the magic it makes use of), while the various Vines creations are actually animated by Mordremoth itself, making them in a way actual parts of its body (after Mordremoth’s death, those vines also “died”, while minions with their separate but corrupted minds kept going). So, an excess of death magic will annihilate any living thing (imagine a vine surrounded by loads of death magic, it will succumb), but, in opposition, an excess of plant magic will neutralize death (imagine limited death magic being surrounded by unstopplable plant growth: death can’t keep up), and it’s ultimately what happened with the cleansing of Orr. To better understand, let’s oppose fire magic and death magic: fire can be extinguished, but it’s not an organic thing, it can’t be killed; death magic won’t be affected by fire magic either, if anything it will actually help in killing things faster (certain things at least).

Too bad you keep stating your ideas on sylvari on other threads when I made a whole thread just for that. Just to briefly address you here, since you mentioned them, let’s analyze what Scott McGough said: “sylvari are a special case of Elder Dragon minion”, “A Mordrem Guard’s appearance is more due to Mordremoth’s ability to control and shape plant life — sylvari are plants, after all”, “Mordrem Guards [certain sylvari] were influenced by Mordremoth”, “the Pale Tree creates the sylvari [just their physical bodies]”, and as I said in the other thread, sylvari keep spawning even with Mordremoth being dead: it’s clear it wasn’t their actual creator, but they might strongly believe it because their kind of magic is shared. In addition, Mordremoth can’t generate individual species/races (like the infamous seeds), it can just grow plant materials and control plant materials: the Vine Tendrils and Crawlers were actually creations of Mordremoth, and as parts of its actual body (unlike dragon minions) they died with Mordremoth.

Regarding Kralkatorrik I think what you were trying to refer to were actually the lightning crystals, the Aspect of Lightning (the purple one); I don’t know anything about an Aspect of Sky, but sky crystals were used by the zephyrites to store knowledge (similar to asura’s crystals storing data).

@Djahlat and Daniel Handler: Combining elements is also not new to GW2, Elementalists could do the same in the first game. Iron Mist combines earth and air. Ash Blast, earth and fire. Chilling Winds, air and water.

@sock just this once I am going to write the tldr for your three essays.

• the opposite domains only oppose each other when not in equilibrium. With balance one can use all.
• Braham used pure fire magic
• elementalists use arcane magic to manipulate non magical flames.
• not all domains refer to magics
• bubbles will probably use healing magic
• monks combined all God magic to make divine fire
• do you think bubbles uses healing magic drax?
• Konig, death magic needs a body, plant makes a body
• I don’t think sylvari are dragon minions because I don’t understand that champions can make minions with or without an elder dragon. Nor do I understand the transitive property.
• Konig I think you are taking about Glint when you mention kralkatorrik and sky. I haven’t read about kralkatorrik’s non crystal abilities

The strikethough is on points that can be disproven with the wiki. The others are theories that I don’t care to engage. In the future focus on brevity and clarity to speed the process of discussion.

@ Buddha and dja
Please read the wiki before you assume what is what. Your depictions not only don’t match tyria they don’t match our reality.

Look up

• wind chill factor
• the relationship between pressure and temperature
• how hot air forms
• ferromagnetism
• the difference between boiling and evaporation

Heat, moisture, air pressure, and rock structure. No reason to combine those four. And as a result the game tells us lava is only fire magic, moisture is only water magic, lightning is only air magic, silica and magnetism is only earth.

You can throw physics around all you want, we are still talking magic, hence your “evidence” may not apply. Please explain in physical terms how a cold wind prolongs the effect of water hex spells. Why does blasting ash into someones face only blind him if he is on fire at the same time? Why does having iron dust in the air make your air magic recharge faster? This is not plain physics, that is a combination of magic.

And yes that is technically a game mechanic thing and not strictly lore, however we don’t have any lore that says it ain’t so. Ergo we can assume that lore does follow game mechanics here.

Sock.2785:

@Konig Des Todes

It wasn’t my intention to mix threads here, nor was this intended in any way to be a continuation of anything – don’t make this personal, because I wasn’t.

Not going to respond to the rest of your post because you missed the main purpose of my short response in the first place – which is also why I’ve just stopped responding to you in other threads.

Even if I provide explicit evidence, even if that evidence is the developers themselves, you deny it, say it is wrong, and go about your own theories.

You completely took my citing Scott completely wrong, you took that as me citing the source for sylvari being dragon minions? Read my post again, and stop twisting words, and stop denying evidence that disagrees with you. I cited Scott about Mordremoth “only growing” – Scott explicitly states an example of when Mordremoth corrupts the living, rather than growing minions.

I wasn’t mixing threads, but you decided to anyways.

@Daniel Handler
You just provided yourself with a “humorous” tl;dr to “answer” me without providing any actual argumentation nor an in-depth personal view of the ideas I proposed because you ultimately don’t care. Just send me a private message next time or even ignore me, it’ll definitely be better (for everyone).
Also this is a forum, there’s no pressure in reading and/or discussing, there’s not a time limit… If you (generally speaking) don’t want to read or discuss just don’t.

It totally looks like you followed draxynnic into this thread, transfering an ongoing discussion from another thread into this, while simultaneously not providing anything to this actual thread’s topic in any way – but you don’t care, so why should you…

@Konig Des Todes
I often tried to underline that there are unclear statementes made in lore, not described in depth well enough to get a clear definite answer, and hence they are open to interpretation.
Too bad there was a miscommunication (but honestly, it was you to first mention the sylvari in relation to the other thread, not me).

Hopefully someone else will be interested in this actual thread.

There are things in lore that are unclear, but then there are things that are not clear.

Like how Zhaitan does not need to kill to corrupt. We see him corrupt living, multiple times. I’ve pointed this out to you in the past. You deny this, what we see, and say “he kills them then corrupts them” because “they’re called undead” (except they aren’t – they’re called risen and there’s a difference; the “undead” name is a misnomer).

Mordremoth does not solely – or even primarily – “generates” his corruption. Like Primordus, he primarlily – but not solely – corrupt the non-animals (in Primordus’ case, land and fire; in Mordremoth’s case, plants). We see this happen in Dry Top. And we know Mordremoth is capable of corrupting living beings, per the cited commented by Scott McGough.

In the end, we’ve seen cases where, effectively, every Elder Dragon corrupts the same things. But they chose to focus on one thing over another.

There are things that are unclear.

But you treat everything as if it’s unclear. And when the defined, clear things are presented to you, you deny them. You did this in your other threads, you’ve done it in this thread already.

My theory?

It’s either going to be that Primordus’ counter is, infact, Kralktorrik. I’d not guess on the reason (plant being the opposite of death is odd enough – let alone shadow being the opposite of mind), but leaks that are proving all too accurate as time goes pointed to expansion 2 dealing with Primordus and Kralkatorrik, rather than Primordus and Jormag, oddly enough.

Plus, with proximity being mentioned, that would likely mean Kralkatorrik ate the lion’s share of death and shadow magic when Zhaitan died.

