Guild Wars 2

Prayer to Dwayna — maybe a good source of healing to others but profession healing skills are far better.

Prayer to Kormir — removes 3 condition with a very long cooldown. The cooldown is not reasonable to justify what it does.

Prayer to Lyssa — are you using this? Might as well use other profession skills.

Reaper of Grenth — used for support and rooting but you die easily. This is not as useful as any other profession skills also.

I actually use Prayer to Lyssa as a low lvl necro. It’s got a very low CD and works nicely with a conditions build. Plus, getting things like protection, regen, or swiftness never hurt a caster.

Dwayna is pitiful. Kormir might be good for Rangers or professions with limited condition management.

Haven’t tried Grenth yet so I don’t know.

I agree that Prayer to Dwayna and Prayer to Kormir badly need buffs. I’d increase the healing granted by Dwayna and either have it also grant you regeneration for X seconds OR heal all allies within a radius. Prayer to Kormir is alright in terms of effect, but it needs a cooldown buff, or it also needs to affect other allies.

I wouldn’t mind Prayer to Lyssa getting a small cooldown buff as well (10s would be perfect, in my opinion), but it might be abused in PvP settings.

what human racial skills? never used them

they all suck in comparison to the profession skills, didn’t even bother to unlock them (it’s not just a human problem almost all racial’s suck the better ones are from sylvari and asura imo)

Human-specific skills are useless… i hope ANet will do something about this

i hope that reaper of grenth should grant stability also,

RoG should be able to cast while moving. You can’t even use it as a root because during that 1 second, people have enough time to be out of your view..

The racial skills are worse than the profession skills by design. It’s not going to change. ArenaNet made it this way on purpose so that what race you picked did not have any influence over how powerful you could be. It’s done like this for the sake of cross-race balance.

The racial skills are bad, intented to generally be worst then profession skills. Yet, i do see other races use their racials from time to time. The only human racial i ever see used is the Hounds.

Its also the only racial ive unlocked because as an Engineer its actually pretty good by comparison to my professions kitteny racials. The other stuff, no chance. No gimmicky, or visually attractive effect to it

Hounds got replaced with misfire wolf
I supposed they can be argued to be stronger by a very small margin.
There’s no point in spending 30pts for something you get for free.

Arcxander.9836:

Human-specific skills are useless… i hope ANet will do something about this

Hounds of Balthazar is pretty great if you need aggro-hog meat shields to absorb a few hits or to fizzle a few spells.

@Argis Then why even add racial skills? They could have just left them out and let what race you choose be a cosmetic thing only, all the rest of the stories are just lore for your character.

To make some distinction between the races you play. Not all racial skills are bad to be honest, and in some cases it depends on the class you play.

For example, the Asura golems are useless on an elementalist…their elemental summons will outclass them any day. But to a warrior, it may be the only way to get some summoned allies, so they could work. But not to the point that they make the warrior match the elementalist’s own skills. And that’s about the case for the other, non-elite racials as well.

They have their uses, but they’re slightly weaker to remove the balance headache.

Argis.7049:

The racial skills are worse than the profession skills by design. It’s not going to change. ArenaNet made it this way on purpose so that what race you picked did not have any influence over how powerful you could be. It’s done like this for the sake of cross-race balance.

This idea is all and well, but (nearly) every race has vary real good skills. Human’s only one is hounds. Asura get great condition damage utilities and golems, particularly on engineer. Sylvari get plant allies things. Charr get Charzooka, hella fun to use in WvW

Has melandru been buffed? I sorta feel ‘tankier’ than I last used it.. It’s become the elite i use most in wvw recently.. If only they would make us big again. /sigh

So basically race and profession choice are almost meaningless? The racial skills are worse than the profession skills by design. It’s not going to change. ArenaNet made it this way on purpose so that what race you picked did not have any influence over how powerful you could be. It’s done like this for the sake of cross-race balance. This is so that all characters suck equally I guess. Reaper of Grenth is only useful to a Necromancer, and the only good human skill is hounds of Balthazar.

