Guild Wars 2

The other schools make sense.
All matter/energy/reality came from ether and it connects the worlds/dimensions.
So of course ele can conjure matter from ether, necros can use it to contact other dimensions, and mesmers can bend reality with it.

But why would a divided bloodstones allow all three to occur in the school of preservation?

Why could monks create light from nothing, contact otherworldly entities using willpower, and defy reality by making light solid. Adding in healing thats four schools in one.

What is the school of preservation? What exactly is a direct conduit to the gods if it could be faith based magic all along.

This seems like the power tripping of all schools. Sure mesmers can alter reality temporarily but monks could passify you through will alone. Paragons could could order people to burst into flame, and other physical impossible things to command a person to perform.

It’s even more wonky when you see how easily all of the professions are using healing magic now. None of the other schools were mixed into the other ones.

We don’t really know the definitions of any school of magic. ArenaNet has never really explored that, and now with (easily) arguable retcons, even GW1 professions could have had a mixing of schools with non-bloodstone magic.

I’m not sure where you got “aether connecting worlds/dimensions” but honestly, I’d say all four schools do multiple things with aether.

After all, necromancers conjure frost and darkness from nowhere, and mesmers create solidified (but weak) fractured light (illusions).

And about professions using more healing in their magic now, keep in mind that bloodstone magic (thus the four schools) have severely weakened over the millennia and has been partially (and largely) suppressed by the magic leaked out from the Elder Dragons. Meaning professions aren’t just using Preservation/Denial/Aggression/Destruction now but also the spectrum that ley-energy is made of – or rather, the rest of the spectrum.

All of the professions have had some degree of overlap, even in Guild Wars 1.

Consider the mesmer, for instance. Manipulation of magical energy in the form of ether is a mesmer speciality… except that elementalists could also do it. Punishment hexes were a big part of the mesmer theme, except necromancers arguably had the best punishment hexes, at least until Panic and Visions of Regret were reworked. Mesmers could strip enchantments… but so could necromancers… or they could remove hexes… but then, so could monks.

Take either of the other two, and you’ll also find these overlaps. Either the lines between the schools had already started to blur at the time of GW1, or they were never that solidly established in the first place. After all, the four schools were originally broken out of a unified whole, so there are bound to be points where spells from the schools resemble one another close to the boundaries between them. The schools each have their own distinct ‘flavours’, the things they’re best at, but there’s little that’s exclusive to one school of magic. In GW2’s time, the boundaries have become even more porous.

Kitten and puppy the 5000 character limit!

In the case of Preservation, I think there are three basic properties of Preservation magic, which conveniently line up fairly well into the three monk attributes:

1) Conversion of ethereal/magical energy into spiritual or life energy. This is a property where, ironically enough, Preservation comes closest to Aggression: Aggression allowed life energy to be manipulated in various ways or converted into magical energy, but generally couldn’t convert magical energy back into life energy. Denial and Destruction both had means of converting ether into life energy, but neither could do so as easily and conveniently as Preservation. This is one of the few functions that has grown weaker in GW2: as other professions have developed their own healing abilities, the ability of preservation to deliver rapid and massive heals has diminished, although it does still exist (Tome/Signet of Courage, and one theory regarding druid is that it involves a significant degree of dabbling into Preservation).

2) Smiting/Holy. My general working theory is that this is essentially concentrating Preservation magic to a degree where it has the potential to be harmful. As an analogy, consider light from the Sun: at normal intensities it helps to nourish plants, but if sufficiently concentrated (such as by a magnifying glass) it can set them alight. Depending on the exact nature of the spell used, this could manifest as beams of energy that resembles light or as blue flames, and such intense concentrations of energy have the potential to start fires or ionise air to create lightning-like phenomena: however, since these spells essentially work by overloading an area with energy, Preservation is unable to manipulate fire or lightning with the efficiency or finesse of Destruction. This function has clearly grown stronger in GW2 – this might be a function of guardians being less scholarly than monks or ritualists (and thus more inclined to just collect as much energy as they can and throw it at their enemies over using it in a more refined capacity to heal their allies), or it could be that with Tyria’s magic having grown stronger, Preservation has become more unruly and it is actually now easier to use it offensively and harder to use it with the finesse required for strong healing without risk overpowering it and killing the subject.

