Guild Wars 2

So from what I understand, lore-wise, there are four schools of magic which each profession practices at least one of. Preservation, Destruction, Aggression, and Denial. Though I feel like my understanding of these schools is incomplete at best, and I can’t find any sources to cite that explain them better. After hours of thought, my understanding of each school to it’s furthest extent is as follows, and I’d like anyone to correct me if they feel I’m missing something or getting something wrong, as well as add anything that they feel deserves to be included.

Preservation: A defensive school of magic that targets primarily the caster. This school’s main focus is defending the caster from negative effects of other magics and enhancing aspects of the caster for offensive purposes. Things this school may be capable of is increasing the caster’s natural toughness, heal them, and defend them from conditions. I’m almost certain that professions such as Guardian and Ranger both utilize this school.

Destruction: An offensive school that focuses on deconstructing base materials in order to get something out of it, such as heat (with fire) or shaping it into a weapon (such as earth and ice). This school can effect both material and non-material things, such as lightning, and can even take the form of pure magical energy for the purpose of either being manipulated or weaponized. Elementalists seem to use this magic most relevantly, though I feel like Warriors and Guardians use this as well.

Aggression: An offensive magic that primarily focuses on a target other than the caster, inflicting suffering and discomfort on those around it by creating conditions and other negative effects. Aggression can involve creating curses as well as physical beings who’s purpose is to be “aggressive” Necromancers seem to use this type of magic, and to a lesser extent, the Mesmer.

Denial: A defensive magic that focuses on interfering with preexisting systems in order to either prevent something from occurring, or to create a new effect altogether. Thiefs use this type of magic by either altering light to become invisible, or to alter space to teleport via the mists (shadowstepping). Mesmers also use this magic to generate visual, auditory, and even neural illusions by influencing the target’s brain or thought processes.

While no one person can practice all four schools of magic, each profession seems to use a “primary” school they default to, and some a “secondary” school which they can fall back on. But the more schools one practices, the greater the chances of said magic becoming uncontrollable, eventually killing the user in the process.

You’re somewhat off the mark there.

Firstly, it’s important to point out that, from the time of Guild Wars to Guild Wars 2, the idea of the four schools of magic is said to be an outdated school of thought. Therefore, it’s rules don’t truly apply to the kinds of magic that are used in GW2 beyond the “using more than one school might kill you” thing.

Secondly, the schools of magic actually, lore wise, date back to Prophecies, the first Guild Wars campaign. Each school of magic was associated with a single profession.

Elementalists had destruction only
Necromancers had aggression only
Mesmers had denial only
Monks (one of two predecessors of the Guardian class) had preservation only

Rangers apparently weren’t truly associated with one of the magic schools and Warriors didn’t use magic (as far as I know). Then, Ritualists and Assassins were released with Factions and Paragons and Dervish were released with Nightfall. I do not believe their roles within the schools of magic were explicitly established but I could be wrong. There was also another campaign in production, called Utopia, that would have the Chronomancer class and one other that I don’t think was introduced (I’ve heard mention of a Summoner class for Utopia), but they scrapped Utopia for Guild Wars 2 instead.

Also, I’ve read somewhere that thieves may use a form of denial magic and that rangers may actually use destruction, as their abilities tie closely to elementalist magic (there’s some lightning and earth magic in the ‘survival’ utilities and there’s fire and ice in traps, and there are the nearly elemental nature spirits that can be summoned, sun, storm, frost, earth and water) instead of preservation. This theory is further improved by the magic that Zephyrites use. The magic comes from crystals which fall into three categories, wind, lightning and sun. Druids, the Ranger elite specialisation, further dives into this with the ‘sun beam’ weapon skill on staves for rangers.

So, the schools don’t really hold sway over how one can wield magic (that’s why every class has the ability to heal itself in GW2, whereas in Guild Wars you had to have a Monk in your party to make sure everyone was healed up, eventually Ritualists, Dervishes and Paragons were added, though the latter two aren’t true healers and Ritualists didn’t really focus on healing like Monks did).

Also, GW1 magic lore was mostly about human concepts. The new races included in GW2 tend to broke the “rules” by nature, and have their own PoVs.

Originally the schools were not simply cultural views, but were very strict aspects of magic. But over the years, there grew more ambient magic (from the Elder Dragons’ hibernation) that the strictness of the schools loosened to the point where it is considered “outdated practices” – we saw the beginning of this (retroactively in canon) by the dual profession system in GW1.

Because of this, while you can attribute GW1 professions to one school (and just one, because with the dual professions if there were two professions that used two schools that didn’t overlap, then you’re breaking lore by being both that in primary and secondary sense as you’d now be using all four), you cannot attribute any GW2 profession to any school (you can try, but now aspects of professions can rather fit all four).

What the schools represented isn’t very clear, but we were told that elementalists were of the Destruction school and it’s heavily believed that each of the four core spellcasters of GW1 were of a different school and only one school (necromancers=aggression, monk=preservation, mesmer=denial being the standard belief but no confirmation). It should be noted that schools are not “purely defensive” or “purely offensive” either. Which seems to be the major cause of confusion by the OP. Further, in GW1, rangers and warriors did not utilize magic in any (school-based) form.

If we extend to the added professions, by observation of the core four spellcasters and lore, ritualists=preservation (+spirit/Mists magic – all/most magic not directly tied to spirits by ritualists had some healing/defense aesthetic); assassins=denial (shared patronage with Lyssa for spell boosts and had similar aspects to mesmer spells); dervish=destruction (elemental based); paragons=preservation (healing/defense and smiting based).

Of course, beyond “old school teachings”, in GW2 the schools don’t matter. Especially now that the Bloodstones have absorbed magic from two Elder Dragons, so not even the four Bloodstones have magic divided solely into those schools anymore.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Of course, beyond “old school teachings”, in GW2 the schools don’t matter. Especially now that the Bloodstones have absorbed magic from two Elder Dragons, so not even the four Bloodstones have magic divided solely into those schools anymore.

That said, those ‘old school teachings’ probably have an influence – the traditions we have in GW2 now grew out of the traditions that were set when the four schools were important. Which is why we still have four magic-using professions that correspond fairly well to the original four schools (however much they have broadened out) rather than a completely different set of four, or a single generic magic-using profession that makes equal use of the entire spectrum.

This sub forum will always entertain me. Lore is so well written it leaves so much room for fantasies and imagination.