Why are they there… They are mostly useless. They aren’t even useful as a fluff since they occupy “real skill” spot on action bar. Also if they were useful it would put too much pressure on choosing a race.
Seems like a lot of the skills could be used as new classes… Prayers – priests. Transformations – druid, shaman w/e. Asuran skills – Golemancer.
I think A-net included the skills to add an extra dimension to each race. Although they have little application, I’m grateful that they included them.
For instance, I think it would be a travesty if I rolled a Norn and was never able to transform into a Bear etc.
It also resonates a little with GW1 where there were Racial Skills that you obtained after you earned Faction after completing particular quests.
I found some of the skills handy when I was levelling up, anyways. They’re certainly not that useful at level 80 because you can’t trait into them. (Edit: Like Riku, I use the Charr Shout. I use it on my Might Stacking S/D Ele that I’m levelling).
And like you said, these skills simply can’t be OP or particularly useful. If there was a niche build or useful application for any one of them (that outshone any of the base-skills), people would feel pressured to roll that particular race. A-net wanted Race to feel different only in respect to Lore and Aesthetic.
Racial skills have no value, and no point using them.
Sorry to say this ArenaNet, but they are there so you can just say:
“Every class also has own special skills!”
We all know that they will never get buffed to be viable, because then we will have a lot of madness and race sellection and that’s what ArenaNet or neither of us want.
Solution, with expansion we could master the skills of other races, and make them stronger ( to unlock all racial skilsl of all other races, and actually make them strong).
Just you should make effort to get them.
Wish I could get back to GW1.. PvP-GvG. It feels like we are outcasted, not desired or rewarded..
They created the racial skills intentionally inferior to make them to be use just as flavor skill.
Allow all races be able to acquire the other racial skills would make the only purpose of the racial skills irrelevant.
Charter Vanguard [CV] – HoD Bardy Belzebuson – Ranger Sir Belzebu – Herald
(and the other 8 elite specs maxed too)
They created the racial skills intentionally inferior to make them to be use just as flavor skill.
Allow all races be able to acquire the other racial skills would make the only purpose of the racial skills irrelevant.
Well they are already so irrelevant that I would gladly take any change
I really like them, mostly the Charr and Asura skills. I use Sylvari Druid summon as Elite and i’m very satisfied with it.
Some players plays a different style and that is the reason why they are there
They don’t need to be overpowered to be usefull, but that doesn’t make them useless either.
Not true at all quite a few racial skills have synergy with traits. For example sylvari Healing Seed with guardian Altruistic Healing, asura Radiation Field with ranger Poison master. Some are just fun such as stealthing in WvW as thief, transforming to avatar of melandru to cast an Entangle on unsuspecting victims.
Summon D-Series Golem is a nice tank summon with 2 projectile blocking bubbles, useful for classes without such abilities. Summon 7-Series Golem adds significantly to single target DPS for classes without DPS class elites.
Before charging skills and power transform stats were nerfed, Bear Form was as good as, if not better than FGS, due to stat increases.
In terms of racial skills, asura > human > sylvari > norn > charr.
Apologies to those who may find my posts on GW2 forums offensive and hateful.
I would kind of like them to add a race slot to the skill bar that can be used to always have one of your racial skills available. Obviously, this would require them to revise the racial skills a bit to ensure that this would not create imbalances.
I like Mtpelion’s idea very much, but I think it would only work in theory rather than in practice.
Firstly it would require an additional skill on the skill bar- the current 10 skills fits perfectly between the numbers 1-0 on the keyboard. Otherwise one of the utility bar skills would be designated as “racial only” which would change a lot of builds and upset a lot of people (they’d see it as a downgrade).
It would be nice to see racial skills have more of an impact in-game. However, balance is currently achieved because none of them are particularly useful.
What would be epic would be if different races had more different skill animations (and more obviously so, especially when it comes to heals, utility skills and elites). I love how my Asuran Guardian pole-dances when using Empower, because it’s so different to what my Norn Guardian does. Perhaps giving the racial skills a visual buff would be excellent- if the skills were very showy and fun, people would be more willing to use the skills during casual play?
Tbh the only thing I’d like changed are the summon spells
the durations are far too short.. and the summon itself is more or less useless but the worst thing of all are the cooldowns
for a cooldown like that I expect a perminant duration on my summon..
the Necro Flesh Golem has a what 60 second cooldown, perminant duration and a special skill that causes launch..
yet every other summon creature has a pathetic duration and ridiculous cooldown and the summon itself is about as effective as a paper sword..
at the very very least give them perminant durations even at the cost of some damage if need be
Tbh the only thing I’d like changed are the summon spells
the durations are far too short.. and the summon itself is more or less useless but the worst thing of all are the cooldowns
for a cooldown like that I expect a perminant duration on my summon..
the Necro Flesh Golem has a what 60 second cooldown, perminant duration and a special skill that causes launch..
yet every other summon creature has a pathetic duration and ridiculous cooldown and the summon itself is about as effective as a paper sword..
at the very very least give them perminant durations even at the cost of some damage if need be
I agree completely! I would love to have mistfire wolf out all the time. Even if it was permanent it would STILL be worthless. But at least looks nice!
