Guild Wars 2

After recently watching a Wooden Potatoes video theorizing the removal of racial skills I was reminded of an issue I have put aside for quite some time.

Racial skills in PvE.

The current racial skill stats make them all but redundant in every aspect of the game, with the exemption of maybe a few niche areas.

Before Guild Wars 2 launched these skills had been presented in such a way to highlight the unique flavor of each race, Asuran’s as master Golemancers, Charr as industrial specialists relying on their respective warband, Humans beseeching the God’s for boons, Norn calling to the Spirits of the Wild for aid and Sylvari having oneness with nature.

I understand within PvP for the sake of balance that racial skills needed to be removed, I support that.

This brings me to WvW, this is for all intents and purposes a variant of PvP.

In PvP we have the themed reward progress tracks to gain in, within WvW we have a similar progression track in the form of WvW attributes gain via WXP.

Wouldn’t it be more fitting to have WvW adopt the PvP stat and gear set builder, using the standardized PvP trinkets and armour.

In doing so it removes upscales and puts the maps population on equal footing with each other.

It also removes racial skills from WvW.

This leaves PvE, I can’t see why buffing the racial skills in PvE would cause an issue, GW2 is a MMORPG, we pick and create our characters with a theme, the role play elements should factor into that.

Imagine a fight against Tequatil, Asurans sending their Golems to fight in the burn phase, supported by Sylvari grown seed mortars.

Or perhaps a dungeon? Having a pair of Norn ambush a boss in Snow Leopard form, only to have the cavalry arrive in the form of a pack of Balthazar Hounds.

I can see the counter argument being that it would alienate certain races from doing specific encounters, but I say that if we can do said content now using standardized skills, we can do it with more variety by utilizing improved racial skills.

In Guild Wars 1, we had serious identity among the races.

Norn are not simply large humans, they were Norn! Have we seen any of the GW2 Norn Heroes change into their respective forms? This is a big part of their racial identity.

(If they have changed into their forms, it’s been so infrequent I cannot recall it happening.)

I could go on, the Charr have strong warband ties, why couldn’t the support skill be improved so it was worth calling your characters warband to help take down a particularly tough Mordrem beast?

I understand balance is an issue, and players shouldn’t have an edge over another player of a different race, but I think we are missing a trick not having the races do what they do best.

There are probably flaws in my argument and I accept that.

I am open to any and all suggestions as to why I may be wrong, but I felt the need to get my thoughts said.

TL:DR

- Racial skills redundant currently
- Lost the unique flavor of each race
- Have WvW adopt the PvP stat and gear set builder
- Remove racial skills from WvW
- Buff the racial skills in PvE
- Bring back racial identity of each race

The point of WvW is to be able to do all the mixing and matching we do now. Not interested in using the PvP model in this game mode.

I’m for having WvW using the PvP build system. Some are opposed because it lacks the ability to have different stat combos on different pieces of gear and lacks food/utility buffs, but having the ability to freely switch between sigils, runes, and amulets and not having to worry about buying these things when the meta changes or having to buy consumables all the time makes for a better experience. Also, you can start a new character and have them go into WvW early without being a burden. The PvP system allows for more experimentation with builds and team comps.

WvW uses the PvE system because it was initially designed as a PvE/PvP hybrid and in a way, the end game of PvE. At this point, I don’t think it should be tied to PvE anymore.

As for the main topic, no, just get rid of racial skills or leave them as is. I’d rather not be better or worse because of what race I picked for a class.

I totally agree that racial skills need to be made useful. What is the point of having skills that are clearly inferior to everything else? That is not an option. When I made my necromancer, I wanted to be Grenth to be my patron. I have never seen any need to use the skill associated with him.

Reaper of Grenth is basically just an extremely watered down version of the Reaper specialization, only completely useless. Hounds of Balthazar are a joke. Avatar of Melandru is completely useless. Prayer to Dwayna and Kormir are, meh… and thats all of them.

These skills should have been what define human characters. So why are they so extremely weak? In their current state, they should never make it to anyone’s skill bar. Why would anyone transform into Reaper of Grenth, when they could also transform into Lich Form?

WvW isn’t real pvp so it doesn’t need the pvp system.

Daniel Frozenwind.2946:

This leaves PvE, I can’t see why buffing the racial skills in PvE would cause an issue, GW2 is a MMORPG, we pick and create our characters with a theme, the role play elements should factor into that.

I can see the counter argument being that it would alienate certain races from doing specific encounters, but I say that if we can do said content now using standardized skills, we can do it with more variety by utilizing improved racial skills.

Failed logic. Yes, content can be currently completed without racial skills, because they are mostly cosmetic and useless.

Let’s compare this to classes currently. Some classes (ranger, necro) are shuned by the community due to their selfish nature and by extension that other classes bring more to the table. This has nothing to do with necros and rangers not being able to completed said content (they can just fine, they’re just a tad slower or it’s slightly harder to do with).

If racial skills get buffed, the same problem will arise here too. Yes, all content will remain doable. But min/maxers will start running “bring xyz” class groups.

There is a reason why racial skills get toned down in MMOs (hell even WoW has made most of them useless or almost equal as far as pve is concerned and mostly pvp). It’s just a big headache to balance on top of class balance.

Not a whole lot would need to be changed to make them at least semi useful. Right now they are all utter trash, and it doesn’t need to be that way.