Charr Guardians
Guardians aren’t warriors. They aren’t even Palladins in the sense of being warriors that can use magic. They are intended to be heavily armored magic users. Magic users that can fight.
Why would you want a rifle when we have a mace that can smack 4k crits on people with minimal crit damage?
Vesper Dawnshield | Guardian
…what do warrior weapons have to do with guardian weapons?
We aren’t muggles, so we don’t need guns. Although Guardians with rifles do look pretty awesome, I love using rifle environmental-weapons.
Charrzooka? It’s like a rifle only more useless.
Guardians aren’t warriors. They aren’t even Palladins in the sense of being warriors that can use magic. They are intended to be heavily armored magic users. Magic users that can fight.
So.. Paladins.. you basically described a Paladin.
I don’t care how Arenanet wants to perceive the class. As it is right now it’s a warrior that uses magic/holy abilities to heal and smite foes.
So.. Paladins.. you basically described a Paladin.
I don’t care how Arenanet wants to perceive the class. As it is right now it’s a warrior that uses magic/holy abilities to heal and smite foes.
With all the non-religious magical abilities, wands, staves, floating magical tombs, no specific religious connotation it seems to me to be exactly what a-net described. mage that can fight.
So if what I described is a palladin then a battlemage can only be a paladin.
(edited by Dustfinger.9510)
So.. Paladins.. you basically described a Paladin.
I don’t care how Arenanet wants to perceive the class. As it is right now it’s a warrior that uses magic/holy abilities to heal and smite foes.
With all the non-religious magical abilities, wands, staves, floating magical tombs, no specific religious connotation it seems to me to be exactly what a-net described. mage that can fight.
So if what I described is a palladin then a battlemage can only be a paladin.
Depends on what paladin you are referencing. If you reference the DnD Paladin I could agree with your assessment. I’m basing mine off the Warcraft Paladin though, which wasn’t about religion really. It was about the “Light” guiding you and your actions, much like the force guides a Jedi in Star Wars.
Depends on what paladin you are referencing. If you reference the DnD Paladin I could agree with your assessment. I’m basing mine off the Warcraft Paladin though, which wasn’t about religion really. It was about the “Light” guiding you and your actions, much like the force guides a Jedi in Star Wars.
So why imply I’m wrong if it depends? WoW palladins originally did have religion guiding them until it was changed. And they still have a dogma. They have the Light. GW2 guardians don’t even have any sort of force guiding them at all. No force, no Light, no nothing. They access the bloodstones like any other magical class.
And then when we get into the thematics of a paladin and a fighting mage, we see that A-net is correct in how they differentiate them. WoW paladins are a combination of priests and warriors. That’s how they began. Priest taught warriors and warriors taught priests their craft. Palladins don’t use wands or staves because they aren’t mages. They are “Holy warriors”. Guardians on the other hand are battlemages. No holy magic. No ties to a belief about the greater universe and light against dark, right against wrong. No bonus against undead or demons. They aren’t purely scholars or associated with any religion or dogma of any form. And we see this in the spells of the guardian and the lore as well. From a-net:
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.
(edited by Dustfinger.9510)
Depends on what paladin you are referencing. If you reference the DnD Paladin I could agree with your assessment. I’m basing mine off the Warcraft Paladin though, which wasn’t about religion really. It was about the “Light” guiding you and your actions, much like the force guides a Jedi in Star Wars.
So why imply I’m wrong if it depends? WoW palladins originally did have religion guiding them until it was changed. And they still have a dogma. They have the Light. GW2 guardians don’t even have any sort of force guiding them at all. No force, no Light, no nothing. They access the bloodstones like any other magical class.
And then when we get into the thematics of a paladin and a fighting mage, we see that A-net is correct in how they differentiate them. WoW paladins are a combination of priests and warriors. That’s how they began. Priest taught warriors and warriors taught priests their craft. Palladins don’t use wands or staves because they aren’t mages. They are “Holy warriors”. Guardians on the other hand are battlemages. No holy magic. No ties to a belief about the greater universe and light against dark, right against wrong. No bonus against undead or demons. They aren’t purely scholars or associated with any religion or dogma of any form. And we see this in the spells of the guardian and the lore as well. From a-net:
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.
I don’t believe you are wrong. I just don’t perceive it as that. The way the class plays and how it is portrayed in Heavy armor wielding a mace and shield makes it out to be a warrior and not a mage. Though it has a staff and a scepter I don’t really see the whole practitioner of magic. The abilities are magical yes, but it’s more of a hybrid warrior.
