Guild Wars 2

draxynnic.3719:

This is, essentially, my basis for ruling that, from what we can observe, necromancers appear to have the potential for the greatest impact – because they’ve had the greatest impact. We could theorise until the proverbial cows come home, but at the bottom line, necromancers have a demonstrated capability to be movers and shakers without needing to have a society supporting them beyond that which they’ve created through necromancy. The capabilities of others to do so remains purely hypothetical.

There is a mesmer who’s been able to create an army on the fly (or atleast a sizeable squad). Reiko. With mirror echo and mirror of darkness, she could not only create several copies of herself, but she could also create copies of the player and their party on the fly. However she did need her own ministry of purity guards to protect her even with the army of illusions.She also had the ministry of purity at her own hand, though whether that was diplomacy or mesmery trickery seems to be up to debate from what i’ve read in the wiki, so i could be wrong here.

Another example of extreme mesmerism is from the books. Queen jenna was able to not only create an illusion of kralkatorrik (who’s the biggest elder dragon by a large margin iirc) that then ‘converted’ another army into branded, or cast an illusion ON the branded army to see those events, who have a hive mind connection with kralkatorrik, but ALSO was able to stun another army and prevent the illusion from breaking as well. She did have lots of perparation time with an army protecting her.

Koro sagewind also made an illusion the size of the eye of the north with the ether backlash blinding her. And then she created a convincing feint that delayed the charr army heading to ebonhawk-to-be for days while tapping into her life force and subsequently dying, giving the human defenders enough time after her return to wall up and prepare for the next charr attack.

Now i’m kind of doing a double take on the big mesmer achievements. it seems there’s a lot of conditions on their achievements that reduce the effectiveness that they can create. I would have added kasmeer but as you’ve mentioned, mesmers are most potent at dealing with magic and not creating powerful magic of their own.

However i do agree that, atleast presentation wise, necromancers appear to have the greatest feats magic-wise.

draxynnic.3719:

My contention is that being easier to attain that power as a necromancer suggests that the necromancer has greater potential. If there are three super-powered necromancers (including Zoldark the Unholy from Vloxen Excavations) and only one potential super-powered elementalist on a similar scale that we know of, that suggests to me that necromancer is the profession with more overall potential to become superpowered.

Or that those who choose the path of necromancy tend to have more ambition. Or that the act of becoming a lich is simply less difficult than the equivalent for other professions because it requires less magical power to do. Or that the writers just like using undead armies in their stories because of our world’s associate with death = evil.

There are a lot of reasons liches are so prominent in the forefront of lore. It doesn’t necessarily mean necromancers are more powerful than the other caster classes.

It’s unclear how sapient the typical elementals such as summoned through the Glyph are. Imps (more powerful ones, anyway) and djinn are sapient, but regular ones might not be – in fact, I think somewhere there’s a reference comparing regular elementals to animals.

I used the word sentient because strictly speaking a moving corpse isn’t sentient and neither are normal rocks. Sapient also works but suggests a higher level of thinking power than I was getting at. At any rate I’m fairly sure I’ve seen elementals speak but I can’t remember. They are, however, able to move and act independently from their master’s will as well as operate without a master at all.

We can’t say for sure that they didn’t, but there’s no evidence of Joko having such an artifact, or that lich in the Vloxen Excavations dungeon. (Even in Khilbron’s case, I wonder if it was actually the Cataclysm that did the raising, or whether that’s just what the Krytans initially assumed when undead started showing up, but that Khilbron actually did the raising.)

Weren’t there already undead roaming the Desolation? Joko could have just bound them to his will without doing the raising himself.

I’d also be interested in knowing if there are any non-liches who have managed this feat. Especially since we again don’t know if being a necromancer is the only requirement for transforming into a lich permanently.

Sure, but we still had one person being able to hold it off. The thing that makes this significant is that we’re relying on the post-apotheosis elementalist being able to make up for a smaller army by being significantly more dangerous in person.

And, to put it simply, Baelfire having his primary strength negated by a mortal (very powerful by mortal standards, but mortal nevertheless) guardian, and then picked off by a handful of heroes, suggests that he’s not that much more powerful in person than the liches. Not enough to make up for the size of armies that the powerful necromancers can create.

