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Dark Adepts. What are they? What are dark psi energy powers?

Started by Thunder-squall, 29, April, 2014, 10:58:31 PM

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Rolina

Problem there is that it's actually not psynergy.  It costs Blados and Chalise nothing to cast, implying that it's actually an item ability.  None of their attacks cost anything, for that matter, and as a result there's a strong part of the fandom that believes they're not adepts at all.  I mean, you'd think that if they were, they'd at least fight like it. 

Plexa

0) Sorry for bumping this, but I couldn't resist!
1) I love your Theory about Sol/Luna alignments within each element. I'm not completely sold on your categorisation, but I definitely can see the macroscopic picture fitting within the golden sun universe. (For instance, Venus is pretty strongly associated with life and death and that seems somewhat difficult to bring into your current breakdown. Similarly, poison and acid seem pretty similar at a heuristic level but are aligned with venus/mars respectively and even combined in Haures so I'm a little dubious of acid being a large part of mars. And along those lines Crystalux being a justification for crystaline structures when thats a Venus/Merc summon again seems like a bit of a stretch (although there's a good argument for many rigid structures within Venus to be incorporated somehow within this - eg. crystals, metal, stone and so on)). ANYWAY.. I disgress. Point is, it's a really clever way to view the light/dark "psynergy" thing and I hope its canon!
2) On dark "psynergy" like shadow shield. One could make an argument that Dark Psynergy works off of the absence of psynergy. A kind of anti-psynergy if you will. There's a pretty good case for that;
- Psy grenades could be seen as the dark psynergy version of a crystal powder or bramble seed
- Dark psynergy seems strongly tied to the vortexes, which sap adepts of PP
- "dark psynergy" doesn't cost any PP to cast (or falls outside of the "known" psynergy)

Rolina

Poison is actually associated with multiple elements - Venus is just the most common.  As such, I've come to believe that ailments should be more associated with aspects than with elements, and that there's no reason that they couldn't be associated with multiple elements either.

Poison, for example, would be associated with Plant, Caustic, Wind, and Water aspects, for example.  Each element is represented, and there's a relatively easy logical argument for each of those forms.  However, claiming that poison is associated with Stone, Explosives, Lightning, or Steam isn't really going to go very far.

Acid/Corrosives are mars mainly because that's what the games said they were.  Acid Bath, Acid Bite, etc - any ability that has acidic themes to it is given the Mars element.  Mars and Jupiter's third aspect were actually the easiest to pin down because both of them have solid support within the games.  Crystal was harder to do - no real examples can be found outside of a djinn until Dark Dawn, where Crystallux pretty much locks it down.  Mercury has like, no precedent period - I just went with the third state of water.

As for Poison and Acid being similar... I'm honestly not sure where people come from with that claim - I've never really understood it myself.  Things get really confusing when you're in the pokemon fandom, too - the acid move being ineffective on Steel types?  I call BS.  That'd be super effective for sure.  So... yeah, my mental thought processes are just kind of "...that's not how that works", so I really don't get it.  One way to explain my point is that poisons can come in many forms, but the most common is through enzymes (which is arguably why Venus is the most common source).  Acid/Caustic things are strictly chemical reactions, however - the way they inflict harm is also quite different.  Acid has much more in common with fire than it does with poisons in how it affects flesh, too.

I've never been a fan of Haures, Charon, or Iris' elemental choice.  They've always come across as summons that should have been tetra-elemental to me. After all, all elements have themes of light and dark within them - it'd only make sense that light/dark themed summons would use a bit of each.

2)  The problem with this is that Dark Dawn itself contradicts this theory.  If that's how alchemy works, then the Grave Eclipse should have caused life to start dying off, rather than to cause it to evolve rapidly.  In addition, while I would have whole heartedly agreed with you as to how Dark works pre-dark dawn, DD pretty much disproved the whole Symbol Theory in favor of introducing the almighty vagueness that is "Fundaments".  Honestly, Dark Dawn didn't know what the hell it was doing with either light or dark - on one hand, it supported the fan theory of darkness being anti-psynergy, while on the other it has that dark=chaos thing going on, which is directly counter to that.