3) Conjuring of barriers and other constructs of magical force. Protection Monks and the like in GW1 typically offered relatively weak barriers that provided limited protection to an ally, but which could linger for extended periods. Guardians nowadays typically produce stronger barriers that can reliably block attacks outright or prevent enemies from crossing, but which are typically short-lived: it’s unclear whether this method is actually stronger, or whether it’s another case of monks having more proficiency and finesse than the typical guardian while guardians are more likely to simply use raw power. Creation of spirit weapons, however, does seem as if it might be a more developed application of this branch (if it’s not simply the summoning of spirits which manifest as weapons, which would fall outside the purview of the four schools entirely and into Mists magic), and where monks used this property exclusively or almost exclusively defensively, guardians have developed more aggressive uses. This property has some overlap with similar effects in Denial, but Preservation has more of it, and some of Denial’s effects could be viewed as effects that happen to have the same in-game mechanical effect as a physical barrier but actually accomplish that effect through other means. (For instance, is a Feedback bubble actually a barrier that reflects attacks in a traditional sense? Or is it a field that causes projectiles within it to reverse their momentum? The fact that Feedback works on projectiles within the bubble regardless of whether they actually cross the bubble suggests it’s not actually a physical barrier but a region of warped reality…)

A full analysis would, of course, require going into much greater detail, but those are what I think of as the core properties of Preservation magic. Direct conversion of magical energy into life energy. Conjuring of physical barriers directly from magic, with those barriers manifesting as ‘solid light’. And… whatever smiting/holy damage actually is.

Keeping in mind, of course, that particularly in GW2’s time, the schools of bloodstone magic have been supplemented if not outright replaced by an increasing concentration of ambient magic. The fact that a bloodstone exploded without a profession being materially affected suggests that whichever profession was linked to the Maguuma bloodstone didn’t really need it any more, after all. It wouldn’t surprise me if it turned out that the White Mantle started tinkering with the Maguuma bloodstone a lot earlier than the journal entries, and that tinkering is at least part of why resurrection magic in the GW1 sense no longer exists.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@konig
The world’s are islands floating in aether connected through the rift. Necromancers channel the ice abilities of death and their ice is as comparable to water magic as holy fire is to fire.
And though it may be associated with no more healer philosophies, preservation mixed the most with the other schools.

@drax elemtalists and mesmers use ether differently.

One second editing. Don’t reply just yet

I need to sleep soon and that ‘second’ has become an hour, so I’m going to break your request and quickly respond to what you’ve said and look at your edits tomorrow. Knowing my luck you’ll probably finish up just before I do, but them’s the breaks…

Regarding necromancers and cold: It’s possible to come to the same result through multiple routes. For instance, a water elementalist freezes things by conjuring frozen water on the target, while necromancer may be chilling things by directly draining the heat out of the subject and any frost that is generated is a side effect. Similar end results, but they can look different and involve different forms of magic.

Regarding elementalists and mesmers using ether differently: Yes, they do, in GW1 anyway. Mesmers generally manipulated someone else’s magic, while elementalist ether-style spells generally involved using their existing magical energy to generate more (particularly the original form of Ether Prism). Mesmers generally have a lot more finesse and control (according to Gwen’s Story, a lot of mesmer skills that don’t obviously involve ether from their names, actually do when their effects are described in the journals), while elementalist usage of ether is more of a brute-force affair.

However, let’s say that the elementalist ether skills in GW1 had been mesmer skills to begin with. Would anybody have looked at them and thought they were out of place and belonged in the elementalist list? Ether Renewal, perhaps, drawing a comparison with Aura of Restoration, but otherwise, probably not. Similarly, if the arcane skills in GW2 had been mesmer skills in the beginning, would people intuitively think they were misplaced? Probably not. Most of the arcane skills involve blasting away with what appears to be pure magical energy, and mesmers do that as well. There are definitely distinctions, but the general point is that there are areas where mesmer and elementalist skills overlap somewhat, just as you can find areas of overlap between any other two bloodstone schools. Elementalist is probably the magical profession (out of the main four) with the least overlap with mesmer, but the arcane and ether skills are at least approaching the mesmer’s area of expertise.

@konig
The world’s are islands floating in aether connected through the rift. Necromancers channel the ice abilities of death and their ice is as comparable to water magic as holy fire is to fire.
And though it may be associated with no more healer philosophies, preservation mixed the most with the other schools.

@drax elemetalists, mesmers, and necros use ether differently.
(I had to rub to the shop, thems the breaks)

You comment about aggression got me thinking.

So if you wanted to define the bloodstones it pretty much looks like this. (at least in my eyes)

Mesmers use magic to alter the energy in themselves/others, inducing temporary realites from surrounding ether. Essentially they change the laws of physics and matter responds (most skills use altered gravity/kinetic energy/etc to create permanent results). Mesmers use immaterial energies like light/darkness/ether and seem unable to produce matter from energy(i.e Razah). The closest thing is a phantasm.