Looking at the player characters every profession has an equal chance of being lethal in person. Even the non-magical characters can defeat powerful spellcasters one on one. Logan and the other members of Destiny’s Edge are a group strong enough to take down Dragon Champions together, which are usually threats that need whole armies to respond to. I feel having two members of Destiny’s Edge plus a group of adventurers that include the PC is more than sufficient to match any of the liches you’ve mentioned.

The elementalists don’t necessarily make up for the lack of an army by being stronger combatants. They make up for it for having greater destructive potential when left alone to do their thing. None of your liches could summon an army on the spot. They all needed time to slowly build up said army. Huge amounts of time if you take Joko as the standard.

You can rule through fear by having henchmen that propagate that fear for you. Ulgoth is also clearly powerful for a personal visit to be highly threatening. However, he still only summons one big elemental, and a surrounding storm, that dominates the area of maybe a town center? This does not compare to raising an army.

Except we also know the Harathi was a much larger tribe than the nearly extinct Midoniir. The Harathi didn’t fear Ulgoth’s henchmen, they feared Ulgoth.

This is, essentially, my basis for ruling that, from what we can observe, necromancers appear to have the potential for the greatest impact – because they’ve had the greatest impact. We could theorise until the proverbial cows come home, but at the bottom line, necromancers have a demonstrated capability to be movers and shakers without needing to have a society supporting them beyond that which they’ve created through necromancy. The capabilities of others to do so remains purely hypothetical.

Again your evidence is purely from liches. Liches that we do not know the origin of or how it effects one’s magic. Why do liches tend to have such a major impact on the world? Because they have a substantially longer life span than anyone else, an utter lack of morals, and the ambition to try and take over the world.

I’d like to see more of these world defining feats of power from necromancers that have not transcended mortality through unknown means.

At any rate, here are some high end feats from elementalists that I’ve managed to collect.

The Emress Tahmu, upon being captured by the invading naga that had just killed her guards and were slaughtering her people, called down a storm of fire so intense it wiped the entire invading army from her city. The spell killed her, and she ascended to become a Celestial Dragon. I’d say the potential to eradicate an entire army at least cancels out raising an army over the course of 60 years.

Less fatally the elementalist henchwoman Cynn was discovered wounded by a charr warband and wiped them all out with a single spell that also destroyed the remains of her house. A warband can be anywhere from 5 to 20 charr.

The ability to do some major damage to an army is definitely there. Supported by some elementals I could see an elementalist taking on a necromancer and their own army.

Ehecatl.9172:

Or that those who choose the path of necromancy tend to have more ambition. Or that the act of becoming a lich is simply less difficult than the equivalent for other professions because it requires less magical power to do. Or that the writers just like using undead armies in their stories because of our world’s associate with death = evil.

Like I said, I consider that if it’s easier for them to reach a more powerful form, that gives them a better potential to be more powerful, unless there’s reason to think that the more powerful form of the other profession is even more powerful to compensate for the added difficulty of getting there. At the moment, we have no evidence that this is the case.

I used the word sentient because strictly speaking a moving corpse isn’t sentient and neither are normal rocks. Sapient also works but suggests a higher level of thinking power than I was getting at. At any rate I’m fairly sure I’ve seen elementals speak but I can’t remember. They are, however, able to move and act independently from their master’s will as well as operate without a master at all.

So can minions, according to the lore. GW1 minions used to go berserk when their master died, and Draithor’s minions continue to be a threat even immediately after the event to kill Draithor. Some elementals are certainly more intelligent – so are some undead.

Weren’t there already undead roaming the Desolation? Joko could have just bound them to his will without doing the raising himself.

From what we know Joko raised them the first time around. Turai smashing his face in allowed some to get their independence.

I’d also be interested in knowing if there are any non-liches who have managed this feat. Especially since we again don’t know if being a necromancer is the only requirement for transforming into a lich permanently.

Every known lich is a necromancer, and including GW2 liches (which are less powerful than Khilbron and Joko, but still quite dangerous) I think there’s enough to set a trend. There’s a quest chain in Nightfall involving a Shiro’ken that was given some lich-like properties (namely, being hard to make it stay dead…), but it was Khilbron who gave it that power, so it comes back to necromancy.