As for the Vortexes...  I'm not certain there were any strong ties or even hints towards its relation.  I'm going to lean towards Flip Side Theory on this one, and say that the vortexes are caused by an Imbalance of Pressure between the two sides of Weyard.

Plexa

I'm somewhat ashamed that after posting I went away to read up on every psynergy for each element in an effort to better understand things. First things first, the mixing of elements to create psynergy is pretty much impossible as currently set out by the games - growth being Venus, Venus+Mars, Venus+Jupiter and Venus+Mercury makes that difficult to account for within the theory. Secondly, I'm hesitant to read too much into summons are evidence because that's where the essence of two elements is combined (or 1 if you're talking about the basic summons). Lastly, to me it looks like Mercury/Venus and Mars/Jupiter are related to each other in structure, hopefully you can see that from these lists.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So, from what I gathered the elements have the following themes:

Venus:
- Life and plants; growth, thorn, revive, punji trap, etc. (you could make an argument for cure here, given the strength of venus's cure)
- Death and the demonic; assassinate, condemn, thorny grave, poisons, curses, etc.
- Manipulation of Earth; Spire, Quake, Gaia etc.
- Swords; Ragnarok, Helm Splitter, Sabre Dance, Weapons Grace, etc.
- Dragons; because Himi -_-;


Mercury:
- Healing; Ply, Wish, (you could argue fairies belong here as well) (healing is strongly associated with Merc, as opposed to other elements which also have heals, as Merc has the strongest heals available)
- Being Healthy/Restorative Effects; Cure Poison, Restore, Break, etc.
- Manipulation of water as a medium; Douse, Cutting edge etc.
- Manipulation of the state of water; Prism, Frost, Ice, Parch etc.

Mars:
- Manipulation of Flame; Flare, Fire, Blaze, Fume, etc.
- Ability to cause tremendous amounts of heat; Volcano, Lava, Beam, Heat Wave, Arid Heat etc. (or to manipulate existing heat sources, such as planetary)
- Explosions; Blast, Starbust, Fire bomb, Burst, etc.
- Associated with Defense manipulation

Jupiter
- Manipulation of Wind: Whirlwind, Slash, Gale, Fresh Breeze (to some extent), etc.
- Manipulation of Lightning: Plasma, Ray, Thunder Mine, etc.
- Movement: Halt, Speed Punch, Death Leap, Quick Strike, Teleport etc.
- Attack and Resistance manipulation
- Manipulation of the Mind: Sleep, Drain, Mind read etc.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reading through this you can kind of see that Venus/Mercury are set up to be opposites (or complements?) of each other as are Mars/Jupiter. Venus gives life or takes it away while Mercury gives a healthy life given you are living. Venus adepts are generally offensive (see their association with swords) while Mercury are defensive or peaceful. Jupiter can enhance attack while Mars enhance defense. Jupiter can manipulate the mind signalling a heightened mental capacity, while mars adepts are generally portrayed as lower down on the IQ spectrum! You can also ratify this with the other elemental associations -- Venus/Jupiter are both 'attacking' elements are so are mutually weak to each other, similar for Mars/Mercury being 'defensive' elements (purely from psynergy, of course). Mars/Venus and Jupiter/Mercury being symbiotic could also be seen in this with the right interpretation.

What I haven't been able to do is bring this inline with the fundamentals theory, but I'll keep thinking about it because it should be possible.

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

QuoteReading through this you can kind of see that Venus/Mercury are set up to be opposites (or complements?)
I dunno what to say...
Well, given how Class Types work, and the in-game story with Mercury Lighthouse weakening Saturos, but Venus Lighthouse strengthening him due to Mars/Venus being aligned together... then... this is the way I have thought of it.

Complements/aligned elements:
Sol/naturally hot: Venus + Mars
Luna/naturally cold: Jupiter + Mercury

Opposites:
Offensive: Venus + Jupiter
Defensive: Mars + Mercury

No idea:
Venus + Mercury
Mars + Jupiter


And the hot to cold order thing...
Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Mercury

Sols on left, Lunas on right. Jupiter with the cool winds as hinted in Contigo... and needing to rush to Mars Lighthouse to warm things up... Mercury has ice-like psynergy. (Frost, and you need a hotter element to get Douse.)
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Plexa

I mean purely from a "how does their psynergy manipulate stuff" point of view for Venus-Merc Mars-Jupiter.