I don’t believe you are wrong. I just don’t perceive it as that. The way the class plays and how it is portrayed in Heavy armor wielding a mace and shield makes it out to be a warrior and not a mage. Though it has a staff and a scepter I don’t really see the whole practitioner of magic. The abilities are magical yes, but it’s more of a hybrid warrior.
It’s a battlemage. A mage who is also a warrior. I guess that could be a hybrid warrior since a battlemage is a mage-warrior or warrior-mage if you prefer.
Guys, seriously, You’ve got it all wrong.
Guardians are a spiritual class. What the creators call magic is in truth something that regards inner power, willpower, or essence.
True, they’re magical users, but their magic is different from other magical sources: they don’t need to study it or cast it, they just summon it from themselves. They do this in different ways, that’s why everyone can potentially be a Guardian, provided he has the right attunement.
Spirit Weapons are indeed parts of their spirit materialized through their concentration in physical forms to harm or protect; Virtues are their inner strenght used to inspire others; Shouts to keep others motivated and comfort them. Signets are used as symbols to canalyze their motivation, think of them like the necklace of your loved one, you would give them a deep meaning and receive in change great emotional spin.
The condition for the Guardians is the blue fire, or mystic fire. It is a spiritual fire that burns only under certain conditions; may it be burning only the evils, or only those who are your enemies, or only those who have committed a particular action. This fire is the very essence of the Guardian, and in particular of all the celestial beings, since Fire has always been considered, in medieval times and religious views, the very element of God and its angels. In a way, Guardians are closer to the spiritual and supernatural dimension of the world, looking at it with different eyes.
Guardians don’t have religions or something, they have creeds. But their creeds are personal and unique for each one. That’s why Guardians cannot be classified, because each Guardian class in the world of Tyria is a Guardian because of a very personal reason.
I can be a guardian because as a human I have a great faith in the six gods; I can be one because as an asura I have deep trust in the eternal alchemy; as a Charr I may have loyalty and unconditioned duty or sense of honor toward my comrades and warband, but these are just few and simple examples.
Now, about the original question, why can’t they use rifles.
Well, it’s not that they can’t, in fact I would love to use rifles on guardians because I think it would suit them (and compensate for the lack of ranged weapons we have). The point is that maybe here rifles and pistols are way too technological for them (according to the creators mind); this or just that they already decided to give them to a heavy armored class and they didn’t want to have both of them with guns. But for Charrs we already have the Charrzooka (by the way i find it good and I don’t understand why people complain about it).
Guardians are not so much paladins as they are clerics or warpriests.
Will Hawkins (Human Guardian)
Feryl Grimsteel (Charr Engineer)
Tarnished Coast
Feryl Grimsteel (Charr Engineer)
Tarnished Coast
You have staves.
That’s why.
Far Shiverpeaks
Guys, seriously, You’ve got it all wrong.
Guardians are a spiritual class. What the creators call magic is in truth something that regards inner power, willpower, or essence.
True, they’re magical users, but their magic is different from other magical sources: they don’t need to study it or cast it, they just summon it from themselves. They do this in different ways, that’s why everyone can potentially be a Guardian, provided he has the right attunement.
Their willpower may make the magic accessable but it actually comes from the bloodstones like the other magic classes in the game, unlike the palladins in WoW. This is why everyone can potentially be any class in the game. Elementalist included.
Guardians are not so much paladins as they are clerics or warpriests.
Some of the playable races have no need of clerics or priests. But they are equally able to be guardians and not just able but the class is just as fitting as those with priests.
(edited by Dustfinger.9510)
Guardians are not so much paladins as they are clerics or warpriests.
Really the simple fact that charr can be guardians ruins that, due to the charr wholly dedicating themselves to remove religion from their society, and focusing more on the physical world that they inhabit.
Paladins, warpriests and clerics all have the foundation of religion and religiously inspired combat, either through divine magic or divine magical melee.
Guardians on the other hand have no need for religion, or even the want for religion. It is an arcane magic that is used, it simply manifests in what we would see as more traditionally divine. even then however, there is that separation between guardian and holy warrior, through the guardian being able to use only magical abilities, in essence a battlemage.
