Guild Wars 2

I’m surprised that there isn’t a Topic based on this in the forums (Or the search functionality is terrible here), but I’d figure I’d bring this up.

Now most players know that Racial Skills are abilities that mostly have no place within the game, minus PvE, and that they are relatively much weaker compared to the Profession Skills with a few exceptions like Take Root from the Sylvari and Prayer to Kormir for Humans. But my question to all this is where are we going to see these in the future?

Now many rumors that I’ve gathered lead to a few possibilities. One side being complete removal and another being possibly converted to a Core or Elite Specialization. The former being quite plausible due to the Revenant who for now doesn’t seem to have the ability to change their Utilities without switching Legends.

I am in complete favor of the Specialization idea, cause to me the idea of simply removing these skills from the game seems to be an awful direction.

Reasons why I don’t want them removed is because other than the appearance of reach race, these skills add a little more flavor to the race you choose, from a gameplay and Lore standpoint. It just doesn’t seem right to just simply eliminate skill that just further defines them as characters.

A Norn that can’t transform into their Spirit of The Wild? A Human without their faith in the Six Gods? And the worst one….Asura without their Golems?…No, just…no.

The skills now are useless I’ll admit, but I can only hope that ArenaNet can take the time to find ways to tweak them, or to balance them for the game in the future. Or at least put them in the right place in the game.

A final note are skills such as Mistfire Wolf and the Antitoxin Spray….where are they going too?

I would like them to get specific slots (like F6 +), so they really become additional content based on your race instead of being completely overwritten by other utilities.

But anet seems to be so busy trying to balance every single skill and trait and stat, over and over again, I don’t think they want to handle even more balancing with race skills.
It seems they intend to make race almost purely cosmetic.

I wouldn’t be against them focusing more on the lore than balancing though (with small side quests, side stories, racial features, description for legendaries… ).

Then again, that’s the opinion of a player who mainly focuses on pvE (with occasional WvW) and I understand everyone has their own way of enjoying the game.

I wouldn’t want them to be just aesthetic I want them to be useful to some extent. They just need to be placed in the right direction or place.

We now something is going to happen to them because they don’t want a class to have a specific advantage based on race and if it stays as it currently is every necromancer will be human due to reaper of grenth.

They all should become baselined.

Give characters all integrated Racical Skill Slots, increasing the Skill Bar from 10 to 11.
This way you don’t have to waste utility skills for them.
This way can also revenants have them
This way we get new space for some new utility skills that are more useful to fill up the gaps of the old as utility skill countign racial skills, when with skill slot 11 racial skills become their own category.

I’m a bit worried about this as well. Racial skills are, practically speaking, extremely niche at best. But the flavor they provide is massive. A norn who cannot shapeshift is just a big human, the races (especially human & norn) need that little extra flavor ability to make it really distinct.

One idea I’ve heard that I rather like is the idea of tying racial abilities to masteries. Basically the system would automatically unlock the native racial mastery at an early level and at lvl 80 you can complete mastery lines towards the other playable races, unlocking their racial skills as well. Some skills would be aesthetically different, for example, norn transformations would be “blessing” skills similar to the norn abilities from the first game that would be mechanically identical to the transformations but would not physically transform the character.

This system would remove racial abilities from hero points and, by allowing all racial skills to be used by all players, the racial skills themselves could be buffed.

At the very least though I really really hope racial skills are available in HoT and it would be great to hear some dev comments on this.

I quite like the F6 idea..

Keep the first set of Fskills 1-5 as they are with improvements and changes made as Anet sees fit

then on the other side add F6-0 a secondary set of Fskills which are purely for Race skills (can be disabled for PvP and WvW if neccessary)

Of course this will mean that Racial skills will need to be changed drastically due to conflictions

example being that human has 1 healing, 2utility and 3 elite
Norn has 2 utility and 4 elite

so there would need to be more race skills added to some or taken from some and divided up or changed entirely to make more balance

but on the plus side that would give every race access to a bunch of minor skills they can use as they see fit if they want to at all and we could simply add really big cooldowns to these skills to make them more of a cosmetic thing than a major game mechanic so people don’t rely on it too much

Since I main human I’ll give a small example

Prayer to Dwayna.. Obviously remove the heal entirely and maybe add a couple of seconds of protection and regen instead.. something minor like 2 seconds
or perhaps a Prayer of Dwayna Buff that takes 30-50% of your next attacks dmg and gives it to you as healing.

Prayer to Kormir.. this could remain the same really as a condition debuff.. although perhaps reduce the number from 3 to 1 or 2

Prayer to Lyssa.. this could also remain the same adding a random boon to you and a random condition to the enemy..

