Guild Wars 2

I have played GW2 for 2+ year, before poison can be stacked up. I think, racial skills were left unchanged since the game lunched.

The game progress, as it is today. Creatures are stronger. Most new skills are more powerful and left racial skill useless.

I’d like to suggest the DEV team upgrade all racial skill.
Suggestion
1. Reaper of Grent : inc duration to 30 sec, reduce cool down to 90 sec, change 1 stack of poison to 2-3 stack of poison, chilling remain the same, increased condition damage by 10%.
2. Prayer to Lyssa : grant 2 random boon, apply 2 random condition to target foe, increased duration to 10 sec, cool down remains the same.
3. Hidden Pisto (Char) : decreased cool down to 8 sec.

and etc….

Racial skills were supposed to be inferior to normal skills, to avoid making them meta. That said, however, a few can be useful in certain situations. (Just unlocked your first utility skill slot/elite skills and haven’t trained any yet? Are your profession’s elite skills lackluster while leveling ahem Guardian ahem?)

They actually have nerfed some of them since launch. But yes as other poster above pointed out they are just meant to be a “flavor” skill more or less. Otherwise one skill could become mets for certain classes which would cause issues.

I think racial skills should matter and there be multiple sets. The Humans get the Avatars of the Six. The Charr based of the Legion the character choose. The Asura based on the Academy they joined. The Sylvari split among the those that side with the Pale Tree. the Nightmare Court or the followers of the Dragon. Also the racial skills should also be affected by the profession chosen. With so much opportunity for being a unqiue character their will likely be more than a few real and effective"metas" for each profession.

Make them accessible to all races through a skill unlock on the hero panel, with the limitation that you can’t mix and match across races. So, for example, if you are using Asuran racial skills, you can’t also use Sylvari. Opening them up to all races means that ANet can bring them up to the level of real skills. Not flavor.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Make them accessible to all races through a skill unlock on the hero panel, with the limitation that you can’t mix and match across races. So, for example, if you are using Asuran racial skills, you can’t also use Sylvari. Opening them up to all races means that ANet can bring them up to the level of real skills. Not flavor.

How would this be an improvement? My suggestion was to make the races matter, be different, unique. NO sharing of racial-skills. A human cannot use a Charr skill. An Asuran cannot use a Sylvari skill. To me a player character should be restricted to race/racial faction (for humans one Avatar-human racial skills set only)/profession.

Nicholas S Lin.6187:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Make them accessible to all races through a skill unlock on the hero panel, with the limitation that you can’t mix and match across races. So, for example, if you are using Asuran racial skills, you can’t also use Sylvari. Opening them up to all races means that ANet can bring them up to the level of real skills. Not flavor.

How would this be an improvement? My suggestion was to make the races matter, be different, unique. NO sharing of racial-skills. A human cannot use a Charr skill. An Asuran cannot use a Sylvari skill. To me a player character should be restricted to race/racial faction (for humans one Avatar-human racial skills set only)/profession.

But the dont want race to matter hence why they are worse the profession skills

Nicholas S Lin.6187:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Make them accessible to all races through a skill unlock on the hero panel, with the limitation that you can’t mix and match across races. So, for example, if you are using Asuran racial skills, you can’t also use Sylvari. Opening them up to all races means that ANet can bring them up to the level of real skills. Not flavor.

How would this be an improvement? My suggestion was to make the races matter, be different, unique. NO sharing of racial-skills. A human cannot use a Charr skill. An Asuran cannot use a Sylvari skill. To me a player character should be restricted to race/racial faction (for humans one Avatar-human racial skills set only)/profession.

ANet doesn’t want people picking a race based on the racial skills so as long as they are race restricted, they will be weak skills for flavor only. Which means they won’t be used much. By opening them to all races, it means that they can be buffed to the levels of effective skills and it gives all chars new skills to try out.

Racial and class based skills would not hurt at all if they were cleverly designed as support utilities for some situations, imagine asuran engie that could have a stronger golem(power suit) and could fix golems on WvW with supply, or even carry more supply than normal while using the racial skill ?

