Guild Wars 2

First of all, I am not an expert. I’m just going to be using logic on this, so I would follow what the game developers and staff tell you. I am no trying to change their opinions in any way, but this is what I’ve found by playing GW2 from personal experience.

These are 5 STEPS to choosing the best race for you!

1. Do NOT pick only by, or mostly by the descriptions of each race.
2. Do NOT decide solely, or mostly by the look of a race/race with the profession.
3. Look at the elite skills that each race gives you. (Internet or Book)
4. Think about each race and what each has to offer. (Which skills you will use the most)
5. Search the internet for the skills you are interested in and watch them in play before choosing a race.

I think that these are the best ways to find out which race is best for you. The description of your character will not make people think of you like that in game, because its how you act and play in-game that will make people find their impression of you. For example, the charr is fierce and always goes in first without thinking much based off the game developers decisions. You could be the nicest and most generous person in the game, giving everyone in the game 1 gold for helping you with a small task. That doesn’t reflect your default racial personality at all. You can make it how you want.

The second way is to not base it on the first looks and color that the developers change your character to look like. This is just the default look. You can make it look however you want just like your racial personality. You could even make it look just like your other character that has a mohawk, or you could just make him/her bald. It’s up to you and you shouldn’t think that this one looks ugly with this profession so I just don’t think I should do it, which is what I did as a beginner.

Look at all the elite skills and decide by those. This is where your race actually does have an effect on you. It takes a lot of work before you can use these, especially if you’ve never played before. If you do not like these skills, you have picked a basically useless race for you. Make sure to spend at least a little time thinking about it.

Find the skills you are most interested in and pick out a class that you think has the most that you are interested in. Make sure to write down a list on a sheet of paper or something and then, lastly, look each skill up and watch at least a few videos of the skill in use and decide which ones you are most interested in, and the one/s that you think are the best and useful, pick the race containing it. This is the most important thing in a race that I can think of.

These steps will allow you to feel confident in your race and will most likely be happy with it. Remember this is just from personal experience. However, I do have one more step that I would like to share. Note thats your profession DOES HAVE an effect on those skills. For example, If you are ranger and a human, the hounds may not be the best thing because you have a pet, and it might have been better if you were a warrior and did not have any pets to aid you in the first place. It can effect the difference it makes depending on your profession. So if you already know what you want for a profession, remember to pick your race according to your profession as well.

Feedback is appreciated and tell me what you think. Thanks!

Racial skills are generally worthless because the devs wanted to make all races equal, and therefore made racial skills generally either useless or many times inferior to general skills.
From my experience – a character that looks good, has good lines and looks good in armour is a character I’m likely to play and put time in. Which is why I have 3 level 80 asuras. I know other people pick races based on their lore or looks or whatever, I have never met anyone picking a race for it’s vastly kitten racial skills.

Profession skills usually trump racial skills, but the racials do have their place. This post seems to be for new players who won’t understand all the mechanics of each skill, so research will only go so far.

Size matters. Tall Norns/Charrs can be difficult to get through a jump puzzle. Small Asuras have ridiculously tiny weapons (setback for those who like special effects/legendaries)

Aesthetically, each race wears armor differently. Check out the cultural armor to get a feel for that. (People are generally aware of the option to customize face/body, and if not, it comes up early in character creation so they can always back out and pick again.)

First half of the personal story is all about race. Small consideration for long-term players, but better to be engaged with your story when first starting than be bored by the concept.

I like charrs. So I have mostly charrs.

I find the Norn Racial skills are most interesting to me. How ever Norn are cumbersome, large and dumb. I simply cannot bear to play one.

Azure Prower.8701:

I find the Norn Racial skills are most interesting to me. How ever Norn are cumbersome, large and dumb. I simply cannot bear to play one.

Agreed. You’d have to be stark raven mad to be able to wolf down norn culture.

I almost got all the animal puns in there, but then I realized that there’ s no leopard.

In reality players should just go off what they like the look of because racials, for the most part, are useless. If they had some race specific crafting professions then maybe players would have a better time with some races but Anet’s crafting is kinda worthless as well so who knows.

Charr are awesome so i only really make charr. Asura are pretty cool as well so pretty much only Asura, Charr and a Norn Female.