Elementalists use magic to channel energy in the world, inducing temporary form from surrounding ether. Essentially they change ether to matter and the laws of physics respond (most skills are physical changes obeying heat/gravity/etc). Elementalists use the four elements and seem unable to produce energy from matter. The closest thing is recycling the energy of their spells.

Necros use magic to gather energy from flesh, which fuels the channeling of dark powers. Essentially these abilities give them control over things like darkness, ice, disease, undeath, etc. They seem unable to benefit the living, the closest thing is using blood magic to enhance allies.

Monks use magic to gather energy from their faith/spirit?, which fuels the channeling of light powers. Essentially these abilities give them control over things like light, fire, healing, resurrection etc. They seem unable to benefit the undead, the closest thing is using healing magic to repair minions.

Here is where it gets tricky.

Has this game in trying to balance classes warped the lore? They constantly avoided giving necromancers projectile destruction skills, but when they did it went into a poison field. All the while revenants have dark fields that destroy arrows.

Are they implying that projectile destruction with light is natural to Tyrian magic but using darkness to achieve the same goal is demonic?

Why does guardian fire have more properties to it than necro ice if both are otherworldy? E.g necro ice behaves like elementalist ice, guardian fire doesn’t act like elementalist fire.

Moreover guardian light doesn’t act like the light of any other class. Cleansing, reflection, healing is shared by all. Mesmers may use it with time/stealth magic but guardians just start making stuff with it. Where are the shadow constructs?

Daniel Handler.4816:

You comment about aggression got me thinking.

So if you wanted to define the bloodstones it pretty much looks like this. (at least in my eyes)

Mesmers use magic to alter the energy in themselves/others, inducing temporary realites from surrounding ether. Essentially they change the laws of physics and matter responds (most skills use altered gravity/kinetic energy/etc to create permanent results). Mesmers use immaterial energies like light/darkness/ether and seem unable to produce matter from energy(i.e Razah). The closest thing is a phantasm.

Elementalists use magic to channel energy in the world, inducing temporary form from surrounding ether. Essentially they change ether to matter and the laws of physics respond (most skills are physical changes obeying heat/gravity/etc). Elementalists use the four elements and seem unable to produce energy from matter. The closest thing is recycling the energy of their spells.

Necros use magic to gather energy from flesh, which fuels the channeling of dark powers. Essentially these abilities give them control over things like darkness, ice, disease, undeath, etc. They seem unable to benefit the living, the closest thing is using blood magic to enhance allies.

Monks use magic to gather energy from their faith/spirit?, which fuels the channeling of light powers. Essentially these abilities give them control over things like light, fire, healing, resurrection etc. They seem unable to benefit the undead, the closest thing is using healing magic to repair minions.

Broadly speaking, yes. There are complexities that will be missed by any brief analysis, but that’s pretty close to the mark.

My quick descriptions would be:

Destruction manipulates tangible constructs that aren’t directly related to life. (The elements, basically)

Preservation creates energy that is required for life. (Including heat and light as well as life force itself)

Aggression steals energy that is required for life and uses it for its own ends. (This can include draining light and heat to create shadow and cold, respectively. Note that some life energy remains in corpses which is accessible to Aggression – Well of Blood, for instance, is, or was in GW1, essentially taking life energy from a corpse and redistributing it to allies.)

Denial manipulates thoughts, perceptions, magic itself, and other intangibles.

Spirit (not a bloodstone school) calls upon the Mists and the entities that reside there.

Here is where it gets tricky.

Has this game in trying to balance classes warped the lore? They constantly avoided giving necromancers projectile destruction skills, but when they did it went into a poison field. All the while revenants have dark fields that destroy arrows.

Are they implying that projectile destruction with light is natural to Tyrian magic but using darkness to achieve the same goal is demonic?

I think this is possibly more the inverse, actually – they were avoiding giving necromancer a projectile block because of balance reasons. If a thief can protect themselves from projectiles with a smokescreen (presumably on the assumption that the fire can’t see through the smoke to shoot accurately), there’s no reason a necromancer shouldn’t be able to do the same with a field of darkness… lorewise, anyway.

Why does guardian fire have more properties to it than necro ice if both are otherworldy? E.g necro ice behaves like elementalist ice, guardian fire doesn’t act like elementalist fire.

As I’ve commented before, I don’t think necro ice is the same as elementalist ice. Elementalist ice generally freezes the target from the outside in: they conjure ice and hit the target with it. Necromancer cold generally works from the inside out – they suck warmth out of the target, and any frost that forms is more of a side effect. There are a few exceptions, but those exceptions can be seen as the necromancer sucking the warmth out of an area.

