Guild Wars 2

I understand that the balance team only balances around pvp, but lets not forget about the plethora of useless pve and racial skills (particularly Norn elites). I know that Anet’s intention is to not have races affect build making and while I agree with that philosophy, what is the point in having useless elites that only hinder you? Transforming into a spirit only lower your stats and replace your skill set with a set of (aside from the snow leopard and bear rush skills) useless skills.

Now I understand if Anet made these Norn elites actually half decent that it might start affecting how a player will specifically chose a race in order to build his or her character which is against Anet’s philosophy. So rather than making them useful, I propose that these skills (and particularly other racial skills) should only be intended for roleplaying purposes.

I feel like this would be a rather easy task since all the Norn elite skills are already total dog kitten, they only need to adjust the leopard and bear rush skills and give the player a 100% up-time on them. These skills would also have a 100 or so seconds cooldown when leaving the transformation just so the player cannot just freely toggle in and out of them as if they were an engineer kit or something. Cause you know, I want to be a real kittenin Norn like the ones in GW1, not these kitten whipped kittenes that call themselves Norns in GW2.

TLDR
GW1 Norns: Alpha as kitten
GW2 Norns: Beta kitten kittenes

Peace

Unfortunately you and I have chosen the race that the devs seem to hate the most. All other races have a racial skill that is actually useful in some way, typically bringing something that other class elites can have (charr warband support, asuran golems, sylvari take root, human hounds of balth) where the best norn summon currently is…summon wurm. That and armoring issues with the norn female mesh (male/female clearly use the same mesh because stuff on the females clearly wraps around that horribly misshapen norn male frame) and lest we forget hair that clips your body and many other things the dev’s have said many times will never be fixed…

I disagree about making these skills totally social, but in GW1 the norn’s transformations had them still carrying their weapons, so they could be altered to just be a combat transmogrify (like the infinite watchknight tonic) where we keep our weapons in hand and the xform only buffs stats rather than replacing them. Their biggest combat issue at the moment actually is simply the way the attacks are structured, there is no mobility…you ARE a pve mob, and a bad one at that being unable to move during your attacks.

Because reading a few paragraphs is more than the average forum reader can handle:
Norns are the only ones without a useful combat elite (snow leopard for stealth/rush is…sketchy) And turning them to a combat transmogrify (basically a tonic where you keep your weapons/attacks) is the best fix imo

Ahahaha ty for the tldr because I really can’t be ‘kittened’ with the slab of text, however I agree Norn elites are a little sad… they are more of just a novelty… Like, I can use my norn warrior in arah p3/p4 to solo the light room, but then I endure a 240s CD on my elite for nothing, so really the entire skill is just a novelty.

Most of the racial skills are terrible or very situational. I actually wish the would rethink them, since they are just a waste right now.

Racial skills are supposed to be bad. They are just there to increase the race feeling and to have some fun. They are not supposed to have any further influence on the game. Otherwise certain races would have advantages due to skills.

Race skills must never have any further influence on the game at all.

DAS NECRO

Wanted to make another topic but I figure I google an existing topic (since the search function is awful).

Racial skills can only be used in 2 game modes, pve and wvw. Wvw is about either roaming which is for the agile and the scary or blobbing which is about group utility and/or group control. NONE of the racial skills are useful to the slightest degree in there, and I doubt they ever will but you know what? There is this lovely feature to split how each skill behaves in each game mode so instead of pretending like racial skills earned that perma-bench status how about they make them semi-useful?

The whole idea is that racial skills should not be better than other skills. Meaning if there is a might stacking skill that heals at the end for a racial skill it would never be stronger than empower. Why not atleast bring them to the light though with a few buffs for pve? Would it really hurt? Right now its just stacking, cleaving, and zerging, none of which racial skills would hurt or help.

[Asuran]
-Pain invertor: Increase confusion duration to 6 seconds. Chang retaliation duration to 2 seconds per enemy effected.

