ThatOddOne.4387

Balthazar being pretty damn knowledgeable and skilled at magic comes with being a God/former God and by all accounts an ancient being. Patron of warriors and martial combat he might have been, but in Tyria we've often seen the two blended with magic more often than not. It's no surprise then that Balthazar knew what he was doing with magic.

It's also pretty clear to my mind that the Gods merely removed his "divinity" aka the God magic, not all his powers. Without the divine magic that makes him a God, he is still a monstrously powerful magical being that is beyond anything on Tyria except for the Dragons.

He needed the power of the Bloodstone to get to the point he could start to work towards claiming powers from the Dragons so he could thus challenge the five remaining Gods + potentially his replacement. This to me is also a pretty clear indicator as to where Gods stand power-wise to Dragons - Equal or greater.

The Lazarus disguise was purely to avoid people noticing that he was Balthazar, rather than out of any fear he wouldn't be able to deal with complications. He could have brute forced his way to what he wanted, or indeed appeared in Divinity's Reach and rallied an entire kingdom to his cause as a returned God, but he chose not to. I figure this is because at that time Kormir was still present and could have intervened.

I disagree. If they leave the Gods as they are now, without any concrete explanation of what they are doing, then they as a concept and storytelling component are entirely undermined. Kormir's departure was not in any way climactic, and if ArenaNet thought it was then they seriously fluffed it.

As something that has existed since the beginning of the franchise, the Gods deserve better attention and respect in the narrative. You don't see other franchises just dropping or writing off the literal Gods of the setting because another generation of writers apparently don't want to deal with them beyond vague mentions or even performing a semi-spiteful reveal that they've really been uncaring incompetents the entire time and the race they rescued from another planet were stupid for ever worshipping or offering them respect.

If they haven't chosen a successor for Balthazar already then I hope it comes up as a story point given that situation is far more interesting than the dragons. ArenaNet seem to have a habit of making the plots they personally don't want to explore more interesting than any of the other options.

But if a successor is chosen, I'd like to see a different take on 'war' and 'conflict', or rather, the original take on it that Balthazar was supposed to represent before he got hit with the villain bat. Similar to how the God of Secrets was succeeded by the God of Truth. Perhaps the God of War can be succeeded by the God of... Who knows? Protection? God of Protection, the Guardian, insert plethora of titles here.

War is not nice, but it is necessary to protect yourself, your family and your friends. Fighting to defend yourself is no sin, fighting against world ending threats certainly isn't either. A God that represents that side of War rather than the bloody-minded slaughter that Path of Fire Balthazar went for would be nice.

It'd also be another example of the Gods tending to clean up their house when one of them acts up: See replacing Abbadon with Kormir, Dhuum with Grenth etc. Each one vastly preferable to the one before them.

they're doing pretty damn good for a childish species given they've done more to save the world than any of the other races.

As far as I was aware Ascalonian soldiers were perfectly capable of facing down one or more charr at the same time. Just saying.

I don't think it's fair to say they rely on the gods. They're the ones that end up policing their own gods.

So you want the Gods to be undermined even more than they already are?

Let me tell you what we actually know from literally the Path of Fire storyline: The Gods did not fight the Dragons because it would have destroyed the world, either because of the energies unleashed in the clashing of the two entities, or the result of killing the Elder Dragons causing the planet to die regardless.

This implies only one thing: The Gods had the power to take on the Elder Dragons but they chose not to because the collateral (IE: Tyria being destroyed along with all the races the Gods theoretically would have warred with the Dragons to protect) would have rendered the victory pointless.

The Gods also came from beyond Tyria and had their power already, they did not take any from the sleeping dragons and there has been no reference or clue hinting to such. It has no backing.

Of course, ArenaNet are so fixated on making the Gods appear like villains at worst or incompetent at best this might very well turn out to be the case.