Or, what I would prefer: Taimi’s theory is proven false. Because this would counteract HoT’s dues ex machina of “every Elder Dragon has a unique weakness” (opposite of the spectrum isn’t unique) and “Mordremoth’s unique weakness is fighting his mind directly”. The theory would have been devised purely to have us head to the new map, meet up with Braham, and show that Jormag too has gained new minions.

Sock.2785:

@Daniel Handler
You just provided yourself with a “humorous” tl;dr to “answer” me without providing any actual argumentation nor an in-depth personal view of the ideas I proposed because you ultimately don’t care. Just send me a private message next time or even ignore me, it’ll definitely be better (for everyone).
Also this is a forum, there’s no pressure in reading and/or discussing, there’s not a time limit… If you (generally speaking) don’t want to read or discuss just don’t.

It totally looks like you followed draxynnic into this thread, transfering an ongoing discussion from another thread into this, while simultaneously not providing anything to this actual thread’s topic in any way – but you don’t care, so why should you…

I responded to drax’s assertion that fire couldn’t oppose ice by explaining that elementalists don’t actually use both at the same time. Ergo Jormag can oppose Primordius.

Here is what has happened.

When you misinterpret Konig, myself, or others, we paraphrase to clarify. However we have our limits. If you don’t get my first point about Jormag vs Primoridus, or my second I am not going to adopt your writing style and write 15,000 words of redundancies.

Within those 15,000 words there is about 1 paragraph of text to respond to. Konig has tackled half of that paragraph. Here is my response to the other.

• the water dragon may use healing magic, we don’t know. You presume the dragon domains contain all of the spectrum of magic. The amount of things not present in the other 5 dragons would require Bubbles to have way more than 2 domains.
• yes domains don’t all refer to magic, there is obviously no crystal magic.

BuddhaKeks.4857:

You can throw physics around all you want, we are still talking magic, hence your “evidence” may not apply. Please explain in physical terms how a cold wind prolongs the effect of water hex spells. Why does blasting ash into someones face only blind him if he is on fire at the same time? Why does having iron dust in the air make your air magic recharge faster? This is not plain physics, that is a combination of magic.

And yes that is technically a game mechanic thing and not strictly lore, however we don’t have any lore that says it ain’t so. Ergo we can assume that lore does follow game mechanics here.

1. Wind chill increases the rate at which the body loses heat. This makes it easier for the skin to freeze and stay frozen.

2. Ash is a earthen byproduct of fire. Traditionally it stays in the firepit or rises up and away with the smoke. But when something hits the firepit the particles go out and possibly into your eye. Look at the art for
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ash_Blast
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blinding_Ashes

The ash is not being thrown at the persons face. Its being thrown at the ash near their feet. So with earth magic one is making ash, then doubling the effect by striking preexisting ash.

3. All of air magic, from lightning to wind, is heavily influenced by magnetically charged particles in the air. Either due to electrical charges or because of air pressure.

The only thing they break as far as physics goes is conjuring matter. If they wanted to combine stuff then earth could burn like fire, fire could bounce like lightning, lightning could freeze like water, and water could reflect like earth. They don’t. Instead geysers go up and rain comes down.

Boot up Gw1 and make an elementalist/mesmer character, then echo chain Chilling Winds https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Chilling_Winds The game tells us that Chilling Winds is not a water/ air magic hybrid because it doesn’t affect itself. And as you said, mechanics can be lore unless we are told otherwise.

Neither the game designers, nor physics support the idea of combination.

Daniel Handler.4816:

1. Wind chill increases the rate at which the body loses heat. This makes it easier for the skin to freeze and stay frozen.

Neither do all water hexes freeze nor does this work on all freeze spells. It’s exlusively works with hexes. Argument invalid.

Daniel Handler.4816:

2. Ash is a earthen byproduct of fire. Traditionally it stays in the firepit or rises up and away with the smoke. But when something hits the firepit the particles go out and possibly into your eye. Look at the art for
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ash_Blast
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blinding_Ashes

The ash is not being thrown at the persons face. Its being thrown at the ash near their feet. So with earth magic one is making ash, then doubling the effect by striking preexisting ash.

So you are telling me that someone on fire just calmly stands there and waits until the natural updraft of the heat carries the ash into his eyes? I don’t know about you, but I would stop drop and roll when on fire. Of course they don’t do that ingame, but they still move around too much for the heat to matter in that case. If anything the ash get’s into their from moving too much. Or because it is magic. Argument invalid.

Daniel Handler.4816:

3. All of air magic, from lightning to wind, is heavily influenced by magnetically charged particles in the air. Either due to electrical charges or because of air pressure.

Still does not explain the cooldowns. That’s not just normal particles flying around they clearly have an influence on the casters ability to use air magic, beyond being “magnetically charged”. Argument invalid.

Daniel Handler.4816:

The only thing they break as far as physics goes is conjuring matter. If they wanted to combine stuff then earth could burn like fire, fire could bounce like lightning, lightning could freeze like water, and water could reflect like earth. They don’t. Instead geysers go up and rain comes down.

Boot up Gw1 and make an elementalist/mesmer character, then echo chain Chilling Winds https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Chilling_Winds The game tells us that Chilling Winds is not a water/ air magic hybrid because it doesn’t affect itself. And as you said, mechanics can be lore unless we are told otherwise.

Neither the game designers, nor physics support the idea of combination.

I never said the spells have to break physics, I’m saying you can’t explain everything they do just with physics. It’s magic, it can break a few rules. What’s so hard to understand about that? I also never said that those spells are a clear 50/50 split, but they certainly combine aspects of another element into the dominant one. Chilling Wind is clearly air magic, but it’s greatest effect is on water magic. Which means there is a connection that goes beyond simple physics.

With magic being as crazy as it is right now, why are we even considering killing any more dragons?

@Konig Des Todes
Mordremoth’s “mind aspect” is interesting to be focused on: if it actually were a separate magical aspect, I guess Mordremoth would be able to affect every single mind, and not just those of plant beings and/or by “infecting” entities with plant materials. So I doubt “mind” is a magical aspect, one actually flowing through the ley lines, similarly to fire magic, but has more to do with the personality and the original nature of Mordremoth (and by the way, why Mordremoth has a link to the Dream is still an obscure knowledge, we don’t have a definite answer for that yet).

“Death opposed to plant” is tricky to grasp, but we have a clear example of it with the cleansing of Orr, where plant magic overthrew death magic.
Death magic will weaken plant magic and what comes from it if present in bigger quantities and/or used correctly, destroying “life”; in opposition, overgrowth (so a high quantity of plant magic) would “choke” death, if present in higher quantities.
Imagine a Risen (which, by the way, this term clearly stands for undead, as in “risen from death”, and we just use it in reference to the undead whom are under Zhaitan’s influence; so it can’t be used as a synonym of “undead” in this sense) getting surrounded by plant magic: it will get enveloped by overgrowth (plant magic, not just normal plants) and its death magic wouldn’t be enough to weaken the vines, there would be nothing he could do to free itself and it would slowly succumb to “life”.

