Guild Wars 2

Something I’ve been curious about classes within the game world. Obviously, virtually anyone can become a stereotype warrior/soldier. They pick up a sword and shield and do their thing. Along the way maybe they enlist, are taught in another fashion, or just learn all the other skills that we can perform in the game. The same may be said for someone like the engineer, they learn to wield a gun and build things. Perhaps the thief is included in this, as anyone could ideally steal something and learn to be sneaky.

But what about all the magical classes and professions that require something more than what we might consider an average trait or skill? Can anyone learn to be a mesmer or learn to cast spells?

I don’t mean to disregard any of the classes from this, and they are included. Can anyone learn to be a mesmer, knight, templar, engineer, ranger, etc? Or is this one of those things that your born into?

yes and no.
People are born with a magical allignment, thanks to the bloodstones.
EVERYONE has magic, but the allignment dictates what magic you’re limited to.
This isn’t a hardwall, mind you, with sufficient training and some natural born prodequity, you can also tap into secondary magic schools.
I don’t remember the exact names of the schools, but I kind of come down to
Creation, Destruction / Constitution, Punishment.
from a gameplay point of view a character can access all four, but one can never master one if he spreads out his knowledge over the fields.
It may sounds strange, but even the warrior uses a lot of magic, actually. They use magic to increase their strength, harden their armor, bless their weapons, carry signets, etc. It’s not so much magic in the literal sense, but magic nonetheless.

Do note that the average npc, civilian, soldier, builder, whatever, doesn’t have a tenth, if not a hundreth of the magic a prodegy the main player has.

So to come back to your question, yes, anyone can be a warrior, anyone can be a mesmer, anyone can be an elementalist, etc. however, the average man has severe limitations to what he can do, and birthright will often dictate what path they take.

addendum:
the four schools are

• Agression (physical and elemental prowess)
• Destruction (Arcane and elemental prowess)
• Preservation (healing, toughness, warding)
• Denial (magical conditions, magic stuns, interuptions, sealings, curses)

Magic is a feeble thing, everyone has it, everyone can use what they have however they like. Before the bloodstones, everyone and everything had all magic. After abaddon’s tantrum, magic got seperated into four schools, (either by intent or as a sideeffect)

Anybody can become anything. Becoming an expert… that’s another matter.

Everyone has at least some aptitude for magic, which implies that anybody could become any profession. The levels of aptitude might vary, however – some might have a strong natural talent and pick it up very quickly, while others might study for decades and only develop the most basic skills.

Referring to Amaimon’s comments regarding the bloodstones: The bloodstones don’t dominate the magic supply available to mortals any more. Even when they did, I don’t recall off the top of my head anything to indicate that people got locked to one at a young age. There did seem to be a point at which switching primary professions became difficult (unless you’re Keiran) but I don’t think there was anything stopping someone from learning the ‘wrong’ profession. They might find out that they have just a secondary profession and haven’t developed their primary profession, though!

Yes, draxynnic, the bloodstones don’t dominate the flow of magic, they regulate it. it’s like the ohm on a machine. Initially they blocked the flow from magic into the world so the dragons would go to sleep. Then Abaddon unlocked it which caused so much magic to be available everyone started acting like gods. so the human gods reactivated the bloodstones, but not at its full potential. The bloodstones now regulate.. or slow down, however you like to call it, the flow of magic. One individual has access to all magic, but he can’t access it all at once. It’s kind of like having four organs, and the more you use one, you can’t use the others. So you can, say, for example, use all 4 schools at 10% of their potential, or you can focus on one school using it at 75% of it’s potential and maybe 20% of another school, but you can’t draw full potential from all four schools at once.

Now the interesting part is, now that one of the bloodstones has been destroyes, does that mean the magic of that school now flows through Lazamayberus, or has that school been completely liberated of control?

the problem with the bloodstones is, they played a humongous role in defining magic in GW1, but then the writers of GW2 sort of started neglecting it, so there are some loopholes and contradictions

They’ve flat out said in interviews that the Bloodstones aren’t an important factor in mortal magic any more. The evidence of their existence persists in the way the four primary spellcasting professions (scholars and guardians) still largely map to the four Bloodstones, but spellcasters aren’t limited by the limits placed by the splitting of the Bloodstones any more. Instead, what limits how much of the magical spectrum a particular individual can master is a mix of time and the fact that some of the boundary regions are still unexplored ground that can be dangerous to tread.

Why this has happened has never been explicitly explained, but it seems to be that instead of the Bloodstones being the primary source of magic, there’s enough magic just floating around nowadays that the magic coming from the Bloodstones is no longer the primary source of mortal magic. This is what I meant by the bloodstones not dominating the supply of magic any more. In 1AE, all magic available to mortals was coming from the Bloodstones. Presently… the bloodstones are still a source and repository of magical power, but there’s plenty of magic just soaking in the environment for the taking… too much, if anything.

They no longer play the regulatory role they once did, and no profession relies on a bloodstone any more. The continued division of magic into four schools is a matter of tradition and training rather than hard limits now, and there are some who think that they’re obsolete.

I forgot about Abaddon and his fit. As much as I’ve read I still wasn’t sure if jack, jill, or their uncle bill could do the things that our characters do. It makes sense that everyone has some magic essence, but whether they have the aptitude to tap into and use that essence makes a lot of sense.

Thanks

kraziyk.6183:

I forgot about Abaddon and his fit. As much as I’ve read I still wasn’t sure if jack, jill, or their uncle bill could do the things that our characters do. It makes sense that everyone has some magic essence, but whether they have the aptitude to tap into and use that essence makes a lot of sense.

Thanks

in GW1 the player was a ‘hero’. They weren’t gods, but they were centainly prodigies in their fields. Hence the Eye of Janthir picked up on you. Like, the player posessed high aptitude of magic, ability to learn anew, and also ascended. Long story short, the player defintely belongs to the 1% abilitywise