Guild Wars 2

I know racial skills are odd to bring up in a profession balance forum, but this one is just laughable. Artillery Barrage is quite likely the worst elite skill in the game (yes, even accounting for Mortar) and really should be looked at.

First, it deals less damage than its most similar skill, Meteor Shower, a weapon skill that is on1/8 of the cooldown. Elites should be more powerful than other skills, and while I understand racial skills should be weaker than profession skills, this is still ridiculous.

On top of the low damage and unreliability of the skill (due to random placement of the 15 explosions), it is melee range. This makes no sense to me at all. Why would anyone call down an artillery strike on their position? It’s suicide! Without a doubt, the range of this skill needs to be increased.

My personal suggestion would be to up the damage of the skill slightly, but far more importantly, drastically increase the range up to 1,200 or 1,500. Then it will feel more like an artillery strike. You call those on positions you are having trouble reaching, not places where you’re already in close combat with the enemy.

On top of that, it will give charr an additional, situational option. Tequatl/Wurm Heads would become good PvE times to use it, and in WvW, it might see some use when seiging a tower/keep or in zerg battles (especially on thieves, as their elites really aren’t usually good in either case). It still would not be anyone’s general-use elite, but it would at least provide a reason to equip it sometimes.

I totelly agree… artillery Barrage is compleatly useless!!!!

Can someone at arena net look into this skill? It’s cool having a charr to call in artillery strikes but it’s the most useless skill in the game!

I would like to see ALL racial skills get buffed. Sure, I can understand that these skills are not supposed to be better than what professions have because of balance but as they are now they are completely worthless and are never used by anyone.
I don’t like having pointless skills!

A couple of the human ones are bad as well…

All racials could use a re-design. The Norn Jaguar form is far and away the best racial, if not the best elite in the game.

+1

Couldn’t agree more. Why did they create it if no one is using them? Also, they should fix the suit for asura. There are some usefull racial (elite) skills that people use. Mainly reduce the ridiculous long cooldowns on some racial elites. It’s laughable and should be addressed.

I like Hidden Pistol, but that’s mainly because as a necro, I have no other sources of evades/blocks/invulnerabilities (other than two basic dodges). Reliable combo finisher is kinda nice too. Shrapnel Mine is also handy at times. Same with Battle Roar if you aren’t warrior or ranger.

Actually, I like all of the charr racials except Artillery Barrage.

Artillery Barrage is pretty sad. A d I agree that someone should take the time to tweak racial skills a bit.

While I agree that racial skills in general are pretty pathetic, we are talking about a lot of skills and a lot of them elite across races. The time spent balancing these could be better spent balancing/fixing skills that people actually use IMO. Weapon skill bugs/issues in particular should take precedence over everything else, but sadly this has not been the case so far.

calavel.6249:

The time spent balancing these could be better spent balancing/fixing skills that people actually use IMO.

If, for example, some skill randomly gets broken and everyone stops using it because of that, does that mean the time would be better spent elsewhere since fixing a skill nobody uses is a waste of time?

This skill has been useless since day one.

Hazmat suit needs a ranged auto attack too. Melee is very bad as a slow golem.

All racial skills should be buffed. If they idea is to make them so worthless that they don’t overshadow or compete with class skills, why even have them in the game to begin with? They’re not even available in sPvP, so why can’t PvE players actually get some use out of them?

There’s a difference between “weaker” and “worthless”. They’re in the game for flavor purposes. That said, there’s no reason they should be so bad that you just never equip them.

The Charr Artillery Barrage is the weakest elite in the game. It does less than half the damage of meteor shower, has an insanely long cooldown, and only has a range of 450 meters. If it the range were to be increased to say 1200, and the cooldown halved it’d be at least in line with other racial elites, but right now it’s probably the weakest elite skill in the game.

Here’s a breakdown of the stats of these two skills in wvw with the same gear and buffs.

Skill——————-Damage——Range———Cooldown———Cast Time
Meteor Shower—— 956×24———-1200———30 seconds———-3.75(Immobile)
Artillery Barrage——727×15————450——-240 seconds————-2 (Mobile)

Artillery Barrage also has a small impact blast radius that I do not know currently.

How about:
Drop a flare that calls upon a barrage from Ironstrikes Fall (yay for fancy charr airships) that detonates the area with 3 245mm caliber anti-ghost shells (0.5s daze pre hit, one shell pre half a second, 2s of burning and 821+0.4 power pre shell hit), deals 33% less damage if allies are in the aoe.

About as strong in terms of defiant stack reduction as hounds of balthazar, same type of burn attack, okish damage but way more reliable, also fancy lore favor (not razing your own troops), also all parts of the code/ability are used in game in one form or another.

On that note why cant the call warband summon the actual warband you picked trough the personal story?

Andele.1306:

On that note why cant the call warband summon the actual warband you picked trough the personal story?

A better question…why is Warband Support so weak when compared to Thieves Guild?

RyuDragnier.9476:

Andele.1306:

On that note why cant the call warband summon the actual warband you picked trough the personal story?