As for the Elite skills.. these will need to be drastically nerfed in power to make them more or less utility level skills..
we don’t want them too powerful
the point is there needs to be a balance so that all of these skills are useful.. but are there just as a small support long cooldown feature..

we don’t want people relying on them or using them multiple times in the same encounter..

I would say adding a 4-5 minute cooldown on every race skill would be more than enough to achieve that
that way we get small support skills and wont see people waiting around between encounters for them..

as for the transform skills I think they will need a little bit of thinking over…
but im thinking a small bit of CC or something isnt out of the question..
little bit of lunge and knockback here and there..
durations can be short though.. 10-15 seconds perhaps or perhaps instead of durations each transformation skill simply lasts until the player has performed a limited number of actions while transformed.. thus limiting their options and making them decide carefully which of their 5 skills will be most useful in the situation they are in..

this will also allow players using the transformations for Cosmetic reasons to stay in their bear form, golem form or avatar form for as long as they like in towns etc

but yes in general these are supposed to be minor support skills designed to be a little bit useful (much less than your standard build skills) with long cooldown so people don’t rely on them and really only useable in PvE

I think a system like that.. fine tuned by Anet would actually be a really.. really good change

They useful in right situations.
We need more honestly. I want a Melee attack racial. I want more transformation Racials.

I’ll just leave this here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Suggestion-Racial-Skill-Slot/first#

Riot Inducer.8964:

I’m a bit worried about this as well. Racial skills are, practically speaking, extremely niche at best. But the flavor they provide is massive. A norn who cannot shapeshift is just a big human, the races (especially human & norn) need that little extra flavor ability to make it really distinct.

One idea I’ve heard that I rather like is the idea of tying racial abilities to masteries. Basically the system would automatically unlock the native racial mastery at an early level and at lvl 80 you can complete mastery lines towards the other playable races, unlocking their racial skills as well. Some skills would be aesthetically different, for example, norn transformations would be “blessing” skills similar to the norn abilities from the first game that would be mechanically identical to the transformations but would not physically transform the character.

This system would remove racial abilities from hero points and, by allowing all racial skills to be used by all players, the racial skills themselves could be buffed.

At the very least though I really really hope racial skills are available in HoT and it would be great to hear some dev comments on this.

Yes I had similar thought where if you got say a norn to lvl 80 and had a racial skill unlocked it would then become available for unlocking for all race characters on account.

If they don’t change something substantial, revenants might just get a slottable “racial legendary” where swapping to it equips all available racial skills. It would be kinda weak but it would be there.

Another option would be a rebalance of racial skills and put them on a consumable bundle item that you can buy from a home instance npc. It would likely limit it to open world pve only though as many consumables are blocked in wvw/dungeons.

Or or or, maybe you all are just being paranoid and, get this, racial skills will stay just as they are! There is no reason to remove them, and they are a skill set, not a trait line, meaning there is no need to make a specialization out of them. They’ll just stay the exact same as they are now. Underpowered skills you can swap into your build to add some racial flavor. The ONLY ones who should be curious as to how racial skills will fit into their builds are the Revenants due to the whole Legends issue.

ArchieD.6972:

I’ll just leave this here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Suggestion-Racial-Skill-Slot/first#

Guess we came up with more or less the same kind of idea ^^

Specialisations for racial skills is an interesting thought, actually. You could start with mastering the specialisation for your own race (of course!), and then you can develop the specialisations of other races, similar to the HoT specialisations for NPC races and the race title tracks in EOTN.

draxynnic.3719:

Specialisations for racial skills is an interesting thought, actually. You could start with mastering the specialisation for your own race (of course!), and then you can develop the specialisations of other races, similar to the HoT specialisations for NPC races and the race title tracks in EOTN.

Because an Asura with a Charr Warband that can transform into the Spirit of the Bear is totally lore friendly

I’m not sure about this. I kind of like that these are not very useful (In a way) Because then I am not choosing the race I want to play just because their racial skills are better then the race I enjoy playing. While I could see that some races have an advantage in some cases, but if it is to strong of an advantage simply because of your race…Not sure how I feel about that.

Sigmoid.7082:

We now something is going to happen to them because they don’t want a class to have a specific advantage based on race and if it stays as it currently is every necromancer will be human due to reaper of grenth.

Weird. If you were going to choose elite to chill, I think you would go with plague and the blind—> chill trait instead.

Personally, I wish the racial skills were really good. That would give more exciting diversity to the game.