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

Okay. You seemed to not know if they were complements or opposites, so I was just giving my take. (Probably both?)
Would be nice to know what to call them in a general view not limited to the psynergy itself, I guess.  -  Irregular comparisons? Umm...
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Plexa

Oh I'm very well aware of the elements interaction between themselves (I even mentioned that in the last paragraph). Venus-Mercury and Mars-Jupiter has always bugged me though. Looking at how the psynergies are designed for each element somewhat makes that connections clearer - Venus/Mercury and Mars/Jupiter take different aspects of the same themes and together create a complete spectrum within that theme. Venus/Mars and Mercury/Jupiter are complementary (from this point of view) in the sense that between those elements there is little to no overlap between the themes their psynergies cover. While Venus/Jupiter and Mercury/Mars have overlapping themes AND aspects within those themes, suggesting they're competing or in tension. Looking at this p[synergy list from this perspective gives you complete relationship between the elements and agrees with the games canon of symbiotic and opposing elements.

Daddy Poi's Oily Gorillas

QuoteReading through this you can kind of see that Venus/Mercury are set up to be opposites (or complements?) of each other as are Mars/Jupiter.
Maybe I shouldn't be staring at that question-mark.... Because that's what I was going by. :/


Hmm, although, this may not be the same thing, this almost makes me think of lines in a 3D environment: Parallel, Perpendicular, and Skewed.
Golden Sun Docs: Broken Seal - The Lost Age - Dark Dawn | Mario Sports Docs: Mario Golf & Mario Tennis | Misc. Docs
Refer to Yoshi's Lighthouse for any M&L hacking needs...

Sometimes I like to compare apples to oranges. (Figuratively) ... They are both fruits, but which one would you eat more? (If taken literally, I'd probably choose apples.)
Maybe it is over-analyzing, but it doesn't mean the information is useless.


The only GS Discord servers with significance are:
Golden Sun Hacking Community
GS Speedrunning
/r/Golden Sun
GS United Nations
Temple of Kraden

Can you believe how small the Golden Sun Community is?

2+2=5 Don't believe me? Those are rounded decimal numbers. Take that, flat earth theorists! :)

Luna_blade

Quote from: Plexa on 23, January, 2015, 12:39:43 AM
Lastly, to me it looks like Mercury/Venus and Mars/Jupiter are related to each other in structure, hopefully you can see that from these lists. (...)
That's basically conforming what I thought about the elements.
Useable link:http://goldensun.wikia.com/wiki/Alchemy
Quote from: Fox
No idea:
Venus + Mercury
Mars + Jupiter
Never thought about that.
Although TLA features a few summons that use this combination of elements.
I guess  :VenusStar::MercuryStar: = healing of some sort?

Quote from: Luna_blade on 26, April, 2014, 03:07:44 PM
:VenusStar: Matter
:MercuryStar: Body
:MarsStar: Force
:JupiterStar: Mind
This is what I think the elements represent in one aspect.

Also, aren't we going a bit off-topic with all these element theories?
"Hear the sounds and melodies
Of rilets flowing down
They're the verlasting songs
Whispering all the time
As a warning that behind some rocks
There's a rigid grap even
Oreads fear the tread"

Rolina

Gonna have to break this down due to all the posts between it - not meaning to try and play counters here, so...  Yeah...

Quote from: Plexa on 23, January, 2015, 12:39:43 AM
I'm somewhat ashamed that after posting I went away to read up on every psynergy for each element in an effort to better understand things. First things first, the mixing of elements to create psynergy is pretty much impossible as currently set out by the games - growth being Venus, Venus+Mars, Venus+Jupiter and Venus+Mercury makes that difficult to account for within the theory. Secondly, I'm hesitant to read too much into summons are evidence because that's where the essence of two elements is combined (or 1 if you're talking about the basic summons). Lastly, to me it looks like Mercury/Venus and Mars/Jupiter are related to each other in structure, hopefully you can see that from these lists.
I've always seen summons as [Damage Source] + [Effect] - For example, Megaera does Mars Damage, while the Jupiter fuels the party buff.  That's how I make sense of it, at least.  GS in and of itself does not have support for the actual mixing of elements, as that's a complicated mess of mechanics that nobody wants to deal with. ^-^;