(There’s also reaper cold, which may well be something of a result of a N/D combination. Some of the reaper stuff shares names with dervish skills, after all.)

Moreover guardian light doesn’t act like the light of any other class. Cleansing, reflection, healing is shared by all. Mesmers may use it with time/stealth magic but guardians just start making stuff with it. Where are the shadow constructs?

Well, this gets into the question of what illusions actually are. Consider the blade of a Phantasmal Berserker, say. Is the damage it deals purely in the target’s mind? Is the blade pure magic, and on passing through the target it deals pure magic damage (what would be called ‘chaos damage’ in GW1) to the target? Or are they part of the crossover region between Denial and Preservation, with the blade being a construct of solidified ether hard enough to physically cut like a conventional blade? As I said, whether Denial creates actual barriers is something that is plausibly deniable, but it is also plausibly affirmable as well – we just don’t know.

I would be inclined, though, that calling either ‘light’ might be a misnomer. It’s magical energy, that gives off light, but which otherwise has properties that normal everyday light doesn’t have.

However, the people of Tyria aren’t physicists. They see something bright and glowy, they think ‘light’.

Daniel Handler.4816:

@konig
The world’s are islands floating in aether connected through the rift. Necromancers channel the ice abilities of death and their ice is as comparable to water magic as holy fire is to fire.
And though it may be associated with no more healer philosophies, preservation mixed the most with the other schools.

I’m going to leave the discussion between you and drax be for the moment as I’m getting pressed for time.

Worlds aren’t “islands” first off – when people talk about “islands in the Mists” they’re talking about things like the PvP arenas, WvW borderlands, or Fractals of the Mists areas – in lore, all three of those are the same. Worlds are much larger and much more stable.

Secondly, they’re not “floating in aether” but rather floating in the Mists’ protomatter. And even then, it’s not the protomatter (or aether) that connects worlds, but another location that is “The Rift”, which is pretty much a “world between worlds” kind of set up.

Either way, necromancers do not reach out to other dimensions, let alone necessarily use aether to do so – or rather, raw aether.

As for necromancer’s ice being comparable to water magic as holy fire is to fire magic: I’m not so sure about that. Not everything about necromancy is about death, keep in mind, and some is about shadow. Darkness in of itself is cold because of the lack of light. Coldness creates frost and in turn ice, by soliding water molecules in the air.

For all we know, water magic from elementalists is just taking those water molecules and expanding and combining them, or taking the heat out of them to make ice.

Which would mean both are the same function. One is just a bit indirect.

As for “preservation mixed the most” – maybe, but I’ll just refer to what drax said since his argument mirrors mine.

I was always curious about healing magic. We, the PC can fix dismemberment, piercing, burns, poisons, rots, mental corruptions. But heroes and allies sit out a fight because their legs hurt.. are we somehow easier to heal? Is our healing divine? Then why dont PCs heal entire armies?

IMO, all the classifications on GW1 were based on the specific human vision of magic. The schools never were “the truth”, but only “a truth”, shaped by the standards of our protagonist’s mother culture.

Personally, I prefer the Great Alchemy logic.

Amaimon.7823:

I was always curious about healing magic. We, the PC can fix dismemberment, piercing, burns, poisons, rots, mental corruptions. But heroes and allies sit out a fight because their legs hurt.. are we somehow easier to heal? Is our healing divine? Then why dont PCs heal entire armies?

Rapidly healing entire armies is called being a Lich.

Doctors in our world can fix that list you described. For instance if my toe is cut off I can have it reattached if I am quick enough. The only difference is magic treatment is more speedy, and they are better at resuscitation than we are.

So with magic/medicine waiting to seek care makes the issue harder to resolve.

The longer something is dead/diseased/damage/decaying/decomposing the less they can help.

It becomes the domain of necromancers.

If I wait a year to reattach my rotting toe only a Dr. Frankenstein could fix it. However I would still be left with a dead toe that was reanimated, an undead toe.

Specifically with Taimi’s leg she has a degenerative disease that appears to be genetic. They are to stop it at her leg but they can’t regenerate the function of the leg itself.

I personally would love for Marjory to reanimate Taimi’s leg, but I don’t know if it’s possible without killing her.

Daniel Handler.4816:

Amaimon.7823:

I was always curious about healing magic. We, the PC can fix dismemberment, piercing, burns, poisons, rots, mental corruptions. But heroes and allies sit out a fight because their legs hurt.. are we somehow easier to heal? Is our healing divine? Then why dont PCs heal entire armies?

Rapidly healing entire armies is called being a Lich.

