Absorbtion

Reduces physical damage by X
How come fire damage isnt physical?
If you burn yourself in real life you will physically get hurt, + you can feel fire.
How come water damage isnt physical?
If you get hit by tidal wave it hurts, + you can feel water.
How come earth damage isnt physical?
If earthquake happens under you, and earth splits open and makes a 50ft fall for you it hurts + you can feel the earth (especially when you fall down)
How come lightning damage isnt physical?
If you keep your finger on a high current, your finger will start burning + you can feel lightning(electricity)
Finally how come absorbtion rune doesnt absorb physical damage like it should?
If it wanted to absorb melee damage why didnt they describe it by saying "reduces melee damage by X."
I think they should make a armor stat that reduces holy and shadow damage.

I understand how shadow and holy damage isnt physical, but others I cannot understand.

Another fine post, quanzong. The four elements are earth, air, fire, and water. Thus, these are the "elemental" damages. Not all physical damage is melee, it can also be from bows, or actually the arrows, without elemental mods, of course.

Ok well elemental damage fire earth etc, can also be considered physical, they should change the wording to physical to some other thing, because if you start a fire and then touch it for 3 seconds and let go and look at your hand, your hand is burnt, which is physical.
I think physical can be in the same category as elemental, but elemental cannot be in same category as physical, the only things that arent physical are holy and shadow damage, have no clue what you consider chaos damage(to me its shadow damage) maybe lightning damage isnt physical (if you have a breadboard and incorrect make a circuit and put your finger on the circuit it will burn from the electricity/lightning damage), .... but thats only thing that physical cannot relate to elemental.

Physical means the damage source, not the type of damage that is sustained. A sword slashing you is caused by someone exherting physical force. Same with an arrow. Fire, Earth, Air, and Water are conjured elemental powers. As far as someone swinging a sword with fire damage, well, there needs to be a clear difference, so it will be considered elemental.

I personally think you're overanalyzing the wording. You obviously know what the game means by physical and elemental. The rest of the community knows the difference. I see no problem.

Check out this site, and definition of Physical
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/physical
Involving or characterized by vigorous bodily activity, fire lightning, wind, water, air, involve the body, so its physical.

Seeings as he was posted like 5000000 topics and posts about inane stuff like this, I have to assume he just wants post count, and/or just wants to make a fuss about nothing for his own venting or pleasure.

He's bumping old thread with pointless answers too :/

For his own defense, a few (FEW) of his topics actually make for some discussion.

You're really reaching on this one. Quit whining and deal with the change.

LOL this one is the real deal, I may have bumped an old thread, GW Updates, but why bother trying to find a thread that I posted weeks ago? Yeah I'm getting post counts but not cheating to get them with stupid replies. Physical damage can be considered from fire water air, etc.

EDIT: Should I wait 2 hours before posting on the thread I created between replies? Will that make me not really go for post counts, my belief is "if you have something to say, then say it"

you are making things too literal. This is a game. The different types of damage make the game have more strategy since you are not defending against only 1 type of damage. If everything was physical, then many armors would be pointless, as well as skills and weapon upgrades. Making only 1 type of damage would seriously cut down the complexity of the game to the point where it would suck a lot of fun out of it.

Theres alot of whiners in this world... just grab your sword/axe/hammer/bow/staff/wand/dagger and just go play GvG. As long as the post aren't pointless then nothing to whine about them in the first place.

Just enjoy...

dude this isn't real life,
i could ask why throw dirt takes 45 secs to recharge?
how can u blind some on with dirt?
how do u summon flesh golems in real life?
why do signets exsist?
how come elementalists float up into the air when casting spells?
how can u slow some one down by 66% with water?
the list goes on and and on and on.....

Takes a lot of dirt to blind someone for a long time
um, ever got dirt in your eyes?
be a cultist
chiense belief
ever watched a magic show with magician floating?
yeah, bring you to a 3ft pool and watch you try and run

but games have some imaginary things, but also things that are real, and I say this game has 60% real things, and I am curious why fire damage isnt considered physical, I havent found anything convincing enough.

I love it when people whine about semantics and don't even realize that's what they're doing.

No, wait, I don't love that at all. Sigh.

In Guild Wars physical means blunt, piercing or slashing damage.

Axes, hammers, swords, arrows, daggers and some traps do physical damage by default. They can be altered by upgrades, preparations, nature rituals or spells. Also necromancer minions and ranger pets do physical damage.

Let's remember that guildwars is a FANTASY setting, and as such you have the 4 basic ELEMENTS, earth, air, fire and water, anything from those elements is called elemental regardless of whether or not they PHYSICALLY rend your flesh from the bone.

If you really want to nitpick that much, I can supply a counter-argument to match:

The problem with your argument is that you're only looking at the end result of the damage: Fire burns you, which is a physical change to your body, therefore it must be physical damage. You've neglected, however, to consider the source of the damage.

See, the thing about elemental damage in a vast majority of fantasy worlds (including that of Guild Wars) is that, with only a few exceptions (Flame Trap would be one of those), all of it is magical in origin. An elementalist casts a spell to throw a fireball at you; he doesn't light something on fire with matches before chucking it at you. There's a big difference there because the fire is not normal fire and does not act like normal fire. Normal fire does not wad up into a ball and stay intact as it's hurled through the air--it just doesn't happen.

Therefore, we can conclude that magical fire has some different properties than naturally occuring fire. One of those is that normal armor doesn't have as much of an effect in stopping it. Thus, warrior armor, which is made to primarily protect against physical damage (they get an inherent +20 AL vs. physical after all), doesn't help as much against damage inflicted by magic. For that reason their armor can't absorb elemental damage.

In short: it's magic.

My counter arguement:Steel, swords and wood and the like which is used to make weapons comes from the ground. Therefore that should be earth damage, therefore there should be no such thing as physical damage as it's really just earth damage in disguise.

See how fun that was?

comes from the ground, yet is not the ground. thank you, come again!