Regarding non-liches creating sapient undead: Unclear, with a caveat. The sapient undead in the Shards of Orr dungeon were created due to a curse placed by an ‘advisor to the king of Orr’ – either this is indicating that Khilbron was a lich all the way back then (and thus, not made a lich by the Cataclysm), or that sometime in the past an Orrian vizier, presumably a then-living one, had the power to do this.

Except we also know the Harathi was a much larger tribe than the nearly extinct Midoniir. The Harathi didn’t fear Ulgoth’s henchmen, they feared Ulgoth.

Citation please? From what I recall, the Modniir were driven out of the Shiverpeaks by Jormag and competition from other inhabitants (such as norn and dredge), but were still a stronger tribe than the other two – certainly not “nearly extinct”.

The Emress Tahmu, upon being captured by the invading naga that had just killed her guards and were slaughtering her people, called down a storm of fire so intense it wiped the entire invading army from her city. The spell killed her, and she ascended to become a Celestial Dragon. I’d say the potential to eradicate an entire army at least cancels out raising an army over the course of 60 years.

I was considering Tahmu earlier and didn’t think it countered my position, for the following reasons:

1) Like you keep claiming regarding the liches, we don’t know the full circumstances. She might have had help from an artifact or some outside intervention. Putting that aside…

2) It cost her life. In the theoretical matchup between Tahmu and a lich, the lich will simply send in another army after she’s blown herself out of the picture.

3) Similar to the great mesmer feats of magic above: It only covers a relatively small area (compared to having enough undead to dominate an entire nation). Larger feats of destruction did require the use of artifacts.

4) Even when such feats of magic don’t kill the user, they tend to exhaust them, and for mesmers and elementalists both, once the feat of magic is done, it’s done. They don’t have the ability to ‘ramp up’ to the degree that liches have demonstrated, creating a massive army over time that can dominate a territory and literally bury a foe beneath a pile of bodies.

Could a powerful elementalist take on a powerful necromancer’s undead army and win? It’s certainly plausible. Pick battles so that they’re only facing a manageable fraction of the army at a time. Conjure some elemental cataclysm to turn the tide, send in elementals to mop up, take any time required to recover, and repeat, hopefully wearing down the necromancer’s forces faster than they can replace them.

But as previously discussed, the ability to beat someone does not necessarily mean that you have a bigger impact then them. Our hypothetical elementalist can destroy armies, but can’t hold down a territory on their own as well as a necromancer’s army can. The main thing holding them back is that they can’t build up their power like the necromancer can build up an army. The necromancer has less influence once battle is already joined, but can spend years, decades, or (in the case of liches) centuries growing their army bigger and bigger until its strong enough to achieve whatever the necromancer’s goals are. An elementalist can swing a battle, but from the observations raised above, cannot spend their downtime raising a bigger and bigger army as well as a necromancer can.

Given a decade of peace, a necromancer can raise an army. Given a decade of peace, an elementalist’s capability to wreak havoc will have gone unused, and what they’ll have is the likely significantly smaller and less powerful force of elementals that they were able to gather in that time. Start a lich, a post-apotheosis elementalist, a post-apotheosis mesmer, and for good measure let’s throw in a post-apotheosis guardian at roughly the same power level, and give them each two centuries. In that time, the lich would likely have raised a huge army, while the elementalist might have a small army of elementals, while the mesmer and guardian probably might as well have been sitting on their thumbs the whole time. This is why I think necromancers have the most potential to be super-powerful: because what they do lasts and can be built up more than what others can do on their own.

Why do we use Lich as an example when the only Lich that we know the origin of did not use their own power.

Is Shiro Tagachi any less powerful than Joko?

draxynnic.3719:

Like I said, I consider that if it’s easier for them to reach a more powerful form, that gives them a better potential to be more powerful, unless there’s reason to think that the more powerful form of the other profession is even more powerful to compensate for the added difficulty of getting there. At the moment, we have no evidence that this is the case.

We seem to be discussing different things here. You’re saying the practitioner has higher potential while I’m discussing the magic itself’s potential use. A necromancer might have a higher chance to reach a higher level by becoming a lich (and thus gaining more time to study and practice his art) but that doesn’t necessarily mean a user of necromancy is inherently more powerful if both practitioners are at the same level of skill and experience.