But as things stand currently: The Gods are just as powerful as the Elder Dragons and certainly could have defeated them. The sheer fact that the Gods can work in concert whilst the Elder Dragons are opposed to each other also helps this, it would have been 6 Gods vs 1 Elder Dragon at a time.

But that would have destroyed Tyria, so they did not.

Mn. Still not sure I'm comfortable with all this talk of Grenth 'fleeing'. One hopes there's a good reason for his and the rest of the Gods' departure, if Garden of the Gods is accurate, then that'd be good enough. But it would be nice to get some confirmation as to what the Gods are doing and yes it does justify leaving their realms in peril to do so. And also not tell the trusted followers they're leaving behind what they're doing so, you know, they don't grow discontent like Desmina is apparently doing/has done.

This 'retconning' of the Gods being uncaring or cowards is not something that sits right with me. As I've said before, if that is the way things are going, then ArenaNet are delivering a massive kick to the nether regions of the human narrative and basically going "haha you were stupid for believing in the gods". Which is not how you treat one of your playable races, and the most popular one.

Interesting. I'm not sure how I feel about Desmina 'usurping' or otherwise being responsible for the deaths of Grenth's most trusted servants, but I suppose it could be interesting... If it's ever explored more. If she is outright usurping or taking dominion of the Underworld though it seems remarkably 'short sighted' since she still won't have Grenth's divine power and presumably if he ever returned he could flick her on the forehead and that would be that. Usurpation does not sound like a particularly smart thing to do when you don't have the power of a God on your side to begin with.

It's either that or Dhuum had a moment where he legitimately could have broken free and that took the Reapers and Desmina by surprise but the situation was still able to be salvaged.

The Judge is another factor, perhaps his purview is restricted to the Domain of the Lost. As a side note, Grenth definitely seems to be the God that has the most 'named' servants in the lore. Likely because the Underworld is the realm players have interacted with the most over the years, mind.

So it appears that at the end of the Dhuum fight, the Reapers die.

"Desmina: The Voice in the Void is silenced again.

Character name: The reapers paid a heavy price.

Desmina: They did as they were meant to do. As you did.

Character name: And what happens now? There's no one left to rule the Underworld.

Desmina: Isn't there?

Desmina: Now leave me."

This makes me sad, but I suppose it could be interpreted as it being the Reapers' duty to sacrifice themselves to seal Dhuum away for good. A last action or command of Grenth.

Desmina is likely the ruler of the Underworld now in Grenth's place. Thoughts on this?

Another pretty interesting thing to note is what the Reapers say when they are called:

"Desmina: The way to death is open. Return! Dhuum must fall.

Desmina: The influence of the statues overcome Dhuum's corruption. The gates are unlocked. Our allies are here.

Reaper of the Labyrinth: We will do what must be done, red witch.

Reaper of the Forgotten Vale: We've returned to silence the Voice in the Void.

Reaper of the Ice Wastes: Defend us to the death! If one of us falls before the ritual begins, Dhuum's escape is assured.

Desmina: Do not let them fail the ritual. I'll help as my strength allows."

From the wording, it seems to imply they actually left with Grenth, but were called/sent back.

Which of course raises all sorts of timeline questions about the Reaper that was encountered in Orr.

Why should sylvari have gotten something different though? Wouldn't that cheapen the apparent power the God of Death has on, well, death? If a specific type of it.

I think it's really quite interesting that Grenth has a claim, however temporarily, on souls that die in a specific manner. I like to imagine some kind of agreement with Raven in the case of norn that the Realm of the Lost is to help said norn find themselves again before being moved on to the Spirit. (I just like the image of Grenth and Raven bro'ing it up okay)

Drawing the Gods away from being 'human only' is a good thing, as it reverses what ArenaNet did with GW2 in the first place - The Gods have never been 'human only' in the lore. If there were multiple playable races in GW1, there wouldn't have been 'Human Gods', just 'Gods'.

I also find the idea of charr going there incredibly funny given their irreverence. Feels like karma. Having no faith in a magical universe where faith is quite tangibly a thing always struck me as ignorant. I apply the same logic to D&D or any universe with God-like beings that can be proven to exist.

