The Norn. Has there ever been a push for a united Norn Nation All Under One Banner?

[Aaron Ansari.1604]

In this particular case, I think it's because the charr don't have their own tradition that, through some process of convergent evolution, wound up close enough to to be included in the playable guardian, any more than humans had an independent tradition that just so happened to count as playable engineers. In both cases, they're just porting over what the other race has developed, with the aesthetic and cultural baggage that entails. Even if the personalized fuel that's powering the spell comes from something that makes sense from a charr-centric worldview, the form of the spell was still something drawn up by humans.

@Loesh.4697 said:

And yes I have seen some crazy sports fans, but few of them have come at me with a chain-axe...yet. :P

In fairness, I've never had anyone religious come at me with a chain-axe either, but I have had a sports fan come at me with a cleat. Speaking personally, I tend to be more wary of jerseys than crucifixes.

[draxynnic.3719]

@Loesh.4697 said:

@draxynnic.3719 said:

@Loesh.4697 said:Oh I completely understand the Anet explanation, or rather what they are trying to explain. It comes off as total nonsense though, while there are plenty of people zealous about their friends and family the fact that it manifests as rays of judgement and sanctified areas is....eh, form and function, don't match that whatsoever and that an entire order would manifest their power this way across nations, even with their human origins, don't make a whole lot of sense.

Not really. Consider: In the context of Tyria, why are things like beams of light that can distinguish between friend and foe associated with religion? Because that's something that guardians (and, formerly, monks) do, and

they

are associated with religion because they are often religious themselves. Guardian and monk powers certainly don't line up nicely to any of the gods - Dwayna and Balthazar (and, considering nonhumans, Zintl, although I don't think we've seen hylek guardians...) are probably closest, but any powers that

did

come directly from any of the gods or godlike beings in the setting would look quite different to the powers of a monk or guardian.

What's actually happening is that guardian/monk magic is a branch of magic just like the magic of necromancers, mesmers, and elementalists, but for some unknown reason, it appears to be drawn to, and function best for, people with faith. The names are just names, reflecting the fact that most people with that degree of faith, and hence most guardians,

are

religious in some manner or another, with most of the original guardians likely being priests of Dwayna or Balthazar.

And, believe me, there are people who get that obsessed with their sport(s) of choice. I don't understand it either myself, but it happens nonetheless.

Close is a drastic understatement, those powers look

exactly

like something that would come from Dwayna or Balthazar, in no small part because whenthe gods were still messing around with mortals 200 years ago that's pretty much their go to of choice. Beams of light, cooling healing mist, massive explosions of fire, their aesthetic colors even even orange and blue respectively. In their depictions. I mean back in the days of monks it wasn't even subtle, you were a direct conduit to the gods through which their power was flowing and you even had absurd things like Resurrection shrines that brought back the dead and bestow blessings

Let's not even talk about the angel and seraph imagery from wings of resolve, cause yeah. Why would a Charr manifest his comradeship in something that looks so distinctly godlike is beyond me, but there you go.

And yes I have seen some crazy sports fans, but few of them have come at me with a chain-axe...yet. :P

I don't think Khorne is exactly an appropriate basis for judging whether behaviour is religious or not...

With regards to Dwayna or Balthazar: Sure, there are aspects of monks and guardians that can be associated with the two, which is why in GW1 monks were most associated with those two rather than, say, Lyssa, who was associated with mesmers and Grenth with necromancers (even though there was no requirement to be a follower of Lyssa or Grenth to be a mesmer or necromancer respectively).

However, the monk and guardian isn't a particularly great fit to either.

In Dwayna's case... yes, she's a goddess of healing, but she's also a goddess of wind and lightning and storms. Sure, there's a little bit of this in the monk/guardian, but not nearly as much as you'd expect if the power was coming directly from Dwayna. With healing now present in the Elementalist, a better match for power coming from Dwayna would be an air/water elementalist (which is what most Priest(ess) of Dwayna NPCs we see in GW2 are), or perhaps a composite with the air skills of the Elementalist with the healing of a Monk.

In Balthazar's case, associating Protection and Smiting always felt a bit like a least bad fit - 'it doesn't really fit anywhere else and it's magic used in battle, so we'll associate it with Balthazar'. In practice, we know what power coming from Balthazar looks like - the Avatar of Balthazar, the various Forged, and Balthazar himself. None of it looks anything like a Monk or even the somewhat more militant Guardian, except that the guardian employs a little bit of fire, and there's not really anything among the Forged that behaves like a Guardian. Of the playable professions, a Warrior with the Berserker specialisation looks much more like you'd expect a holy warrior of Balthazar to behave than a guardian does.

And that's just those two. Tahlkora is a Monk priestess of Lyssa, for instance, and monk skills are well outside of her domain. Same for Margonite worshipers of Abaddon. White Mantle and Charr shamans worshiped the Mursaat and Titans respectively, and they still got to have monks (and guardians in the case of the GW2 White Mantle). The mursaat themselves don't seem to recognise any higher powers than themselves (in the same way as the charr today - beings called gods exist, but they don't worship them), and they still get to have monks. I guess you could try to argue that the mursaat are in fact semi-divine and thus inherently have access to such powers... but then you get grawl monks. Who worship rocks.

It's pretty clear, even just from GW1, that while that branch of magic is associated with religion, it is not actually derived directly from the object of worship. Otherwise, you'd expect a priest of one deity to have different powers to the priest of another, depending on the powers of the deity in question, while those who worship things that are not genuine deities would have no power at all. Instead, if you have faith, you have power, and it doesn't matter what that faith is in. That seems to have been ArenaNet's concept of the monk (and later guardian) all the way through.

Sure, these powers and effects are associated with religion, because they tend to be in the hands of religious people. But it's magic of Tyrian origin, unconnected to any divine being, which anyone can access regardless of what they believe, just that through some weird quirk it's attracted to people who have faith. It's no different in this regard to the other schools of magic, which likely have their own quirks as well (each branch of magic tends to be associated with a particular personality, although it's hard to say whether it's because the magic is drawn to that personality or that people of that personality are drawn to the magic).

[Loesh.4697]

I think Khorne is a perfectly appropriate way to judge the religious extreme as in real life, there have been people who have done...let's just say a lot of killing in the name of their god or gods and leave it at that.

I'd also point out that I think this over emphasizes how important elemental skills are to Dwayna, because we have to remember that Balthazar of all the gods is the only one who is really depicted to be into fire the absolute extreme aesthetically. Dwayna first and foremost is associated with healing, compassion, protection of the meek and innocent, so on and so forth. Saying that the guardian specialization isn't a great fit for her is a really big stretch to me, everything about their aesthetic, including the god rays of light, the wings which have always been associated with Dwayna, and sharing one of her two primary colors is very Dwayna-esque.