Joko, for example, had centuries of experience as a necromancer. It’s impossible for me to find an elementalist of the same skill and experience because none live that long aside from perhaps a Mursaat elementalist, and they tend to rely more on their hax powers than upfront magic.

Every known lich is a necromancer, and including GW2 liches (which are less powerful than Khilbron and Joko, but still quite dangerous) I think there’s enough to set a trend. There’s a quest chain in Nightfall involving a Shiro’ken that was given some lich-like properties (namely, being hard to make it stay dead…), but it was Khilbron who gave it that power, so it comes back to necromancy.

Every lich is a necromancer but not every necromancer is a lich. The vast majority of necromancers will never become a lich. That makes liches an outlier that are not a representative of what mortal necromancers can do.

Regarding non-liches creating sapient undead: Unclear, with a caveat. The sapient undead in the Shards of Orr dungeon were created due to a curse placed by an ‘advisor to the king of Orr’ – either this is indicating that Khilbron was a lich all the way back then (and thus, not made a lich by the Cataclysm), or that sometime in the past an Orrian vizier, presumably a then-living one, had the power to do this.

So more than likely they can’t. Or have a heavy reason not to like not being able to control intelligent undead, which seems reasonable. Otherwise liches would be making themselves vulnerable to normal necromancers, and that would be silly.

Citation please? From what I recall, the Modniir were driven out of the Shiverpeaks by Jormag and competition from other inhabitants (such as norn and dredge), but were still a stronger tribe than the other two – certainly not “nearly extinct”.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Harathi

I’m afraid my gaming computer is down so I can’t go ingame to hunt for text. The wiki states the Harathi are the largest of the three tribes and make up the bulk of the centaur army, and that the Harathi and Tamini were forced into the alliance out of fear for Ulgoth, not out of fear of Ulgoth’s much smaller tribe.

I was considering Tahmu earlier and didn’t think it countered my position, for the following reasons:

1) Like you keep claiming regarding the liches, we don’t know the full circumstances. She might have had help from an artifact or some outside intervention. Putting that aside…

I’m fairly confident that if there was an artifact involved the story would have mentioned it. This is, after all, the only bit of lore we have on Tahmu, unlike Palawa Joko and Khilbron who both have major story arcs dedicated to them.

2) It cost her life. In the theoretical matchup between Tahmu and a lich, the lich will simply send in another army after she’s blown herself out of the picture.

Unless said lich got caught in the spell along with the army he was commanding. In which case it’s a draw.

3) Similar to the great mesmer feats of magic above: It only covers a relatively small area (compared to having enough undead to dominate an entire nation). Larger feats of destruction did require the use of artifacts.

True, but that army can be torn a part by groups of soldiers and completely circumvented by use of stealth. Palawa Joko didn’t conquer Elona through sheer military supremacy, he did it by crippling them by stealing their only water supply. Something an elementalist could also do with water or earth magic.

In fact the elementalist Teinai was able to melt a frozen lake, re-freeze it, and then nuke it with lightning to defeat a powerful demon that was terrorizing the countryside. Clearly showing they can block huge bodies of water with a single spell if they were inclined.

If not for the lack of water the people of Elona could have resisted Joko and potentially put him down like what happened the first time he tried to rule them.

A necromancer has a greater reach with his army, but his presence in those areas is substantially less potent than an elementalist who could simply start nuking a town instead of razing it with soldiers.

4) Even when such feats of magic don’t kill the user, they tend to exhaust them, and for mesmers and elementalists both, once the feat of magic is done, it’s done. They don’t have the ability to ‘ramp up’ to the degree that liches have demonstrated, creating a massive army over time that can dominate a territory and literally bury a foe beneath a pile of bodies.

Elementalists do have the potential to ramp up, though. They can continuously make/summon/bind elementals to form an army. It’s just that, as we previously discussed, they don’t seem to be able to do it as quickly as a necromancer can with raised corpses.

Could a powerful elementalist take on a powerful necromancer’s undead army and win? It’s certainly plausible. Pick battles so that they’re only facing a manageable fraction of the army at a time. Conjure some elemental cataclysm to turn the tide, send in elementals to mop up, take any time required to recover, and repeat, hopefully wearing down the necromancer’s forces faster than they can replace them.

