Guild Wars 2

I started a thread on Magic and Warriors a few days ago as the topic was intriguing to me. It started to branch out so I thought I would start another thread on magic. There was really good conversations going on in the last thread. A lot of you have great insight and I was enjoying reading all of your thoughts.

All of the professions are interesting in their own ways. I find there connections to magic very interesting as well. Or more specifically their “potential”. In a game like GW2 you have to balance professions for everyone. But outside of the game (Tyria fiction) there are always those who are more powerful than others. This is due to various reasons. Just like in real life. For example, some people train harder than others or have a natural affinity to what it is they do etc.

What I am interested in is what all of your opinions are about the potential of the magic users in Tyria.

Personally, I find the Mesmer and Guardians very interesting. Their magic is different from one another but I like these professions a lot.

I feel I understand a Guardian’s magic more than the Mesmer’s though. So I will focus on him first. If you look at his skills and at various articles and bits of lore you pick up a lot of different things about a mesmer’s power. They have a truly interesting potential. Potential to be very powerful. If a mesmer were to focus on certain aspects of his power he can be much more than just an “illusionist”. They can warp reality and speed up time. They can teleport, turn invisible and manipulate energy. Not only that but physically they have the potential to be excellent fighters or duelists as well. Think of the utter potential that is there… As I said all of the professions are interesting I just happen to really like the mesmer. I look forward to all of your insights on the topic… And thank you!

Mesmers weild Chaos Magic or if you will Elder Dragon Magic…..

Chaos magic is NOT Elder Dragon Magic… The Inquest mistook dragon energy for chaos magic because they can have similar effects, but they are not the same thing. It would be remarkably silly for a class to be running around using dragon magic.

If I understood right then is chaos magic the untamed wild mixed magic. The development of magic seems to be the major key to understand how things work.

Let’s try: I think mesmer magic is influencing things in a quantum physical way. It is not that mesmer can use a certain magic directly, but they can use a certain aspect of all magic at once.
For example the popular time warp manipulates all magical particles in the area to move faster.
Illusions could be the visual particles and phantasms more pysical. Shattering collapses them and releases some magic this way (damages, confuses, dazes, distorts).
The mesmer seems to be able to step out of phase, but just for a short time or he bends the light particles around the hidden area (both seems possible and I tend to use the second possibilty, but the names go more toward phasing).

A lot of abilities are sort of random (most popular might be Signet of Inspiration). They do the same with different results. The chaos armor grants random boons and causes random conditions on the enemy on hit.

The mesmers mind in connected to the sorrounding area and that’s the reason he can manipulate it.

(It seems I need to play the actual episode first, because some discussions in this forum imply that there is a form of magic that I discarded in my researches. Knowledge as a form of magic got new feed here and I discarded it, because it’s to easy gathered to deny it to others.)

@Horst: Great insight! Yeah I thought of it a little that way as well. Energy manipulation on various levels. The fun thing to think about is the “full” potential of a mesmer.

Thinking of mesmers as manipulating things on a quantum mechanical level is an interesting approach. This could explain their ability to manipulate the mind (by affecting the QM states of the mind), generate light-based illusions (replicating the QM processes that create light) and… well, basically everything.

From this viewpoint, elementalists act more on, well, our level. They manipulate things in bulk. Necromancers and guardians are a bit harder to pin down in this manner.

In terms of potential: I think the ‘big four’ are probably, well, those with the most potential. Guardians may be a little below the others because they mix it up with physical combat, with monks hypothetically being able to do better because they’re more specialised – however, it could just as easily be that theirs is a form of magic well suited to mixing with physical combat, and guardians are actually unlocking more of their full potential.

Rangers and thieves I think of as being, essentially, dabblers. The ranger primarily uses physical combat, but augments it with a little bit of elemental magic. The thief is similar, except they rely on a specialised branch of mesmer magic that focuses more on stealth and teleportation than regular mesmers. The indigo trails of most thief attacks, however, suggests that thieves might also be using magic to augment their attacks in a similar manner to how a sword mesmer does.

draxynnic.3719:

The ranger primarily uses physical combat, but augments it with a little bit of elemental magic.

We also know that Rangers can summons Spirits of various Nature aspects (Water, Frost, Sun, Stone, Storm, Nature itself, and that’s not counting the ones from GW1) to affect the environment that surrounds them.
Not only that, but in the skill animations, let’s say Maul (GS #2), you see a “Spiritual” bear mauling your foe, and I like to think that as the Ranger actually summoning a Spiritual Bear to strike, or as a Bear to lend its strength to the Ranger for that strike. The first would be more logical, because if we consider Swoop (GS#3) and Serpent’s Strike (Sword#3) both have effects that could hint to a Spiritual animal being summoned to enhance the attack (Swoop : You see an eagle grabbing your character to make him leap. Serpent’s Strike : You see a serpent biting your enemy, and afflicting Poison on the latter).
And there’s also the Charming method for companions. They radically changed from GW1 and 2. In GW1, you had to use Charm Animal which would magically turn the animal into your servant (aka : pet) and in GW2, you just come close to your Juvenile future pet, and press “[F]” to “tame” it.
The GW1 approach does seem rather “cruel” as in crushing the animal’s will with the ranger’s, but it is the most plausible from the two ways. Then, if those methods are purely game mechanics or canon, I guess a ranger has an emotional bond with the animal, rather than the animal being a mindless servant