Guild Wars 2

[sup]I am rambley, this post will be rambley, apologies to all offended by rambling[/sup]

Okay! So! I was thinking about stuff that could be done to give more depth to the game and an idea occurred that seemed really, really interesting: What if each race had an elite specialization. It could give a bit of extra history to the classes and our characters!

How bout a Char from Iron Legion, who can direct their legion’s machine might in combat or an Asura who applies advanced technology to fight the dragons. Heck, you could have a cleric-y human who has an actual connection with Melandru or Balthazar. Sounds cool right?

This isn’t an idea for now though. If Anet wants to release a new class every time an expansion comes out eventually there’ll be a need to add in eight or ten elites per xpac . This would be an easy and cool way to take some elite-spec weight off the team’s shoulders and let them shift that attentive focus towards bosses or glider rockets.

In conclusion:

Rocket boot warrior.
Racial elites 2019.

Would be a coold idea till it comes to sPvP or WvW. People already hate each other because of some certain classes, no need for racism related cancer too

Vasdamas Anklast.1607:

Would be a coold idea till it comes to sPvP or WvW. People already hate each other because of some certain classes, no need for racism related cancer too

Oh come on! Think about how it would feel to take down a human with stolen Flame Legion Magic- You could season all of Meatoberfest with that salt!

Elite or not, i would really love some racial specializations. I like that each race has its own special features, and i would really love it if they developed these “differences” even more, making each race interesting and unique (except on pvp, clearly, so hopefully they can disable specific specializations on pvp). And with no specialization, now those racial skills are getting slightly less useful :-(

i’d love to spec my burly norn warrior into bear for!

Absolutely not. Then everyone would be a Charr.

The base spec has race specific elite skills (even in wvw) but you dont see all Charrs carrying around Charrzokas. In fact some of the race specific elites were considered a joke in wvw, (insert become the bear to tank a gate down).

In the spirit of unity and fairness I understand the design theory that no elite race should be superior to another. On the other hand, the battle of Charr vs Human vs Asura vs vs vs still rages in the hearts and minds of players. Therefore, diversity and ethnicity is important from the very beginning of the characters life. Alternate racial elite skills and even alternate regular skills would be a valuable and potentially fun and explosive addition to the game. But, it shouldn’t be limited to 1 game mode. If we want to have a 5 man vs 5 man Charr bomb in pvp or a zerg vs zerg vs zerg Asura laser light show in wvw, we should be able to.

While the -flavor- of this would be great, there are a lot of practical problems. I like the racial skills we have, but they have to be undertuned to keep them from being better than normal class skills. If they’re not, you put players in the position of wondering if they should reroll a character in their favorite race in favor of a character in the most powerful race.

If the racial elite specs are undertuned, like racial skills, then they seem like a waste of time to add anyway. People weren’t keen on the Druid being a healing/support class, because they felt that significantly limited the play types where that would be effective, so I don’t think sacrificing effectiveness for flavor is a choice a lot of players want to make.

Besides that, balancing racial elites sounds like a nightmare. For a class elite spec, you mix it with options from that single class, but with a racial elite, I could mix it with any of nine classes. “Charr Firecaller” might be really weak with Warrior skills, okay with Mesmer skills, and devastating when paired with Thief skills.

HazyDaisy.4107:

The base spec has race specific elite skills (even in wvw) but you dont see all Charrs carrying around Charrzokas. In fact some of the race specific elites were considered a joke in wvw, (insert become the bear to tank a gate down).

In the spirit of unity and fairness I understand the design theory that no elite race should be superior to another. On the other hand, the battle of Charr vs Human vs Asura vs vs vs still rages in the hearts and minds of players. Therefore, diversity and ethnicity is important from the very beginning of the characters life. Alternate racial elite skills and even alternate regular skills would be a valuable and potentially fun and explosive addition to the game. But, it shouldn’t be limited to 1 game mode. If we want to have a 5 man vs 5 man Charr bomb in pvp or a zerg vs zerg vs zerg Asura laser light show in wvw, we should be able to.

But how does one ensure this, “no elite race should be superior to another.”?

There’s going to be some skill that is preferable to the others. Some idiot on YouTube will popularize it and rerolling will commence since everyony has 600 tomes of knowledge.

The only way to balance this is to make the exact same skill 5 times, but with different animations depending on race.

For example: An AoE that deals a load of Damage over an area and applies burning:

Humans could have a Smiting Prayer-inspired Rain of Burning Swords, Balthazar style.
Asura could have a precision strike with Orbital Lasers
Charr have a simple Carpet Bombing
Norn prays to Drake, conjuring a spiritual image of a firebreathing Drake.
Sylvari cause combustible Blooms to spring from the ground and explode in a fiery inferno.

Same damage, same activation time, same cooldown, same EVERYTHING except just the looks.