Not all racial skills suck. Asuran’s radiation field is absolutely devastating especially if you’re a condition specced necro. Its borderline OP. Pain inverter is equally as good. Why can’t we have something like that? Lyssa isn’t so bad for a quick boon and condition on your enemy. Kormir is just useless. It needs its cooldown reduced by alot jsut to make it worth using. The hounds are actually kind of useful in some situations, just dont use them near alot of AoE or they die easily. they can give you an edge in 1vs1 combat though just to have an extra thing hitting your opponent. Just make sure you don’t use them when your opponent is near dead or they might rally off of killing them. Grenth needs its duration bumped up alot or its cooldown shortened. it would also be nice if it also crippled in addition to what it already does to make the most out of it. should also give stability to you. Melandru only seems useful to me when fighting harpies in fractals so they wont knock you off the edge. And even then its not that great. Aside from that it sucks horribly.

I accept that Anet will never change the racials because heaven forbid we have something to differentiate ourselves, but honestly the question asked before bears repeating, why the kitten do we even have them in the game if they’re so useless? I feel bad for Norns in particular, you pick the race because in GW1 you could become a massive bear at will and for extended periods. GW2? Thirty seconds of up time, they’re basically worthless to begin with, and then we have a four minute cooldown. That is beyond absurd.

I’ve been using prayer to lyssa and I’m very happy with the results. I will make a video of wvw and show how/why it works very soon.

As my Human is a ranger, and my only Human, I found that Hounds of Balthazar were okay in the beginning, and I was using it as much as possible, but once I speced out I started using Rampage as One, which in my opinion, isn’t the best (that’s me though) but it was better than the racial skills for Humans.

Argis.7049:

The racial skills are worse than the profession skills by design. It’s not going to change. ArenaNet made it this way on purpose so that what race you picked did not have any influence over how powerful you could be. It’s done like this for the sake of cross-race balance.

There’s a big difference between being less powerful than Profession Skills and being flat out terrible. By your logic, they could strip all non-cosmetic effect from the skills and it would still be acceptable by design.

I think every race has a thread like this. Actually I believe the human skills are the best overall, if a bit heavy on healing (compare them to Charr’s Artillery Barrage, or three of the Norn transformations, which are terrible), although professions > race nearly every time.

For my guardian, Hounds are good; I take them when soloing in PvE (especially against vets or for skill challenges), or when I want to go full offense in WvW. Sword of Justice + Hammer of Wisdom + Hounds of Balthazar gives me 4 extra attackers and gives the enemy 4 targets to soak up damage. Prayer to Kormir is a cheap substitute for Contemplation of Purity (not nearly as good, but 40 second recharge instead of 60); in the zerg I often use Save Yourselves!, so having either one to purge conditions is a must. I learned that the hard way after pulling 22 stacks of bleed onto myself once. That hurt.

Prayer to Kormir; reflect projectiles for 3 sec

Prayer to Lyssa; gives one of your conditions to the target.

Prayer to Dwayna; should knock back foes in a 300 AoE

Reaper of Grenth; reduce cooldown to 60 seconds, instant cast, renewed for 3 sec when you kill an enemy

Avatar of Melandru; retain utility skills

Prayer to Dwayna: Player character should shout something. I liked the idea someone had to add a knockback. The cooldown is perfect as is.

Prayer to Lyssa: Lowering to cooldown to 10 seconds would be great, but I think of all the racials this one is simple and should stay that way.

Prayer to Kormir: I cannot see the cooldown being any shorter then 30 seconds. It isn’t meant to be amazing and a 30 second cooldown is still really nice.

Reaper of Grenth: It should create a water color image of Grenth and voice over like the Prayers do… in fact it should be renamed Prayer to Grenth for consistency. It needs to be usable while on the move and it should have its cooldown reduced to 90 seconds and duration increased to 25 seconds.

Hounds of Balthazar: Perfect just needs the water color image of Balthazar upon activation and to be renamed Prayer to Balthazar for consistency

Avatar of Melandru: Should give player added armor. Needs a water color image upon activation and be renamed like the other to Prayer to Melandru

Meh, frankly I wish they’d have a non-deity related racial skill, something that humans actually have as a species to contend with the other races. My human main is actually an agnostic over never experiencing the gods and how little intervention they’ve had on the world and hours of useless “prayers” (hint hint -.-)

Does reaper of grenth remove your weapon and utility skills? (The wiki page doesn’t say)

lorazcyk.8927:

Does reaper of grenth remove your weapon and utility skills? (The wiki page doesn’t say)

No it does not (at least for the engi)

Terrahero.9358:

The racial skills are bad, intented to generally be worst then profession skills.

Radiation Field + Cluster Bomb doesn’t look all that bad.