QuoteSo, from what I gathered the elements have the following themes:

Venus:
- Life and plants; growth, thorn, revive, punji trap, etc. (you could make an argument for cure here, given the strength of venus's cure)
- Death and the demonic; assassinate, condemn, thorny grave, poisons, curses, etc.
- Manipulation of Earth; Spire, Quake, Gaia etc.
- Swords; Ragnarok, Helm Splitter, Sabre Dance, Weapons Grace, etc.
- Dragons; because Himi -_-;

Part of the aspect theory states that Buffs, Debuffs, and Healing are all aspect-neutral.  They may lean towards one fundament or another, but they're not tied to any particular aspect.  The only thing affected by the fundaments are the form the element takes when it does damage, and what ailments are associated with it.  As I've mentioned before, ailments must make sense for the aspect, so things like saying stone inflicting poison doesn't work, but having plants inflict it does.

Dark-themed things are associated with the Lunar aspect due to their nature.  Likewise, light-themed things are associated with Sol.  Haunt, Curse, Condemn, and similar would fall under the Lunar aspect due to their nature (thus, would be associated with Plant-users for venus).

Ragnarok, Odyseey, and Huge Blade all seem to be stone swords - as such, I'd associate them with the stone aspect.  However, for things like this, I'm open to interpretation - Undead Sword would work as Plant due to how it's a green blade that suddenly "Grows" beneath the foe, and Legend is clearly Celestial Energy.

There are dragons of all elements.  That's just a summon-themed spell Himi has.



Quote
Mercury:
- Healing; Ply, Wish, (you could argue fairies belong here as well) (healing is strongly associated with Merc, as opposed to other elements which also have heals, as Merc has the strongest heals available)
- Being Healthy/Restorative Effects; Cure Poison, Restore, Break, etc.
- Manipulation of water as a medium; Douse, Cutting edge etc.
- Manipulation of the state of water; Prism, Frost, Ice, Parch etc.

Healing is aspect neutral, and every element is shown capable of it.

Water, Ice, and Steam are the three aspects that make sense.

QuoteMars:
- Manipulation of Flame; Flare, Fire, Blaze, Fume, etc.
- Ability to cause tremendous amounts of heat; Volcano, Lava, Beam, Heat Wave, Arid Heat etc. (or to manipulate existing heat sources, such as planetary)
- Explosions; Blast, Starbust, Fire bomb, Burst, etc.
- Associated with Defense manipulation

Stat association should not be assumed.  Jupiter was the only way to boost attack before Himi showed up, after all.  It's safer to assume that all elements can boost all stats - it's probably more based on the character and their role in battle than their element.

Unleashes and monster skills should not be ignored in an analysis.  The Acid Bath unleash and all corrosive monster skills are associated with this element.

QuoteJupiter
- Manipulation of Wind: Whirlwind, Slash, Gale, Fresh Breeze (to some extent), etc.
- Manipulation of Lightning: Plasma, Ray, Thunder Mine, etc.
- Movement: Halt, Speed Punch, Death Leap, Quick Strike, Teleport etc.
- Attack and Resistance manipulation
- Manipulation of the Mind: Sleep, Drain, Mind read etc.

Movement is affected by all elements - most notably the hand series of spells (Move, Pound, Lash, Lift, Force, etc).  

All astral based spells and abilities are associated with Jupiter, in addition to most laser-based abilities.  Astral Blast, Shining Star, Light Surge, etc.

QuoteReading through this you can kind of see that Venus/Mercury are set up to be opposites (or complements?) of each other as are Mars/Jupiter. Venus gives life or takes it away while Mercury gives a healthy life given you are living. Venus adepts are generally offensive (see their association with swords) while Mercury are defensive or peaceful. Jupiter can enhance attack while Mars enhance defense. Jupiter can manipulate the mind signalling a heightened mental capacity, while mars adepts are generally portrayed as lower down on the IQ spectrum! You can also ratify this with the other elemental associations -- Venus/Jupiter are both 'attacking' elements are so are mutually weak to each other, similar for Mars/Mercury being 'defensive' elements (purely from psynergy, of course). Mars/Venus and Jupiter/Mercury being symbiotic could also be seen in this with the right interpretation.

