Guild Wars 2

I was expecting: Some big hounds pushing out from my back breathing fire.

What I got: A very small, very FLAT textured dog faces with a tiny little flame

and what are backstraps and what purpose do they serve?

edit: it looks bigger and better on anything not asura, why is it so bad on asura? I am telling you now there is no way it is scaled properly for them

Backstraps are a statless back item that comes packaged with back skins. Since you can’t wear a back skin unless you have a back item to apply it to, the backstrap is provided so that you can wear your skin immediately even if you don’t have a proper back item yet.

You could also use backstraps to remove account binding on back items, but the new costume system makes that redundant.