I'd also argue on the little bit of fire part, if you really want to you can just coat everything with blue and orange flames. Blue/orange fire also has the distinction of being uniquely associated with Balthazar, to the point that the foefire is often depicted as manifesting as waves of blue flame washing over people. In Path of Fire the orange pops more but you can see the trails and tendrils of blue, If you want to go heavy into the zeal and radiance trees you can vomit out so much fire that for all intents and purposes you may as well be a forged at that point.

You also say you'd expect them to have different powers but by the looks of things, they sort of did? In GW1 a flame legion Shaman would be distinct from a regular old monk by pairing him with an elementalist and emphasizing his fire skills, the devs back then got around things in the games system by shifting and shuffling the classes together. This extended even down to the animals, which is why there's no real fluff pieces about Flame Shamans have monk like traits, but the monk class's abilities felt like a good way to represent their toolkit when paired with fire elementlists as a spec.

GW1 was especially obvious with this using things like ressurection shrines, the gods interference in mortal affairs and their meddling with people extended to the point of bringing back the dead. Which is probably why there aren't any monks anymore as those gods are no longer around to make people into direct conduits, so as per 'Natural Healing: Gift of the Monk' people went into a process of taking bits of Monk discipline and applying it to Ritualism and Elonian protection magic. The origin is completely human and very obviously rooted in belief of the gods, but in order for them to be playable by other races you've gotta toss some ambiguity in there, even though the ambiguity makes no sense.

I should clarify i'm not arguing it's lorebreaking for Anet to do this, they write the lore. But it is mildly hilarious to see a Charr wandering around with that aesthetic even though it makes no sense. Dinky's quotes with us and his overall personality don't help, I guess I just assume Charr guardians really like thumbtacks.

[draxynnic.3719]

@"Loesh.4697" said:I think Khorne is a perfectly appropriate way to judge the religious extreme as in real life, there have been people who have done...let's just say a lot of killing in the name of their god or gods and leave it at that.

I... really don't think that "religious" and "religious extremist" are necessarily the same thing.

I'd also point out that I think this over emphasizes how important elemental skills are to Dwayna, because we have to remember that Balthazar of all the gods is the only one who is really depicted to be into fire the absolute extreme aesthetically. Dwayna first and foremost is associated with healing, compassion, protection of the meek and innocent, so on and so forth. Saying that the guardian specialization isn't a great fit for her is a really big stretch to me, everything about their aesthetic, including the god rays of light, the wings which have always been associated with Dwayna, and sharing one of her two primary colors is very Dwayna-esque.

Dwayna is probably the closest fit, but I think you're grossly underestimating how important Dwayna's sky goddess identity is.

The cathedral of Dwayna in Orr is called the Cathedral of Zephyrs, not the Cathedral of Mercy or Healing or anything like that. Her statues in Guild Wars 1, when activated by the Favour of the Gods, are signified in their activation by a lightning strike. Dwayna is the patron of Air Magic and Wind Prayers (even though some specific skills in the latter are more Grenth-oriented) as well as all Monk branches despite Smiting and Protection being associated with Balthazar elsewhere in the lore. When angry, she expresses her anger through lightning and storms, as seen in her GW1 lore (where she sends lightning to strike those who threaten her followers) and in her parable.

Dwayna is certainly the least bad fit, but if monks really were being granted her powers, you would think that a) you wouldn't be able to be a monk unless you followed Dwayna, and b) that monks would also have the lightning and storm aspect as their offensive option in lieu of Smiting.

Meanwhile, mesmer and necromancer, which are generally regarded as secular spellcasters, are pretty much perfect fits for Lyssa (at least in GW1) and Grenth (the cold slant of necromancers in GW1 was relatively weak, but it was certainly there) respectively. Those professions are actually better candidates to be conduits for the power of their patron deities than monks are.

I'd also argue on the little bit of fire part, if you really want to you can just coat everything with blue and orange flames. Blue/orange fire also has the distinction of being uniquely associated with Balthazar, to the point that the foefire is often depicted as manifesting as waves of blue flame washing over people. In Path of Fire the orange pops more but you can see the trails and tendrils of blue, If you want to go heavy into the zeal and radiance trees you can vomit out so much fire that for all intents and purposes you may as well be a forged at that point.

Except that's the thing - fire and use of weapons (which only applies to guardians, not monks) is pretty much all they have in common.

Apart from a smithing aspect, Balthazar is a bit of a two-track mind. Virtually all of his magic is fire - we see this in his avatars, in Balthazar himself, and in his GW1 blessings. What isn't fire is related to handling weapons in some manner - if you consider chains to be a weapon, that's pretty much what he has. The Forged are a little more varied, but that probably comes from some of them retaining skills they had while they were alive, and they're still mostly 'fire' and 'handling weapons'. There's nothing among the Forged that I would consider guardian-like or monk-like (the War Mage is possibly the closest, but...). Guardians, on the other hand, have a much broader range of skills. It's hard to argue that they're empowered by Balthazar when their range of capabilities are so much broader.

Even when they do throw fire around, the appearance is noticeably different. Guardian flame is pretty much always blue (the only exception is Firebrand stuff, and the elite specialisations are somewhat replacing secondary professions anyway, so that might not be pure guardian magic to begin with). Balthazar's flames, on the other hand, are natural fire colours: the hottest portions burn blue because that's true of regular flames as well.

You also say you'd expect them to have different powers but by the looks of things, they sort of did? In GW1 a flame legion Shaman would be distinct from a regular old monk by pairing him with an elementalist and emphasizing his fire skills, the devs back then got around things in the games system by shifting and shuffling the classes together. This extended even down to the animals, which is why there's no real fluff pieces about Flame Shamans have monk like traits, but the monk class's abilities felt like a good way to represent their toolkit when paired with fire elementlists as a spec.

I really don't see what you're trying to argue here? Some charr monks had secondary professions? So did PCs. The magic worked exactly the same - you could even learn spells off a charr through capture signets if you were so inclined. Pre-EOTN charr rarely had secondary profession skills, and post-EOTN, the monk profession was paired with mesmer and paragon in addition to elementalist.

Furthermore, the titan gods of the charr really shouldn't be able to grant that sort of magic - the only titans that had such magic was one of the subtypes of Frost Titans. The Destroyers which they worshipped in EOTN, furthermore, were noteworthy in not having monks at all. Where was the Flame Legion's monk magic coming from if it HAS to come from a patron?

GW1 was especially obvious with this using things like ressurection shrines, the gods interference in mortal affairs and their meddling with people extended to the point of bringing back the dead. Which is probably why there aren't any monks anymore as those gods are no longer around to make people into direct conduits, so as per 'Natural Healing: Gift of the Monk' people went into a process of taking bits of Monk discipline and applying it to Ritualism and Elonian protection magic. The origin is completely human and very obviously rooted in belief of the gods, but in order for them to be playable by other races you've gotta toss some ambiguity in there, even though the ambiguity makes no sense.

