Guild Wars 2

Most players after years of GW2 have a number of max level characters. The old notion of unbalancing racial populations isn’t as big of a deal anymore. As it stands every character in the game has five skills that are simply unusable. Make the racial skills useful finally please Anet!!

Decrease the elite skill cooldowns at least so they match up with the other elite skills. I’d like to see the gameplay variety that Norn shapeshifters and Asura battlesuits would bring to the game. Those skills are already banned from PvP, so it shouldn’t be that big if a deal to let people actually be able to use those skills in PvE.

Part of the MMoRPG acronym is RPG. The flavor racial skills give characters would really help flesh out the RPG aspect of the game.

Anet should simply take them all out and replace them with real useful Utility Skilsl instead, that would make far more sense.

Racial Skills are a Concept, that never worked in any game, and GW2 is no exception of that

PS: also if Racial Skilsl ever become something, that should make sense, then Racial Skilsl should be baselined gameplay mechancis, not somethign for that you have to waste precious utilit skill slots for just to be able to use these talents of your race.

Such stuff like the Norn Transformations should be baselined Talents, that a Norn should be able to use at any given time and not only, because you wasted a Utility Skill slot for one of their Transformations …

It’d be pretty annoying having to change to a race you don’t want to be to get a certain skill. I don’t see why anyone would want that?

L Step.8659:

It’d be pretty annoying having to change to a race you don’t want to be to get a certain skill. I don’t see why anyone would want that?

That’s how pretty much every RPG in the world works. In dungeons and dragons if you want super strength you usually don’t go with halflings. In Elder scrolls every race has their own special abilities.

So, what you’re saying is. I hate the Asura, but I want a golem suit. Why should I have to play an Asura to get one?‘!? (Because the Charr and Humans don’t use that type if technology…obviously) also, jus because a human can’t turn into a werewolf does that suddenly mean that a human Mesmer won’t be as good as a Norn Mesmer? Of course not. There’s so many skill and trait combinations that even with useful racial skills it won’t make any class/race combination unviable. It just adds flavor to the game.

If you got a Charr Ranger and Someone else has a Norn Warrior, does that mean your Charr Ranger sucks because he can’t shapeshift? Heck no! Just Pull out your chat zooms and go to town!

If after watching a Human player turn into Melandru and seeing how cool that is, it hopefully should make people want to play different race/class combinations. That adds a ton of interesting variety to the game.

The comment that no RPG has ever come out with useful racial skills is just plain wrong. Play ANY RPG! The whole concept of race/class combinations is what RPGs have been about since the days of Gary Gygax and Dungeons and Dragons first edition.

L Step.8659:

It’d be pretty annoying having to change to a race you don’t want to be to get a certain skill. I don’t see why anyone would want that?

That’s how pretty much every RPG in the world works. In dungeons and dragons if you want super strength you usually don’t go with halflings. In Elder scrolls every race has their own special abilities.

So, what you’re saying is. I hate the Asura, but I want a golem suit. Why should I have to play an Asura to get one?‘!? (Because the Charr and Humans don’t use that type if technology…obviously) also, jus because a human can’t turn into a werewolf does that suddenly mean that a human Mesmer won’t be as good as a Norn Mesmer? Of course not. There’s so many skill and trait combinations that even with useful racial skills it won’t make any class/race combination unviable. It just adds flavor to the game.

If you got a Charr Ranger and Someone else has a Norn Warrior, does that mean your Charr Ranger sucks because he can’t shapeshift? Heck no! Just Pull out your charzooka and go to town!

If after watching a Human player turn into Melandru and seeing how cool that is, it hopefully should make people want to play different race/class combinations. That adds a ton of interesting variety to the game.

The comment that no RPG has ever come out with useful racial skills is just plain wrong. Play ANY RPG! The whole concept of race/class combinations is what RPGs have been about since the days of Gary Gygax and Dungeons and Dragons first edition.

I know other RPGs have done it, but it’s a bad system isn’kitten Anet purposely made them weak so we could be whatever we wanted. Some people like odd lore characters like a norn engi or whatever. You see much more character diversity when people aren’t pigeon holed into a race. They’d probably be better off just getting rid of them and replacing them what profession skills, but I think RPers still use them so I don’t know if that’d be a good idea.

uhm, because it makes your decisions of which race you play more important, other than letting your chosen race be nothing more, than being an unimportant visual preference?