Regarding the Dragon’s weaknesses:
Zhaitan wasn’t destroyed by exploiting its specific weakness after all, but by using a more general “weakness”: magic was poisoned (unfortunately I don’t think we got more details about this), rendered unabsorbable/unusable by the Dragon, and instead it was turned into a weapon.
So it would be easier to destroy each Dragon while knowing its weakness, but it seems it’s not a strictly necessary step; afterall, Braham’s new-found magic just destroyed the Crystalline Armor of the Ice Beast, whom wasn’t immune to damage, but destroying said “armor” was very helpful in defeating it.
Mordremoth was indeed weakened in its mind, a thing which (seemingly) highly impaired it, but it wasn’t ultimately defeated from that alone: what we did, in the end, was to deprive it of an actual body, a thing that high quantities of death magic would also be able to do if used correctly (which would have been its actual magical weakness).

Definitively, I treat as unclear just what can be treated as such, which is definitely not everything.


@Daniel Handler (link to the comment I’m referring to)
Misinterpratation may come from both sides, not just from one. The writing style is a personal thing, you don’t need to adopt mine in order to respond to me, that’s simply unreasonable. Not liking my “writing style” does not imply that you can’t discuss the points I proposed; in addition, nobody is forcing anyone to do so.
Also… 15,000 words? If anything 15,000 characters (formatting and punctuation included)…

To respond at your points:

Daniel Handler.4816

the water dragon may use healing magic, we don’t know. You presume the dragon domains contain all of the spectrum of magic. The amount of things not present in the other 5 dragons would require Bubbles to have way more than 2 domains.

Of course we ultimately don’t know, I just tried to share ideas in trying to make a clear picture (which wouldn’t necessarily result in the right one). Also, we really just know the “spheres” of two Elder Dragons for now.

Daniel Handler.4816

yes domains don’t all refer to magic, there is obviously no crystal magic.

Crystal isn’t a “domain” of Kralkatorrik as far as I know, it’s just listed as such by us on the wiki. Again, we really just know the spheres of Zhaitan and Mordremoth as of now.

Hopefully I didn’t misinterpret anything.

DarcShriek.5829

With magic being as crazy as it is right now, why are we even considering killing any more dragons?

That’s a good question: I guess that for now they’re regarded as a bigger threat by tyrians (and also by the PC) than the high amounts of magic freely flowing through Tyria that could potentially, if not definitely, generate mahyem (to say the least).

On relation of Kralk with chaos, there are a few details you could take into consideration.

In game a lot of ‘chaos’ locations and characters have the same visual effect tied to them, which manifests as a lightning.

Examples :

Chaos Crystal Cavern jp – http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Chaos_Crystal_Cavern_Jumping_Puzzle_gw2-47.jpg

Chaos Anomaly – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/b/b6/Thaumanova_Anomaly.jpg

After Thaumanova’s explosion you see a lot of misplaced creatures around, and also lightning in the sky – http://66.media.tumblr.com/98df96f9c1e38924a7f900c23ddb2b69/tumblr_of1x9eO61u1vsfzdio1_1280.jpg

Chaos Crystal Charge item you get if you’re doing HOPE collection also has lightning in it’s icon – https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Chaos_Crystal_Charge.png

Strangely enough, Kralkatorrik-affected areas and enemies have the same thing going on:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/6/67/Dragonbrand_04_concept_art.jpg

http://65.media.tumblr.com/703a4372d3bf36c468c1edfc642ca7a4/tumblr_npum8aj6mf1uxm4jho1_1280.jpg

As for DSD, water is closely tied to healing in the game. Perhaps self-healing/invulnerability powers. He was also hinted to be a hydra, which is hard to kill, cause it ‘regrows’ it’s heads back.

I think the relationship between Kralky and DSD is that of Lightning and Water. If you notice, while there’s a chaos storm with Kralky’s stuff, it looks like it sparks similar to lightning. Plus the branded areas always look like they’re storming.

So with all the dragons, we have Zhaitan (Death), Mordremoth (Life), Primordus (Fire), Jormag (Ice), Kralky (Lightning), and DSD (Water), each split into respective pairs and cancelling each other out.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@drax

Schools don’t regress, ele didn’t lose all its recharge/cast modification abilities, they just don’t use the glyphs.

Burning precision is a variance of the glyph of immolation. And cantrips are the glyph of essence etc.

It’s not simultaneous. It’s mechanics. Especially because glyphs could affect the magic of other schools in Gw1.

Broadly speaking: So?

Glyph of Immolation still allowed you to inflict Burning with an ice attack – as, incidentally, Elemental Flame did. Now, I am inclined to think that it’s possible to have effects that combine elements while still only using magic from one element (lava spells, for instance, would involve directing fire magic into the earth to melt it), but it’s pretty clear that applying any of these effects – Burning Precision, Glyph of Immolation, Elemental Flame, or anything similar – involve combining fire and ice (or at least fire and water).

It’s possible that water and cold are separate areas of magic and it’s just that water magic happens to be able to generate cold and that’s what elementalists have been using. So it might be that fire and water are miscible, while fire and cold are not, with ‘cold’ being something that elementalists don’t actually use despite appearances.

@buddha
I asked you to read up so I didn’t have to elaborate on physics. But since you haven’t I will try to be clearer.

Neither do all water hexes freeze nor does this work on all freeze spells. It’s exlusively works with hexes…

Hexes affect the person directly. Ergo the person has solid, liquid, colloidal or gaseous water directly in contact with their body.

If skin temperature is below freezing there is less energy for a phase change. Ice takes longer to melt, and liquids/clouds (fog, mist, etc) take longer to evaporate.

So you are telling me that someone on fire just calmly stands there and waits until the natural updraft…

Stop, drop, and roll does nothing unless you are an elementalist. In which case you use water to melt ice and extinguish flames.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stop,_Drop,_and_Roll

A person taps a cigarette against an ashtray, or a Ritualist drops an urn, because the force to make ash airborne has to come from somewhere. And even then it rarely gets into one’s eyes.

Fire is a natural updraft. That is why smoke rises against the force of gravity. But smoke tends to go straight up.

In both games, and reality, a projectile pushing through a smoky area deliver the force required to get particles into one’s eyes.

Still does not explain the cooldowns.

I can’t give you a physics explanation for cooldowns. The magical explanation is obvious. A mist of spiky crystals will activate fresh air very quickly.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fresh_Air

Chilling Wind is clearly air magic, but it’s greatest effect is on water magic. Which means there is a connection that goes beyond simple physics.

The water cycle is the simplest of physics. Yet somehow you think it’s odd that ten seconds of very cold air affects water more than it affects earth or fire.

Cold air moves across our planet on a daily basis. If phase changes in earth or fire happened in the same range as water then humans would not exist. If you put lava in your freezer does the lava slowly become solid rock or does your freezer melt?

RyuDragnier.9476

I think the relationship between Kralky and DSD is that of Lightning and Water. If you notice, while there’s a chaos storm with Kralky’s stuff, it looks like it sparks similar to lightning. Plus the branded areas always look like they’re storming.

So with all the dragons, we have Zhaitan (Death), Mordremoth (Life), Primordus (Fire), Jormag (Ice), Kralky (Lightning), and DSD (Water), each split into respective pairs and cancelling each other out.