Actually, it's based on the original GS's team.

Isaac is the Attacker
Garet is the Defender
Ivan is Support
Mia is a Healer

As such, the roles of the elements are associated with the character's roles in the party.  By equipping venus djinn, HP and ATK go up.  By equipping mercury djinn, PP and LUCK go up.  Equipping Venus djinn tends to make characters more damage oriented, while equipping Jupiter makes them more support oriented.  The only time this isn't observed is for Tri-element and Item classes, which have their own rules.

QuoteWhat I haven't been able to do is bring this inline with the fundamentals theory, but I'll keep thinking about it because it should be possible.
The theory is actually called "Aspect Theory", and what you've seen here isn't everything that's been written on it.  This site is rather inactive compared to some others, and even my entry on it in Tumbr needs to be updated a bit.  Tumbr does have a more updated version of it, though.  The most up to date version is part of the MkII system I've been working on.  The v3.3α has been released publicly, though I'm currently working on v4.0 right now.  4.0 is much more in-depth, and will do a lot to explain things.



Edit:  Wow, a lot of y'alls discussion can easily be summed up by "The elements in GS follow the roles of Team Isaac's Party", and can simply be chalked up to developer laziness.  A lot of those trends are perceived, and don't actually follow the way the elements are actually described in the games.  A better idea may be to separate the role in combat from the elements and instead associate it with individual characters instead.

Also, remember:

Venus:  Cure
Mars:  Aura
Jupiter:  Boon and Care (aka Fresh Breeze)
Mercury:  Pray and Wish

All elements can heal.

As far as aspects are concerned, I've always seen it as:

:VenusStar: Body
:MarsStar: Spirit
:JupiterStar: Mind
:MercuryStar: Heart

That's what makes sense to me, at least.

Plexa

Well I won't bother writing up a massive response particularly seeing as you have a more comprehensive write up in the works :) I look forward to that. But I do want to defend some points. I do agree I should probably look into the unleashes a bit more, but my previous post was purely based off of the available psynergy in all the of the games.

Mercury and Healing: While it's true that every element is capable of healing, I maintain that the association is stronger with mercury. All known Venus and Mercury adepts have the innate ability to restore HP (even Alex!!) - some Mars/Jupiter adepts are capable of healing but not all. Mercury/Venus are differentiated through all Venus adepts having access to Revive and Wish being a Mercury psynergy. Moreover in terms of raw healing power Mercury heals are stronger. There's also a silly argument possible with Mercury lighthouse producing healing water at it's base and Lemuria's fountain also serving a healing function :P Anyway, because of the wider array of healing psynergy, raw power of the heals and other misc. evidence I think there's a solid case for this.

Mercury and Steam: to me it seems that the influence of steam on Mercury is so insignificant in comparison to the rest of Mercury's traits. The only psynergy that calls upon steam is Parch and that falls more cleanly into being able to manipulate the state of water than its own category. Yes some unleashes call upon steam, like searing fog, but again it still falls cleaner under the manipulation of water idea than devoting a

Jupiter and Movement: by this I mean with respect to people/living things, as opposed to moving inanimate objects. Other elements don't really include stuff about this directly.

Jupiter and Astral: the problem with this is that there's just as much evidence for mars to be related to outerspace. For one, 'Outer Space' is a mars based ability. Then there's the fact that Starburst literally calls upon a star, Nova is an explosion related to stars, planetary/planet diver. Meteor is literally a rock from outer space. Only Megiddo kinda falls out of characterization as it's Venus based (but still gives some credit to the idea that astral isn't jupiter exclusive). Similarly, both Jupiter and Mars deal with different means of generating light through beams and whatnot. In this sense when you combine Jupiter and Mars you get the complete picture of space.

I will agree, though, that Jupiter leans towards a kind of medieval understanding of what stars were. However, noting that Astrology was connected to the stars and was an medieval way of predicting the future, I think that connection between Jupiter and Astral is really a way to connect Jupiter to Astrology and premonition - and ultimately - a strong mind.