>. “Hey is that an Asura?”
<. “What a cute little fella!”
>. “Yeah, I hear they’re smart as well and mostly use Golems for their physical labour.”
> + <. “OH MY GOD HE JUST TURNED INTO A GIANT BEAR AND TORE THOSE MINOTAURS TO PIECES!!!!”

Nah, I’d rather keep the racial skills as they are.
Weak but Unique. (My new slogan for Racial Skills)

Nero.8047:

>. “Hey is that an Asura?”
<. “What a cute little fella!”
>. “Yeah, I hear they’re smart as well and mostly use Golems for their physical labour.”
> + <. “OH MY GOD HE JUST TURNED INTO A GIANT BEAR AND TORE THOSE MINOTAURS TO PIECES!!!!”

Nah, I’d rather keep the racial skills as they are.
Weak but Unique. (My new slogan for Racial Skills)

Reminds me of dwarf berserkers in dark age of camelot, they shared the berserker bear form size with the troll race

The chief value of racial skills is to newer players, since they are available as soon as you get a utility or elite slot. ANet has always wanted these skills to take a backseat to profession skills.

I think that’s a fine system for GW2. I don’t see any great need to change the status quo, especially since it’s clear that ANet already has plenty of work to do to balance elites specs with base specializations.

Nicholas S Lin.6187:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Make them accessible to all races through a skill unlock on the hero panel, with the limitation that you can’t mix and match across races. So, for example, if you are using Asuran racial skills, you can’t also use Sylvari. Opening them up to all races means that ANet can bring them up to the level of real skills. Not flavor.

How would this be an improvement? My suggestion was to make the races matter, be different, unique. NO sharing of racial-skills. A human cannot use a Charr skill. An Asuran cannot use a Sylvari skill. To me a player character should be restricted to race/racial faction (for humans one Avatar-human racial skills set only)/profession.

That’s the point.

Imagine if you wanted to go play in a raid or something and the party requirement was “Norn only” or “Human only” or a WvW raid with “Sylvari Only.”

It de-values any existing characters you may have which aren’t part of a specific optimization, effectively invalidating them, regardless of your capacity to play or build for the content.

They’re free utilities and intended solely to be used for flavor.

Now, if every race’s set of utilities had identical effects but different flavor elements (humans have avatars but norn maintain semi-druidic animal effects, asura use some kind of device, etc., then they could be buffed. Otherwise, absolutely not.

When wvw roaming on my warrior long ago I used to take snow leopard since the other elites were meh.

Snow Leopard is also useful for the heat room in Thaumanova Reactor fractal.

DeceiverX.8361:

Imagine if you wanted to go play in a raid or something and the party requirement was “Norn only” or “Human only” or a WvW raid with “Sylvari Only.”

Reminds me of Neverwinter Online’s PvP a while back where the entire top strat of PvP was entirely Halflings with the occasional half-orc because their racial bonuses were just that much better than every other class for PvP.

It’s not something I’d like to see again. I rerolled so many characters for that

I think more than 40% of the overall utility skills should matter

DeceiverX.8361:

That’s the point.

Imagine if you wanted to go play in a raid or something and the party requirement was “Norn only” or “Human only” or a WvW raid with “Sylvari Only.”

That’d only really happen if you made the racial skills stronger than current utility skills. As is now, while some utilities are pivotal for certain encounters, those tend to involve mass boons, reflections and utility effects like stealth and teleportation. Again, as is, I don’t see parties requiring you to choose specific utilities. So it’s a leap of logic to assume improving some utilities would then press parties to require you to select these particular utilities.

So why not just be real and admit what the real issue here is: the min/maxers will be ‘forced’ into specific races for specific builds. So long as the disparity between racials and utilities don’t flip flop (making racials stronger than utilities), the utility slots will remain similar to what we see now: swapping your utility skills depending on what you need.

But regarding the real issue, I have no solution and semi-agree that you shouldn’t be forced into a race to get your desired build. However, I also semi-agree that more flavor could be considered for race. The races of GW2 are pretty unique and further separating an Asura Warrior and a Charr Warrior increases replay value.