Given a decade of peace, a necromancer can raise an army. Given a decade of peace, an elementalist’s capability to wreak havoc will have gone unused, and what they’ll have is the likely significantly smaller and less powerful force of elementals that they were able to gather in that time. Start a lich, a post-apotheosis elementalist, a post-apotheosis mesmer, and for good measure let’s throw in a post-apotheosis guardian at roughly the same power level, and give them each two centuries. In that time, the lich would likely have raised a huge army, while the elementalist might have a small army of elementals, while the mesmer and guardian probably might as well have been sitting on their thumbs the whole time. This is why I think necromancers have the most potential to be super-powerful: because what they do lasts and can be built up more than what others can do on their own.

I can understand your point of view. I still don’t feel it makes necromancers potentially more powerful. After all, while we don’t see entire elemental armies in the lore we also don’t see non-lich/Zhaitan factions conjuring huge armies of undead to supplement their forces every engagement.

Necromancers use their undead as auxiliary forces just like elementally inclined factions use their elementals. Likely because they are in a state of war and are losing undead/elementals at the same rate they can create them. In fact the necromancer Naku, a non-lich necromancer of great power, had to sacrifice himself to create a full sized undead army, which clearly shows that making massive, persistent armies is a lich exclusive affair.

It’s interesting to note that RANGERS of all professions have a similar ramp up ability to necromancers. Zojun and his rangers were able to create an entire army of beasts to defeat Magadore, and the way the story is written it sounds like a ranger left to their own devices in the wild has the potential to come out of a forest with an army of wolves if they desired. Whether they can keep the army after the battle is unknown, but I don’t see why they couldn’t. Rangers don’t magically bind animals to them. While there may be magic involved it’s just creating a bond with the animal so they become loyal and has no upkeep cost to speak of.

As for what an elementalist can do in peace times. Aside from raising an elemental army it seems casters can also store magical energy as is the case with Magadore, who was storing up that energy to launch a war of magic on the emperor. We know signets are items that hold spells for later use, so an elementalist could produce quite a few of those in preparation.

Then there’s the giant floating castles we see occasionally. While we don’t know what’s keeping them afloat we DO know it’s elemental magic that the Zephyrites use to keep their flying ship in the air (The aspects are different forms of air magic trapped inside Glint’s crystals), so it’s reasonable to think that the flying castles could be powered by elemental magic as well. Especially given Isgarren has an army of elementals, which implies he’s an elementalist or has access to multiple fields of magic.

So let’s say an elementalist has 60 years of prep time. He could store air magic inside some crystals (Not necessarily Glint crystals, there are a lot of crystalline objects that can store magic), use it to levitate a castle he shapes with earth magic, create an army of air and fire elementals, then laugh as the necromancer’s army can’t reach him as he drops meteors on them from above.

Considering that the criteria for judgement I’m using is the capability of one individual to make an impact based on their profession, then naturally anyone who’s relevant is going to be an outlier. Jennah is not typical of mesmers, Logan is not typical of guardians, Gaheron Baelfire and Ulgoth were not typical of elementalists, and from the perspective of the lore the PC is not typical of anything. Since the topic is about which profession is the most powerful, I think it’s reasonable to interpret this as which profession has the potential to generate the most powerful practitioners (which includes the ability to extend one’s lifespan so one has the opportunity to achieve that level of power and knowledge over their extended lifespan). If we’re talking about which branch of magic is capable of doing more, say, when you have a group of ordinary practitioners working in concert – at that stage I think we’re talking about a different question, which I’d be happy to discuss if you’d prefer, and where I would possibly come to a very different conclusion (tossup between mesmer and elementalist, at first glance).

When it comes to creation of sapient undead: I think it’s a mix of moral considerations (creating a necrominion is little different morally speaking to creating an elemental with a similar degree of intelligence, while binding a soul into a sapient undead is denying the soul the ability to go to its proper rest – something which seems in Tyria to be something that only the villains do, whether it’s sapient undead or using a soul to power a construct, unless the subject is a volunteer) and being a more advanced technique in general. Regarding liches making themselves vulnerable to normal necromancers… Possibly they do, but taking control over any form of sapient undead doesn’t seem to be as easy as simply using Verata’s Aura. For a lich to be vulnerable to a living necromancer, said living necromancer would probably need to be more powerful and knowledgeable in necromancy than the lich.

