Guild Wars 2

Currently, for balance and variety in the game, racial skills have been weakened to the point of almost always being avoided. I understand that they do not want only Asura or Norn or any other race to become too common compared to others. To avoid this and allow racial skills to be fun and useful I have a proposal. As HoT introduces quests for skills such as gliding as well as precursors for legendaries, why not create quest lines allowing learning the racial skills of other races. For instance, an Asuran character could do quests to help the Charr and as his favor increases with them, they progressively teach the Asuran their own racial skills. This will allow a rebalancing through questing while having pre-known skills from your own race. This is similar to what many loved in GW1 when all could learn Raven transformation or pain inverter. It would also allow the developers to create re-skins if they wish for new appearances of across species transformation. If they do not wish to add too much work into this, an aura equivalent could also be tested. I just recently found out from my brother as I write this that Wooden Potatoes had a similar suggestion.

Thank you for your time and enjoy the great gaming!

I think this would be a great idea!

I’ve always been for the idea that different races should have different animations for all of the utility skills. Not just body movements, but different auras and other things, like different pictures/symbols above their heads.

For instance, an Asura Ranger should feel far more like some kind of experimenter observing his/her creatures, whereas a Norn should be “as one” with their pet. Our characters already make different vocalisations for these kinds of skills, depending on race, but I feel that it could be taken one step further.

I think that upon the release of the game, this was kept as simple as possible to avoid making this confusing in PvP. However, now that was have standard models as an option there, I think that racial uniqueness across utility skills could be vamped up a bit.

Of course, this could be applied to racial skills as well and I feel that these could be made even more special. They could each have their unique twist.

For example, other races learning “Become the Bear”, a Norn Racial Elite:
-All races will still have the change in stats and be given the same skills as the current transformation
-Asura will jump into a golem suit that has resemblance to a bear and call out “Ursine Superiority!”, alluding to the race’s knack for technology
-Charr would scream “I am the bear!” and increase in size, alluding to the fact that they rely on their own strength rather than that of the spirits of the wild/gods
-Humans would cry “Melandru is ever strong!” and be shown with an aura of a bear floating around them, alluding to how they are touched by the gods
-Sylvari would call out “The wild is mighty!” and be transformed in a regular bear, alluding to how they are already close to nature

Just an example- had a bit of fun coming up with the ideas

I realise that this would be a huge undertaking for the devs as they would have to design new models, animations and get the voice actors back in to cover the updates.