MadRabbit.3179:

I think more than 40% of the overall utility skills should matter

I’m confused as to how that relates to the question of whether racial skills should be ‘upgraded’, especially since ANet has always said that racial skills are meant to be weaker, lore-colorful options. (I agree that there are still too many utilities that lack value; I think it’s moot for this thread.)

Leo G.4501:

DeceiverX.8361:

That’s the point.

Imagine if you wanted to go play in a raid or something and the party requirement was “Norn only” or “Human only” or a WvW raid with “Sylvari Only.”

But regarding the real issue, I have no solution and semi-agree that you shouldn’t be forced into a race to get your desired build. However, I also semi-agree that more flavor could be considered for race. The races of GW2 are pretty unique and further separating an Asura Warrior and a Charr Warrior increases replay value.

As mentioned, I think upgrading racial skill can provide more unique play and build. To think an asura will summon a golem to fight for his side, to think a human warrior prey to their gods and fight with different style from a charr warrior, is interesting for me.

Upgrading racial skill will provide diversity of play style rather then playing zerker warrior, viper warrior, zerker elementalist, celestial elementalist, Medi guard and etc.

Racial skills being weak are, I believe, an artifact of ANet being burned in the original game by the Ursan skill. Unfortunately, ANet’s idea of “balance” seems to be “nerf it into the ground,” rather than the "minor tweaks’ they’ve talked about. Racial skills in GW2 are not just slightly weaker, they are inferior to the point that anyone remotely interested in efficiency just forgets they exist. There’s a rather large range between “not better than” and “stinks.” Unfortunately, racial skills fall close to, if not near the bottom of, the latter category.

Just had a thought that might be an interesting compromise. What do you guys think of this idea:

Racial Masteries:
Rank 1 = Unlock the ‘Racial Slot’ that will allow you to basically equip an extra utility but it’s limited to Racial Skills only.
Rank 2 = Using a Racial Skill decreases the cooldown on Elite Skills. This skill only procs once per slot per Elite cooldown (i.e. if you use the skill in your racial slot, your elite’s cooldown is decreased but using that racial slot again won’t decrease the cooldown again until the elite goes off cooldown and you use it. If you have another racial in 6-9, they will decrease the elite. If you have a racial elite equipped, it will not decrease its own cooldown).
Rank 3 = Unlock Culture Expansion. You now have access to masteries of other races.
Rank 4 = [Race] Mastery. Unlock the max potential of your own race. Any racial skill from your own race has improved effects when equipped into the Racial slot.

Culture Expansion: Allows you to study and commune with other races, unlocking the ability to use that race’s abilities. You can only commune with 1 other race at a time. Races to include: Charr, Human, Asura, Norn, Sylvari, Tengu, Koda, maybe Skritt?

I personally have no problem with my Asura being able to transform into a bear. Again, it’s something the player can go to explain like using holograms over a specialized golem or something. That said, if I’m a Norn and I want my transformation to be more prominent I can form a build to take advantage of it proper. Would it be meta? Likely not but if you’re a Norn that likes to Norn it out or a Charr that wants to Charr it up, or a Norn that wants to seem like he’s buds with Charr or a botanist Asura or a religious Sylvari or whatever, it’s something you can roleplay and have an actual way to accomplish it.

Corvette.5687:

Leo G.4501:

DeceiverX.8361:

That’s the point.

Imagine if you wanted to go play in a raid or something and the party requirement was “Norn only” or “Human only” or a WvW raid with “Sylvari Only.”

But regarding the real issue, I have no solution and semi-agree that you shouldn’t be forced into a race to get your desired build. However, I also semi-agree that more flavor could be considered for race. The races of GW2 are pretty unique and further separating an Asura Warrior and a Charr Warrior increases replay value.

As mentioned, I think upgrading racial skill can provide more unique play and build. To think an asura will summon a golem to fight for his side, to think a human warrior prey to their gods and fight with different style from a charr warrior, is interesting for me.

Upgrading racial skill will provide diversity of play style rather then playing zerker warrior, viper warrior, zerker elementalist, celestial elementalist, Medi guard and etc.

Considering the many choices in utilities and elites you currently have and the tiny number of which are actually being used, we can assume that good race-class choices would become paramount.
They would end up replacing current meta builds with the additional requirement to run a certain race on top of class and build.