With regards to the Harathi: The impression I’ve always had is that while the Harathi are more numerous, the Modniir are typically more powerful on an individual basis, including having more magic (which is a bit strange given that they only had monks in GW1, but whatever). Either way, the Ulgoth only had an army because the other centaurs cooperated, regardless of whether it was out of fear or other reasons. If Ulgoth’s army had all decided to revolt and were willing to accept victory or death as their only acceptable outcomes, at best he could kill them all and then he’d be left without an army. If Joko’s living subjects revolt, he can kill them all, raise them as undead, and still have an army.

Regarding Tahmu: Given that we only have one paragraph, and whoever wrote that paragraph likely didn’t have the whole story (remember, ArenaNet uses the unreliable narrator), I wouldn’t make that assumption. Particularly since Guild Wars in general and Factions specifically has a number of examples of people using power that’s not their own (Shiro invoking the Jade Wind, the PCs using the Celestial skills granted by Kuunavang).

Regarding a lich being caught in the blast: I’d intended to include that caveat myself, and evidently forgot in the long post. Nevertheless conceded, but on the gripping hand, a smart lich could just hang back and send in the armies until the elementalist is forced to expend all their power, unless the elementalist has some means of picking and choosing their fights (under which circumstances the elementalist can win, as I described myself, but still could not hold down a nation like a necromancer can).

Regarding Palawa diverting the Elon, and the possibility that an elementalist can do the same: This is true, but the elementalist has less ability to maintain the grip on power afterwards. Without a living army to back up their authority, the elementalist is essentially relying on blackmail to keep the society in line – do this or I’ll cut off your water supply, don’t do that or I’ll make it rain fire on your village. They don’t have the ability to maintain garrisons to maintain a presence throughout their domain like a lich does, reducing their overall reach and allowing a greater potential for a resistance movement to arise.

Regarding Zojun: Zojun needed to rally a force of other rangers to do that. He didn’t do it alone, and it’s unclear just how many animals each ranger was commanding – probably more than the one you can have out in-game or even the four you could have in GW2 considering swapping and underwater pets, but I’d be surprised if Zojun had any individual ranger commanding more than a few dozen pets. Certainly, we’ve seen no indications of a single ranger being able to maintain an army of animals on their own. (Magadore, incidentally, I had actually assumed was a necromancer all along, since draining life force to fuel magic is something that necromancers do. The use of the term ‘wizard’ does leave it unclear, of course.)

When it comes to doing other things in peacetime: Sure, an elementalist could presumably spend their time creating magic artifacts, altering terrain to be more defensible, terraforming farmland to be more productive, and so on. However, the elementalist still comes against the same limit that engineers have: In order to actually have reach beyond the range of their magic, they need to have the support of a society that can make use of all that. A lich-level necromancer, if push came to shove, could create a large army that is entirely constructed by the necromancer, removing their dependence on anything other than the products of their magic.

For instance, let’s imagine Isgarren has some sort of grudge with Palawa Joko and has been preparing for decades to take Palawa on. At some stage, he decides he’s ready, flies over to the Bone Palace, and things work out pretty much as you describe. And then, Isgarren declares himself ruler of Elona by right of conquest, but none of the Elonians agree. What happens next?

As we’ve been discussing, an elementalist probably can’t raise an army like a necromancer can. He can probably garrison a few key places, such as the dam, and fly his floating tower around like a fantasy Death Star annihilating anyone he identifies as openly defying him. However, without the ability to have troops on the ground everywhere, he’s more vulnerable to various forms of insurrection. Maybe he can hire an army of mercenaries, but he won’t be as sure of their loyalty. Without troops on the ground, any tribute he asks for might ‘disappear’ before it arrives, either because it was never sent or because it was genuinely raided by a third party. Similarly, without much in the way of ground patrols, it would be easy for rebel bases to sprout up across the wilderness of Elona – possibly supplied by food and water smuggled in by the Order of Whispers through a much more porous border. Some day, it’s likely that he’ll take his floating tower down to pick up supplies or blast some defiant village… and then the Whispers-supplied cannons and asura megalasers that he didn’t notice being built because he only visits once a year or so open fire, and that’s the end of him. Meanwhile, while Palawa’s rule hasn’t been flawless (we know the OoW has a line of communications in to continue fighting against Joko, for instance), he manages to avoid much of that simply by having a large army, the loyalty of the undead component of which he can be fairly assured.