If its just skill effects for why you chose a specific race, then its simply bad game design, that encourages you to go for the “Meta” that lets people make you believe, that you need that “skill X of race Y” just to be successful or the most effective, when in fact you would have with every race the same fun and would be based on your build, or your group constallation the same effective, or maybe even more effective with your personal chosen race, that you’ve chosen to play, because you like that race to play and not because of the community wanting you to use that race, because of it having the most best racial skills…

It is absolutely unnatural for a natural born ability like that of the norn to be able to transform themself to be able to use these natural born talents only, when you take these abilities into your utility skill slot,s when in fact something like such natural born talents should be useable without any restrictions, because thats in fact what would make the Norn Race so special compared to all other playeable races, because you could never know in combat, when your enemy suddenly transforms into one of its possible shapeshift forms to continue to battle further agaisnt you in its changed form and that definetely longer than just only laughable 20-30 seconds, but as long as you, the player actually wants to stay in that form.

The same thing would make humans alot more interesting in combat, if they could perform at any given time something from their godly based skills based onto which god you are currently “attuned” to and pray for (changeable at divine temple shrines or similar like elemental attunements)

Sylvari would be alot more interesting to play, if they could surprise you at any given time more frequently in combat with their natural powers with that they can create various natural effects like growing plants out of nowhere due to being heavily bonded to the nature.

Asura with their lots of crazy alchemagical inventions would be alot more fun to play, if they would be able to use them more frenquently in their gameplay their awesome and unique inventions and alchemic potions ect. or golems that they could use as battle suits/mounts like Zojja/Taimi

And charr as the most war driven race of them all would be with their variosu guns, charrzookas ect. also more fun to play, if you coudl make frequently use of these racial unique things and not just only, if you waste useful utility skill slots for these things.

Just think about it for a minute, how much more fun the battle system of GW2 could be, when all racial skilsl would become for all races just baselined integrated combat skills that you can use same as frequently like weapon skills and where masteries are responsible for it, how effective your racial skills are in the end, where racial skilsl in fact become just part of the mastery system as kind of horizontal progression, that plays also actively part in the combat system, without that it anyhow influences negatively the utility ksill bar???

For me this would be an awesome game change, if ANet woudl do this change – plus on the other side, it would create space for more useful utility skills, because the racial skills wouldn’t take up space then anymore as significantly weaker “pseudo utility skills”

Yeah, that sounds pretty awesome too. I’m mainly just sick of having spent all those skill points on crappy useless skills. The programmers spent good amounts of time making them have fun and interesting game mechanics and cool special effects, then turned around and decided they didn’t want anyone in the game to use them. It seems such a waste…

If you want to balance racial skills, first you must equalize them.

Instead having 6 skills each race, with different types and behaviors, all races would have a full set of skills with the same behavior, and visuals based on the race.

For example, where a Norn would have Bear Form, a human would have Avatar of Balthazar, a sylvari Husk Form, asura a Heavy Combat Suit and charr a “repurposed dredge armor”.
The skills would have different icons and visuals, but the same descriptions and behavior.

So for every racial skill equivalents would have to exist for the other races. If none of the existing skills match, one new would be made.

For example, the norn wurm and the sylvari turret match enough.

Once all races have the same PvE skill sets, you can actually balance them without making them negligible and meaningless, since no player would pick a race to get some skill if there’s an exact equivalent for each race.

Here’s the list of all combined skill behaviors found as racials:

• Healing:
  • A healing turret.
  • A simple healing skill.
• Utility
  • Confusion + retaliation
  • Poison field + weakness.
  • A daze.
  • An object-based immobilize.
  • An immobile turret.
  • A summon.
  • A long bleed.
  • A 3-condition removal.
  • Random self boon and random condition.
  • Power + fury for allies.
  • An evasive attack.
  • A bleed + cripple mine.
• Elite
  • A single creature defensive summon.
  • A single creature offensive summon.
  • Two creature summon.
  • A multiple turrets with invulnerable channel.
  • A form leaning towards ‘power’.
  • A form leaning towards ‘control’.
  • A form leaning towards ‘support’.
  • A form leaning towards ‘condition’.
  • An AoE DPS barrage.
  • A ‘conjure’ style weapon with charges.

That’s obviously a lot of skills, some some would have to be removed and/or merged with others before giving each race the full set.