A better question…why is Warband Support so weak when compared to Thieves Guild?

Because its a racial skill.

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Andele.1306:

On that note why cant the call warband summon the actual warband you picked trough the personal story?

A better question…why is Warband Support so weak when compared to Thieves Guild?

Because its a racial skill.

Still doesn’t explain why it’s 1/4 as effective as Thieves Guild. I could live with 1/2 or 3/4…but 1/4? Might as well not exist then.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Andele.1306:

On that note why cant the call warband summon the actual warband you picked trough the personal story?

A better question…why is Warband Support so weak when compared to Thieves Guild?

Because its a racial skill.

Still doesn’t explain why it’s 1/4 as effective as Thieves Guild. I could live with 1/2 or 3/4…but 1/4? Might as well not exist then.

See above. Racials are just for flavor, not serious skills, since they aren’t even available in PvP.

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Andele.1306:

On that note why cant the call warband summon the actual warband you picked trough the personal story?

A better question…why is Warband Support so weak when compared to Thieves Guild?

Because its a racial skill.

Still doesn’t explain why it’s 1/4 as effective as Thieves Guild. I could live with 1/2 or 3/4…but 1/4? Might as well not exist then.

See above. Racials are just for flavor, not serious skills, since they aren’t even available in PvP.

Then why not ramp up the power? One could scream imbalance for WvW, but since the Thieves Guild NPCs fold fast under pressure from anything, I don’t see why they can’t be more powerful.

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Andele.1306:

On that note why cant the call warband summon the actual warband you picked trough the personal story?

A better question…why is Warband Support so weak when compared to Thieves Guild?

Because its a racial skill.

Still doesn’t explain why it’s 1/4 as effective as Thieves Guild. I could live with 1/2 or 3/4…but 1/4? Might as well not exist then.

See above. Racials are just for flavor, not serious skills, since they aren’t even available in PvP.

Yup, racial skills are for flavor but no one ever uses them so at this point they are just a waste of disk space. The fact that they are not available in PvP means that there is less of a reason for them to be useless. Don’t worry, if they get buffed a little bit it won’t break the game, class skills will still be a little better and will still be affected by traits.

Reaper of Grenth and become snow leopard are very strong racial elites as powerful as any non-racial elite. Warband support is not as strong as thieve’s guild, but it’s a thieves guild that any class can use so it fits in well with racials being weaker than class elites.

ProtoGunner.4953:

+1

Couldn’t agree more. Why did they create it if no one is using them?

Because the PVE side of development was style over substance.

Ganathar.4956:

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Andele.1306:

On that note why cant the call warband summon the actual warband you picked trough the personal story?

A better question…why is Warband Support so weak when compared to Thieves Guild?

Because its a racial skill.

Still doesn’t explain why it’s 1/4 as effective as Thieves Guild. I could live with 1/2 or 3/4…but 1/4? Might as well not exist then.

See above. Racials are just for flavor, not serious skills, since they aren’t even available in PvP.

Yup, racial skills are for flavor but no one ever uses them so at this point they are just a waste of disk space. The fact that they are not available in PvP means that there is less of a reason for them to be useless.

It is in part because they are not found in SPVP that they are weak. This is because seemed to have a progression in mind for players.

They enter via PVE for the MMO exprience. Then they progress to WVW for the initial PVP fix. Then they graduate by going into SPVP and perhaps joining a esport team. Or at least that seemed to be the thinking at launch.

Anyways, they didn’t want people to get too attached to their racial skills during PVE and WVW. And this transition thinking is also why PVE and WVW skill balancing is subservient to SPVP balancing. Because ANet want’s people to get to know the skills in PVE/WVW, and then bring that knowledge into SPVP.

In effect, PVE and WVW are overly elaborate training areas for the MOBA known as GW2 SPVP.

But the player base didn’t play along, and so ANet has been trying to rething their plans over the last year while ratcheting up the Living Story as filler. This is why SPVP is being brought more in line with PVE in terms of rewards, and WVW got its own overflow system.

Racial skills are likely a leftover from early development when they were planning to make certain races better at things than others. Asura would be more inclined to magic classes, Norn to martial ect. They scrapped that idea and made a tiny goblin hit as hard as a 10ft NFL linebacker and we have the leftovers from their initial idea.

They probably just made then as weak as possible to maintain as much of a flavor/cosmetic only element to race choice as possible. A game that has one or more races clearly better because of exclusive racial skills is a bad game.

Substance E.4852:

Racial skills are likely a leftover from early development when they were planning to make certain races better at things than others. Asura would be more inclined to magic classes, Norn to martial ect. They scrapped that idea and made a tiny goblin hit as hard as a 10ft NFL linebacker and we have the leftovers from their initial idea.

They probably just made then as weak as possible to maintain as much of a flavor/cosmetic only element to race choice as possible. A game that has one or more races clearly better because of exclusive racial skills is a bad game.

