Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,
i stumbled across a topic, i just can not find a good answer for. How strong are elementalists/ is magic in lore? I mean most of the nations (Human, Charr, Norn, Sylvari) use conventional soldiers. With sword/shield, bow and guns. But if you have someone who can block bullets (magnetic aura), let it rain meteors, spit fire, teleport himself etc. what is the purpose of a soldier? Ok, there may be the sneaky guys who stab you in the back and the warriors who have glowing/burning swords and look like they came from hell, they can still be effective.. But normal soldiers, like seraphs, do they have any purpose? I mean look at a D/D elementalist and how he fights.. I can not imagine a soldier or even 20 soldiers standing any chance.. and how common are persons who can use magic like that? can you build an army just of them?
Hope you guys can enlighten me ^^

Ps: sorry for my bad English..

From what I understand of the lore, everyone can use magic. Magic is a very dominant source right now and is actually the cause for awakening the Elder Dragons. They feed of the magic in cycles. When the magic reaches it’s apex, the Elder Dragons awake, devour, and go back to sleep.

So with that in mind, the other professions have magic of their own to combat elementalists. I would agree though that it would seem Elementalists have the upper hand while using magic. Although I guess Mesmers and Necromancers would fight them for that upper hand.

The way I see it, everyone in Tyria can use magic in the same way any of us can do math equations. Most of us instinctively know 1+1=2, while only a tiny fraction of the population can do complex calculus. There is nothing physically stopping anyone from learning, but it takes a lot of dedication and no small amount of natural talent to take the skill to a level where it is actually useful for anything.

A sword and board, meanwhile, is a lot easier to pick up and learn for the more tactile-oriented. I suspect that most of the soldier NPCs we see in the world are capable of small magical feats, but they never use it when we’re around because they’re trained to fight with physical weapons.

The player characters are also supposed to be special. We’re the unusually gifted and talented people who go on to become heroes of legend. I don’t think most elementalists are capable of doing what a player character elementalist can do on a regular basis.

Like the other classes, most ele’s probably won’t be able to have every skill available to the entire class on hand.

personally i feel elementalism is the most balanced form of magic
objectively, the point of the ‘gw2 living story’ is an emphasis that even engineers can be formidable

A good question though is why are they still using wooden ships when eles can chuck fireballs and summon elementals and set the sea on fire. The zephyrite ship especially you would think all those sales would make it very flammable(the crash to earth wouldn’t help it either). Glits remains should be sufficient for aitherblade with flying ships to strike.

Well the Charr have metal ships I think?
As for why humans don’t – I imagine it’s as simple as not having the resources to smelt all the metal that would be required for one, and then not having the fuel to power it. The Charr by contrast have mines and ready access to iron and coal.

Of course you do have to consider things like buoyancy and manoeuvrability. A wooden sailing ship is going to be able to tack etc to dodge incoming attacks, an engine powered Charr boat on the other hand wouldn’t be quite as agile – certainly fast, but they wouldn’t have the wind or the tides on their side.

There is a reason you don’t see a lot of metal ships around – the huge exception being cargo/shipping ships which are so out of their need to support massive weights. Most boats are made out of either wood or fibreglass. Fibreglass is obviously a little bit beyond any of the races on Tyria >.>

As everyone is able to use magic, just chooses or has a different way of actually implementing it in their chosen life- or fightingstyle.

If we presume that the basic magic everyone wields (even if it has different forms) is more or less the same, then we can also presume that the magic the elementalist wields is just a different projection, from what a warrior does with his shouts.

what else does an elementalist then gathing magic at one point, combining it with an atribute (through reaction) and form and then unleashing it? (simple version)

As we do not know how the eternal alchemy actually works, we can only somehwat apply our knowledge of physics to the matter, seeing as an elementalist is using (magic) energy to get certain reactions on their souroundings.

However, as everyone is able to use this energy they also might have a form of natural shielding, or passive abilities to ward of magic effects: resistance.

Maybe in Tyria a meteorstorm looks flashy and destructive, but most people are no as fearfull of it as of an giant metal ball beeing hauled at them by a charr tank.

There is always the saying: a weapon is only as powerfull as it`s wielder.

Even if an elementalist learns a very powerfull spell, he is still mortal (usually human, but as we have a lot of races here) and not perfect.

We see for example that the player elementalist is not using his abilities to his full potential, as he is not able to fly for example like sieran of the priory did.

The reason is likely that truly powerful spellcasters are rare. Unlike the game, the ships in the books only have roughy 1 spellcaster per ship. This means that the ratio of spellcasters is likely 25 to 1 at best, and likely worse. Physical stuff is in ready supply and cheap to boot. Spellcasters (and to a lesser degree, warmachines) are rare and certainly not available for every foot soldier.