Of course, a smarter move for Isgarren might be to come in as the saviour of Elona rather than another despot, get himself crowned as king by a grateful populace, and rule with a light hand (openly, at least). However, this comes back to my overall point: other professions can only control nations with the tacit consent of the population (note that consent extorted by terror is still consent, in this context). The powerful necromancer is the only one that always has the ‘kill’em all and bring them back as undead minions’ option that can allow them to create a powerful nation in defiance of this rule.

At the bottom line, other professions need a support network of allies in order to extend their reach and maintain control over a large nation, while a necromancer can create their own and their maximum reach may be theoretically infinite.

If we are going to tap into additional power as Khilbron did, then the Lich is not the only one capable.

Jenna is not a Lich nor do they seem anything similar to the apotheosis of a mesmer. So let’s raise her talents.

Who is to say Jennah at apotheosis couldn’t lockdown an entire nation? No need for tacit support.

Gaheron is the assumed but not the definitive apotheosis of an elementalist.

Who is to say that an elementalist at apotheosis could not create an infinite army of elementals? Living matter is far outnumbered by inorganic.

The only benefit to a Lich is eternal life, something that a guardian or engineer could possibly replicate.

The tacit support of the people is irrelevant, only a large selection standing army and eternal life.

Jennah’s feats are pretty in line with what we’ve seen from other mesmers who push themselves beyond safe limits, actually. Palawa Joko however isn’t even the norm among liches. He’s accomplished far more than any other lich in history.

I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to trim the fat of the discussion, so to speak. We’ve spread out into several smaller conversations and it’s getting a bit cumbersome to manage them all in unison.

Regarding a lich being caught in the blast: I’d intended to include that caveat myself, and evidently forgot in the long post. Nevertheless conceded, but on the gripping hand, a smart lich could just hang back and send in the armies until the elementalist is forced to expend all their power, unless the elementalist has some means of picking and choosing their fights (under which circumstances the elementalist can win, as I described myself, but still could not hold down a nation like a necromancer can).

Actually elementalists are a far more mobile profession both in mechanics and lore. They can teleport, dash, and nearly fly using air magic, as well as have aerial support from flame and air elementals. Along with access to items enchanted with air magic that allows true flight.

If both sides have similar prep time an elementalist seems perfectly capable of having a substantial advantage in mobility, so picking and choosing where they fight would be their prerogative. Which plays into my point about the professions being roughly equal in power but specializing in different areas.

For instance, let’s imagine Isgarren has some sort of grudge with Palawa Joko and has been preparing for decades to take Palawa on. At some stage, he decides he’s ready, flies over to the Bone Palace, and things work out pretty much as you describe. And then, Isgarren declares himself ruler of Elona by right of conquest, but none of the Elonians agree. What happens next?

What comes next is political power, not magical. If we’re discussing what profession would be the best at gaining political power mesmer is hands down your best bet for becoming a shadow ruler. As far as we know mesmers are the only profession that has a secret shadow society of other mesmers dedicated to keeping their own kind in check.

Again I have to point out though, that Joko didn’t conquer Elona through necromancy alone. He dammed the river which caused mass starvation in Vabbi and Kourna. They surrendered to him because if they didn’t they would die from the natural environment of their homeland.

Joko also isn’t ruling Elona through necromancy. He needed the support of mortal followers as well, and to that end turned the living into his allies with promises of wealth and power. Joko, more than any other lich in history, had the most time to prepare, best conditions to set up his rule, and most resources at his disposal, yet he still needed the living to support his rule.

So what makes Joko needing living support different from an elementalist needing it? In both scenarios the caster rules through fear and suppression and call allies to their side with promises of wealth and high social standing. Both have the potential to be supplanted by a small, coordinated group or taken out by a glorious martial hero.

You could argue the necromancer’s army makes the living army less necessary, but then the entire point for the Empire constructing the Death Star was so that they could lessen their military expenses with the knowledge that no one in their right mind would rebel against someone that can wipe out their home with the press of a button.

@Ehecatl. My point was that we really don’t know what the apotheosis of any class is. The examples we use are of the greatest feats we know, but we don’t know how high that is in the potential of each profession. It is not fair to compare Jennah to a lich. After all mesmers have been killed by perform great feats; you can’t kill an undead lich.

