Basically the above.
There are also a lot of instances in the game where I don't agree entirely with joining in the fight, but that is my personal feelings/head canon/whatever. Garlemald and parts of the SB story kind of drove that home to me and the whole a "hero to someone is a villain to someone else" trope, at the end of the day we are straight up murdering a ton of random dudes who are just fighting in their own military (sometimes with out choice) or mind controlled.
I'd argue personally that if you do nothing, then what happens? Garlemald just wins, Zenos wins, X bad guy wins? That seems even worse then fighting to try and stop the current conflict.
To keep this short, because I kind of get it and don't want to sperg too hard against this
(so I give you three paragraphs instead of ten).
What other choice do we really have when a bunch of soldiers just run at you and your potential method of combat is lighting people on fire or punching people so hard that you can kill them? We try to talk it out, mostly through Alphinaud usually see Baelsar's wall and Eulmore. We're not Batmaning our way past the obvious fact that if we go into a fight, it is basically kill or be killed or at best you just badly beat them up. I think if we just knocked out literally everyone that'd be even more ridiculous then all the other named deaths we throw away in this story.
Perhaps because I played DRK's story ever since it came out where they directly address this issue, but I always found that WoL was effectively a person who has no real effective choice to avoid being guilty of death. Inaction leads to death because the villains win, and action leads to death because obvious reason. So really the only way out is just shooting yourself back into the aether and telling someone else to put up with all this crap. Which if you do that, that is what a weak person does, and WoL is not a hero if they're weak (as in overall strong, not 'I hit thing good' strong).
So the way I see it is, if you make all that murder count for something and go with a just purpose then at best you're not a genocidal maniac in the end, which given WoL's position as a super combat soldier that is the best you can reasonably expect I think. It isn't the most romantic notion, but I think it adds weight to the choices you make, because in the end all fights you engage with means someone has to die. So you better make that death count for something. It isn't the most life changing thing in the world, but I like it as it walks that line between "violence bad" and "violence sometimes needs to be done".
Agreed.
Further, I've always hated positionals. Why do people like them? Having to always constantly moving is irritating as hell.
Because they've taken out most other forms of mechanics that involve giving a shit about anything besides slamming your buttons on every job that isn't BLM, and BLM is a million times more mobile today then it was even 4 years ago so even some of that has been lost overtime. For all the crap gun/bow mage (Brd/Mch had caster stances that dramatically increased their damage in HW for all newfags) got, at least you had to give a shit about something that EW rdps don't have to do which is why I despise current Bard because proc whack a mole was actually kind of engaging despite no positionals but they killed that because piss babies cry about doing anything besides throwing their keyboard. Plus they've reduced the relevance of positionals overtime anyway compared to what it was, which I personally don't like that either.
You especially feel this in 4 mans where you can just spaghetti your entire rotation and still win, giving a modicum of a fuck about positionals is what kept me awake on melee dps especially playing Monk where you had to rotate a good bit around to do your rotation right. Also if you're not terrible you barely need to move at all in most fights because you can just stand between that little line that splits the rear and the flank and shuffle around a little, which is enough for the majority of fights in this game.