Doctors in our world can fix that list you described. For instance if my toe is cut off I can have it reattached if I am quick enough. The only difference is magic treatment is more speedy, and they are better at resuscitation than we are.

So with magic/medicine waiting to seek care makes the issue harder to resolve.

The longer something is dead/diseased/damage/decaying/decomposing the less they can help.

It becomes the domain of necromancers.

If I wait a year to reattach my rotting toe only a Dr. Frankenstein could fix it. However I would still be left with a dead toe that was reanimated, an undead toe.

Specifically with Taimi’s leg she has a degenerative disease that appears to be genetic. They are to stop it at her leg but they can’t regenerate the function of the leg itself.

I personally would love for Marjory to reanimate Taimi’s leg, but I don’t know if it’s possible without killing her.

Maybe I wasnt specific enough:
LS1 battle on the breachmaker.
The Pc gets burnt, poisoned, practically dismembered several times, healing skill cures all.
Next up, Braham says his leg hurts and cant continue to fight?
Does Braham have no healing skill, is he not as susceptible to healing or is the PC just too greedy to share their healing skill? If I played Ls1 on a druid or guardian. i shouldve been able to cure him, no? In a matter of 2-3 seconds even.

Amaimon.7823:

I was always curious about healing magic. We, the PC can fix dismemberment, piercing, burns, poisons, rots, mental corruptions. But heroes and allies sit out a fight because their legs hurt.. are we somehow easier to heal? Is our healing divine? Then why dont PCs heal entire armies?

Magical healing seems to have a bit of a ‘speed of plot’ aspect to it. Obviously, there are some some injuries that fall short of death that magic is unable to heal without a convalescence period. Equally obviously, PCs do not suffer these injuries unless it is convenient to the plot, just as they never get instantly killed by an arrow to the head or the like, but NPCs occasionally do.

What those limits are have never really been defined. It is worth noting, though, that conditions removed by a skill are typically also conditions that would wear off on their own in a relatively short period of time, so such injuries are probably relatively superficial. “Cripple”, for instance, may actually represent something more along the lines of a stubbed toe than a broken bone.

Ardid.7203:

IMO, all the classifications on GW1 were based on the specific human vision of magic. The schools never were “the truth”, but only “a truth”, shaped by the standards of our protagonist’s mother culture.

Personally, I prefer the Great Alchemy logic.

It’s fairly clear that magic changed around the time of the Exodus, and part of the changing of magic lead to spellcasters being arranged into a specific set of professions rather than being all over the magical spectrum. It’s also fairly clear that magic has been changing again so that the bloodstones are no longer in a position to regulate the use of magic… however, their legacy continues in that the most magical professions (including when adopted by asura) are still based around the schools as defined by the Bloodstones.

My position is that the schools are ‘obsolete’ in the sense that magic is no longer regulated in that way, but it clearly was in the past and some holdovers remain. The mention in an interview that some younger asura regard the schools as human superstition is, in my mind, a combination of asuran arrogance towards other races and the typical conceit of a younger generation believing that it is smarter than its forebears. If the limitation of the bloodstones had purely been human superstition, then I would have expected races who developed magical traditions independently before becoming contaminated by human ideas (the asura being a prime example) to have develop their own professions that use different combinations of magic. Instead, we see the same four – with monks being replaced by guardians – throughout.

@amai

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scarlet's_End
Braham’s leg broke.

Compare

Mhenlo rushed to push the creature’s carcass from on top of the mage’s body. The man was barely conscious. He had been badly mauled by the Charr. His face was slashed, and he coughed blood. Dropping to his knees beside the man, the Monk laid his hands on the mage’s wounds. With a quick word, a flood of blue-white energy crossed over from the Monk to the wounded man…"Then what are we waiting for?” said Cynn, starting off to the east…Mhenlo looked up from his ministrations to the wounded mage. “Cynn, please. You aren’t helping.”

Vs

The Charr let out a howl then raked its axe across the Warrior’s face, cutting a deep wound into her flesh. But as quickly as the wound was made, her skin knitted itself together again.

Both from https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Nolani_Academy_of_the_Arcane_Arts

It takes time to heal serious wounds, yes there is an element of plot to it, but it’s pretty consistent throughout both games. Rox spent time healing Marjory so she didn’t die, they didn’t have to to help Braham. And you were too busy fighting, you didn’t have several minutes to devote to healing.

In their universe damage to the flesh is not serious, burnt/bleeding skin can easily be regrown. Damage to the internal organs (coughing blood is lung damage) or bone is much more complicated.

Moreover as drax mentioned some conditions are magical and can simply be dispelled.

Whether you were a Druid or a Guardian you wouldn’t have had time to heal properly.