The Forged are Balthazar's Margonites, is how I read it.

I honestly wouldn't mind a "World ends" scenario. Have the Gods reappear, open portals, start trying to evacuate everyone to this new world they have supposedly been preparing. They were right all along!

It certainly does imply that. I'm hoping we see the answer one day, and ArenaNet hasn't written the Gods off to get them out of the picture.

Because even when he isn't a god he is still an incredibly powerful magical being.

The Gods learnt from their mistake of imprisoning one of their own whilst he still had Divine power (Abaddon), and so stripped that from Balthazar. Because they are more than capable of imprisoning a non-divine magical being, however powerful.

> @Nogothanc.5014 said:

> Rytlok: "We only handed an elder dragon the energy of an god."

> ???

> Balthaddon is no god or did I miss something?

>

> Kormir told us that the five stripped Balthaddon of his power, his claim and title.

>

> So Balthaddon consumed Bloodstonemagic and Elderdragonmagic this has given him god status again?

>

> Is being a god just a dragonball z thing? if you reach a magic level of 9000! even a Mosquito can become a god?

>

> And if Balthaddon was a god why were we not blinded?

I'm just going to go ahead and say Rytlock is wrong. Like he nearly always is. I'll take what Kormir says over what he says. Balthazar was no longer a God, we know he physically could not have been because we were not blinded whilst he was in his original, 'base' form. Not concealed or shrouded like they were when they were walking Tyria.

He is also a character that is really starting to annoy me, totally unsympathetic, not 'badass' and 'cool' like ArenaNet want to portray him as, just generally an unpleasant person who causes more trouble than he's worth and yet somehow is never called out for it, whilst Logan gets all the flak when really it's nearly always Rytlock causing the problems.

Friendly reminder Balthazar was only freed from his prison because a bloody charr wanted a stolen human sword back. That's how stupid Rytlock is.

Balthazar's character has been accurately deconstructed by others on this forum and the overwhelming response seems to be "Balthazar -needed- to act out of character to become the Path of Fire Balthazar in the first place."

It is very poor.

Blow up the world.

The Gods were right all along.

But no, the new Kormir line just makes Balthazar's 180 even worse. If the Six foresaw there could be no victory, what, was Balthazar not one of the Six then?

An observation I disagree with.

It does seem that ArenaNet are quite adamantly trying to make the gods uncaring/incompetent, and yes it does leave a bitter taste in the mouth.

> @Arden.7480 said:

> Kormir is no longer a human, she is some kind of robot as Balthazar- they don't even have hearts or stomachs or anything...

What.

Don't even get me started on humans turning into pink-skinned furless charr. Their religion and faith was one of their appeals.

They -are- Gods.

> @Djinn.9245 said:

> The six gods arrived on the world and brought the humans with them...so both the humans AND the gods are aliens to Tyria. Also keep in mind that the human gods are not worshipped by any other races on Tyria - many of the other races have their own gods.

Mmn, no.

Dwarves, Forgotten and Quaggan. Either one or two of them or all. Worship of the Gods was not unique to just humans.

I'm not sure whether it's correct with what people are saying when they say the Gods are afraid of the Dragons.

I interpreted it as Kormir saying that the Gods COULD fight the Dragons, possibly win (Because the Gods can act in concert and the Dragons cannot), but the collateral damage caused in the process would be staggering, and that's not even factoring the instability caused by dead dragons on the world itself.

Like, Gods vs Dragons would be the equivalent of the Gods basically dropping atomic weapons (Massively powerful spells) at the Dragons to kill them. Which causes collateral, the way the races deal with Dragons is a kind of death by 10,000 cuts business. That's why Gods vs Dragon/s would cause more damage than races of Tyria vs Dragon/s.

You are completely missing the point, still, it's not being babysat to have the gods there in the background as they have always been since GW1. Writing them off and shutting them out completely is the problem.