There's actually nothing that says that even resurrection magic came from the gods. Plenty of beings who would be regarded as enemies of the gods, including the aforementioned charr, managed it just fine.

Sure, easy resurrection magic is no longer available, and that change happened around the time the gods disappeared. But they may not be connected. Or they may be connected, but more in a 'the gods changed the way that the Mists worked so that it was no longer so easy to call spirits back from the Mists' way than in a 'resurrection was divine intervention' way.

I should clarify i'm not arguing it's lorebreaking for Anet to do this, they write the lore. But it is mildly hilarious to see a Charr wandering around with that aesthetic even though it makes no sense. Dinky's quotes with us and his overall personality don't help, I guess I just assume Charr guardians really like thumbtacks.

Because the magic is only associated with religion because of who people see using it.

(Which is, granted, why charr often distrust it - at some level the charr know that a guardian is not necessarily religious, but on another level, the fact that they often are makes them suspect.)

The concept of magic of various types being attracted to different personalities is not unique to ArenaNet. Your reference indicates that you're familiar with Warhammer - part of the fluff for the lores of magic there (which included the Lore of Light, which could also easily be mistaken for "holy" magic just like the Monk and Guardian) is that the lores of magic each have a distinct personality and tend to work best for those who match that personality. Light Wizards are philosophical, Amethyst Wizards are reverent, Gold Wizards are logical, and so on.

The schools of Tyrian magic seem to follow a similar rule, when you pay attention to the personalities of NPCs of the various professions. Monks/guardians are faithful. Mesmers are creative. Elementalists are often flamboyant, while necromancers are often dour. Now, it's hard to say how much is cause, how much is effect, and how much is a spiral effect, but it does seem to have been ArenaNet's intention all along that any magic that doesn't explicitly involve communing with a third party (spirit summoning, revenant legends, etc) can be performed completely independently.

If you have faith, you can channel the power of the guardian. It doesn't matter what you have faith in, because the actual power is coming from the interaction of your inner faith with Tyria's magical field.

[Loesh.4697]

I didn't claim that being religious is the same as religious extremism? but religious extremism fits Guardian the best the whole thing revolves around zealotry, to be a zealot, and being a zealot can mean you are a zealot of football but it's not really an aesthetic that quite compares in the vast majority of cases with modern crusaders.

Secondly, I don't think i'm grossly underestimating the importance of the elements at all. Sure wind and lightning are thematic of Dwayna, as well as light in general for that matter, but the gods are not defined by the elements they are associated with. They are defined by the core concepts they embody, and for Dwayna that was compassion, protection, defense, so on and so forth. Likewise while Monks definitely have association with Dwayna and Balthazar the most strongly in terms of theme(Hence the iconic monk being of both Balthazar and Dwayna.) the gods in general were associate with helping and protecting humanity, hell in Lyssa's scriptures one of her primary stories is about seeing the beauty in someone who was sick and infirm, this general sense of benevolence towards humanity is what grounds monks. In the game it's not even subtle about this, their primary attribute is divine favor which boosts and heals their allies beyond the norm. Her Cathedral might be wind theme'd but that is not the same thing as being a goddess of wind.

When it comes to Balthazar, yes the monks are definitely more broad that's because they're the conduit of all the gods, not just a god. Their skills of protection, healing, and Resurrection fall under others. To say the monks smiting abilities aren't 'Balthazar theme'd because the monk has other stuff in there and it doesn't manifest as a burst of flame doesn't mean it's not Balthazar theme'd since, as you mention in fact, monk skills are associated with Balthazar despite not doing fire damage. Instead they inflict holy which is a unique damage type that in modern Tyria doesn't seem to exist anymore. because it's...well...holy. Again, this is probably why there is no order of monks anymore even though old fashioned ring signets and necromancer Hex's seem to be perfectly functional As far as Guardians go, well Elementilists don't really share that distinct orange blue flame, where yes, the Guardian seems like he's spewing the foefire out of his mouth whenever he uses the torch skill. And, mind you, the Foefire was generated by one of Balthazar's swords.

In that bit about the flame legion, in this regard, it's pretty obvious from the outset of GW1 that Skale probably shouldn't be vomiting necromantic magic at you but it's the best way to represent their abilities inside the gameplay mechanics. Creatures were occasionally given monster skills but with the notable exception of some Nightfall bosses they never felt smooth within the system. So to represent all the various kinds of magic that people used, they turned to using the profession class mechanics to represent what they might be like. Lorewise Charr monks are never commented on, or pushed in any way(And you'd think that someone would say something about that.)because, well, they weren't monks. Monk skills in combination with Elementalist skills just happened to be the best way to represent them. Making monsters skills that work takes a lot of time and energy, and more often then not they came off as janky at best.

And yes Resurrection magic exists outside the gods, just look at the Eternal Flame, but what i'm saying is pretty much what you said. Easy Resurrection no longer exists, the gods were way more active in our mortal affairs to the point that a significant number of people could be brought back from death. In that particular case my arguement isn't that ressurection is unique, it's that it's much easier and just hammers in that with the gods divine will seeping into Tria, even after the Exodus, they were doing some crazy stuff. Hence blessings.

I understand the reasoning, but the reasoning when you actually look at what the guardian does and how he does it, seems nonsensical in non-human cultures. The thrust of my original comment was essentially the idea of replacing faith in the gods, with faith in football and friendship, is way weaker basis for a class and especially one with the sort of divine aesthetic thhat the guardian has. I understand the mechanics completely, I just think it looks very silly and in-congruent with the races it's attached to. But as Aaron had said, it's something that Anet likely whipped up becase actually explaining the vague powers of the guardian and it's magic for every race would probably take until the end of time, or maybe not very much time at all, but it'd take a lot of work and least core game Anet wasn't willing to put that much thought into the class design yet.

[draxynnic.3719]

@"Loesh.4697" said:I didn't claim that being religious is the same as religious extremism? but religious extremism fits Guardian the best the whole thing revolves around zealotry, to be a zealot, and being a zealot can mean you are a zealot of football but it's not really an aesthetic that quite compares in the vast majority of cases with modern crusaders.

And the only association with zealotry is a few skill names that were probably made up by humans? Faith may be required to be a guardian, but extremism is not.

Secondly, I don't think i'm grossly underestimating the importance of the elements at all. Sure wind and lightning are thematic of Dwayna, as well as light in general for that matter, but the gods are not defined by the elements they are associated with. They are defined by the core concepts they embody, and for Dwayna that was compassion, protection, defense, so on and so forth. Likewise while Monks definitely have association with Dwayna and Balthazar the most strongly in terms of theme(Hence the iconic monk being of both Balthazar and Dwayna.) the gods in general were associate with helping and protecting humanity, hell in Lyssa's scriptures one of her primary stories is about seeing the beauty in someone who was sick and infirm, this general sense of benevolence towards humanity is what grounds monks. In the game it's not even subtle about this, their primary attribute is divine favor which boosts and heals their allies beyond the norm. Her Cathedral might be wind theme'd but that is not the same thing as being a goddess of wind.