Rolina

Again, you're associating the roles of the characters with the elements themselves.  The games are built around Isaac's team, and were never modified to work with other teams at all.  Would also like to point out that no adept has an "innate" ability to heal so far - innate would imply that they can use it regardless of class, like how Isaac can use Move no matter what.  I think you mean "natural", as that's what base class is supposed to be.  I'd also like to point out that outside of The Broken Seal, few adepts seem to follow what seems natural for them - case in point is Felix.  Isaac makes sense as a paladin archetype.  But Felix I've always seen as being more of a Dark Knight to Isaac.  If we didn't keep getting copy/paste jobs when it comes to classes, I'd be inclined to agree, but I'm actually going to call "developer laziness" on this one.

Jupiter and Movement:  This ignores the existence of spells like Retreat and Alex's "Mist" psynergy, which also share emphasis on movement.  In addition, many other examples don't really work on account that they're physical psynergy.  Of course they move during the strike - so does Piers when he uses Diamond Burg, and Isaac during Odyssey.

Steam:  Yes.  I said as much.  Mercury is the one thing with the least support for the third aspect.  It was chosen because it made the most logical sense.  I mean, hell - what would you choose as the third form for Mercury?

Mars and Astral:  So... you're saying that the explosive spell is totally a star-based spell, even after establishing that explosions are mars' domain?  And Outer Space and Meteor, which uses the heat of reentry to inflict damage, are totally star based?  Ignoring that we have abilities that are, quite literally, laser beams shooting down from the heavens, stars actually hitting the foe in the face, and pretty much every single ASTRAL (read, Star based, not absolutely everything to do with space) attack being Jupiter?  This isn't attacking with Outer Space - it's attacking with Astral Energies.  Starlight and such.  I think you're misinterpreting what I mean when I say Astral/Celestial.

@Medieval:  Huh?  Where is that coming from?  I don't think I mentioned anything like that.



Edit:  Just thought of something, figured I need to mention it.  Aspects aren't what an element does - rather, they're the shape an element takes.  This is why buffs, healing, debuffs, etc are aspect-neutral - they're kind of irrelevant.  This specifically refers to the forms the elements take when they do damage.

Plexa

Well with your aspect theory I can see why you've made some of the decisions you have in classifying things, particularly after you clarification. What I'm talking about is using the same underlying idea but trying to capture the spirit of each element including buffs/debuffs etc. That's why I've been insistent on Mercury being associated with healing - and you could chalk it up to the developers being lazy, but thematically within the world this association makes sense. Even to the point where Piers/Mia rush to heal Isaac's/Felix's parents at the end of the game. Until there is evidence to the contrary I think it's safe to say that, with the currently presented information, Mercury has the strongest association with healing. So far as my interpretation of your ideas go, I feel like this is an integral part of what makes mercury an element. And you're welcome to disagree with that! But let's keep in mind we're approaching your ideas from slightly different angles :)

Movement: Retreat I agree is an exception. Alex's warp is unknown at this point, it could be a psynergy item he has equipped! The point behind the attacking psynergy is that it is the speed that gives those attacks their power. Much like the heat from the meteor coming down gives that it's strength (as you rightly pointed out) or the Iceburg that Piers summons to give his attack power. It's the additional fast movement that make these distinctly jupiter, imo.

Steam: I think you could answer what I would put here :D but I also agree that if you limit yourself to just attacking psynergy/unleashes you don't have many options. I don't have a good replacement within your framework.

Astral: You're quite right, my mistake for misunderstanding. You didn't bring up Medieval, I did. Golden Sun is clearly inspired by medieval times (which isn't too surprising) and given that you can kind of make sense why astral can makes sense as a jupiter association as astral is associated with astrology, and astrology associated with predicting the future.

EDIT: I looked over all the Mercury unleashes and there really isn't a good case for steam other than 'it makes logical sense'.
[spoiler]dreamtide
searing fog
rising dragon

blizzard
aqua strike/shock
hurricane
Lethe Albion (= a hades river | great britain)

ice crush
psy leech
frost bite
life leech
drown

stun cloud
sargasso (= sea with lots of seaweed)
flash force
reverse star

DD Only:
blue comet
arrow shower
dimension rift
[/spoiler]I wish I could offer a better alternative though. I will keep thinking about it.

