Guild Wars 2

I liked the idea of Racial Skills (Healing, Utility, Elite) instead of a persistent passive you have on from lvl1 to 80 like most other MMO’s have. You had a choice to substitute a good class skill with a racial one. However, it would also be nice if we could have the option to enable racial “passive” via spending talent points. This way, it is merely an option that comes at the cost of weakening your class talents, a tradeoff option.

For example, let us say you are a Charr. You spend 5 points and unlock the first passive upgrade, called “Quadrupedalism” (movement on four limbs, Wikipedia). This passive grants a +20% increased movement speed while out of combat (i.e. When running on all four legs). How many times have you watched your Charr start running on all 4 and looked silly since he is still running at the same speed as before?

Now, let’s say you have invested 30 points instead of just 5. You now have the option to select from I through XII unique passives. XI could be an improvement to the Warband or Charrzooka elites. The XII could be the same across all races, an improvement to the Mistfire Wolf Collector’s Edition skill, an elite skill that looks great but is really bad and in need of a boost – assuming players are willing to sacrifice some strengths elsewhere.

As for the individual racial talent bonus’s (like the +10 power, Healing, etc. associated with the class ones), it might be a good idea to have them do something like +2 to all, +1% XP bonus. Something that is good for all classes, but weaker in contrast to the class talent bonus.

Interesting, I had thought at one time that a racial tree would be interesting. However, I would also like to point out some issues with the idea.
1) What if one race’s tree was far better than another race’s tree? Then everyone would play one race and ignore other races, which I think is something Anet wanted to avoid (I don’t know for sure, however)
2) I personally think builds are tough enough with only 70 traits. Sometimes I feel as if it is not enough. Why would I feel like I am wasting my valuable trait points on a tree that I feel like it would not benefit me at all? (Sorry if that came out sounding rude)
3) I also feel as if the races don’t have enough, skill wise, to really benefit from a new tree. The professions each have a ton of skills, and weapon skills, to boot. With races only having 6 skills, there would need to either be more racial skills, or a ton of other bonuses just to compensate.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like the idea of a racial tree. But I would personally think that as things are now, it just isn’t a viable option to most people.