The core concepts might be the most important part of their identity, but that doesn't mean that the elemental part is unimportant. Look at Balthazar: Fire everywhere. Grenth's realm has the Frozen Wastes, and that's actually the portion of his realm closest to his seat of power. We haven't seen Dwayna or her realm directly, but the stories talk about her sending storms and lightning against those who offend her, and we have no reason to believe that Dwayna is less storm-based than Balthazar is fire-based.

If the power was coming directly from Dwayna, why wouldn't she extend power over storms to her priests? Because she can't, because Tyrian magic is independent of the powers of the gods.

When it comes to Balthazar, yes the monks are definitely more broad that's because they're the conduit of all the gods, not just a god. Their skills of protection, healing, and Resurrection fall under others. To say the monks smiting abilities aren't 'Balthazar theme'd because the monk has other stuff in there and it doesn't manifest as a burst of flame doesn't mean it's not Balthazar theme'd since, as you mention in fact, monk skills are associated with Balthazar despite not doing fire damage. Instead they inflict holy which is a unique damage type that in modern Tyria doesn't seem to exist anymore. because it's...well...holy. Again, this is probably why there is no order of monks anymore even though old fashioned ring signets and necromancer Hex's seem to be perfectly functional As far as Guardians go, well Elementilists don't really share that distinct orange blue flame, where yes, the Guardian seems like he's spewing the foefire out of his mouth whenever he uses the torch skill. And, mind you, the Foefire was generated by one of Balthazar's swords.

Humans associate those skills with Balthazar. Humans also associate monk skills with the gods in general. My whole argument rests on those human assumptions being wrong, so trying to prove that the assumption is right by assuming that the assumption is right is circular reasoning.

Even the GW1 game mechanics didn't support the connection of Protection and Smiting Prayers with Balthazar. The blessing that boosted Monk skills came entirely from Dwayna. (And before you say "a-hah, that's evidence that monk skills come from Dwayna!", note that Lyssa's blessing also boosted mesmer skills, Grenth necromancer, and so on, so if you're going to make that claim, you're claiming by extension that every Guild Wars 1 profession only has its power because of the gods... including warriors.)

Holy still exists. "Light" and "holy" were interchangeable in Guild Wars 1, to the point where for the first few years, weapons that inflicted holy damage were described as dealing light damage instead. All those guardian symbols that produce light fields? Those are the same energy as 'holy' in GW1. They've just been renamed to something more... secular.

And you know what none of the Forged, avatars of Balthazar, or the like seem to have? Anything that looks even vaguely like it's a light field.

(As for why there are no monks around any more: when the guardian was announced, it was explained that, basically, the monks got fed up with being targeted first because they wore light armour and were poor at defending themselves and started training in heavy armour and martial weapons instead. Guardian magic and monk magic is the same branch of magic (although guardian also has some contributions from other professions which most likely drew from the same bloodstone, back when bloodstones mattered). That's why I keep referring to them together.)

In that bit about the flame legion, in this regard, it's pretty obvious from the outset of GW1 that Skale probably shouldn't be vomiting necromantic magic at you but it's the best way to represent their abilities inside the gameplay mechanics. Creatures were occasionally given monster skills but with the notable exception of some Nightfall bosses they never felt smooth within the system. So to represent all the various kinds of magic that people used, they turned to using the profession class mechanics to represent what they might be like. Lorewise Charr monks are never commented on, or pushed in any way(And you'd think that someone would say something about that.)because, well, they weren't monks. Monk skills in combination with Elementalist skills just happened to be the best way to represent them. Making monsters skills that work takes a lot of time and energy, and more often then not they came off as janky at best.

That argument only goes so far. When you have a magical animal using magical skills, sure, you can call it a 'less bad fit'. When you have sapient beings which are explicitly mentioned in the lore as using magical spells, though, the argument gets weaker. When you're talking about other humans that don't worship the gods and yet still have monk skills, that blows the argument out of the water. (Particularly since ArenaNet was careful in GW1 that skills that absolutely WERE connected to the gods, namely the dervish avatar skills, were only given to enemies that could plausibly still be worshipers of that god. For instance, Grenth dervish enemies in War in Kryta were from the so-called Peacekeeper auxiliaries, not the White Mantle themselves.)

You also seem to be claiming that all charr 'shamans' were combinations of elementalist and monk, when in fact we saw charr monks that were pure monk, monk/mesmer, or monk/paragon as well as elementalist/monks.

They behaved pretty much identically to human monks, and they did not worship the gods. A White Mantle Abbott behaved pretty much identically to a priest of Dwayna, and they did not worship the gods.

The reasonable conclusion to make is that monk magic does not require worshiping the gods.

And yes Resurrection magic exists outside the gods, just look at the Eternal Flame, but what i'm saying is pretty much what you said. Easy Resurrection no longer exists, the gods were way more active in our mortal affairs to the point that a significant number of people could be brought back from death. In that particular case my arguement isn't that ressurection is unique, it's that it's much easier and just hammers in that with the gods divine will seeping into Tria, even after the Exodus, they were doing some crazy stuff. Hence blessings.

Except that the power to fuel the spell doesn't need to be coming from the gods. At most, it needs to be permitted by the gods.

As an example, consider the following:

A resurrection spell combines powerful healing with a call to the Mists to pull the spirit of the deceased back to the mortal world. Grenth has set up the rules of the Underworld to allow this. However, he has no direct control over who can be returned in this way, so both the followers of the gods and their enemies are able to do it. At the time, the gods feel that this tradeoff is still a net win.

Then Zhaitan rises, and takes advantage of this to steal a whole bunch of souls from the realm of the gods and stuff those souls into Risen. This infuriates Grenth, so he seals the Underworld so that souls can no longer be pulled from the Underworld as easily.

The resurrection spell, from the Tyrian side, is still doing exactly what it used to do. However, when previously it was successful at returning the soul of the deceased from the more permissive Underworld, now it no longer has the power to break the more stringent safeguards the gods have put in place to prevent more souls from being stolen from their realms, so the only effect of the spell is that the body it's cast on is maybe in slightly better condition.

I understand the reasoning, but the reasoning when you actually look at what the guardian does and how he does it, seems nonsensical in non-human cultures. The thrust of my original comment was essentially the idea of replacing faith in the gods, with faith in football and friendship, is way weaker basis for a class and especially one with the sort of divine aesthetic thhat the guardian has. I understand the mechanics completely, I just think it looks very silly and in-congruent with the races it's attached to. But as Aaron had said, it's something that Anet likely kitten up becase actually explaining the vague powers of the guardian and it's magic for every race would probably take until the end of time, or maybe not very much time at all, but it'd take a lot of work and least core game Anet wasn't willing to put that much thought into the class design yet.

