parch is weird

[mecurylighthouse]

I have a Question why would Parch be a Mercury psynergy since water evaporates with HEAT who better to do this that a Mars adept 

[Kain]

It's basically hot water to my understanding, like Scald from Pokemon...a water type move that has a chance to inflict burn.  Why should mars have control over hot water would be my rebuttal.

[mecurylighthouse]

ok in more detail water is heated by the sun in nature right? and the sun is heat so it would be under a Mars adepts power to duplicate this effect and Mercury adepts have the powera to freeze water but they never melt it actually in golden sun 3 to melt ice you need a fire ball and that game's parch equivilent is Mars element as well so from this it seems that Mercury adepts have the abilty to make things colder but not hotter

[Rolina]

Er, no, not quite Kain.  Parch is the act of evaporating water, which always seemed strange as a Mercury ability.  As such, in Dark Dawn, they decided to make it Mars elemental and call it Arid Heat instead.  Not sure if we should count it as a retcon or what...

[Kain]

...Evaporating water...is a mercury psynergy.  From the description I thought it was just heated water.  At least Dark Dawn fixed it.

[NightXsenator]

Parch is an utility that manipulates exactly water:MercuryStar:, this is a little explanation. Then, however, more utilites' elements will become questionable...

[Durza]

I've always taken it that Parch simply uses the energy already present to evaporate the water, while Arid Heat supplies heat itself. Which would also explain why Parch can be used on the water directly rather than relying on those weird bowls to amplify it.

[zman9000]

what about reveal which is jupiter same for mind read, teleport and halt? cloak is mercury.
lift is mercury yet catch and carry are venus. and move is mars?

There are a bunch of psynergy that doesn't make alot of sense for their element.

however i did think it was weird at first for partch, but i looked at it as, the power to turn water into steam/moisture, which then douse would be to turn the moisture in the air into rain thus water.

[NightXsenator]

How complicated Golden Sun is, another time I'm saying!

[Rolina]

Mind Read and Reveal DO make sense.  Jupiter also represents the Aspect of the Mind, remember?  This basically allows you to See the Thoughts of another person, as well as the ability to have True Sight.  That makes sense in context, and I wish that they did more such spells with the other elements, where it'd go off of that element's aspect.

Mercury is a perfect fit for cloak, too.  Using water to bend light and make yourself appear invisible.  It's a similar mechanic to cloaking devices in star trek, where you aren't really invisible, but rather you're bending light around you to give the illusion of being invisible.  The reason adepts can see it is because they can see psynergy, and thus the water curtain that's bending the light.

Your argument would have made a lot more sense if you used the Hand Psynergies as the basis of your argument, since none of those really have much of a basis for their element - they're all rather arbitrary.

Anywho, about Parch - Parch is a spell which applies heat.  It's the application of heat that cuases it to make no seense for mercury, at least not to me.  Think about the puzzles for a second.  You use fire to melt ice, not douse or some other mercury spell.  Plus, Dark Dawn all but admitted it, when it created a bunch of puzzles revovling around the evaporation of water... all of which used a Mars spell to do so.  This is why I don't think that Parch should have been a mercury psynergy...  It just doesn't really make sense, not with my particular train of thought.

[Aile~♥]

To me, the flavour text for Parch is what really does it in. It would make plenty of sense if Parch was stated to "Dissipate standing water." rather than "Evaporate standing water." There, now it's a definite Mercury ability, that simply MOVES the water into the atmosphere.

As for Reveal and Mind Read and related stuff, what I'd like is a Mars ability that allows the user to see the exact Psynergy reserves of nearby Adepts and alchemical devices, even though I don't see a whole lot of gameplay applications for it (aside from telling you "cast something on this rock/statue/whatever, it magnifies your Psynergy" or telling you the exact remaining PP of an enemy in battle.). Also, Venus is stated to be able to detect life force. I'd like to see that as an ability in-game, as well.

Also, I think in all probability, in GS4 the sight-related artifact for Mars is probably going to bestow Mind Read, or a weaker variant thereof. (Considering that the three orbs used to open the way to the Endless Wall apparently represent three eyes, and that the yellow orb — which just happens to be a Venus colour — represented the Third Eye, which also happens to be a Venus arctifact, I think it isn't unreasonable to make the connection between the Insight Glass and the blue orb. This leaves only the red orb, Mars, without an associated artifact. And since we only have Mind Read left, with a weakened True Sight (Search doesn't do all the same things that Reveal did) and a weakened Clairvoyance (Insight doesn't show the future, only the solution to the immediate problem at hand) already taken... this would also make thematic sense, as Mars can be seen to represent Spirit and Emotion.)

[Rolina]

Spirit I can see, but I don't know about emotion.  I've always seen it like this:

Venus:  Body (Strength and beauty)
Mars:  Spirit (Passion and Determination)
Jupiter:  Mind (Knowledge and Reason)
Mercury:  Heart (Empathy and Emotion)

[Aile~♥]

Yeah, that makes sense, I suppose. Certainly Mercury represents controlled emotion, while Mars represents uncontrolled emotion, or passion as you said.

[Rolina]

Passion isn't necessarily uncrontrolled emotion.  Your passions are what drive you, and passions can lead to uncontrolled emotions, yes.  You could say that the strength of the fire within someone can cause their emotions to lose control, so we could chalk this up to elemental aspects - the stronger the passion, the more unstable the emotion.