Also, i’ve seen a few comments about the nature of the light in warcraft, and there seems to be the thought that since there’s no divine entity, the light is just another form of magic, a trail of thought that really isn’t true. The light in warcraft is in itself the divine entity that paladins and priests derive their powers from. Even the few forsaken who use it call directly on the light itself. The goblins saw profit in it’s powers and began their worship too (or atleast one would assume) and gnomes had a similar trail of thought, only more technically minded rather than money minded. the trolls are really the only priests who have deities to worship, the tauren paladin and priests are caught between paladins and priests and druids. While druids worshipped the moon originally (we can assume now that the druids also have partial faith in the sun too since cataclysm), the tauren saw the moon as only one eye of their deity, and the sun as the other, making their magic (lore wise) a mixture of druidic and divine, the sun being the source of their light.
Dear god, i know way too much about wow, and i’ve never even payed for a subscription X_X.
Regardless, back on topic, the guardians aren’t paladins, they are battlemages. The best example i can give would be to look at the restoration sphere of magic in the elder scrolls series. Restoration magic is entirely arcane, there is (as far as i know, i’m not too educated on elder scrolls lore) no divine magic in existence. Yet, the restoration school acts exactly like how we’d expect divine magic would act, being directly harmful to the undead (going so far as to add undead specific damaging spells in skyrim: dawnguard) and on the other hand be focused on healing the living (apart from one undead healing spell in dawnguard). The restoration magic in the elder scrolls is the very equivalent of guardian magic in guild wars 2.
Some of the playable races have no need of clerics or priests. But they are equally able to be guardians and not just able but the class is just as fitting as those with priests.
Really the simple fact that charr can be guardians ruins that, due to the charr wholly dedicating themselves to remove religion from their society, and focusing more on the physical world that they inhabit.
You two misunderstand me. I’m talking more as a playstyle archetype within the braoder spectrum of roleplaying games. Regardless of whether or not “clerics” and “warpriests” are religious and charr are not, the guardian’s abilities and playstyle are very much similar to that found with clerics and warpriests. If you removed the religious flavor of clerics from the cleric, you would be left with – lo, and behold! – a guardian. Defensive and support magic cased within heavy armor. A lot of “fire from heaven” abilities? Check. Abilities named after virtues and judgment type aesthetics? Check. And the list goes on. There’s even an ability called “Hallowed Ground” and a trait called “Monk’s Focus.” The tome elites are clearly meant to evoke a religious aesthetic. You can call a guardian a “battlemage,” but that’s how a cleric plays. Clerics in D&D even had the option of not worshiping a god, but following higher ideals, whether humanistic or broader.
Will Hawkins (Human Guardian)
Feryl Grimsteel (Charr Engineer)
Tarnished Coast
Feryl Grimsteel (Charr Engineer)
Tarnished Coast
So you acknowledge that they aren’t clerics or war-priests according to lore? Works for me. I was discussing lore. Though, I can’t see how you would have excluded paladins if you were just talking about things like heavy armor with defensive and support abilities.
(edited by Dustfinger.9510)
I’d also like to point out that several fantasy avenues also attribute paladins (<—-notice only one l, not two!) with not just defensive magic abilities but also offensive.
Guardians do fit the bill of a paladin-like class/profession.
I’d also like to state that my Charr Guardian worships the One True God and sneers at the other false gods. Sure his legion scoffs at him, but when they see him kicking kitten or when his divine-given abilities save their hide, they usually shut up.
“Be like water” – Bruce Lee
I don’t get this arbitrary assignment of describing them as paladin-like. Any fighter who cast spells would be paladin-like to some degree or another. Like a thief. It’s basically just reaching for straws to connect guardian to paladin.
Can a guardian have a religious connotation? Absolutely, the same way a thief can be a religious assassin if that’s what you choose. If that’s your characters background. Do guardians automatically start out with it in lore? Not at all. Just like a thief.
So the difference is that I don’t think anyone is saying a guardian can’t be a ‘paladin’ if you want yours to be. But A-Nets template for guardians are more battle-mages than holy fighters, lore-wise. Because they are missing a core element from what a paladin traditionaly is. They are missing the automatic religious connection. Battle-mages on the other hand, wear heavy armor and cast all kinds of spells. Offensive and defensive. There’s no need to ignore any core elements in order to connect guardian and battle-mage.