Lightning could be a good candidate indeed, given that one type of the magical crystals used by the zephyrites is made from the Aspect of Lightning (and it also appears purple in colour). But like the other Aspects, we refer to those magics with other names: fire magic would be the Aspect of Sun and air magic would be the Aspect of Wind.

In addition, the opposition isn’t really clear with Lightning and Water (supposing it actually would be water for Steve), or at least I can’t think of any as of now, meaning that one won’t weaken the other in this sense. So, lightning and crystals are just ways in which Kralkatorrik’s magic can and will present itself if present in high quantities.

In addition, primordial concepts seems to be associated to the natural magical aspects that flow through the ley lines:

• Death, used by Zhaitan
• Life, used by Mordremoth (even though technically it’s plant, it clearly has a connection to life)
• Heat, used by Primordus
• Cold, used by Jormag
• Chaos, used by Kralkatorrik
• Order, used by Steve

Displayed in this way, I think the oppositions are quite clear. By using one or a combination of them, the magical capabilites of magic-users are potentially endless when interacting with physical things.

But there are other “things” with magical properties: there’s the ley lines, the Mists and the Mind (which has connections to magic), but these aren’t part of those magical aspects flowing through the ley lines; ley lines themselves are a separate thing, they are the medium for magical aspects (what we refer to as, for example, fire magic) to flow all around the world; the Mists have magical properties but are a thing on their own, similarly to the Mind.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@buddha
I asked you to read up so I didn’t have to elaborate on physics. But since you haven’t I will try to be clearer.

It’s great that you enjoy explaining 5th grade physics so much, but you are neither telling me anything new, nor are you explanation in anyway relevant. Of course the spells are inspired by real world physics, if they weren’t they were both hard to programm and could alienate the players. That however doesn’t mean you can explain everything they do with plain physics, as evident by your complete failure to do so yourself.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Hexes affect the person directly. Ergo the person has solid, liquid, colloidal or gaseous water directly in contact with their body.

If skin temperature is below freezing there is less energy for a phase change. Ice takes longer to melt, and liquids/clouds (fog, mist, etc) take longer to evaporate.

You still have not answered the question, you just rambled on about body temperature. This has nothing to do with what I asked you to explain. Explain why it only works on water hexes. If your physical explanation was the correct one, why doesn’t it work on non-elementalist spells that cause cold damage? Examples Grenth’s Fingers and Icy Veins

A person taps a cigarette against an ashtray, or a Ritualist drops an urn, because the force to make ash airborne has to come from somewhere. And even then it rarely gets into one’s eyes.

Fire is a natural updraft. That is why smoke rises against the force of gravity. But smoke tends to go straight up.

In both games, and reality, a projectile pushing through a smoky area deliver the force required to get particles into one’s eyes.

I seriously don’t know what you are trying to tell me here. I said myself that the heat causes an updraft, but that doesn’t matter in a combat situation. Not at all.

Besides the game already breaks physics in case of fire, since an arrow shot through a line of fire (for example from Engineer’s Napalm) catches on fire. That would not happen in reality, as the arrow is way too fast. Same reason your finger doesn’t get burned when you move it fast enough through a candle’s flame. So that much for physical accurate presentation in the games.

I can’t give you a physics explanation for cooldowns. The magical explanation is obvious. A mist of spiky crystals will activate fresh air very quickly.
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fresh_Air

This is what I am getting at! Stop pretending everything can be explained with physics alone. It can’t. It doesn’t make sense. Not everything does. Not everything has to.

But if you want to prolong this little game: Explain this guy with physics. Ok I give you chemistry and biology too. How does he move around? How does he see? Why is he attacking some creatures, while he leaves others alone? Where did he come from, where did he go? Something something Cotton-Eyed Joe. Sorry got caught up in the lyrics.

The water cycle is the simplest of physics. Yet somehow you think it’s odd that ten seconds of very cold air affects water more than it affects earth or fire.

Cold air moves across our planet on a daily basis. If phase changes in earth or fire happened in the same range as water then humans would not exist. If you put lava in your freezer does the lava slowly become solid rock or does your freezer melt?

For the last time, I don’t think physics in real world is magic. I’m not a 5 year old. I merely point out that your physics explanation repeatedly failed to address any of the points I made. For one very simple reason

@drax the issue is not misicibility, the issue is how they mix.
Unlike air or earth, water cannot burn. Hot water becomes steam, very hot water ionizes into a plasma.
It never combusts. Regardless of whether or not Tyria has atoms, that fact of water still applies. It doesn’t matter whether the contact is aquatic or teresstial, in all versions of the game water never ignites.

Glyphs do not combine magic, they allow simultaneous production of different types. Elementalist/x used this to bypass the bloodstone. Whether or not the products mixed is based on the physics of Tyria.

@buddha I gave the fifth grade explanation. I will now paraphrase it in case I wasn’t being clear.

Water hexes touch you. Skin warms water touching you. Cold skin means water touching you stays liquid/solid/cloud longer. Pure water vapor is invisible. All water hexes use liquid/solid/cloud water.

Read
https://www.ourair.org/wp-content/uploads/facts-smoke.pdf
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Nolani_Academy_of_the_Arcane_Arts

In combat ash is not airborne without an outside force, however very hot fire can easily ignite an arrow.

Not all magic is explained by physics, but elemental magic is. Your friend Joe doesn’t behave like any water/fire/earth/air skill because sentient animation relies on the concentration of magic. Their water behaves like our water until it is concentrated enough to start thinking for itself.

Lastly you implied that cold air greatly affects water magic because of a magical relationship. That is silly given their real world connection. It’s not that physics is magic. It’s that you repeatedly discount explanations you don’t understand. If you don’t want the fifth grade explanation, then draw inferences from the original.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@buddha I gave the fifth grade explanation. I will now paraphrase it in case I wasn’t being clear.

Water hexes touch you. Skin warms water touching you. Cold skin means water touching you stays liquid/solid/cloud longer. Pure water vapor is invisible. All water hexes use liquid/solid/cloud water.

And again you have failed to explain why this only applies to hexes, not all water magic spells, or hex spells that function like this, but are outside the elementalist’s water magic. You can keep explaining the same thing over and over and over again. But you still fail to understand what my issue with it is. Not that I can’t grasp the science behind it. No, the problem is that it doesn’t matter in the context at all. Nothing. Not one bit. In absolute no way.

Daniel Handler.4816:

In combat ash is not airborne without an outside force, however very hot fire can easily ignite an arrow.

For someone rambling on about physics you know incredibly little about kinetic energy. You maybe should read up on that. Yes an arrow can catch fire if you hold it into a flame (though that might take a while), but it certainly wont if you fire it through a flame. If you believe it does than I should be the one giving lectures about physics to you, because you apparently didn’t pay too much attention in school.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Not all magic is explained by physics, but elemental magic is. Your friend Joe doesn’t behave like any water/fire/earth/air skill because sentient animation relies on the concentration of magic. Their water behaves like our water until it is concentrated enough to start thinking for itself.

So you are saying the elements can be influenced by magic to the point of not at all behaving like they do in the real world? Congratulations you finally understand what I’ve been telling you for days.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Lastly you implied that cold air greatly affects water magic because of a magical relationship. That is silly given their real world connection. It’s not that physics is magic. It’s that you repeatedly discount explanations you don’t understand. If you don’t want the fifth grade explanation, then draw inferences from the original.