It's only nonsensical if you assume the power comes from the human gods, which it doesn't.

You can continue making increasingly convoluted arguments to justify that belief, or you can accept that it was ArenaNet's intention all along that the power comes from Tyria's magic and human belief that the power came from the gods was just a misunderstanding by humans... a misunderstanding that is easy to make when the power seems to flow most effectively for people who have faith in the gods.

GW1 lore had four schools of magic, and four bloodstones (and the keystone). This is not a coincidence - the whole point of the bloodstone lore was to explain why magic was divided into four schools. Monk magic, now guardian magic, was one of those schools, most likely being linked to the Preservation bloodstone. Now the four schools of magic are more a matter of tradition rather than being bound by the Bloodstones, but the source of monk magic, and therefore guardian magic, has been firmly established as being Tyrian in origin, just like necromancer, mesmer, and elemental magic, right from the beginning.

[Aaron Ansari.1604]

If I'm reading Loesh's arguments correctly, the contention isn't that the power used by monks/guardians comes from the gods, but that A.) the way by which guardians are said to draw on that power (faith) and B.) the way in which that power manifests (Dwayna coloured healing magic, wings, Balthazar styled flames) both make for poor fits for non-human races, using the charr as a suitable example. Essentially, that a charr 'guardian' would more sensibly tap the power- I'll call it 'Preservation' for convenience- through something other than faith, and manifest it in ways visually distinct from the human-flavoured guardians we actually have.

If I'm reading drax's arguments correctly, the contention is that the connection to faith and the Dwayna coloured healing magic, wings, and flames are the natural manifestations of Preservation, and that their association to religion is either coincidental (the color match to Dwayna, the element match to Balthazar) or a result of the practice filtering through humanity's culture before reaching the other races (skill/specialization names involving zeal, faith, etc.).

Is that fair? From where I'm sitting, those central disagreements are getting lost under tangential disputes concerning the nitty-gritty of details that aren't ultimately relevant.

[Loesh.4697]

Oh for gods sake, this is reaching the point of absurdity. To assume that it's Anets intent all along, and frankly anybody with eyeballs can see that Anet doesn't have that level of clairvoyance, is plain madness. I doubt that when they changed light damage to holy damage they did it with the idea that at some point in the far they would need to describe holy in some other way and then turned that into light again, rather then much more logical answer that they wanted to express the monks divinity but when they moved away from gods in storytelling they went back into light. Again, I refer you back to the fact that monks no longer exist in GW2 likely for that very association with divinity and with the gods, to the point that Natural Healing: Gift of the Monk is very likely there to bridge the gap from monk tradition without divine power over to the guardian. Hence why yes, in part is monks using heavy armor, but there is a reason why Macha states it's only a bit of monk training, in combination with Ritualist 'Hoo hah' and Elonian Protection magic for a grab bag of you can't hurt me.

The bit about animals versus sapiant beings is just plain confusing, because the very fact that a bog skale is using necromantic magic for some weird reason and a bull is hitting you with warrior abilities seems to indicate, again my original point that rather then assuming that bull is a warrior, it's safe to assume that it is doing warrior like things and mimicing those abilities. In the same way that the Flame Legion shaman might be using monk abilities but that doesn't strictly mean it's a monk or using monk class subsets because that is what the best representation of what that power is. If Charr monks exist, again would we not hear of them? would there not be some background information on what these Charr monks were doing to gain their powers? rather then say that the Charr likely was getting things from the Titans seemed to have monk like effects. It is more of a stretch for someone to point at that and say 'Hey that's the same thing as a monk' with no explanation and backing beyond those skills, then simply assume that within the constraints of GW1 lore It's funny that you actually mention the Dervish skills, because bizarrely as of a recent season we fought an Avatar of the Five gods who comes from a culture that replaced the gods with Joko worship for all intents and purposes, which actually supports your argument that 'it's all just magic', which given Anets direction in GW2 it is probably true now even if it wasn't before.

If you think my arguments convoluted i'm not sure what to call yours, absurd, surreal, it requires a lot of assumptions about Anets capability to see into the future, their explanation...and the reasoning for their lack of explanation with the class, and implies some rather extreme divides in aesthetic choice that frankly seem to not make a whole lot of sense. Just because Dwayna is the Goddess of air doesn't mean that a being she deliberately empowers, and again may I remind you the monks primary stat is called divine favor, need take the form of a thudnerstorm rwhen they are already expressing her particular virtue as a goddess. Yes the stone of preservation and healing magic has always been a thing, but where that healing comes from with the monk is not necessarily all from that stone especially when they are explicitly described as beign a conduit of the gods.

And the maddening part of all this is that the primary basis of my point is that now, as Anet moves further away from the god storyline, it looks extremely nonsensical for all these human icons, abilities, and terminology to be associated with a class that is multi-racial despite all those races not sharing the same idea of holiness, if they even have a concept of holiness at all. Leaving us with only a vague idea of what they are consecrating anything in the name of, what entity is passing 'judgement' on their foes, so and so forth. Because in place of religious faith, we have faith in our friends, and instead of the gods we have this odd element that we call light which was likely picked for the exact reason that it matched a name from the early game used by monks. Not because back then they thought holy and light were the same thing, but in the context of the guardian now it serve that purpose, even if the aesthetic still doesn't match the other races at all.

God, my necks stiff now.

[Loesh.4697]

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:If I'm reading Loesh's arguments correctly, the contention isn't that the power used by monks/guardians comes from the gods, but that A.) the way by which guardians are said to draw on that power (faith) and B.) the way in which that power manifests (Dwayna coloured healing magic, wings, Balthazar styled flames) both make for poor fits for non-human races, using the charr as a suitable example. Essentially, that a charr 'guardian' would more sensibly tap the power- I'll call it 'Preservation' for convenience- through something other than faith, and manifest it in ways visually distinct from the human-flavoured guardians we actually have.

If I'm reading drax's arguments correctly, the contention is that the connection to faith and the Dwayna coloured healing magic, wings, and flames are the natural manifestations of Preservation, and that their association to religion is either coincidental (the color match to Dwayna, the element match to Balthazar) or a result of the practice filtering through humanity's culture before reaching the other races (skill/specialization names involving zeal, faith, etc.).

Is that fair? From where I'm sitting, those central disagreements are getting lost under tangential disputes concerning the nitty-gritty of details that aren't ultimately relevant.

Yes thank you, that is to me exactly what my end of the argument is, and what I understood Drax's arguments to be.

[draxynnic.3719]

ArenaNet doesn't need clairvoyance (or, more accurately, precognition). It was in there all along.