-7 Series Golem: Have it gain “berserk” at 50% health for the remainder of its duration. Lower cooldown to 150 seconds.

-D-series Golem: Increase health to ~18,372 (tier 3 profession health). Give it the ability to “self repair” once it reaches 50% health. Lower cooldown to 150 seconds.

-Summon power suit: Separate it’s health from the player’s health. Instead if the suit dies with a player in it, they are launched out with 50% health and are “knocked out” (cannot break stun similar to frost bow freeze) for 2 seconds. Lower cooldown to 200 seconds. Change launch fist to a skill shot, dealing damage and dazing foes in its path (1 second daze). Lower channel time of gattling fists to ~4.5 seconds. Allow directional movement during whirling assault. Increase self repair channel duration to 8 seconds. Movement interrupts this effect. (more reliable offensive and less of a suicide suit).

[Human]
-Avatar Of Melandru: Change cleansing leaves to a held channel skill to remove 1 condition from each ally (up to 5) every .5 seconds for up to 5 seconds and drastically lower aftercast. Grant regeneration from roar of the forest for the same duration (5 seconds). Increase width of healing spring to 360 units. (weaker form of tome of courage, but still a threat to interrupt).

-Hounds of Balthazar: Increase health to ~15,802 (tier 2 profession health). Increase damage of fiery leap to ~2,200-3,400 and add functionality “gain might for each foe hit (3 stacks for 8 seconds)”. Increase bite attack speed by ~33%. (little more reliable but with such a long cooldown only a scare skill).

[Charr]
-Battle Roar: Lower cooldown to 30 seconds. Increase might stacks to 3. (still not a shout, lower boon duration, longer cooldown than “for great justice!”).

-Artillery Barrage: Increase damage per strike to ~657 (80% more). Increase cast range to 1,000. Increase number of strikes to 20. No cooldown change. (basically a meteor shower with an incredibly high cooldown).

-Warband Support: Increase health of melee to ~15,802 (tier 2 profession health). Increase damage of ranged by ~15%. Added functionality based on warband legion; blood has fury on battle roar (7 seconds) and ranged shots pierce, ash has daggers for melee dealing more damage while flanking and ranged mine grants stealth to allies in the blast radius (3 seconds), iron battle roar removes 1 condition and ranged aimed shot deals 20% more damage.

-Charrzooka: Reduce cooldown to 150 seconds.

[Sylvari]
-Seed turret: Increase attack speed to once every 3 seconds.

-Healing seed: Creates a water field for 10 seconds once killed (not if it expires).

-Druid spirit: Grant -20% condition duration towards itself, added functionality “increase toughness by ~35 every time it applies regeneration”.

-Sylvan Hound: Change attack to a small leap slash that applies poison and cripple for 2 seconds. Added functionality “gain health when a condition is applied”. ~320 healing with a 1 second ICD.

[Norn]

-Call owl: change effect to attack 5 times, applying 1 bleed stack for 8 seconds per attack. Executes 5 attacks over ~2.25 seconds.

-Become the Bear: Allow movement with AA. Heavy swipe causes knockdown instead of knockback (1 second KD). Add 20% damage to knocked down foes with maul. Lower cooldown to 200 seconds.

-Become the Raven: Lower cripple duration of aa to 1 second, allow movement with AA. Allow movement while casting shriek. Increase number of attacks for rending talons to 6 and increase bleeding duration to 8 seconds. Lower cooldown to 200 seconds.

-Become the Wolf: Allow movement with AA. Increase number of attacks in blood frenzy to 6 (same channel duration) and gain quickness for 2 seconds if you hit a foe that was knocked down (only applies once). Leap breaks immobilize now. Lower cooldown to 200 seconds.

-Become the Snow Leopard: Remove cast time of growl while changing it to a radius effect of 240 units (shorter). Pounce now has +50% critical damage if you were affected by prowl however casting it immediately removes prowl’s effect. Cooldown remains at 240 seconds.