Guild Wars 2

- Increase Size of Shields on Norn to better reflect their size differential.

My reasoning is that if my Norn is really this goliath-THING that can wield great amounts of weight with ease, why doesn’t it have shields that reflect this, The animations for the shields are fantastic, but whenever my Norn whips out the shield it just doesn’t seem… right. It seems off, they’re all just a little too small for me to believe that they are as impactful visually.

-Animations for one handed swords on Norns.

The attack animations for 1 Skill on Swords for Norn look lackluster. Like if you compare the movement and exaggeration used in animating the greatsword skills or any of the other skills for a great deal of the weapon they are much more fluid or powerful feeling. My Norn Thief feels fantastic as he flies through the air dancing with his daggers, but most of the sword animations feel lackluster, more specifically the standard attack.

Norn Elite skills Become the X. Wolf, Bear, Leopard, Raven. Ok so I hear tell that they are intended to be weaker, but I dont see any reason why they have to be. It sort of takes away from the race if all of their cultural variety is unusable. 30 Seconds of buff time on a 4 Minutes cooldown is pretty bad.

These skills have a really bad up-time for skills that aren’t much more ridiculous than my skills that are available for switching to my secondary weapon and typically I don’t have to worry about running out of skills to use because the cooldowns between two weapon sets are really well matched across the board. The cooldowns on the Transformation Elite skills are so long that I can’t weight their effectiveness against the shorter cooldowns of the Guardian skills or native Elite skills of other classes for the impact that I get from them.

My Proposal:

Is that you take these transformation skills and make them unique in this manner. Make them sit in that elite slot and function like a third weapon set.

So instead of getting a buff for thirty seconds that makes me this cool werewolf or were-leopard which goes on cooldown for EIGHT TIMES its duration make the transformations another skillset that you can toggle on or off much like weapon switching with the standard 9 second cooldown and make the skills that are available in those transformations balanced around a time frame that would make them both attractive as part of being in an elite skill and useful enough that I feel like I’m using the skill because it has some kind of separate function rather than because it is culturally fulfilling. (Not saying it can’t be culturally fulfilling, but that shouldn’t be the only thing.)

Or even that I use the transformation and realize that something in the environment has changed and I need a different skill from one of my weapons to deal with that situation, but I won’t get to use any of my cool beast skills because when I go out of the transformation I’ll have to wait four minutes to use it again.

My example since a lot of the skills on the transformation are really strong would be moving the cooldowns on the skills to something like this

Rending Slash/Rending Swipe – (Stays where it is as a standard attack skill)

Blood Frenzy (5 seconds) —> (7 Seconds)

Snarl ( 10 Seconds) —> (15 Seconds)

Howl ( 10 Seconds) —> ( 30 Seconds)

Leap ( 15 Seconds) —> ( 20 Seconds)

Not exact numbers just examples, such a thing would need QA testing to make sure it wasn’t too ridiculous, but its just an idea, because right now those really cool skills are ones I can’t justify because of how stupidly long those cooldowns are.

These are just some ideas I’ve been having, and I would love feedback or alternative solutions as that is the best way to refine an idea is through critique.

Being a warrior… i hate the sword animation. Its so insulting for me because i love dual weilding. Who in the right mind would use a sword like that… slice to the left with the right hand then go to right then stab the middle… The animation is so awkward. I have no choice but to use the axe…

The animal form is a joke. Actually, no it isn’t, it’s an embarressment. Sorry Anet but huge fail on animal form. HUGE.

You can call them a joke all you want, but not trying to find a constructive way to address the problem doesn’t help. As a designer I can say that from all of the QA testing I’ve done you get plenty of stray interesting and useful ideas from the people who test your games.

I was suggesting changing them to feel more like a weapon set because that is one of the big things in this game that influences the flow of the game is how you choose to gear your character and how well you can flow back and forth between your skills. Making the transformation skills available in this manner would be both interesting and more practical, but I can’t say much for the other races, since all of my characters are Norn.