It was in the lore, right from the Prophecies manual, that there were four schools of magic, each deriving from a Bloodstone. Originally it was possible for a single spellcaster to employ the full spectrum of magic, but the point of splitting the bloodstones was to make it so that people had to cooperate in order to benefit from the full spectrum of magic. Nowadays, enough magic has re-entered Tyria's ecosystem that the bloodstones are no longer the primary source of magical power and thus the rules they enforced are no longer in play, but most spellcasters still loosely fit into one of the four schools because that's what people are used to teaching... but those schools have been growing broader over time.

Four bloodstones and four schools of magic in the Prophecies lore, right at the beginning. For core spellcaster professions in Prophecies. The origin of monk magic, all the way back in Prophecies, was always intended to be the same as the origin of mesmer, necromancer, and elementalist magic. Each of the four branches of magic comes from a Bloodstone.

(The Ritualist, when it was introduced, was incorporated as an older form of magic that predated the "gift of magic", drawing its power mostly from the Mists rather than the bloodstones.)

The only change is that in Guild Wars 1, humans believed that the gods created magic and the bloodstones, and thus all magic was a gift from the gods. Monk magic, mesmer magic, necromancer magic, elementalist magic... all different branches of the same magic, sourced from the bloodstones, which in turn were created and empowered by the gods. Now, we know better: the bloodstones are/were essentially giant magic batteries, created by the Seers to soak up and regulate the world's magic (and hide it from the Elder Dragons so they'd go into hibernation before they consumed everything). Which means, in turn, that monk/guardian magic is coming from Tyria's own magic. No different to mesmers, necromancers, and elementalists... all of which humans once believed were empowered by the gods.

On the 'holy and light are the same thing' question: It's actually pretty obvious if you compare between the games. Many of the skills in GW1 that did 'holy' damage mention light in their name (Spear of Light) or have graphics in the form of a beam of light (Ray of Judgement). Several guardian skills in GW2 have the same name as monk skills in GW1, often doing similar things, so the energy is likely the same, and the skills in that category that generate fields (Symbol of Wrath, for instance) produce light fields. "Light" and "holy" are synonymous. They genuinely were so on the early years of GW1, but ArenaNet replaced instances of 'light damage' with 'holy damage' instead, likely to remove confusion. Now, they've switched back to 'light' in order to secularise it. It's the same energy.

Regarding the 'why doesn't anyone specifically point out that the charr have monks'...

...Why would they? ArenaNet isn't in the habit of spelling every little thing out. Even during presearing the Ascalonians had been fighting the charr for a while, so any "Wait, they have monks, HOW?!" surprise would have long since dissipated and replaced with a practical attitude of dealing with it. Describing charr monks by more specific names, some of which are used by NPCs, is more useful.

Besides, now that you come to mention it, a little bit of irony: that skale example? There is a quest in GW1 where a group of skale elementalists are specifically described as being elementalists by an NPC. Of course, there's also a quest where an NPC talks about map travel mechanics, so it's likely that some NPC conversations are not entirely canon and we might still be having this argument even if we did have an NPC in Guild Wars 1 pointing at a Charr Shaman and shouting "That charr over there is somehow a monk despite not worshiping our gods! Obviously it's possible for our enemies to be monks even if they hate our gods!"

Regarding the appearance:

Monk/guardian/paragon magic (and, incidentally, Macha isn't our only source on that connection) - or Preservation magic for convenience - has the appearance that it does simply because that's the way it manifests. Ghostly wings are a pretty clear visual indicator for 'flight spell', and doesn't have to represent Dwayna or any god - the norn, for instance, could regard them as the wings of Raven or some other bird spirit, or a practical asura or charr could simply shrug and go "giant ghostly wings for a short flight, makes sense" and not worry about it. The visual effect of symbols, likewise, has no iconography that relates them to any specific divine entity or pantheon: at most, they reflect the effect of the symbol.

Sure, it's blue/white, and that matches Dwayna's colour. Mesmers similarly match Lyssa, and Necromancers, Grenth. Nobody is claiming now that mesmer power and necromancer power comes from Lyssa and Grenth respectively, and if you don't worship those gods you're not a real mesmer or necromancer (even if the spells used are exactly the same). In fact, it's entirely possible that the gods chose their colours to match the branch(es) of magic they most favoured. Magical effects have to have some colour in which they manifest, and ArenaNet's policy has been for each profession to have one or two colours that its magical effects are associated with if there's not a reason to have some other colour (this is true even for elementalists, although it's obscured through most elementalist effects naturally having the colour of the element).

The only thing in there that's strictly religious is the terminology... and ArenaNet stated a long time ago that different races and groups might have different names for the various skills, the names we see in the interface are just the most commonly used.

[Reusterr.6982]

wow what did i start....

[Genesis.8572]

Yeah so how does this connect to the idea of norn unification?

[Reusterr.6982]

I have no idea lol.

[Loesh.4697]

Fair enough on account of the Skale there since I forgot about the Skale elementalists, but that doesn't at all take away from the Dervish example that I brought up. In fact as of lately we've had Avatars of Balthazar that could be created using objects rather then belief or direct granting by the gods, as per the story of Orr. If it is indeed true that Anet was extremely careful about which characters could use the avatars, then that is a massive logical inconsistency within their fluff now. And to be clear i'm not arguing that there isn't a school of healing magic, i'm arguing that holy power directly comes from the gods because also the prophecy manual is the statement that...yes, the Monks are conduits of the gods. Is the manual to be trusted? is it an unreliable narrator? some of the stuff from the original manuscripts appears to be contradicted. Why only the class descriptions and not the...well everything else? I suppose you could argue the class descriptions are slated from a human perspective, but then that would likely transfer over to the historical sections. Which granted are also heavily contradicted these days, or expanded upon in ways that undercut them because Arenanet is moving away from the human center focus.

Also as far as Anet spelling everything out, I would argue the exact opposite. Anet defines it's storytelling in contrast to other MMO's like world of Warcraft by the fact that they have enormous caches of lore for every single little thing. To the point that many cultures in Tyria have their own translatable language, Ascalonian is for example based off of ancient phonetician with it's own alphabet that you can read. Wouldn't it be kind of a big deal the Flame Legion shamans were somehow employing a direct spiritual conduit to the gods, and for some reason the humans don't mention it? Or Aloe Seeds for that matter? or is it more along the lines of a bull using warrior skills because there isn't really anything else to represent it.