Once each race has the same skills, you can make something decent out of them, and even create a PvE racial spacialization, that also has the same traits and mechanics, but with different visuals based on race.

Anet has never been shy about admitting Racial Skills are sub-par….directly by design. They have said that they don’t want everyone playing any particular race due to a favored racial skill….(or any statistical reason to favor one over another).

I guess what I’m saying is Racial Skills suck for a reason….working as intended.

It’s not like the abilities bring anything crazy to the table, even if moderately buffed, most are lesser versions of other skills, and it doesn’t affect pvp, can ban it from WvW, so that there won’t be a problem, since pve content is “faceroll easy” and all.

As long as they are kept out of PvP I can agree with some of them getting looked at and buffed.

Some are more or less alright as is though.

There’s no reason for every race having the same skills. For the same reason as every class has different skills, different races can have different skills, yet still be of equivalent power. Rangers and elementalists are vastly different, yet they are approximately of equal power level.

I agree to just keep them in PVE, since racial skills are for Roleplaying.

Derenek.8931:

There’s no reason for every race having the same skills. For the same reason as every class has different skills, different races can have different skills, yet still be of equivalent power. Rangers and elementalists are vastly different, yet they are approximately of equal power level.

I agree to just keep them in PVE, since racial skills are for Roleplaying.

Races are a lore, visual and taste choice.

Skills are a combat/mechanics choice.

So yes, they need to have the same skills, so people won’t pick this or that race because of this or that possible race/profession combination.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Derenek.8931:

There’s no reason for every race having the same skills. For the same reason as every class has different skills, different races can have different skills, yet still be of equivalent power. Rangers and elementalists are vastly different, yet they are approximately of equal power level.

I agree to just keep them in PVE, since racial skills are for Roleplaying.

Races are a lore, visual and taste choice.

Skills are a combat/mechanics choice.

So yes, they need to have the same skills, so people won’t pick this or that race because of this or that possible race/profession combination.

If racial skills are limited to PVE, then that stops being as important. Min maxing is really only a matter of necessity in PVP. In PVE it’s just a matter of showing off the cool factor of being one race or another. PVE is cooperative not competitive.

Derenek.8931:

[…]

If racial skills are limited to PVE, then that stops being as important. Min maxing is really only a matter of necessity in PVP. In PVE it’s just a matter of showing off the cool factor of being one race or another. PVE is cooperative not competitive.

PvE skills re usable in WvW. WvW doesn’t have a different skill set.

And even if they were fully PvE-only, that won’t matter.

There’s often some particular run in some dungeon that uses some combination of special.

If PvE skills are to be fixed, making them worth using for anything more than looks while roleplaying, they can’t be completely unique to races. Only their visuals can be unique to a race, not their mechanics.

Keeping them so underpowered makes them pointless.

So the way to go is making them have versions across all races, and making them powreful enough not to be a better choice over race skills, but neither as negligible as they are now except in the very few situations a profession skill is useless like a few elites.

Derenek.8931:

Yeah, that sounds pretty awesome too. I’m mainly just sick of having spent all those skill points on crappy useless skills. The programmers spent good amounts of time making them have fun and interesting game mechanics and cool special effects, then turned around and decided they didn’t want anyone in the game to use them. It seems such a waste…

The amount of skillpoints is negligible. If that is the problem, they can just remove the skillpoint cost and let players have those as their “free” utility skills until they can purchase their profession ones.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Anet has never been shy about admitting Racial Skills are sub-par….directly by design. They have said that they don’t want everyone playing any particular race due to a favored racial skill….(or any statistical reason to favor one over another).

I guess what I’m saying is Racial Skills suck for a reason….working as intended.

Or, if they just made all of them good, you’d have to make the tough choice of which flavor of good you want to bite into rather than which annoying background noise you want to ignore. Of course, one requires more work to accomplish well and when it comes to that, people will always pick the easy less-involved option. Not blaming them though. At the very least, they could have done more with your race’s specialty outside of combat and linked it to flavor text, story options and solutions that end up in your instances.

MithranArkanere.8957:

Races are a lore, visual and taste choice.

Skills are a combat/mechanics choice.

So yes, they need to have the same skills, so people won’t pick this or that race because of this or that possible race/profession combination.

Again, that’s the lazy choice, not the best choice.