Luna_blade

Quote from: Luna_BladeAlso, aren't we going a bit off-topic with all these element theories?
I am only saying this because this interesting part of the discussion will be harder to find back because it has little to do with the title.

Quote from: Rolina on 24, January, 2015, 10:08:07 PM
Quote from: Plexa on 23, January, 2015, 12:39:43 AM
I'm somewhat ashamed that after posting I went away to read up on every psynergy for each element in an effort to better understand things. First things first, the mixing of elements to create psynergy is pretty much impossible as currently set out by the games - growth being Venus, Venus+Mars, Venus+Jupiter and Venus+Mercury makes that difficult to account for within the theory. Secondly, I'm hesitant to read too much into summons are evidence because that's where the essence of two elements is combined (or 1 if you're talking about the basic summons). Lastly, to me it looks like Mercury/Venus and Mars/Jupiter are related to each other in structure, hopefully you can see that from these lists.
I've always seen summons as [Damage Source] + [Effect] - For example, Megaera does Mars Damage, while the Jupiter fuels the party buff.  That's how I make sense of it, at least.  GS in and of itself does not have support for the actual mixing of elements, as that's a complicated mess of mechanics that nobody wants to deal with. ^-^;
Yeah, well I actually sorta think elements can be combined. I agree on what you say about the summons though.
From what Kradens says one can asume that everything is made of the elements. Just like the elements in real life. It's my opinion that stuff in the GS world isn't made of a single element most of the time.
But I can also agree on multi-coloured psynergy not being a thing.
Quote from: Rolina on 24, January, 2015, 10:08:07 PM
QuoteSo, from what I gathered the elements have the following themes:

Venus:

Part of the aspect theory states that Buffs, Debuffs, and Healing are all aspect-neutral.  They may lean towards one fundament or another, but they're not tied to any particular aspect.  The only thing affected by the fundaments are the form the element takes when it does damage, and what ailments are associated with it.  As I've mentioned before, ailments must make sense for the aspect, so things like saying stone inflicting poison doesn't work, but having plants inflict it does.

Dark-themed things are associated with the Lunar aspect due to their nature.  Likewise, light-themed things are associated with Sol.  Haunt, Curse, Condemn, and similar would fall under the Lunar aspect due to their nature (thus, would be associated with Plant-users for venus).
Quite interesting. This seems to make more sense for me. I was always connecting buffs and stuff to certain elements, but I guess that is a bit strange after reading this.
Quote from: Rolina on 24, January, 2015, 10:08:07 PM
Healing is aspect neutral, and every element is shown capable of it.
Hmm... I agree.
Quote from: Rolina on 24, January, 2015, 10:08:07 PM
As far as aspects are concerned, I've always seen it as:

:VenusStar: Body
:MarsStar: Spirit
:JupiterStar: Mind
:MercuryStar: Heart

That's what makes sense to me, at least.
So you basically made one that is more fitting to organisms?
Although it makes me think that I made a mistake on putting Space and Force in the aspects. It makes the other elements less worthy?
Quote from: Plexa on 25, January, 2015, 08:36:24 AM
Jupiter and Movement: by this I mean with respect to people/living things, as opposed to moving inanimate objects. Other elements don't really include stuff about this directly.
So jupiter is a sort of willpower?
Quote from: Rolina on 25, January, 2015, 12:24:21 PM
Edit:  Just thought of something, figured I need to mention it.  Aspects aren't what an element does - rather, they're the shape an element takes.  This is why buffs, healing, debuffs, etc are aspect-neutral - they're kind of irrelevant.  This specifically refers to the forms the elements take when they do damage.
Interesting. :idea:

Quote from: Plexa on 25, January, 2015, 12:59:27 PM
Movement: Retreat I agree is an exception. Alex's warp is unknown at this point, it could be a psynergy item he has equipped! The point behind the attacking psynergy is that it is the speed that gives those attacks their power. Much like the heat from the meteor coming down gives that it's strength (as you rightly pointed out) or the Iceburg that Piers summons to give his attack power. It's the additional fast movement that make these distinctly jupiter, imo.
Well I played the first game a lot and TLA once recently. There is big chance Alex uses a teleport stone (forgot the name). Making them faster or something?
"Hear the sounds and melodies
Of rilets flowing down
They're the verlasting songs
Whispering all the time
As a warning that behind some rocks
There's a rigid grap even
Oreads fear the tread"

Misery

While there is the possibility that the elemental abilities we have access to are modeled after Isaac's team, isn't it just as likely that Isaac's team is modeled after the characteristics of the elements? With the way character designs are handled in Golden Sun, I wouldn't find this surprising at all.