Remember, you going to be looking at the running/walking backside of this character for a very long time.

Pick something you can live with …
I would never create a charr or asura for this reason, because I dislike their animations.

I have a human and a norn, and my next (and last alt) will be silvari, if I can get over the leaf and stick bits …

bri.2359:

I would never create a charr or asura for this reason, because I dislike their animations.

This is the exact reason I have a Charr and an Asura. I love their animations, and they fit exactly the spot in lore I want them to fit.

bri.2359:

Remember, you going to be looking at the running/walking backside of this character for a very long time.

Pick something you can live with …
I would never create a charr or asura for this reason, because I dislike their animations.

I have a human and a norn, and my next (and last alt) will be silvari, if I can get over the leaf and stick bits …

Unfortunately, what one can live with isn’t always immediately obvious. I’ve tried all the character races, but for various reasons I wound up deleting and rerolling several characters even though at the time of creation I was fairly well pleased with how they looked. That’s how I’ve ended up with 7 humans and 1 asura.

Charr – the constant tail clipping and the bizarre short-scale giraffe neck bothered me. Delete/reroll.

Norn – the males all look like Bluto/Brutus (from the Popeye cartoons) to me and the females, well, even at their smallest they’re just too big and lumbering. Delete/reroll.

Sylvari – aiee. I’ve tried to play a sylvari twice, got one up to level 36 as an engineer (with 400 in jewelry). Liked the profession, but didn’t like the sylvari, so… delete/reroll.

Asura – I like my little asura ele. He’s cool. No delete/no reroll. I almost went with female asura for my engineer but I hit on a look for a male human engineer that I really liked. If I ever roll a duplicate profession I’ll probably go with that female asura.

Sometimes I wish we could save character ‘appearances’ for future use. We can use screenshots, yeah, but still…

OscarKitteh.7198:

Racial skills are generally worthless because the devs wanted to make all races equal, and therefore made racial skills generally either useless or many times inferior to general skills.
From my experience – a character that looks good, has good lines and looks good in armour is a character I’m likely to play and put time in. Which is why I have 3 level 80 asuras. I know other people pick races based on their lore or looks or whatever, I have never met anyone picking a race for it’s vastly kitten racial skills.

Sorry, Engineers everywhere of every race can’t hear you over the sound of all their GADGETS! Being a charr gives you an unload on your toolbelt, being a norn gives you an egg that you can eat for buffs, etc

I dislike making choices in games based on utility. In GW2 I picked the races, professions and weapons of my (five) toons purely based on looks, backstory and projected fun-factor, and couldn’t care less about racial skill choices. But -hey- if it works for you: that’s good !

If you are going for legendary weapon – consider how small the weapon will be on a Asura – especially when scaled to the smallest size. Not worth the effort on an Asura to me.

Jumping puzzles are much harder with Norn than Human or Asura. I use the toy tonics if there is nothing to fight…..

I love humans and 3 of my characters are humans- I made them purely because I like how human females look and I am one.
I made a sylvari and fell in love with them because of the dorky run the females do.
So I deleted my human thief and made a sylvari ranger…
To me it is all about how the look fits your character concept
I couldn’t care less about racial skills and all that at char creation

I’m afraid I have to disagree strongly with the OP.

There are VERY few racial skills worth using, certainly not enough to justify skipping over a class/race combination. You are going to be staring at your character possibly HUNDREDS of hours, and picking out outfits for, pick something you enjoy aesthetically – if you’re big on lore/roleplay you’ll also want to make sure their setting is one you can immerse yourself in properly (Lot of folks can’t handle asura for example because they have too many preconceptions about fantasy worlds and asura’s high-tech level is disruptive to them).

Picking your class/race on the basis of racial traits is the least of your concerns.

Depends on the name for me.

3 main characters i use are

Eric Charrtman when i heard about all the charr pun names i wanted one myself after thousands of already taken names i found this was not.

Voleur Crudelis a name i composed fit for a thief, it sounded perfect for a human.

Dumblenorn, i love harry potter dumbledore is epic (even tho she revealed what hes attracted to kinda a downer but eh) so i thought of it as another pun yet cool name.

And miss infectant will be my 4th if i get attached to the name. Playoff of words of disinfectant.