Guild Wars 2

So I main a guardian. And I know their power comes from belief and willpower. In which case is there a limit to what they can do with their power. Is their limits to what it can be used for does it not work on certain things,what their will can create/shape, or is their power only as powerful as their will. so if say their will falters or their will broken will their magic not work, or will it just be weakened.

I wanted to know this because I know each class have thier weakness like necromancers rely on lifeforce to power their magic, elementests and the elements, etc.

Zakhelm.4618:

So I main a guardian. And I know their power comes from belief and willpower. In which case is there a limit to what they can do with their power. Is their limits to what it can be used for does it not work on certain things,what their will can create/shape, or is their power only as powerful as their will. so if say their will falters or their will broken will their magic not work, or will it just be weakened.

I wanted to know this because I know each class have thier weakness like necromancers rely on lifeforce to power their magic, elementests and the elements, etc.

There power is based in preservation magic. It pervades everything. Even the skills they picked up from paragon have been infused with preservation magic (they give aegis). That is their limit.

No matter how much will they have they cannot create an illusion. The base way the professions use magic is different. There have been some blurring in that many classes have been able to slightly mix preservation magic into their own magical lines. But it has not been enough to produce any blended magic above the basic level.

Necromancers don’t rely on life force, elementalist dont rely on the the elements.

Necromancers use life force as an ingredient in some spells. The limit to some necromancer spells is that they require ingredients.

Elementalist summon the elements, magic powers their magic. They just attune to the elements when they turn magic into matter. There is no lore that stays an elementalist could not summon a waterfall in the desert.

Necromancy relies on drawing life force only when relating to the creation of minions or utilizing soul magic. Blood magic requires blood. Curses probably require intent.

Elementalism is probably the most broad, as long as there is magic around they can conjure and manifest the elements easily.

Guardians if like paragons and monks works off faith more than will but they probably changed it for the other races. I would equate it to the green lanterns. It can falter if their will does, and presumably other magics would interfere with certain spells of a guardian.

How does the explanation they give on Guardian magic make any sense. The monks were conduits of the gods powers. The ritualist could practice preservation magic as the conduit of spirits.

This new thing that you just need faith in something seems beyond strange.

Yeah I can have faith in my warband but that doesn’t exactly have any power in it on the level of channeling gods/spirits.

Daniel Handler.4816:

How does the explanation they give on Guardian magic make any sense. The monks were conduits of the gods powers. The ritualist could practice preservation magic as the conduit of spirits.

This new thing that you just need faith in something seems beyond strange.

Yeah I can have faith in my warband but that doesn’t exactly have any power in it on the level of channeling gods/spirits.

I’m gonna reach for some straws here, but perhaps it’s not magic created by faith, but faith infused in magic. Human necromancy was developed with a connection to grenth and faith in a god of death, but there were charr necromancers and even asura necromancers (though admittedly for the charr in gw1, they revered the titans). there was a way to practice necromancy without reliance or belief in grenth, and that way i’m sure there’s a direction for there to be guardian magic seeped in faith.

Daniel Handler.4816:

How does the explanation they give on Guardian magic make any sense. The monks were conduits of the gods powers. The ritualist could practice preservation magic as the conduit of spirits.

This new thing that you just need faith in something seems beyond strange.

Yeah I can have faith in my warband but that doesn’t exactly have any power in it on the level of channeling gods/spirits.

The human gods have gone silent. It seems reasonable that they aren’t answering prayers in enough quantity for entire groups of monks to fuel their magic, which would explain why they started to rely on faith to fuel their spells rather than rely on the gods.

Though the existence of charr monks kind of made the “God conduit” thing weird to me since we know the Titans aren’t exactly the prayer answering sort. I imagine the non-human monks we met in the game relied on faith and when the human gods went silent humans started to rely on this method too. That’s just a theory though.

@Daniel : Schools of magic are not a thing anymore, it’s been officialized as a false belief by Angel McCoy I believe.

Djahlat.9610:

@Daniel : Schools of magic are not a thing anymore, it’s been officialized as a false belief by Angel McCoy I believe.

That is an oversimplification.

Schools of magic no longer exist. However each profession still uses the basics of their skills and twists them slightly. This is why we have solo professions.

It was also explained that while blended magic does exist it is rare, especially because people seem to be operating at the phd level in magic. So anything that the guardian performs is a result of what preservation magic when blended with paragon arts can obtain. The power sources should be the same.

It’s a fairly common trope in fantasy for “divine” magic to turn out to be powered or channelled through the faith of the spellcaster – although this is easily mistaken for prayers being answered when a religious practitioner performs the appropriate benediction and the magic happens!

It was fairly obvious, when you thought about it, that this was what was really happening even in GW1. First, because Preservation magic was just another form of magic coming from the Bloodstones like the other three – so either Preservation magic flowed from the respective Bloodstone independently of the gods, or all forms of magic were coming directly from the gods. Second, it’s pretty clear that while the gods appeared to have some influence on the rules by which magic applied, they could not deny the use of any of the four schools of magic, including Preservation, to their enemies. Third, while sapient ‘monks’ in Guild Wars 1 were nearly always religious in nature (where any indication of their nature beyond “enemy that uses monk skills” existed), it didn’t matter what they worshipped. You had charr shamans that worshipped the Titans, Stone Summit healers that either worshipped the Great Dwarf or the Great Destroyer, White Mantle Priests who worshipped the Unseen Gods, and Mursaat monks that were claiming to be gods themselves, all using monk magic with no apparent penalty from not actually being faithful to the gods, and that’s just a brief run-through of Prophecies alone. It’s hard to imagine that if every monk prayer was a direct intervention of the gods, that they would also intervene on behalf of a mursaat who is trying to replace them in the same way. If monk magic only occurred as genuine miracles from the god, then presumably ‘monks’ that don’t follow a god would not have the same abilities.