It is pretty easy to level a different race up if you want that other races abilities. This would also encourage more alts. Which means more people buying character slots. So go for it Anet!

About revenant and racial skills for example: as charr you choose elite: warband or artilerry or charrzooka and rest of skills become racial utilities, heal skill is racial if exists or toxic spray(can swap). So rev’ mechanic saved.

I like idea of racial skills and I would like see some maguuma/new racial’ related skills in HoT.

Racials skills can be still in game, but with no spec category.

I’m pretty much with everyone here on not removing racial skills. Keep them in the game the same, change them a little, add them to their own catigory, make them a mastery track. What ever.

Just don’t remove any of them. Too many MMO’s think they’ll make the game better by pruning skills not used in the popular build or meta.

Yeah, if racial skills are going to be essentially worthless for the sake of balance, I’d rather them become universal skills that everyone can learn if that means they can be buffed to be on par with class skills.

Either the ability to learn a variant of other race’s skills through masteries and/or story events, or getting functionally identical but aesthetically different skills. Or a mix of both as makes the most sense.

So as an example of the first, Sylvari have Take Root by default, and other races could complete some sort of chalange around the sylvari starting area and be given a satchel of turret seeds. Instead of taking root, other races would kneel down to plant some seeds, (Therefore rooting them in place like the Sylvari skill does) and then the turrets bloom.

As an example of the second, take Asura’s Technobabble skill. Every race could have a diferent shout or verbalization with the same effect. Char could roar, Norn could also roar or have a have a battlecry, Humans could scream “Lyssa confound you!” and have it actually work, Sylvari could throw a spray of toxic stun pollen.

A side reason I like the idea of evening out the racial skills, It’d also give every engineer access to the full set of toolbelt skills as well, being the once class mechanic that is directly affected by race choice.

That ALSO gives the benefit of potentially learning racial skills of non-playable races. Hylek alchemy poison attacks, Skrit scavenging skills (Dig up random bundle weapons like rocks and such) Quagan underwater skills, etc, etc.

They could be fun to play with, and might also be a way to give all classes access to some PvE niceties to balance out the process of exploration and map completion for all classes. (Like every class having a short PvE only self-stealth, some mobility options, a targetable leap to aid in jumping puzzles, etc.)

Teratus.2859:

ArchieD.6972:

I’ll just leave this here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Suggestion-Racial-Skill-Slot/first#

Guess we came up with more or less the same kind of idea ^^

Yeah, you went much more in depth though!

I’m all for keeping the racial skills unique and viable without them being an essential part of a build that forces someone to choose that race. I feel like racial skills should be free of charge, this would at least get people leveling up to use them more. Maybe they do something unique that profession skills can’t do. Like perhaps there are bosses that decide to target random races, so all the asura get pulled into a warp or something and have to use their racial abilities to escape.

One example would be for Charr, their charzookas could have less power than other profession abilities, but they could also have further range than any profession ability has. Say there’s a part in a fight where you can’t survive within a certain distance, and the only ability that can hit the boss from that range is the charzooka.

And do other things for other elites for each race. I’m not saying this is the perfect idea, just getting some thoughts out to spur conversation, and maybe some more ideas!

I totally agree with the 11th racial slot idea. More things to do, that are minor yet highly aesthetic and strictly lore-related: would make everything funnier and the whole game more inmersive. Its a win from every point of view.

I do hope they stick around somehow. For my thief, Shrapnel Mine is a fantastic keep-away tool, much better than the other legit thief traps.

But, I figure they’re going to disappear because of Revenants. That makes me sad.

Teratus.2859:

draxynnic.3719:

Specialisations for racial skills is an interesting thought, actually. You could start with mastering the specialisation for your own race (of course!), and then you can develop the specialisations of other races, similar to the HoT specialisations for NPC races and the race title tracks in EOTN.

Because an Asura with a Charr Warband that can transform into the Spirit of the Bear is totally lore friendly

Easy. Charr Warband -> Charr Mercenaries
Become the Bear -> Ursan Blessing

As draxynnic mentioned EoTN gave us a pretty clear example of learning at least partial forms of other races abilities.

A Volcano.2510:

Sigmoid.7082:

We now something is going to happen to them because they don’t want a class to have a specific advantage based on race and if it stays as it currently is every necromancer will be human due to reaper of grenth.

Weird. If you were going to choose elite to chill, I think you would go with plague and the blind—> chill trait instead.

Reaper of grenth doesn’t change your skill bar and is 10 targets.
Obviously plague form has stability, vitality and longer duration but the option to choose which elite you want at the moment will highly encourage necro to choose human.