The melee animations could generally do with an overhaul to look more fluid. As a ranger, one of my larger complaints is that most shortbows look waaaaay too tiny on a Norn. They could do with some up-scaling to match their body size better. Now it’s almost as if she’d wield a toy weapon.
And yes, the best way to prove that our cultural elite skills are useless is that I can’t remember seeing a playing ever using them outsides of RP.

I want the old female greatsword running animation back. Holding it sideways just looks silly.

Aether McLoud.1975:

I want the old female greatsword running animation back. Holding it sideways just looks silly.

Holding it the way idiot weeaboos think katanas are supposed to be held was even stupider though.

For additional suggestions I can rattle of a few.

• Norn dudes should be able to hide all their armor above the waist. It’s sad to have a bunch of half-giant barbarians walking around without the ability to take their shirts off.
  • Additionally, there should be an ‘Oiled’ toggle so we can really get that old Conan the Barbarian look going.
• We need kilts. Every armor type should have access too.
  • All norn should be able to use greatswords and hammers no matter the class. I want my massive norn thief man to be a bloody homicidal maniac in a claymore and a kilt!
• Scrap the animal changing thing, it’s lame. Replace them with booze themed group buffs.

I agree with being able to toggle off armor since I think shirtless Norns have a certain look to them that just makes sense as opposed to using armor that is less plate and more chest.

I like the transformations, I just think they just need to function differently, but I am sort of surprised that Norn don’t have an alcohol related cultural skill.

Attic.1562:

• Scrap the animal changing thing, it’s lame. Replace them with booze themed group buffs.

……… players like you are why I don’t like GW2’s norn. The fact that they took a race that had this whole other side to them, a shamanistic reverence for the rough, icy wasteland they lived in who could invoke the powers of the creatures living there, and they turned them into giant stupid, 1 dimensional frat boys, saddens me.

You can just barely see the GW1 norn in the norn elders such as Eir and Knut, but it is WAY too subtle for my taste. I agree the animal forms are weak but they are a massive part of the norn identity. I still feel like they should have made it entirely cosmetic. Have the player automatically shapeshift when they reach half health into the animal form they chose at character creation. This gets rid of the terrible elite skills and allows them to shapeshift without paying an elite skill tax.

Icarus Pherae.4680:

I still feel like they should have made it entirely cosmetic. Have the player automatically shapeshift when they reach half health into the animal form they chose at character creation. This gets rid of the terrible elite skills and allows them to shapeshift without paying an elite skill tax.

Ew. No. The forms not only play poorly but they look bloody awful too. I’d need a free race change token for my characters if they did that nonsense. Else I’d be mighty annoyed. Bad enough we have all these sodding terrible cabbage elves running about without adding furries to the mix.

Screw the whole ‘sensitive native american’ thing and give me bloody cimmerians all day long by Crom.

Attic.1562:

Icarus Pherae.4680:

I still feel like they should have made it entirely cosmetic. Have the player automatically shapeshift when they reach half health into the animal form they chose at character creation. This gets rid of the terrible elite skills and allows them to shapeshift without paying an elite skill tax.

Ew. No. The forms not only play poorly but they look bloody awful too. I’d need a free race change token for my characters if they did that nonsense. Else I’d be mighty annoyed. Bad enough we have all these sodding terrible cabbage elves running about without adding furries to the mix.

Screw the whole ‘sensitive native american’ thing and give me bloody cimmerians all day long by Crom.

don’t the charr already fill the furrybait position?

which part of shapeshift into an even larger werebear says sensitive native american to you? I’m pretty sure Conan would have loved such an ability

No its intended to be a big part of their cultural identity and it was pretty evident from the start. It was a big flashy interest marker from character construction and its not actually something that is available functionally for the race to use for the extent of the game that they have access to it because its too weak.

1. The one-handed auto-attack chain is horrendous. If anything, please please please, at least change the 3rd strike where you’re stabbing awkwardly down and at the middle with your arm all twisted.

2. Make the other transform skills on par with Snow Leopard form.

Icarus Pherae.4680:

don’t the charr already fill the furrybait position?