Oh I spoke too soon you haven’t understood a thing. No I’m not implying cold air affects water magic, I’m implying magic affects other magic. Get it? Magic. Not physics. Magic. It’s a card game and also the driving force of this game’s plot. You should read up on it.

@buddha. Telling you to read up on something shortens the length of my posts. It allows you to extrapolate the correct answer and avoid this level of discussion.

Chilling Wind is clearly air magic, but it’s greatest effect is on water magic. Which means there is a connection that goes beyond simple physics.

Chilling wind affects water magic expecially because it is cold air. You assume that elemental magic goes beyond simple physics because it is magic. That is simply not the case. They can’t deny the rules of our physics or Tyria’s. This is because reality manipulations is only by Mesmer/Assassins and they weren’t combining skills in the time of Gw1. The other aberrations are because divine fire is not real fire, etc.

The only magical part is influencing the starting conditions/position, at which point the simple physics of Tyria take over.

If you didn’t play Gw1 you can say so. Otherwise you should know a hex targets a person or object. A spell targets a location. Water hexes are the only type of skill where proximity to skin, and heat transferance, affect the phase of the substance.

You are confusing flame gas with flame plasma. An arrow can move at 150 mph through plasma, and ignite.

Magic affects other magic but given that elementalists cannot simultaneously use two attunements, your explanation is unlikely. If you want to delve into the natural laws of Tyria look into the combo finishers. They may not makes sense to you, and not all fire fields use plasma, but the finishers are non magical. And they are the last simple physics I will ask you to look up.

Putting my scientist hat on…

Water can burn. It’s not something you see often under normal circumstances, since water is relatively stable and usually when it oxidises a material it does so in a slower and more gradual fashion, but it does act as a weak oxidiser and can act as the oxidant for a fire if the fuel is a sufficiently strong reducing agent (such as an alkali metal). Such a reaction also releases hydrogen, which can result in a secondary burning mechanism.

(I think, but don’t quote me on this, that high-temperature steam can cause some of the more reactive (but not as insanely reactive as alkali metals) metals to burn as well, although a stream of hot oxygen would probably do the job even better.)

This is one of the ways you can get a fire that you shouldn’t put water on. Others are that the fire is burning a liquid (water will just splash it around); the fire is an electrical fire (pouring a liquid conductor into live electricity is generally not a good idea) or that the fire is just so hot that it will cause water to disassociate into hydrogen and oxygen and then the hydrogen and oxygen burns (thermodynamically speaking this is a net loss of energy for the fire, but it can turn a high-intensity but compact fire into an explosion, and anything burning that hot probably has energy to spare anyway).

Incidentally, a water plasma is impossible. Plasma is defined as when electrons start to disassociate from atomic nuclei: covalent bonds don’t survive in those conditions because the valence electrons are usually among the first to go. A “water plasma” isn’t water, at best it’s a 2:1 mix of hydrogen and oxygen plasma, or a mix of plasma and water vapour.

Relating back to the game:

Water and fire aren’t inherent opposites. We see, through skills and traits like Burning Precision, Glyph of Immolation, and Elemental Flame that water and fire magic can be combined.

However, Jormag has never been called the water dragon. It’s the ice dragon. While we don’t know for sure that the DSD is water, it’s a reasonable presumption. Jormag’s energy, on the other hand, seems to be a primordial cold rather than relying on the medium of water. While this may look similar to certain manifestations of water magic, it’s likely something different which is a more direct antagonist to fire magic.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@buddha. Telling you to read up on something shortens the length of my posts. It allows you to extrapolate the correct answer and avoid this level of discussion.

If you are so desperate to discuss physics, atleast do it like Drax and make it interesting. And for the last time: you don’t even understand what my issue with your point is, spouting the same facts over and over again wont bring you anywhere.

Chilling wind affects water magic expecially because it is cold air. You assume that elemental magic goes beyond simple physics because it is magic. That is simply not the case. They can’t deny the rules of our physics or Tyria’s. This is because reality manipulations is only by Mesmer/Assassins and they weren’t combining skills in the time of Gw1. The other aberrations are because divine fire is not real fire, etc.

The only magical part is influencing the starting conditions/position, at which point the simple physics of Tyria take over.

If you didn’t play Gw1 you can say so. Otherwise you should know a hex targets a person or object. A spell targets a location. Water hexes are the only type of skill where proximity to skin, and heat transferance, affect the phase of the substance.

And you are wrong. Spells don’t need a target. Spells can be anything from self-target, to an area to a specific object or just cast around you. Who hasn’t played GW1? Hexes also do not exclusively affect one target, they could aslo be multitarget. On top of that, no not all water-hex spells function in the same way. There is Blurred Vision that specifically targets the eyes, there is Freezing Gust that slows when the target is not affected by a water hex and does damage when he is. There is Icy Shackles which slows more if the target is enchanted. There is Rust which doubles the activation time of signets (which acording to old lore are sigil rings).

This is a very wide array of effects which can not be explained by “kitten his skin is cold”. What can explain it? The properties of magic which have been provided by both games so far. So for the last time: physics is not the cause of these effects, magic is. Physics helps enabling them, but it is not the sole reason.

You are confusing flame gas with flame plasma. An arrow can move at 150 mph through plasma, and ignite.

All you do is bring up things that are completely unrelated in hopes that I don’t notice. I do though. What fire does to an arrow under lab conditions is non-relevant to fire fields you will find in active combat. Same as the natural updraft of warm air is completely unrelated to the movement of ash in a combat situation. So you can stop bringing up things like this, it doesn’t help your argument, it just wastes my time because now I have to explain why it doesn’t have anything to do with the discussion.

Magic affects other magic but given that elementalists cannot simultaneously use two attunements, your explanation is unlikely. If you want to delve into the natural laws of Tyria look into the combo finishers. They may not makes sense to you, and not all fire fields use plasma, but the finishers are non magical. And they are the last simple physics I will ask you to look up.

Do you want me to bring up more spells which combine two or more elements? Because I can do that. The four elements of greek philosophy are not modern science in case you don’t know. While the ancient minds were brilliant, they lacked the modern tools. Thus their categories of elements aren’t the basis of our understanding of elements today. Anet still took it as a basis for their magic system (which a lot of writers do) and thus build their universe around an inherently unscientific system. This alone should tell you that you can’t base everything on physics alone.
Anyway, knowing our real world physics Anet created a world that follows most of our rules, on a system which shouldn’t. This (and gameplay decisions) is the reason why some of what we see does not make sense. And I repeat. It doesn’t have to. This is a game, not a science fair. Just enjoy the fact that there are people that conjure a magical wind, which also prolongs the effects of water hexes.

@Buddha I’m not explaining science to you, you don’t know how rust might affect technology. Google any further questions you have. I am not explaining lore to you, you haven’t realised that Tyria has science fairs, engineers, and mathematicians. Its a game, but even in the game some things are magical, some aren’t. And some magically made things have to work under non magical restrictions.