How would this comparison change if you had an undead mesmer?

Power is subjective so the premise of this post is flawed.

Before the discussion can proceed the participants should dicuss what power they want to focus on.

combat=/=political=/=creative=/=destructive=/=etc

Engineers. They can create bombs and guns for everyone so even the weakest of them all can be lethal. Also they can create ever bigger bombs:D

Necromancer is the strongest profession lore wise no doubt. Pawala Joko enslaves the entire continent. Lich sunk an entire continent. Trahearne the another powerful necromancer, hate him all you want but he’s THE marshall of the pact. Then, there are strong necromancers like Necromancer Rissa and Marjory.

Engineer is up there. Scarlet threatens an entire continent with her engine of destruction. Clockworks, legion tanks, copters, pact airships… Enough to say.

I don’t know why elementalist are rated so high. Are there any elementalist that is actually has power level and influential level of Joko, Lich, or Scarlet? Ulgoth and Baelfire are strong, but they never have the same influence as Joko, Lich, or Scarlet.

Also warriors are rated too lowly. Turai Ossa and Jalis anyone?

Tier 1: Necromancer
Tier 2: Engineer
Tier 3: Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer, Elementalist
Tier 4: Thief, Ranger

I don’t know where to put Revenant, Rytlock is pretty much the only named Revenant.

Revenants potentially equal to any of the other professions, considering where their power comes from.

There may come a day where a revenant channels the legend of an Elder Dragon or a God and with such mastery that they practically mimic their entire @rsenal (really, gonna censor that?).

@Ehecatl: Sure, an elementalist can do all those things. So can an engineer (see, as pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Scarlet), and engineer stuff is generally more able to be produced in large quantities than elementalist stuff.

Yes, while elementalists are more mobile than necromancers (in GW2, anyway, and I think that’s more representative of what they can really do), they can still only be in one place. The necromancer’s advantage is that he, she, or it doesn’t actually need to be nearby to project power. An elementalist can be a mobile natural disaster, a Mesmer might be able to manipulate the living… but a powerful necromancer can be the source of an army that can hold a continent in thrall. (Yes, Palawa has living subjects. However, this is because it’s convenient, and it’s probably also helped by the fact that those living subjects know he can kill and animate them if he has cause and it would only be a minor inconvenience.) No other profession, with the possible exception of an engineer that invents a self-replicating robot that remains loyal to its creator (see, again, Scarlet) can achieve that. If there’s any competition to the necromancer in this regard, it’s the engineer, not any of the other spellcasters that remain dependent on living allies to extend their reach.

In terms of being able to wield power, being able to create an army that is loyal only to you trumps all the rest. Mesmers can manipulate, but they need to manipulate rather than simply having an army of undead at their beck and call, can probably only magically influence so many individuals at once, and are at constant risk of their manipulations being exposed. Elementalists can destroy, but have limited ability to remain control of an area after they’ve moved on. A powerful necromancer can lock down a continent, and unlike all the hypotheticals that have been brought up, this has been demonstrated. I’m not saying that use of a certain amount of guile didn’t help in Palawa’s case, but the fact remains that he has the means to consolidate his victories that other professions simply do not.

(I’d also note that, just like air and fire elementals should be able to fly but don’t according to game mechanics, it’s likely that necromancers can create an air force using incorporeal undead and/or the corpses of flying creatures.)

@Pikachu: Warriors are rated lowly because while they have a good shot at defeating any other profession in direct combat (which is what the game mechanics are based around), they don’t have the ability to do much else. Any other power they have beyond smashing face is based not on being a warrior, but on skill sets like political and military leadership that all professions can develop. (Arguably, a warrior might develop them more because they don’t have the shortcuts available that other professions do, but the point still stands.)

@Throdin: While revenants channel the power of legends, they don’t seem to get the full power of the legend they channel. A revenant channeling a god or Elder Dragon would probably be on a similar level to a human using an avatar form or a norn in animal form: still within mortal parameters. Since revenants are so new to Tyria, though, their limits remain untested. My gut feeling is that they’d be similar to guardians – having some ability to do fun things with magic outside what is allowed to PCs, but not able to pull the larger feats available to the scholar professions.