Anyone else have any advice on this for feedback. I think we could get somewhere with this.
Most of the racials have ways to get options from other classes that aren’t as potent. I don’t see that as a bad thing. Where the racials fall is in the limited number of utility slots and no synergy with traits, so most late-game builds have no room for them at all.
The racial elites are often terrible for GW2’s free-flowing combat system. The Norn transforms are blocky when they attack and far too short in duration to be meaningful.
Which brings me to two suggestions:
Fix the shoddy animation locks on all transform skills. (And Ranger sword combo :P)
Much like the F1-F4 class traits, have either F7-F10 (if they’re unassigned) or at least Shift7-Shift0 to the above-right of the utility section. Adding extra space would put racial skills on the UI.
That would, of course, be HUGE for WvW rebalancing, so the racials would have to be carefully examined for effect and cooldown times.
Many alts; handle it!
“I’m finding companies should sell access to forums,
it seems many like them better than the games they comment on.” -Horrorscope.7632
Honestly racial skills could be great if they were just disallowed in PvP… problem solved. Who cares if they’re imba if they’re only available in PvE? Obviously it would be good to make them more or less even with each other, but again, if it’s PvE-only it really doesn’t matter that much, as long as they aren’t consistently the best options.
“You’ll PAY to know what you really think.” ~ J. R. “Bob” Dobbs
Honestly racial skills could be great if they were just disallowed in PvP… problem solved. Who cares if they’re imba if they’re only available in PvE? Obviously it would be good to make them more or less even with each other, but again, if it’s PvE-only it really doesn’t matter that much, as long as they aren’t consistently the best options.
Although PvE doesn’t directly pitch players against players, there are still a lot of competitive aspects.
For example, if there was to be a build (meta or close) that revolved around a racial skill, I can totally imagine people in dungeons demanding “X Race Only”. That in itself is a problem.
Anyone else have any advice on this for feedback. I think we could get somewhere with this.
Artillery Barrage. Eight times the cooldown of Meteor Shower (a weapon skill), less than 2/3 of the damage and hits only 30 times maximum as opposed to 72. And it’s melee range.
I know racial skills are supposed to be inferior, but this is an absolute joke. At bare minimum, give this some range. You don’t call an artillery strike on your position, you call it on some place that you can’t reach.
All I hope is that they learned their lesson about OP faction type skills from GW1 EotN and do not implement those kinds of skills in GW2. The fact that Racial skills are garbage implies they remembered it when they started GW2 design….I hope they remember it with HoT and the Mastery system.
We go out in the world and take our chances
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That’s the way that lady luck dances
All I hope is that they learned their lesson about OP faction type skills from GW1 EotN and do not implement those kinds of skills in GW2. The fact that Racial skills are garbage implies they remembered it when they started GW2 design….I hope they remember it with HoT and the Mastery system.
I think having a Mastery for Racial skills would be pretty cool
it would be something you would have to work on to buff those skills but in the long run it would make specialized players able to use Racial skills effectively during the game
this opens up a lot more build diversity which is something the game severely needs right now..
by managing to avoid the problems caused in GW1 by the colossal number of skills added to the game over its expansions they have unfortunately cripled build diversity in GW2 which pretty much leaves most players just running Meta builds and most of the skills accross all professions being completely unused
I know they wanted to make Races a thing based on personal choice but lets be honest here..
it doesn’t matter at all what Race you choose to play..
besides some cultural armors and the first bit of the personal story there is absolutely nothing special about any of the races at all
Norn are Big
Charr are cats
Asura are wierd Yoda things
Sylvari glow in the dark
and Humans just exist
I think its about time we started asking for Races to play just a little more role in how we actually play the game
a Mastery that we have to progress over a period of time that allows us to improve our Racial skills would be something I would be very interested in seeing
besides some cultural armors and the first bit of the personal story there is absolutely nothing special about any of the races at all
And that’s a good thing. They did this to not have a “best” race for a given class/build, so you can pick you class purely for aesthetic reasons. Actually, i’d say racial skills shouldn’t be allowed in WvW the same way they aren’t for PvP.
And that’s a good thing. They did this to not have a “best” race for a given class/build, so you can pick you class purely for aesthetic reasons. Actually, i’d say racial skills shouldn’t be allowed in WvW the same way they aren’t for PvP.