Pretty much. Thus I fail to see why we should force anyone else to endure such a cursed existence every time they dip below half HP. Especially when they look as as bloody terrible as say the raven form does.

There are good ways to handle the transformation skills, but judging by the sad state of the majority of environmental weapons, I don’t believe ANet has the skills/resources to come up with and implement any of them.

which part of shapeshift into an even larger werebear says sensitive native american to you?

Nothing, but you were complaining about the lack of “a shamanistic reverence for the rough, icy wasteland they lived in who could invoke the powers of the creatures living there” and that turn of phrase only makes me think of this picture.

Attic.1562:

Icarus Pherae.4680:

don’t the charr already fill the furrybait position?

Pretty much. Thus I fail to see why we should force anyone else to endure such a cursed existence every time they dip below half HP. Especially when they look as as bloody terrible as say the raven form does.

There are good ways to handle the transformation skills, but judging by the sad state of the majority of environmental weapons, I don’t believe ANet has the skills/resources to come up with and implement any of them.

which part of shapeshift into an even larger werebear says sensitive native american to you?

Nothing, but you were complaining about the lack of “a shamanistic reverence for the rough, icy wasteland they lived in who could invoke the powers of the creatures living there” and that turn of phrase only makes me think of this picture.

Fair enough, but they really have diminished the race to a very one dimensional stereotype which is pretty disappointing to say the least. It’s as if they took the entirety of Chinese culture and made them the chinese food restaurant guy on south park. They went from a compelling and complex race to… a joke.

Icarus Pherae.4680:

Fair enough, but they really have diminished the race to a very one dimensional stereotype which is pretty disappointing to say the least. It’s as if they took the entirety of Chinese culture and made them the chinese food restaurant guy on south park. They went from a compelling and complex race to… a joke.

I only played the original GW for about 8 hours, but from what I’ve seen in several hundred hours of GW2 is that “a joke” is probably the best way to describe the games lore in general.

Anhangare Odin.1238:

2. Make the other transform skills on par with Snow Leopard form.

This is pretty much it. The attacks are actually fairly ok, on par with the warrior Juggernaught at least(not that Juggernaught makes many bars either).

The prime problem is that you can’t move while using any of them, which renders them entirely useless in WvW(can’t use racials in Spvp anyway) and surprisingly useless in even light PvE.

The secondary problem with the racials is cooldown. Not only are the forms weaker than any class inherent elite, but the cooldown is so long that you can’t even be weaker nearly often enough!

So…skill use on the move, half the cooldown, and suddenly there are relevant flavor abilities.

I think it would be great if the norn racial skills actually called forth one of the animal spirits to fight by your side instead of the transformation. Much like how the vikings would venerate their Gods, for example a great thunderstorm that helped their ships sail swiftly was thought to be Thor guiding their journey. They called for their wisdom and strength in battle etc.

Thrym.9436:

The prime problem is that you can’t move while using any of them, which renders them entirely useless in WvW(can’t use racials in Spvp anyway) and surprisingly useless in even light PvE.

Yah, thats a pretty big detail. It is cool to have the casting animation, but for the sake of combat it ruins the fluidity of your needs to be moving while fighting.

Animal forms…make them viable or perma.

I don’t know if this is norn-specific, but weapons are too big. I know I’m 9 meters tall but no one could swing around a 100kg greatsword that’s almost as big as I am like it’s a cricket bat. Many long weapons also go through the ground (to say nothing of the soul-crushing amount of clipping with armor).

OrianZeta.1537:

Animal forms…make them viable or perma.

I don’t know if this is norn-specific, but weapons are too big. I know I’m 9 meters tall but no one could swing around a 100kg greatsword that’s almost as big as I am like it’s a cricket bat. Many long weapons also go through the ground (to say nothing of the soul-crushing amount of clipping with armor).

The swords are sized a hell of a lot better for the Norn who are meant to have borderline strength then for the humans who don’t get the benefit of proper scaling.