If you want to call a guardian a “paladin who has no religious connotation”, that’s fine but that’s what a battlemage is. A heavy armor wearing melee spell caster. Or a spell caster who fights on the front lines. So this fairly new move that some companies are pushing their paladins in by distancing them from a religious belief, is really just turning them into battle-mages. Even WoW lore seperates battle-mages from paladins for those same reasons
I don’t get this arbitrary assignment of describing them as paladin-like. Any fighter who cast spells would be paladin-like to some degree or another. Like a thief. It’s basically just reaching for straws to connect guardian to paladin.
Can a guardian have a religious connotation? Absolutely, the same way a thief can be a religious assassin if that’s what you choose. If that’s your characters background. Do guardians automatically start out with it in lore? Not at all. Just like a thief.
So the difference is that I don’t think anyone is saying a guardian can’t be a ‘paladin’ if you want yours to be. But A-Nets template for guardians are more battle-mages than holy fighters, lore-wise. Because they are missing a core element from what a paladin traditionaly is. They are missing the automatic religious connection. Battle-mages on the other hand, wear heavy armor and cast all kinds of spells. Offensive and defensive. There’s no need to ignore any core elements in order to connect guardian and battle-mage.
If you want to call a guardian a “paladin who has no religious connotation”, that’s fine but that’s what a battlemage is. A heavy armor wearing melee spell caster. Or a spell caster who fights on the front lines. So this fairly new move that some companies are pushing their paladins in by distancing them from a religious belief, is really just turning them into battle-mages. Even WoW lore seperates battle-mages from paladins for those same reasons
Paladins are an older class and terminology in the history of fantasy well before a Battle-Mages was even thought of. Paladins WERE the ORIGINAL knight/fighter enhanced with magical abilities.
This isn’t something new. It’s history. What’s new is making Paladins defensive only, and it’s stale. That’s why you’re seeing history repeating itself and taking a twist on the “new concept” of paladin-like classes, thus seeing a mixture of defense and offense.
I’m also not talking about WoW lore. That lore is sooo borrowed from other sources, that they are hardly original. WoW borrows from lore that’s based on lore that’s based from other lore, etc., etc.
“Be like water” – Bruce Lee
(edited by Lonewolf Kai.3682)
I’d have to see a source for that. Right now it just seems that the term paladin is being shoehorned into the idea of battlemage for purely stubborn reasons. Even the RL paladins have a religious connotation. In fact, I don’t know of any fantasy lore where paladin didn’t have a religious connotation early on. And the recent move away from religion still hasn’t been completed by anybody. So it isn’t history repeating itself at all, since in the beginning, paladin had that religious connotation, where as the term battelmage was needed to distinguish between a ‘fighting priest’ and a ‘fighting mage’.
Is there any fantasy universe earlier than D&D that had a paladin that wasn’t a holy warrior?
edit: after some research I’ve learned a few things. OD&D Paladin were added to the fighters class but were based on the romanticized idea of a Christian knight. They were righteous warriors with divine powers.
Warmages were created in 3.5 and were indeed distinguished by being an ‘arcane warrior’ rather than a ‘holy warrior’.
(edited by Dustfinger.9510)
Why can’t guardians use rifles. Warriors can so why can’t they?
The same reason Warriors can’t use daggers, or shortbows, or pistols, or staves – they’re warriors; shouldn’t they be competent with all weapons that are actually applied to the bonce of the enemy? The same reason there are no 2-handed axes, compound polearms, or (I think) crossbows. The same reason longbows shoot as far as rifles, and rifles fire as fast as longbows, and neither they nor shortbows use ammunition and they all have pitiful (compared to real life, and relative to apparent running speeds) ranges.
If you want to wear plate and use rifles just roll a warrior
Why can’t guardians use rifles. Warriors can so why can’t they?
The same reason Warriors can’t use daggers, or shortbows, or pistols, or staves – they’re warriors; shouldn’t they be competent with all weapons that are actually applied to the bonce of the enemy? The same reason there are no 2-handed axes, compound polearms, or (I think) crossbows. The same reason longbows shoot as far as rifles, and rifles fire as fast as longbows, and neither they nor shortbows use ammunition and they all have pitiful (compared to real life, and relative to apparent running speeds) ranges.
actually the reason why there aren’t crossbows is because there’s no logical reason to have them. Rifles are essentially superior crossbows. on top of that, with the techno revolution of the charr, rifles can more easily be enhanced to suit the needs of the engineer. longbows and shortbows essentially take care of the other aspects of the crossbow.