Yes, but the racial skills are not a good cosmetic because to use them you have to “sacrifice” utility and elite slots, that is bad design. Anet either have to make them completely cosmetic and not take up ability slots or make them somewhat useful so using them is not completely ineffective like now.

However, that is for the far future of the game because as it is now class balance is completely out of whack, what with the warrior dominance across all game modes and the many useless trait lines, utilities and elites.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Dalanor.5387:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Andele.1306:

On that note why cant the call warband summon the actual warband you picked trough the personal story?

A better question…why is Warband Support so weak when compared to Thieves Guild?

Because its a racial skill.

Still doesn’t explain why it’s 1/4 as effective as Thieves Guild. I could live with 1/2 or 3/4…but 1/4? Might as well not exist then.

See above. Racials are just for flavor, not serious skills, since they aren’t even available in PvP.

Then why not ramp up the power? One could scream imbalance for WvW, but since the Thieves Guild NPCs fold fast under pressure from anything, I don’t see why they can’t be more powerful.

Read it again and try to graps the meaning of it.
If you are a thief (assuming the constant complain about Thieves guild), use thieves guild. End of story.

It’s just for fluff to make races a bit different from eachother and tbh there are a few exceptions when racials are better than utility skills. For example Hidden pistol or Snow leopard is awesome on a necro or Take root have 3s invulnerable which is nice in some rare situation, Radiation field on a condi class which has no / limited acces to weakness etc

Ofc this doesn’t reduce the problem of Artielly barrage. As an elite, even if just a racial flavor skill, its pathetic. See above and compare it to Meteor shower. But still you want to use it only, when you lack ranged aoe attacks and except mesmer, everybody has that in some form.

I. Know racial skils are supposed to be weaker than normal ones but this one could use a snall buff, its a little too weak. Super long cast time, short range and hits unreliably.

Im asking you a honest question and to both of you above. If its get buffed, would you use it as an elite? If yes, when and why?

On the risk of proposing something too drastic, what if the skill had:

• 480 impacts.
• 240s duration.
• 240s CD.
• 2000 radius AE, placed right in front of you so that one end of the circle is at your feet. Far point is hence 4000 units in front of you.

Basically, for the duration of the CD – you can keep it up if you want to, 2 shots come down per second. In a giant area.
The effective damage versus ~anything would be very low, if anything hits them at all. But especially in WvW, not only would it be somewhat effective and keeping people in combat, imagine how things would look if 10-20 Charr called down this on a keep or tower. It’d still not be overly dangerous, but it’d actually saturate an area for some damage and to make people seek cover.

magic fly.2041:

calavel.6249:

The time spent balancing these could be better spent balancing/fixing skills that people actually use IMO.

If, for example, some skill randomly gets broken and everyone stops using it because of that, does that mean the time would be better spent elsewhere since fixing a skill nobody uses is a waste of time?

This skill has been useless since day one.

If it’s a racial then yes. Because racials are gimmicky/not for PvP. ANd PvP (WvW+SPvP) is obviously the main focus of end game, because it sure as hell is not raids or instances or anything like that.

calavel.6249:

magic fly.2041:

calavel.6249:

The time spent balancing these could be better spent balancing/fixing skills that people actually use IMO.

If, for example, some skill randomly gets broken and everyone stops using it because of that, does that mean the time would be better spent elsewhere since fixing a skill nobody uses is a waste of time?

This skill has been useless since day one.

If it’s a racial then yes. Because racials are gimmicky/not for PvP. ANd PvP (WvW+SPvP) is obviously the main focus of end game, because it sure as hell is not raids or instances or anything like that.

“They may have various effects, such as condition removing or changing to a bear form, but they are all projected to be fairly weaker than their counterparts from professions that are specialized in similar skills.”

By definition they shouldn’t as good as profession skills, thus they are becoming pointless in the overall picture, but as i said too, in rare situations some of them can be useful. Barrage is not one of them.

In PvE it’s just a dps loss to use it.
WvW zergs just run trough it without an issue if you even dare to use it in close range and it’s absolute useless in roaming.

My question is the same. If its get buffed, would you use it as an elite? If yes, when and why?
@Carighan: Changing it in any way (radius, cd, damage, range etc), wouldn’t be still better to just throw there any regular aoe / splash attack? It’s mostly a WvW issue, it’s a stupidly bad skill in PvE. Ele have staff, Necro has both staff and wells for area control and damage. Engi can throw granades, both Ranger and Thief can pew pew with a bow from range. Warriors have longbow with that ridiculous size of fire field (+trait for extra range) and Guardians have the staff mostly equipped but both heavy classes are more likely in the frontlines.
That means (to me at least) mesmer could use it somehow, but their utility elites are far better than this skill could be. Ever. Am i right?

If the range was increased to something useful and reasonable for an artillery barrage I would say yes. Not very often, mind you, but I would throw it on for assaulting a problematic tower or keep to encourage the defenders to leave the walls. Still no risk of overshadowing a profession elite as the times I would use it are rare, but at least they would exist.

Yeah, the range hardly makes any sense. Who would call down an artillery barrage on themselves.