Now, this isn’t a post to make people fear (or excited) for the future about Racial Skills in HoT, as I have no idea what Anet will do with the game or the changes other then what has been announced at the start of this post.
Since it seems very likely Racial Skills will be removed to conform with the new design of attributes and skills, I would like to beg, on my hands and knees, don’t remove them. Racial Skills are useless in the grand scheme of things, or there use is very very niche in a handful of situations in the game. Yet game play shouldn’t be the point of racial skills. Racial Identity is their focus.
I wont bore you with my views in this fist part on why it’s a bad idea to remove them, I’ll just offer up my suggestion as that is what the thread title is.
I feel racial skills should take the roll of Environmental Weapons.
What does this mean? Should I throw my Charr’s Charrzooka and the ground and pick it up? Nah. What I mean is they should be interactive items in your races city that said race can use. For example, charr’s my main.
A charr player could go to the Iron Legion kitten nal section in the Black Citadel and find a table with Pistols and Rocket Launches splayed out on it. Clicking said table will allow them to pick up on use items, one item will when clicked from the bag give a Hidden Pistol skill (replacing main weapons), or the other item will give them the Charrzooka skill set.
The same can be for other skills. You could go near a charr drill instructor and pick up a book of motivational tactics (Battle Roar), or back to the kitten nal and pick up the Land Mine. And finally give your Warband some slight use, go into your home instance and talk to the sole survivor. They will give you a flare gun that can summon two members of the Warband. Thus, Warband Support.
How about for the Norn or the Humans? They could go to god/spirits shrines and talk to the respective Priest/Shaman there. Get a Icon/Totem of the God/Spirit that will allow them to use the racial skills power. For the Norn hunter style skills, there are allot of hunters walking around Hoelbrak. Why not talk to them and get “Hail Slayer, next time your out in the wild. Try using this special technique to call a raven or wurm to your side.”. From here I’m sure you can pick up ideas with the Asura and Sylvari.
And for those wondering about the Mystfire Wolf skill with the deluxe pack, why not talk to anyone of the Mist Warriors around the world? If you got the pack they can offer you this skill in some dialogue.
Now, depending how you look at it, there is good and bad with this idea. The bad will be making niche builds that use the skills very clunky to use (Open bag, find the skill, click it, use the skill, then class skills). Yeah, that’s annoying, and trust me, I used the Hidden Pistol in a Guardian build once (Purging Flames > Hidden Pistol > GS 3.). However, the good could be a different type of build to come from it. You got a freed up Healing/Utility/Elite slot.
In terms of balance, these environmental weapons could be restricted in Dungeons and SPvP, or their current baseline skills nerfed to only be useful in single player shenanigans, of course just because they’d be nerf’d like that doesn’t mean their fun is gone. They where never supposed to be high utility endgame. And for racial flavor lets say a Human tries to get the Charrzooka, they’d be met with a “I can’t give this weapon to unauthorized soldiers, you’re more then likely to blow your hands off trying to operate it.”
((Continued in Part 2))