@Drax It’s just easier to say water plasma, or steam plasma because it’s less words.

The flammability limit refers to combustion in air. Water is inflammable even if it can combust in flourine gas.

Water and fire aren’t inherent opposites. We see, through skills and traits like Burning Precision, Glyph of Immolation, and Elemental Flame that water and fire magic can be combined

Glyphs allow simultaneous use, not combined use. The substances react depending on their own properties. Fire inherently conflicts with water. Water does not inherently conflict with heat. Boiling hot water scalding flesh is not a combination of fire and water.

A combination would be flame merging with water in the same context as water and earth making mud.

What is water/fire?

Except that if you’re going to start nitpicking science, do it properly. At the point at which it’s plasma, it’s no longer water. Otherwise, you could have a 1:2 ratio of oxygen and hydrogen gas just floating around waiting for a spark and you’d have to call that water too, when it’s plainly not. (Until you get that spark, that is.)

If you’re going to keep pushing the science angle – and I can push that well past the fifth grade level – than water is the product of fire. Hydrogen + oxygen + fire = water (water vapour, usually). Hydrocarbons + oxygen + fire = water + CO2 + assorted other byproducts depending on the hydrocarbon, the heat of the fire, and the oxygen supply. Whenever something burns, the end result is something that’s less likely to burn.

Water itself doesn’t burn in ordinary air under everyday circumstances (well, everyday circumstances on Earth), but that’s cherrypicking which parts of science you’re invoking. Put an alkali metal in water, and the alkali metal will absorb the oxygen out of the water (mostly as a hydroxide – why bother stripping both hydrogens off when one will do?), release the now-excess hydrogen as a gas, and depending on how much heat is being generated, igniting that hydrogen to get fire from water. The rusting process – usually associated with water – is a similar chemical reaction to fire, albeit slower and less energetic.

And what is fire magic? Is it specifically referring to the oxidation of a flammable substance? Then Rust counts (anything that rusts will burn if you grind it to a sufficiently fine powder and apply enough heat and oxygen to get it started: it’s the same chemical reaction, after all).

When you look at the things that can be done with fire magic, it seems not. Lava is just applying heat to earth – the constituents of lava are usually about as chemically stable as water (if not more so), it’s just that it happens to be really hot. Underwater fire attunement spells such as Boil are applying heat to water. GW1 fire magic had spells that were themed simply as hot air rather than actual flames. Even the common fireball doesn’t appear to actually be burning anything that we see – it might just be generating a ball of superheated air (or even plasma) and throwing that at the target.

Broadly speaking, “fire magic” might actually be more accurately titled “heat magic”.

So what happens when you merge heat with water? Well, you’ve already given a few examples yourself. You’ve already said that there’s nothing inherently incompatible between heat and water.

Heat and cold, on the other hand…

(And, for the record, the mechanics of Burning Precision, glyphs, and Elemental Flame do indicate that they’re combining fire magic with whatever other magic is being used. If it wasn’t, they’d simply be setting the target on fire independent of casting some other spell. Applying, for instance, Elemental Flame to a water magic hex is creating a water effect that burns. This shows that the two certainly do coexist… in addition to what’s been said above.)

Daniel Handler.4816:

@Buddha I’m not explaining science to you, you don’t know how rust might affect technology. Google any further questions you have. I am not explaining lore to you, you haven’t realised that Tyria has science fairs, engineers, and mathematicians. Its a game, but even in the game some things are magical, some aren’t. And some magically made things have to work under non magical restrictions.

You are talking about Asuran magi-tech or those impossible to create in the real world charr steam tanks? I’m sorry magic is a core part of what makes Tyria, no all of Anet’s creation (do we call it “the All”?), work like it does. Pretending you can explain everything with real world science is a fool’s errand.
Also I’d like to point out one last time, that you have answered barely any of my questions, most likely because you weren’t able to. Shows how much your physics explanation actually held up.

draxynnic.3719:

And what is fire magic?

Fire magic, or what we’re now referring to as heat magic, seems to be an ancient magical representation/correspondant of actual physical heat: given that the Mind is stricly linked to magic, magic-users are able to interact with these ancient magics (as old as Tyria’s universe itself probably), making interactions with the environment.

So, for example, an elementalist will use heat magic to spark actual fires and control them (and fire is actually a plasma by the way), or to warm physical water until creating hot vapor, or to meld earth, giving birth to what we refer to as “fire magic”; it will use cold magic to freeze water, generating ice; it will use a combination of both heat and cold magic to create air currents, and coincidentally lightnings, giving birth to what we refer to as air magic; it will use order magic (which in my view here is equal to restoration magic) to heal and restore through water, giving birth to what we refer to as water magic. How they are able to tap into those ancient magics can however just happen thanks to the Mind and its intrinsic connection to the magical aspects of Tyria’s universe.

We can then refer to Tyria’s physics with a different term: magiphysics.

Considering mesmers, they’re able to manipulate the very space and time, the very reality, or at least they’re able to generate the illusion of such (probably they’re able of doing both). Given that the Mists are the building blocks of reality, magic has a very deep tie to Tyria’s universe, it’s a fundamental and indispensable presence. By channeling then the primordial chaos magic (possibly even the opposite, order magic) mesmers are able to fiddle around with the very reality, and even with minds.

I think that every magic-user can and will use every single aspect of magic in some way – it will just focus on one more than another most of the time (an extreme example of this is given by the Elder Dragons).

In conclusion, while heat and cold magics are indeed opposites, if they’ll meet in controlled and thought-out ways, they won’t “annihilate” each other, they will merge and reach an equilibrium. So, for example, cold magic transfigured the very physical appearance of most icebrood, it coalesced into “magical ice”; when met by enough heat magic, they’ll slowly reach an equilibrium, given that the “magical ice” got “melted” away by “magical fire”. This is the reason why actual physical flames won’t weaken icebrood crystalline armors as good as heat magic will do; we’re talking magics here.

I’m definitely not a scientist, but if we’re being scientific about it; wouldn’t “heat” and “cold” magic be the same exact school? Because the manipulation of hot and cold is just controlling the movement of molecules in a given object.

Erukk.1408

I’m definitely not a scientist, but if we’re being scientific about it; wouldn’t “heat” and “cold” magic be the same exact school? Because the manipulation of hot and cold is just controlling the movement of molecules in a given object.

Those are the magical aspects, it’s like if they are (magical) manifestations of physical concepts, and they seem to work that way in Tyria’s universe.

I’d say that “heat” and “cold” aren’t even a proper physical thing on their own: it’s just, as you said, “the movement of molecules”.

We’re talking magics here.

@Sock: Strictly speaking, flames can have plasma in them. Flame does not necessarily equal plasma, though. It depends on temperature, the constituents of the flame, and other circumstances. Generally speaking, the spot where actual chemical reactions are happening still allows for molecules to be present.

@Erukk: Which is one of the problems with trying to apply physics – 5th-grade or university level – to magic. Scientifically, “heat” is simply thermal energy, and whether something is ‘hot’ or ‘cold’ is a matter of whether the amount of thermal energy is greater or lesser than the baseline we’re comfortable at.