The interviews after the guardian reveal confirmed this – the guardian, and by inference all Preservation wielders, are generating the magical effects themselves through their faith. They are not invoking intervention from higher beings, whether those higher beings are the Six Gods or something else.

Regarding Angel’s interview: It’s less that they’re not a thing and more that they’re not as limiting as they once were. There’s more magic available that isn’t related to the bloodstones, and thus professions have more versatility than they did in GW1, let alone right after the Exodus. However, there are still distinct flavours of magic that are derived from the bloodstones, and we don’t see super-casters who can wield all forms of magic at once as were around after the unsplit seerstone was unlocked and before it got split into the bloodstones.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Djahlat.9610:

@Daniel : Schools of magic are not a thing anymore, it’s been officialized as a false belief by Angel McCoy I believe.

That is an oversimplification.

Schools of magic no longer exist. However each profession still uses the basics of their skills and twists them slightly. This is why we have solo professions.

It was also explained that while blended magic does exist it is rare, especially because people seem to be operating at the phd level in magic. So anything that the guardian performs is a result of what preservation magic when blended with paragon arts can obtain. The power sources should be the same.

First, you’re mixing game mechanics with actual Lore. It’s totally possible for people in Tyria to have multiple professions, but, as a dev said, it would be impractical as it would reduce yojr efficiency in your main profession.
Second, the one and only magic that was officially categorized in a school of magic was Elementalism in Destruction. Anything elsenis pure speculation.

More deduction than speculation. It was explicitly split into four schools when there were four primary spellcasters in GW1, and the only attribution that was ever really in question was Destruction and Aggression on Elementalists and Necromancers – and the reveal you cite resolved that.

That’s still a theory though

I had a theory that maybe mesmeric magic is in the aggression slot due to its nature of literally disrupting natural magic. And that necromancy could be denial as in the denial of death.

Djahlat.9610:

Daniel Handler.4816:

Djahlat.9610:

@Daniel : Schools of magic are not a thing anymore, it’s been officialized as a false belief by Angel McCoy I believe.

That is an oversimplification.

Schools of magic no longer exist. However each profession still uses the basics of their skills and twists them slightly. This is why we have solo professions.

It was also explained that while blended magic does exist it is rare, especially because people seem to be operating at the phd level in magic. So anything that the guardian performs is a result of what preservation magic when blended with paragon arts can obtain. The power sources should be the same.

First, you’re mixing game mechanics with actual Lore. It’s totally possible for people in Tyria to have multiple professions, but, as a dev said, it would be impractical as it would reduce yojr efficiency in your main profession.
Second, the one and only magic that was officially categorized in a school of magic was Elementalism in Destruction. Anything elsenis pure speculation.

Your entire statement serves to contradict absolute nothing that I wrote. Because you seem to be talking about a point I never made in the text.

By only saying the schools no longer exist you deny the reality that all guardian magic except for a little should be a mix of paragon and preservation magic.

Therefore it should be mentioned that although the schools no longer limit guardians, they still act within their previous bounds. As the level of blended magic that exists is quite low. Currently the devs have only mentioned the new healing skills as a sign of blended magic. A person with two professions did not use blended magic. Blending magic was magic of two properties . Like the illusion of a fireball that was actually on fire.

vanderwolf.7084:

That’s still a theory though

I had a theory that maybe mesmeric magic is in the aggression slot due to its nature of literally disrupting natural magic. And that necromancy could be denial as in the denial of death.

Plausible, but it still leaves preservation where it is. I could create a theoretical setup where preservation isn’t monk magic (slotting it into necromancy, of all things, on the basis of it preserving what used to be alive), but I’d be doing it pretty much just to show it’s possible.

We know that bloodstone magic came in four schools, and we know that guardian uses the same school as monks did. General consensus is that preservation is monk, aggression is necromancer, and mesmer is denial. For a discussion of this nature, if anyone disagrees with the consensus, this is simply a matter of switching the nameplates, rather than having any effect on the conclusions that are drawn.

I think Guardians aren’t pure Spellcasters, they can’t use magic directly like real magic users. The spells mostly just enhance their physical abilitys (sword, voice) or are really simple and unsophisticated (still effective though). So if he wants to run at you, he may be able to teleport to you instead or if he wants to block projectiles, he cunjures a simple magic wall against them.

Derom.1205:

I think Guardians aren’t pure Spellcasters, they can’t use magic directly like real magic users. The spells mostly just enhance their physical abilitys (sword, voice) or are really simple and unsophisticated (still effective though). So if he wants to run at you, he may be able to teleport to you instead or if he wants to block projectiles, he cunjures a simple magic wall against them.

from the devs

I think the Guardian is much more of a pragmatic and tactical user of a magic as opposed to an Elementalist, who is a pure student of magic. The Elementalist casts discrete spells, and you have the feeling that there is a heritage and body of knowledge behind those spells. Guardians seem to use magical energy in the heat of combat, from the front line. That sense of immediacy sets the Guardian apart from more traditional spell-casters and allows for a heavily armored magical character.

-http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/31/behind-the-scenes-with-the-guild-wars-2-guardian-massivelys-in/

They run the gamut in terms of complicated spells.