And sure the gods could of chosen their colors to represent their magic after the fatc and preservation magic could happen to look in ways that would appear highly religious to a human but if so it's something that we are not told about, it is not mentioned or expanded on in any way, shape, or form. A story of implications, and especially implications that require several assumptions on Anet's part and their creative intent is not a story, and it definitely isn't an explanation. If I have to extrapolate that firstly monk spells are largely empowered by the stone of preservation to work, and then assume that while they share thematic and characteristic aspects with Dwayna and Balthazar they aren't related, then assume Arenanet designed this from the start to have these ideas in mind and that the dervish skills back then were unique but now are not. Which then snowballs into asking questions about why Avatar skills and dervish powers work still in Joko's domain, if he's altered their magic in some way to resemble or replace and.....and this is all to answer the question of why do Guardian thematic match Dwayna and Balthazar so much. No, I still don't buy that they would have some innate elemental component and I still point to blue fire as a Balthazar thing especially with stuff like the foefire and the distinction between his flame and elementalists.

And the main point is that all of these questions are caused by the vagueness of Guardian lore in order to facilitate a multi-racial class, and to explain an aesthetic that visually and in terms of actual use doesn't really conform to other races in any way. It's more likely to me that Anet wanted a monk that fluff wise would fit in with their current system, didn't alienate any race in particular, and left in so many blanks to fill either out of lazyness or because they didn't have an answer. It would not be the first time that Anet's fumbled on their design process.

@Reusterr.6982 said:I have no idea lol.

Also sorry Op, I know it's like massively disrespectful to have this derailing the main thread. I made the mistake of making an offhand comment about Braham and Guardians, and it sort of spiraled into this.

[draxynnic.3719]

@Loesh.4697 said:And to be clear i'm not arguing that there isn't a school of healing magic, i'm arguing that holy power directly comes from the gods because also the prophecy manual is the statement that...yes, the Monks are conduits of the gods. Is the manual to be trusted? is it an unreliable narrator? some of the stuff from the original manuscripts appears to be contradicted. Why only the class descriptions and not the...well everything else?

It is an unreliable narrator. There are a lot of things that were stated in the manual that have since been proven to be what humans thought, but nevertheless false. ArenaNet has publicly stated that they use unreliable narrators.

The example of the origin of magic being a big one. Humans believed in Guild Wars 1 that all magic, with the possible exception of ritualism, was a gift from the gods. We now know that that was untrue: the gods were not the source of the magic they released in the years before the Exodus, instead they had adjusted the bloodstone made by the Seers to begin re-releasing magic. (And then divided the bloodstones to create the four schools of magic, which appears to still be the true history as far as we know.)

Monk magic came out of the bloodstone, just as mesmer, elemental, and necromancer magic did. In the current, post-bloodstone (in that all but one of the bloodstones still exist, as far as we know, but they are no longer the primary source of magical power) world, guardian magic comes from Tyria's ambient magic, just as mesmer, elemental, and necromancer magic does. Monk and guardian magic is not inherently connected to the Six, or any other pantheon or religion, any more than mesmer, elemental, or necromancer magic is.

@Loesh.4697 said:Also as far as Anet spelling everything out, I would argue the exact opposite. Anet defines it's storytelling in contrast to other MMO's like world of Warcraft by the fact that they have enormous caches of lore for every single little thing. To the point that many cultures in Tyria have their own translatable language, Ascalonian is for example based off of ancient phonetician with it's own alphabet that you can read. Wouldn't it be kind of a big deal the Flame Legion shamans were somehow employing a direct spiritual conduit to the gods, and for some reason the humans don't mention it? Or Aloe Seeds for that matter? or is it more along the lines of a bull using warrior skills because there isn't really anything else to represent it.

ArenaNet does have a lot of lore behind things, but they're not in the habit of spelling it out to the player. A lot of the lore is in the form of hints and subtle references, leaving it up to the community to find and interpret those references.

With the way ArenaNet handles its lore, the lack of any NPC specifically pointing out that charr monks are the same as human monks isn't conclusive of anything. Thanks to the Bloodstones, in fact, what they do has to be broadly similar to what human monks do, since the power source is the same. While for animals we can certainly presume that their skills are stand-ins for things those animals do naturally, when you have sapient magic-users employing magic which has the same visual and mechanical effects, when the rules of the setting state that magic is divided into four schools (plus magic that does invoke entities from the Mists, such as that used by ritualists and revenants), the simplest explanation by far is that they're using the same magic.

If anything, cases where a 'magic' skill was used as a stand-in for something more physical, such as skale vomit, are probably exceptions to the general rule: magical abilities in GW1 which fall into a particular school probably generally indicate that the creature in question has some innate ability with that magic type even if they're using those powers instinctively rather than through the medium of spells. Hydras are a good example: hydras probably aren't casting spells to summon their meteors, but they summon meteors regardless, in both GW1 and GW2. It would have been very easy for ArenaNet to go "yeah, that was just game mechanics, hydras don't ACTUALLY summon meteors, that would be silly"... but GW2 hydras summon meteors regardless.

@Loesh.4697 said:

@Reusterr.6982 said:I have no idea lol.

Also sorry Op, I know it's like massively disrespectful to have this derailing the main thread. I made the mistake of making an offhand comment about Braham and Guardians, and it sort of spiraled into this.

Honestly, I had been thinking myself that if I was a moderator, I'd probably have split this off into a different thread.

[Genesis.8572]

The Phoenician/Canaanite "alphabet" - based in Egyptian hierogylphs - is an abjad system of consonants and pseudo-vowels rather than a true alphabet, which contains proper vowels and consonants. Semitic languages are mostly built around tri-consonantal roots so vowels are less important when writing and reading. The Greeks would turn the Canaanite writing system into a true alphabet, which the Etruscans (and later Latins) would adopt and modify for their own respective writing systems.

The Ascalonian alphabet is something akin to a retro-imaginging of archaic scripts. It represents the Latin alphabet (26 letters, A to Z) but haphazardly mapped onto a modified Phoenician + Latin script. Some map well to Canaanite, such as the Latin/Ascalonian "S" with the Canaanite "samech" (which becomes Omicron/"small O" in Greek); the Latin/Ascalonian "K" with the Phoencian "kaf/kaph," and the Latin/Ascalonian "R" with the Canaanite "resh." But others just make you aggressive if you are more familiar with Canaanite script, such as the Latin/Ascalonian "J" represented with the Canaanite "peh/feh" (what would become "P") letter; L/A "V" letter closer to the Canaanite "lamed" ("L"); the L/A "G" using the Canaanite "beth" ("B"); the L/A "O" using the Canaanite "qof/qoph" ("Q"); the L/A "T" using the Canaanite "tsade" (tz/ts).

This also has nothing to do with the unification of the norn, but here we are...

[Loesh.4697]

@"Genesis.8572" said:The Phoenician/Canaanite "alphabet" - based in Egyptian hierogylphs - is an abjad system of consonants and pseudo-vowels rather than a true alphabet, which contains proper vowels and consonants. Semitic languages are mostly built around tri-consonantal roots so vowels are less important when writing and reading. The Greeks would turn the Canaanite writing system into a true alphabet, which the Etruscans (and later Latins) would adopt and modify for their own respective writing systems.