Ingame, however, we generally don’t see one form of magic that both heats things up and cools things down. Water magic seems to be able to produce water both hot and cold, but it can only directly influence water. So if we were to explain the magic types in terms of physics, it seems that so-called ‘fire magic’ is a magic type that adds heat to things. Some other magic type, that we see in a limited degree in the necromancer, seems to be able to suck heat out. And then you have water magic, that can go either way but can only directly heat up or cool down water: freezing something with water magic is usually accomplished by slapping ice on it.

@draxynnic Just to sincerely clarify, I wasn’t referring to fire in the scientific meaning there (since fire is defined as a process), but as the whole ensemble we see, for example, in a lit candle : as a whole, it definitely behaves like a plasma, while perhaps not being the best example of one; it’s like if in trying to teach about liquids you consider working with ketchup (or more generally, with a non-Newtonian fluid): as a whole, it’s not the best example of a liquid for such a task, but it’s still considered as one nonetheless.

To go back on topic: “fire magic”, “air magic”, “water magic” (to name a few), appear to be in my view simply “magical techniques”, and not actual “magical aspects”: they’re not the actual aspects flowing through the ley lines, like what we’re referring to as heat magic would instead be. So, by manipulating the actual magical aspects, magic-users develop various magical techniques: for example, as I already said, using a combination of both heat and cold magic to give birth to what we refer to as “air magic”, by modifying air currents. After all, elementalists need samples of actual elements to perform their “elemental magics”.
Also, heating up water doesn’t fall under “water magic” (which is a magical technique), as you said, but is obtained by heat magic.

Obviously K and S are opposed. Deserts and oceans are totes opposite. Science!

@drax
If we are going to nitpick then water can’t burn, hydrogen can. Water can be the product of fire, never the reactant. The thing burning in the halogen water interaction is as much water as water plasma.

The typical definition of fire is rapid combustion in oxygen. If you want to widen the definition to other substances you need to defend the tyrian application of that expansion. Where is the explosive combination? And what makes us sure fire magic contains the ingredients?

Let’s take view what we know.

• Guardians can produce flames underwater.
• Foefire creations refuse to touch water.
• Ele flames cannot be produced underwater.
• Berserker flames cannot be produced underwater.
• Engie flames cannot be produced underwater.
• Ranger nor their pets can produce flames underwater, sun spirit does work though.

Regardless of what qualifies as true fire, orange fire cannot be produced underwater.

If you want to restrict fire magic to heat then we can restrict water magic to cold.

The water on our planet came from cooling the atmosphere.

Ice, liquid water, clouds, etc, all of it came from condensation, and freezing.

Steam has the connotation of heat, but let’s look at the versions of the skill.

• in water magic: Target foe is struck for 20…52…60 cold damage. If target foe is on fire, Steam Blinds that foe for 5…9…10 seconds.
• in aquatic fire magic: Blind your foe with superheated water.

Either you make the cold water hit a preexisting heat source, or you make a heat source in preexisting water.

No matter what you want to call it. Heat and cold. Flames and water. They aren’t mixing.

Nevertheless, you can get fire from water. The water itself doesn’t light on fire in the sense of the technical definition of an oxidation reaction between a reducing agent (fuel) and oxygen, but there are ways to have a fire that comes from water: there’s nothing about water scientifically that presents it as incompatible with fire except that it has a low potential to act as a reducing agent and that it can block gaseous oxygen from reaching fuel and hence can extinguish some fires by starving them of oxygen.

Neither property is particularly unique to water. Most rocks and earthy materials are already oxidised beyond the point where gaseous oxygen will not easily react further with them, and can serve as extinguishing agents. In fact, sand is often a more reliable extinguishing agent than water (there are very few fires that can strip oxygen out of the components of a typical sand, apart from whatever moisture may be present in the sand). However, we see “fire magic” being applied to earth to create lava.

It’s also a pretty technical distinction you’re making, which not every scientist would agree with – what happens when you drop an alkali metal in water is still technically combustion (a high-temperature redox chemical reaction between a reductant and an oxidiser), and by your definition the traditional wood fire doesn’t involve burning wood either (wood doesn’t burn directly – the heat causes it to release gases, those gases burn, and the heat created by the fire causes more gases to be released – a mechanism comparable to water releasing hydrogen gas which then burns. This is, incidentally, part of why “wood fires” are harder to start than most other fires: it won’t burn until it gets hot enough to start releasing flammable volatiles).

Moving back to Tyria, if your contention was correct, there would be no Fire Attunement available underwater. Each of the five Fire Attunement skills on trident show that fire magic can, in fact, mix with water. Two of them are explicitly applying fire magic to water (Boil and Steam).

It’s pretty clear that what we call “fire magic” is broader than the combustion reaction. It’s also pretty clear that, since fire magic works underwater, that fire magic and water are not incompatible. Heat magic and cold magic could be, but since water magic can be used to create forms of water that aren’t cold, and are in some cases actually hot, water magic and cold magic are not the same thing.

@ drax
I agree that fire magic is broader than flames, but the word fire has a meaning. I think this has lead to some confusion in the discussion. The word by itself refers to combustion. Fire=flames. Fire magic = domain with the school of destruction. Domains counter domains, because their aspects cancel each other out.

Ex. fire magic vs water magic:

• heat vs cold, not heat vs water
• dry vs wet, not dry vs cold
• might vs damage reduction, not might vs wet

Fire magic can heat water just like death magic can make plant constructs. Domains aren’t canceled by aspects. In gw1 water elementals (including the liquid water ones) were weak to fire damage, but not other fire spells.

Water cannot naturally burn, because its oxidizers/reducers don’t exist in nature, with the exception of radioactive rocks like antozonite. Given that all elementalist magic is natural thermodynamic phenomena, I disregarded the radioactive possibility.

Once again, where is warm water? Steam is water + heat source. All water on earth came from cold and condensation.
—————————————————————————
edit: Destroyers were vulnerable to chill in gw1, then not in gw2 then the infused ones were destabilized by infused magic and became vulnerable again. That makes sense for plant-touched destroyers. But one would think death-touched would be unaffected. To alleviate my confusion I went over Risen skills.

I found that Tequatl and things like the mouth of Zhatain don’t use chill. All of them use poison. It’s highly likely any Zhaitan-produced chill was done by undead elementalists. Meaning Jormag is probably the ice/soul magic found in necromancy but absent in Risen.

Death the domain doesn’t contain chill. Death magic does. And death is process not a type of magic.

The fire domain doesn’t contain meteors. Fire magic does. And fire is a process not a type of magic.

We need to be careful when saying fire that we imply what we mean.

Now you’re coming across as trying to have it both ways. When the game mechanics disagree with you (by showing that fire magic and water magic can be combined to generate, for instance, a flurry of ice that can set people on fire), you resort to real-world science in an attempt to demonstrate that fire and water are inherently incompatible. When a deeper analysis of the science shows that they aren’t – or at least not in a unique fashion – you try to trump that in game mechanics.