That’s not the lazy choice. Actually,. it’ll probably never get done because it would be a lot of work.

It’s not the lazy choice, but the logical one to keep all characters equal regardless of profession.

That, or removing racial skills altogether. Well, keeping them as they are now is practically removing them, since they are of little use already.

I’m not sure why so many people say races MUST have the same skills, or that balancing racial skills will force one race or another. Every MMO out there has racial skills and I don’t see the entirety of the player base playing a single race over another. It is exactly the same as a secondary class like in GW1. This is why I asked for a rebalancing and not a specific skill being strengthened. Well actually all the skills need to be strengthened, then balanced. The racial skills presently suck, so removing them from WvW wouldn’t really affect most players. Then allowing them for coop play in PVE is cool. It’s silly to think that now everyone must have a Charr for a charzooka to finish a dungeon. A human as Melandru also is awesome, an Asura with a powerful golem would also be great. None if those things are the same as the other, yet they can be balanced to be of equivalent power. Just as they balanced ranger skills and guardian skills to be balanced vs each other. All the mechanics are already in place, all they need to change is cooldowns and damage numbers.

MithranArkanere.8957:

That’s not the lazy choice. Actually,. it’ll probably never get done because it would be a lot of work.

It’s not the lazy choice, but the logical one to keep all characters equal regardless of profession.

That, or removing racial skills altogether. Well, keeping them as they are now is practically removing them, since they are of little use already.

Making 5 sets of animations for the same 5 skills is hardly difficult. In fact, they do such for every skill in the game. And idle animations. And run animations. And emote animations.

The likely reason that Anet didn’t do that is because it’s bland, lazy and uninspired.

I have seen SOME arguments for useful racials and here are my coutner arguments:

1. DnD Skyrim argument.
DnD is a closed of only X amount of party members single palyer campaign that ahs onyl THOSe palyers and non other, DnDing alone is very difficult and in normal case simpossible, team paly is needed.
skyrim…………….you can literaly get past EVERY single racial benefit later one by simply train those skills. the only thing it provides in a SINGLE PALYER RPG is preferenced skills to start of more optimal for a wepaon armor etc.

2. make them the same:
then WHATS the point of having them?
you claims only the looks count on them? wrong. its also HOW they play out that makes them lore friendly.
Humans never had the ability to change their form for no good reason, they needed a well trained profession (thats why im VERY iFFY with melandru as transform skill)
I would like it more if all human racials were literly blessing form the gods like the grenth elite.
jsut giving them a different look while keeping the same function and mechanic is boring and could rather be used for a new profession rather then beeing race based.
it would be just shaman toems from WoW otherwise; look different but are just the same.

heck to mention racials in other games

3. other racials in other games suck in the long term too!
WoW racials are NOT a gamechanger
DnD and skyrim racials are only good to start out but have in the end barely any effect, and if they do you have botched skilling your charcater correctly.
any other MMO and RPG racials: become obsolute at the beginning of the middle of their game.

racials are fun to paly with if you jerk around and don´t run fractle 56+

however the true progression should be ON the profession not the race you play.

Heck hardcore DnDer of edition 2 applauded those who made the odd choices.
mages and wizard were useless early gameeven as magical alined race such as elf or other.
or course halfing warriors had it difficult, but those who played good had the best DnD session in their life.
However this is only possible when you can have an controled environment and NOT the chance of elitist bahvior like:
“LFG 18k AP min ZERk ascended infused gear roflboxer lolomgfg or kick and perm ignore list”.

i mean the very fact that we CAN have asura warrior is evidence enough that racials should NOT determing our race choice.
In WOW classes are allready restricted by lore crap, im glad we at GW2 DONT have this problem. I mean even paladin tauren while lore friendly still are debated(holy cows FTW)

Do you guys remember GW1? The race takes the place of the secondary profession. At max level we were able to switch our secondaries by completing a rather difficult quest line, similarly max level characters should be able to learn a racial skill from another race by gaining appropriate faction from them. This will allow every race to be balanced, but still possess some individual flavor for the whole time they are lower level. Then as the meta changes from month to month, people will try to earn human faction to get hounds if Balthazar, then a few months later balance changes will cause people to start farming Norn faction to become a werewolf etc etc….

They’re not all unusable. I’ve heard that some Norn use the leopard form stealth in WvWvW, and some Sylvari use the turret skill for its temporary invulnerability.