Anyway, looking at the class system along with various other aspects in the games definitely suggests there are some consistent trends among the elements. I personally prefer to think that specific abilities can be more strongly associated with some elements than others, this gives each element a much stronger identity and contributes to the depth of the series.

As I see it, the major themes among the elements are:

Venus: Life and vitality (and conversely, death...)
Generally high physical stats, even on mage characters. Revive ability and instant death ability. It's the most "earthly" element in a figurative sense; while it's an element that grants strength, you don't find many things with a weakness against Venus.

Mars: War and destruction (and heat, obviously)
Mars classes tend to have high HP - even Jenna has above average HP in her base class. Ability to increase defense, or lower the enemy's. Most living beings are weak against fire, so it makes for an excellent weapon.

Jupiter: Agility and "mind" (wisdom, intelligence, prediction, heightened senses, etc)
There's not one Jupiter based class that isn't fast. If you put Jupiter djinn on someone, they become fast. And as has already been pointed out, they have the most support abilities, along with "insightful" or mind manipulation abilities.

Mercury: Healing
While every element is capable of healing, it's hard to argue against it being Mercury's "thing". Any character with a Mercury level of 4 or higher will have healing, with the sole exception of natural Mercury adepts influenced by another element, which I'm assuming is entirely for game balance reasons.

It's not like adepts become their element ("Mars are all warriors, Mercury are all healers"). But the element also doesn't become the character ("anyone can do their own thing with any element"). There's kind of a middle ground, where the traits of the element are expressed through the character.

Regarding dark psynergy, I'm seeing a lot of support for it not being psynergy but more like a completely alien force that is anti-psynergy. While yes, if you see the stuff happening in the grave eclipse in DD from the perspective of it being "chaotic", I suppose you could argue it's not in line with the idea, but I wouldn't say it directly contradicts it. You could also see it as something that opposes the "natural" world. It makes a lot of sense to me at least, with Sol representing the four worldly elements and Luna being its polar opposite.

Rolina

@Plexa/Mercury and Steam:  Yup, it's like I said - there really isn't anything supporting this other than just "What else is there?"  If you'll read the tumblr series for them, you'll see that I've classified the Geyser style spells and skills as this, as well as mist/steam based attacks (mostly djinn at this point), but apart from that Mercury has taken no forms other than Ice and Water.  Hell, even classifying Alex's Geyser spells as this is kind of pushing it.  The only reason it's included is to have parity between the elements.  I've made an argument as to why I chose Crystal and Steam over things like Metal and Gel over in the tumblr - it's in the second part, near the bottom.  Check it out for more info.

@Luna/Space and Force:  I'd argue these are element-neutral.  Heck, Force is an actual spell, and has no elemental association.

@Elemental Trends:  I do agree that there are certain trends with elements, and that each have their strengths and weaknesses.  While all elements are capable of all things technically, certain elements are better than others when it comes to doing certain things.  Personally, I see Mercury having better healing, Jupiter having better control, Mars having better damage, and Venus having better defensive capabilities.  Of course, the games themselves don't actually support those last two, what with there being like, no real defensive abilities in the game outside of buffs, but whatever.

Luna_blade

Quote from: Rolina on 25, January, 2015, 04:26:06 PM
@Luna/Space and Force:  I'd argue these are element-neutral.  Heck, Force is an actual spell, and has no elemental association.
Yeah.. I should think up something else perhaps.
"Hear the sounds and melodies
Of rilets flowing down
They're the verlasting songs
Whispering all the time
As a warning that behind some rocks
There's a rigid grap even
Oreads fear the tread"

Radamanthys

Honestly, I am of the opinion that the most simple way to approach the mysteries of the Golden Sun series is to disregard Dark Dawn. They introduced many complications, not just in the elements but even in the geography of the game as well.