The Ascalonian alphabet is something akin to a retro-imaginging of archaic scripts. It represents the Latin alphabet (26 letters, A to Z) but haphazardly mapped onto a modified Phoenician + Latin script. Some map well to Canaanite, such as the Latin/Ascalonian "S" with the Canaanite "samech" (which becomes Omicron/"small O" in Greek); the Latin/Ascalonian "K" with the Phoencian "kaf/kaph," and the Latin/Ascalonian "R" with the Canaanite "resh." But others just make you aggressive if you are more familiar with Canaanite script, such as the Latin/Ascalonian "J" represented with the Canaanite "peh/feh" (what would become "P") letter; L/A "V" letter closer to the Canaanite "lamed" ("L"); the L/A "G" using the Canaanite "beth" ("B"); the L/A "O" using the Canaanite "qof/qoph" ("Q"); the L/A "T" using the Canaanite "tsade" (tz/ts).

This also has nothing to do with the unification of the norn, but here we are...

I mean it's informative, what else can you ask for? :p

[Aaron Ansari.1604]

@Loesh.4697 said:

Also as far as Anet spelling everything out, I would argue the exact opposite. Anet defines it's storytelling in contrast to other MMO's like world of Warcraft by the fact that they have enormous caches of lore for every single little thing.

They seem to now, but GW1, particularly Prophecies... not so much. Lore was very thin on the ground back then. That translatable Ascalonian? That was something one dev tossed together for fun. Krytan, by contrast, consisted of three or four runes. The charr lore, at the time, consisted of 'Come from the north. Worship fire (actually Titans). Take slaves. Not as stupid as Ascalonians think.', and that still made them the third or fourth most fleshed out race in the original release.

I agree that guardian lore was kept vague to apply it to multiple races... but so was monk lore. So was necromancer lore. That's not something new as of GW2- in fact, I'd argue that guardians have been better defined than monks. The only difference is that back then it was accommodating enemy races instead of playable races.

[Loesh.4697]

@Aaron Ansari.1604 said:

@Loesh.4697 said:

Also as far as Anet spelling everything out, I would argue the exact opposite. Anet defines it's storytelling in contrast to other MMO's like world of Warcraft by the fact that they have enormous caches of lore for every single little thing.

They seem to now, but GW1, particularly Prophecies... not so much. Lore was

very

thin on the ground back then. That translatable Ascalonian? That was something one dev tossed together for fun. Krytan, by contrast, consisted of three or four runes. The charr lore, at the time, consisted of 'Come from the north. Worship fire (actually Titans). Take slaves. Not as stupid as Ascalonians think.', and that

still

made them the third or fourth most fleshed out race in the original release.

I agree that guardian lore was kept vague to apply it to multiple races... but so was monk lore. So was necromancer lore. That's not something new as of GW2- in fact, I'd argue that guardians have been

better

defined than monks. The only difference is that back then it was accommodating enemy races instead of playable races.

I can see that actually. especially with the creation of Dragonhunters and Firebrands which in themselves have some degree of identity, the latter a lot more then the former. Maybe it just felt more defined compared to Vanilla WoW at about the same time. That said it still seems like kind of a stretch to think that the whole bit about Monks being divine conduits was essentially made up and planned to be made up y the developers at the time, especially since back then the Gods were a lot more fast and loose as a prescience in Tyria. Anet never came off the company that had so much foresight that they'd design the skillsets of every other creature in the game and their interactions to such a degree that you are simply supposed to take the implication that it's all the same stuff, especially since in GW2 there's all this writing to spell things out for people, even to spell out things that had alreayd been spelled out. It just seems infinitely more likely that with more races, different classes, the design philosophy drifted away from the gods and while the original aesthetic remained from the background lore it was rooted in, there was not the time, the energy, or perhaps even the desire to fit them for other races in the universe.

[Aaron Ansari.1604]

For my part, I agree. I think they took advantage of the ambiguity surrounding the professions, but I suspect it wasn't a design consideration when that ambiguity was first introduced.

[draxynnic.3719]

Yeah, it's unlikely that ArenaNet was thinking of a future with multiple playable races where the influence of the gods was downplayed if not downright retconned when they came up with the lore on magic in Prophecies.

Nevertheless, it's been established since the beginning that all four of the core schools of magic ultimately came from the same source. Either they all ultimately come from the gods, or none of them do. In Guild Wars 1, humans believed that it came from the gods. In Guild Wars 2, we found out that the gods simply unlocked a power source that was created by someone else.

[Reusterr.6982]

@"Genesis.8572" said:Yeah so how does this connect to the idea of norn unification?

lol yeah i mean the Jormag thing and the sons would of set them back a lot and lost a lot pride and now its like some cold civil war with them because even the sons are at holbruk. you got the charr moving into norn lands as well.maybe its time for some kind of norn republic or some justice force to act for the greater good of all norns a non for profit organization like the nights watch in GOT. A order which makes a sacred oath the the old gods (spirits) to protect the norn.1st order wipe sons of the face of Tyria.2nd up the patrols and make a presence to stop the char moving into the foothills .

3. Rebuild in the north.
4. Protect the NornsTell me if I'm crazy i don't mind but yeah love the norn just seems they get the raw deal all the time.

[CETheLucid.3964]

@Loesh.4697 said:

@Castigator.3470 said:

@Loesh.4697 said:I always felt non-human guardians were sort of nonsense. Far as I can tell their magic works on....friendship? and the light? whatever that is. But Anet was pretty adamant about being racially inclusive to all the classes.

Though admittedly, the idea of someone being so zealous about friendship that they immolate someone is mildly hilarious, like a radicalized Brony con.

Well,

more

radicalized.

To be fair,

Dinky

is the most hilarious guardian to ever exist and the charr shamans were often times monks, with monk/elementalist, elementalist/monk being their favoured multiclass. So if nonhuman monks are not without precedent, why should nonhuman guardians be an issue?

The shaman part is key though, my issue is not so much that they are nonhuman, it's that they aren't terribly religious. I mean sure you could consecrate something in the name of football, but people might look at you weird. A lot of the religious overtones shine through with the guardian and it's more then a little distracting.

Dinky is, indeed, hilarious though. He doesn't make a lot of sense attitude wise even within the context of what Arenanet has presented guardians to be, but he's charming.

The other legions have always had shamans, it's just the Flame Legion has always had the lions share and the most powerful of them.

Many shaman of the other legions followed Kalla Scorchrazor into battle against the Flame Legion when she proved herself against the then Iron Legion Imperator, Forge Ironstrike. So it's not breaking lore that the other legions have spellcasters and magic users within the ranks.

It's just charr society generally looks at magic users with suspicion and sometimes scorn. Given general charr single-mindedness to the chain of command and loyalty to their warbands, it's not much of a stretch that magic inclined charr can convert that devotion into power even if it is areligious in nature.