Guild Wars 2

First off, before my main rant, can we make it so that when you shift, your 1 ability has auto-attack automatically selected? Its absurd that I have to mouse right click it every time I shift.

Is there a logistical reason why these abilities have a 3 minute cooldown? The trade off for using it is pretty severe already when you consider you lose access to all but your weapon abilities, and it only lasts 30 seconds. 30 seconds up, 210 seconds down for an uptime of 12.5%. This means in WvW, you can use it once every 2-3 fights. NPC characters that use this ability have a shortened cooldown, because its almost as if they know that 12% uptime is awful…and from a lore perspective, in GW1, it had 100% uptime. I’m sure the global usage rates for these abilities are low, because I have only ever seen a handful of people use them. Human avatar abilities have a 180 second cooldown. Are they weaker than the Norn abilities?

So lets say that in a hypothetical situation, Become the Bear lasted indefinitely, but then went on a 3 minute cooldown when you cancelled it. I’m curios if it would be seen as OP, or even strong. Or if it had a 30 second uptime, but a 120 second cooldown? This would give it a 20% uptime, which still sounds low, but would make it more useful.

Mostly I’m just frustrated with these abilities, because I like them, and like feeling like a Norn, but they just feel so weak when compared to other options. Mesmers with mass invisibility on a 90 second cooldown?

The racial abilities feel underwhelming because ANet didn’t want any race to be that much better than any other race.

racials are intended to be weak, profession elites are supposed to be more powerful.

at least bear has a good use, unlike (almost) every other racial elite. you can do thaumanova fractal hot room on any norn, regardless of class. most (all?) classes have a build that can do it, but simply popping your elite is much easier than contorting your traits and utilities and weapons. especially when elites are often unnoticeable in hard pve content, so you prolly dont use it anyways and the cd doesnt matter.

The question becomes, if they’re supposed to be underwhelming, then why are they in the game? Like, if Asura have awesome golems, and Norn have cool transformations, and humans have awesome avatar, Charr get cool warbands and charrzookas and Sylvari get cool spirits, whats the problem? Having a bunch of unsatisfying skills that don’t get used doesn’t seem like the answer to me.

Yeah, unfortunately they’re just things they don’t really care about that much. The norn get shafted more than the other races since their transformation elites are all practically useless. The snow leapord is only good for it’s stealth so you can escape stuff, and then things like the run attack on the bear are useful as well… but that’s about it.

Kind of unfortunate since those things are what make norn, norn. But yeah, there’s definitely a lot of cleaning up that could be done on all the racial skills in the game.

One of the big reasons why I chose a Norn at launch was so that I could shapeshift. Sad that these skills are pretty useless.

Dienstag.4132:

The question becomes, if they’re supposed to be underwhelming, then why are they in the game? Like, if Asura have awesome golems, and Norn have cool transformations, and humans have awesome avatar, Charr get cool warbands and charrzookas and Sylvari get cool spirits, whats the problem? Having a bunch of unsatisfying skills that don’t get used doesn’t seem like the answer to me.

They kind of need to be. Back when rushing was a thing there was a drive to play a norn because you could “fgs rush” things to death with bear/leopard. Is that right to have a certain race simply better at things than others? It makes it no longer simply a style choice but instead a choice of functionality.

That’s what they wanted to avoid.

But, at least you have some niche uses for some of them. For instance Bear is still great in Thaumanova Reactor fractal to rush through the one fire room. Likewise Asura D golem is great on Old Tom in the uncatagorized Fractal. Reaper of Grenth can be used to chill which can be quite powerful if you aren’t going to use any other elite.

It would be nice if they had more uses, but again, they have to somehow keep them from being a major reason to chose the race if they want to maintain the profession as the key element of functionality.

What’s the point of even having these skills anyway?
If they were to be removed from the game entirely no one would care because there’s almost no one using them.
As far as I’m concerned, these racial skills are just there to serve as an illusion of skill variety.

Been playing sine beta and I’ve seen Charr bazooka literally less than 3 times.

norn ranger…. load up those % boosters and transform for a massive hit. Sure its only once every 3 min, but oneshotting people every 3 minutes, especially kitteny roamers in WvW – worth it.

Dienstag.4132:

The question becomes, if they’re supposed to be underwhelming, then why are they in the game? Like, if Asura have awesome golems, and Norn have cool transformations, and humans have awesome avatar, Charr get cool warbands and charrzookas and Sylvari get cool spirits, whats the problem? Having a bunch of unsatisfying skills that don’t get used doesn’t seem like the answer to me.

Because one of these skills might be so well suited to a specific challenge like a certain dungeon that people will only take players that play the proper race, etc.

Basically: a lot of very different skills are very difficult to balance vs each other so Arenanet made them all weak to make sure none of those ends up giving somebody an advantage over others.

Racial elites should be reworked into common PvE skills that work exactly the same for all races, but look different for each race.

For example, where norn have “Bear form”, humans would have “Form of Balthazar”, asura a “Heavy Golem” transformation, Sylari a “Pine husk” transformation, and charr a “Heavy Tank Suit” form.

All of them would last the same, have the same activation and recharge, and they and their sub-skills would do exactly the same on the same slots, but skill names and icons (and the visual parts of the skill descriptions like "throw a rock/cast a fireball/fire a missile) and their appearance would change between them.

Racials are just for flavor. And you should have gone snow leopard for the stealth.

Yeah, it’s too bad the racials are kind of useless, but even if they didn’t fix them (which they won’t) I wouldn’t be too upset. They’re fun to pull out just for kicks sometimes, and they’re not so bad that doing so will guarantee your loss. Not to mention since nobody expects them, they don’t really build for them, so some racials are good for catching people off guard as well.