Either science trumps game mechanics, or game mechanics trumps science in this debate. You can’t have it both ways. Personally, I’m inclined to stick to game mechanics, since while we can say that apart from the existence of magic the laws of physics and chemistry in Tyria appear to behave the same as far as could be determined by a Middle Ages scholar, we have no idea if the more advanced concepts carry through. Does relativity apply in Tyria, or would the Michelson-Morley experiment successfully detect the speed at which Tyria moves through the Mists? Does quantum mechanics exist, or is there an entirely different set of physics that apply at microscopic scales, that happen to have similar results at macroscopic scales? Even Newton’s laws of gravity are suspect: everywhere we go there seems to be a constant ‘down’ with the same strength of gravity, even if there appears to be nothing down there to generate that gravity.

When it comes to fire damage being more effective against water and ice elementals, this could simply be explained through ice being subject to melting, and water being prone to evaporation. No metaphysical explanation of fire-water incompatibility is needed.

You’re pinning your flag to fire meaning combustion, but this is actually not the definition that was used in the classical four-element system that the elementalist is based on. Instead, philosophers who believed in the system pretty much regarded anything with a significant degree of heat, going as far as including qualities of personality that are associated with heat, as being primarily composed of the ‘fire’ element.

When we look at fire magic skills, there are relatively few that can actually be definitively linked to combustion. Lava isn’t on fire, it’s just very hot. A meteor also isn’t, in most cases, undergoing combustion: it’s again, just, very hot. The various trident fire skills we’ve already discussed. Even some of the more straightforward skills like the humble fireball may not actually involve combustion: there’s no indication that casting ‘fireball’ involves grabbing or conjuring a piece of coal or some other fuel, setting it on fire, and throwing it: instead, it just seems to involve generating a ball of plasma or superheated gas out of the air and directing that at the target. Combustion certainly exists in fire magic, but that seems to simply be because a branch of magic that deals in high temperatures will naturally be good at setting things on fire, not because “fire magic” should be read as meaning “combustion magic”. It basically applies to everything hot.

Conversely, water magic does not exclusively deal in things that are cold. The GW1 version of Steam has already been discussed. GW2 gives us a range of water magic spells where the water appears to, at least, be warm enough not to be liquid and not harmful to the target: Geyser (real-life geysers typically involve hot water, but let’s put that aside and just leave it as “warm enough that being soaked in it doesn’t harm or chill you”), Healing Rain, Cleansing Wave, Water Globe, Undercurrent.

At the bottom line, it’s abundantly clear that Jormag is not the water dragon. His minions have no special affinity for water (liquid water, anyway), and we have a separate dragon that appears to have that domain. Jormag is the ice dragon of the mountains – his domain is cold. A theoretical incompatibility between Jormag’s magic and Primordus has no bearing on the interrelationship between the elementalist’s fire and water magic – water magic is more likely to be related to the DSD.

Daniel Handler.4816:

I found that Tequatl and things like the mouth of Zhatain don’t use chill. All of them use poison. It’s highly likely any Zhaitan-produced chill was done by undead elementalists. Meaning Jormag is probably the ice/soul magic found in necromancy but absent in Risen.

This is pretty much the direction I’ve been thinking, actually. The main source of cold we see among Risen comes from the Risen Corruptors, which are pretty clearly water elementalists (the water magic magic may be mixed with Zhaitan’s power, but it’s clearly water magic nevertheless). Given the observation that we already have a water dragon, Jormag’s ice might be more akin to necromancer cold effects, but on a far greater scale.

I’m not sure if ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ or a like domain is Jormag’s second domain… but it would make sense. Jormag is one of the dragons that has an interest in the Mists, and a spirit-aligned domain might also be part of the reason that Jormag is the only dragon we know of that accepts and empowers free-willed worshippers.

(Along a similar line of thought, Zhaitan did make a lot of use of mesmers and mind games: the Eyes of Zhaitan use mesmer-like skills, for instance. Could be coincidence – Orr was a highly magical society, after all, so they probably had a lot of mesmers. It’s plausible, however, that the “Shadow” domain is linked to mesmerism in some way. Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen shadows and illusion/deception magic linked. ‘Shadow’ is even more closely linked to thieves, whose magic has similarities to mesmer magic.)

(Extrapolating yet further, we have a strong indication from GW1 that the ‘holy’ aspect of Preservation directly opposes death magic. In S3E3, we see plant and death magic undergoing a destructive interaction. This could indicate that there is actually a connection between at least some aspects of Preservation and the plant domain. Mordrem Menders heal with an effect that looks similar to Preservation healing, and there’s no reason to believe that isn’t coming directly from Mordremoth. This would put druidic magic pretty solidly in the plant/life domain – directly or through an intermediary – and could mean that some monk/guardian stuff comes out of the same domain, albeit manifested in a very different fashion to much of what we see from Mordremoth.)

@drax I can’t argue this because game mechanics is getting in the way.

According to the tempest shouts fire shields and frost aura are made by heat waves and ice particles. So fire is heat. And water is moisture.
But.
Fire overload is described as unleashing accumulated flames.
But
Asura shout “I have ignition” when they enter fire.
But
Fire overload can be done underwater, and ignition shouldn’t.
But
Blocking a profession mechanic in water is unprecedented. And all other ele/engie/ranger/pet/warrior, skills that mention flames don’t work underwater.

To proceed, I need to know exactly why the school is called destruction.

For game purposes nothing is being destroyed, we only seem elements being conjured. You can ride the earth overload regardless of whether you are standing in lava, water, or on metal.

Regardless combustion is heat+ oxygen + fuel. So fire magic should be able to also conjure the things it is going to burn.

On another topic but related to this thread. Primordius and Kralkatorrik still need a second school.

I learned from another thread that Branded and Destroyers are made from Basalt. Given that the latter are lava based, they are probably paramagnetic. But Branded is definitely magnetic.
* crystalline basalt exudes magnetic minerals

• the brandstorm is purple lightning
• most natural magnets on our planet were crystallized from basalt and then struck by lightning (lodestone)
• lightning itself is highly magnetic, and the purple glows on branded resembled the lightning of the storm

I think Primordius became Fire and Rock, Kralkatorrik Crystal and Air.

Rock means Primordius can perform seismic magic. And crystal means Kralkatorrik can perform magnetic magic, and use metal (all metal is crystalline).

We don’t know precisely why the school is called Destruction – there are a few theories, but nothing conclusive.

As an observation, Cleansing Fire does work underwater. Generally speaking, though, I do think what’s going on is a mix of Tyrians not having the technical definition of ‘fire’ that we have: anything that looks broadly like flames and is hot is ‘fire’ to Tyrians. “Fire magic” involves making things hot, which often results in fire and flames, hence the connection: but it doesn’t have to. (Particularly when underwater, where combustion is difficult.)

With respect to Kralkatorrik and Primordus: Those are pretty common speculations, yes. I am inclined to think that there’s a good chance that Kralkatorrik’s second domain is something like ‘air’ or ‘sky’ – between what we see from Kralkatorrik directly and the Zephyrite skills coming through Glint, there is a distinct ‘sky’ theme. For Primordus, fire and rock are plausible. I’m inclined to think that there’s a chance that Primordus’ second domain is something less subtle and Kralkatorrik’s “crystals” covers earth in general as well, but that’s more of a hunch than anything backed up by strong evidence.