I would agree with that
as far as I am concerned WvW and PvP are just different game modes of the same thing
if Racial skills only had significance in PvE then making them more useful would be a lot easier
tbh WvW and PvP should have their own variations of skills just like PvP did in Gw1
split the skills again
when a Op skill in WvW gets nerfed PvE players suffer
and when a OP skill in PvE gets nerfed WvW players suffer
its not fair to either party
keep the PvP modes and the PvE mode seperate and split their skills so everyones happy
otherwise they just screw with each other.. fighting other players and fighting mobs are totally different things and no matter how much fine tuning is done there will always be a balance issue on one side or the other
They created the racial skills intentionally inferior to make them to be use just as flavor skill.
Allow all races be able to acquire the other racial skills would make the only purpose of the racial skills irrelevant.
Well they are already so irrelevant that I would gladly take any change
The thing about these racial skills is that while they are inferior to profession skills, they give the race you play a greater sense of identity which is very useful for the kind of player who likes to role play their own character, I personally like using the Power Suit on my engineer from time to time. I see no reason in removing them from the game completely as you can just disregard them yourself.
I’m thinking if you blocked racial skills from WvW, you could probably make all the transforms (even Snow Leopard, probably) and the Mistfire Wolf summon permanent duration and it wouldn’t even break anything. Most of the skill-replacer elites have tradeoffs, and even the summons have opportunity costs compared to other elites (profession elites are usually going to help you more than a permanent Mistfire Wolf).
I LOVE this idea… and agree it has to implemented properly to even remotely work. I agree with mtpelion.4562 that it should be its own skill area separate from the rest. Reason I like this idea is that it would add build diversity which to me is always a good thing, as well as character pride, allows you to be proud of your characters heritage (not in a demeaning to the others way) and possibly unlock through lore questlines and (new) masteries.
And why shouldn’t they be awesome and viable? As long as each race had a comparable skill to use that has equal value to a battle, but it also would create some interesting strategies on both PvE / WvW side (I would restrict them in sPvP). I think this could be a great move for the game.
…Artillery Barrage. Eight times the cooldown of Meteor Shower (a weapon skill), less than 2/3 of the damage and hits only 30 times maximum as opposed to 72. And it’s melee range….
The only place this skill has a good use is vs Tequatl in the burn phase. Too bad it’s not 1200 range though.
The racial skills are fine as they are now (that being extremely underpowered).
If they were anything like GW1 you wouldn’t be able to get into a group unless you were a norn guardian playing ursanway or an asura with Pain Inverter.
I LOVE this idea… and agree it has to implemented properly to even remotely work. I agree with mtpelion.4562 that it should be its own skill area separate from the rest. Reason I like this idea is that it would add build diversity which to me is always a good thing, as well as character pride, allows you to be proud of your characters heritage (not in a demeaning to the others way) and possibly unlock through lore questlines and (new) masteries.
And why shouldn’t they be awesome and viable? As long as each race had a comparable skill to use that has equal value to a battle, but it also would create some interesting strategies on both PvE / WvW side (I would restrict them in sPvP). I think this could be a great move for the game.
Just my 2 copper…
Because you would never get all skills equally viable or useful for each class. Even now racial skills are not comparable, some being way worse than others. Only reason that is not a problem is they all are not useful most of the time.
The extra slot would not change that. Instead it would again lead to pigeoning of race requirements for optimal meta game builds. There would be no diversity since if the skills were even remotely useful you’d be forced to use race x with skill y for optimum performance.
The racial skills are fluff for staying true to the lore of GW1. Nothing more, nothing less.
Racial skills have no value, and no point using them.
Sorry to say this ArenaNet, but they are there so you can just say:
“Every class also has own special skills!”
We all know that they will never get buffed to be viable, because then we will have a lot of madness and race sellection and that’s what ArenaNet or neither of us want.
Solution, with expansion we could master the skills of other races, and make them stronger ( to unlock all racial skilsl of all other races, and actually make them strong).
Just you should make effort to get them.
What if in doing this mastery track, since that seems to be what your suggesting, we learn mechanically identical, but our race themed versions of the other racials, with the final mastery point being a reduction in cool downs on racials(my biggest problem with many racials)? So human seed turret could be a shrine to dwayna, asura hidden pistol is a laser, ect. Norn forms…perhaps the other races treat them like a martial arts form(use same animations, but regular model)?
You could almost make this the whole basis of a living story set after expansion if they return to that model of content delivery…or even a mini expansion. Each episode would be learning a different race’s racials, although I’m not sure what you would do for your race’s chapter since we don’t want to imbalance things by making any racials truly better than class skills, and anet probably doesn’t want to have to make 5 distinct variants of each chapter….perhaps your racials get a better visual effect (replaced with “improved” versions of the skill that are mechanically identical, but much more visually appealing?)
Then again, one everyone has access to every racial, you could give then all some buffing, although it would be kinda crazy if there was a chance of the meta build being the same heal/utillities/elites across classes…So perhaps this is just something that should remain just a dream.
