Guild Wars 2

So, We’re at a point in GW2 where we have this mastry system for horizontal progress. It’s pretty cool.

However, something has been bugging me for a long time about GW2, and that something is racial skills. On the one hand, it’s great that they’re inferior to class skills so that people don’t feel pressured to make specific race/class combinations for the sake of efficiency. On the other hand, it’s kind of sad that all these neat skills see so little play, as they’re very flavorful for characters.

So, how about solving those problems? Let’s make racial skills worth taking, and lets make them avaliable.

This is no small undertaking, but in some pretty important ways it adds a lot of horizontal progression to the game in the specific place that masteries are supposed to address. Since racials are PvE-only skills, and are not locked to specific classes, they’re a perfect fit for masteries.

The basic Idea
Buff racial skills up to a usable level, largely by reducing their cooldowns, and add a mastry track for each race that allows you to learn racial skills from other races. You will always start play with your race’s set unlocked, but they exist at the current power level, and to advance them to useful you’ll still have to progress the mastery to 5, the same level used to unlock the useful balance versions you’d learn from other races.

The Revnant Problem, and solution
Revnants are in an odd position with racial skills already. Their class mechanics revolve around legend channels, and as such it doesn’t make sense to give them normal racial skills. In stead, how about implementing those skills as selectable legends for the revnant in packages? For example, a Snaff channel that gives him a preselected golem summon elite, all three utilities, and invent a heal to round out the set. Rev’s costs and cooldowns will thus be adjusted to give him a unique spin on the racial sets. For instance, you could make radiation field on the rev an energy toggle, and give him a much more spammable golem summon. In this manner, rev gets some much needed additional customization, and you can even play with his effects for a set of pve-only legends that might not be balance appropriate for pvp. Revs would begin play without the weaker versions of racial skills as they do now, and would thus have to earn the mastry to access these legends.

A basic layout

• 1 – Basic <race> diplomacy – Waypointing to this race’s captial city is now free, and you receive bonus karma and writs of <racial term> from events in their territory.
• 2 – <Race> Connections – New, permanent vendors are now avaliable to you in <name of race’s city> that exchange writs of <racial term> and karma for unique racial themed items and decorations.
• 3 – <Race> Ambassador – Gain a special dialogue option with NPC members of <race> to spend wrtis of <race term> and ask them to follow you as an ally for a limited time and distance, attacking your targets and supporting you in combat.

• 4 – Champion of <race> – You revive <race> twice as quickly, boons you apply to them are doubled in duration, and heals you apply are twice as effective. Gain an additional option with members of <race> to spend writs in return for a <race> favor, an inventory item that allows you to summon them anywhere in the world as allies.

Interim step to unlock rank 5 – Complete a trial solo instance that varies per race. You must complete this trial to begin training rank 5.

• 5 – Honorary/Legendary <race> – Learn <race’s> racial skills, employing their unique tools, magic, and tactics in combat. If this is your race, your existing racial skills are enhanced. If you are a revnant, gain access to this race’s racial legend.

Revnant racial legends
Asura – Snaff
Norn – Jora
Charr – Pyre Fierceshot
Human – Melonni (Dervish is an obvious choice for the “grab bag of the gods” human skills.)
Sylvari – Wynne

The champion level is for NPC’s only right? Otherwise this’ll become mandatory for any progress pushing and especially for WvW.

I do love the idea though cause…yeah…no one uses those skills.

Runiir.6425:

The champion level is for NPC’s only right? Otherwise this’ll become mandatory for any progress pushing and especially for WvW.

I do love the idea though cause…yeah…no one uses those skills.

Racial skills are generally PvE only skills, and as such these would be a lot more like the pve version of WvW ranks.

Champion rank is specifically in relation to npcs, not players. It would be a bit broken if it applied to players given their much faster attack speeds and much better durability.

I’d also imagine the “let’s hire friends” mechanics of the mastries wouldn’t apply to key npcs like merchants, bosses, and other important people. basically, if they already have dialogues or some purpose other than as background NPCs you wouldn’t have the “recruit” options with writs as thy’re obviously too important/busy to drop what they’re doing and adventure with you.

The basic idea is that they’re not usable in WvW, as WvW already has a pretty killer advancement system more appropriate to that mode, and racials have always been kept out of PvP for esports balance reasons.

I think that these would make for a solid batch of Masteries to work on. Giving the option to run any racial skills balances things out since anyone would be able to run any skills after investing some effort. I like the idea, but ANet would have to be careful to avoid repeating the issues with PvE skills in the first GW. There are a lot of things that could be made into masteries, and some people have cleared the full set of masteries for the jungle already.

Racial relations seems like a simple thing to invest points into for small benefits, and it has a precedent both in the jungle and even in the first game, interestingly. Perhaps something like this could be introduced over a Living World season (assuming we are still doing those?) to work on maintaining racial alliances while we plan out our next moves.

Insiferi.4831:

I think that these would make for a solid batch of Masteries to work on. Giving the option to run any racial skills balances things out since anyone would be able to run any skills after investing some effort. I like the idea, but ANet would have to be careful to avoid repeating the issues with PvE skills in the first GW. There are a lot of things that could be made into masteries, and some people have cleared the full set of masteries for the jungle already.

Racial relations seems like a simple thing to invest points into for small benefits, and it has a precedent both in the jungle and even in the first game, interestingly. Perhaps something like this could be introduced over a Living World season (assuming we are still doing those?) to work on maintaining racial alliances while we plan out our next moves.

I think GW2’s system is much more tolerant of something like this than the GW1 system. There’s already a lot of overlap in terms of class skills that do very similar things, and racial skills, with mostly just cooldown adjustments, and generally very simple yet flavorful effects. In addition, GW2’s systems don’t rely on or reward skill interactions as much as the GW1 model, so skills that work “in a bubble” are much easier to design and balance.

Yeah but raids/dungeons/fractals are all PvE and suddenly reviving other players faster? To make challenging content they will have to balance against it atleast in end room raids and higher fractals.
And doubling boon duration sorta will break things…like extreme protection durations.

Runiir.6425:

Yeah but raids/dungeons/fractals are all PvE and suddenly reviving other players faster? To make challenging content they will have to balance against it atleast in end room raids and higher fractals.
And doubling boon duration sorta will break things…like extreme protection durations.

No, what I’m saying is that it wouldn’t work on players. You’d only get the boons/heals/revive effect when used on NPCs, and it would obviously be nonfunctional in places it would break content. However it could be designed around from content built with these masteries in mind. For example a hero point challenge the involved reviving X people before a time bomb goes off or something.

Well that’s what I said in my first post, that it would only work on NPC’s right?

Heck yeah this would be great if that is the case. More actual interaction with the races and ability to use those racials would be nice.

Revnant skill bar brainstorming

Snaff
Pain Inverter – Way lower cooldown and significant energy cost. Basically a spammable energy dump that allows rev to use it similar to GW1 pain inverter if he’s willing to dump all his energy in order to stack lots of retal/confusion. Good synergy with either mallyx or jalis.

Radiation Field – Toggle. Places the field and the field remains active and degens energy as long as it is active.

Technobabble – large energy cost, no cooldown. A good, but expensive, interrupt.

7-Series Golem – Rename for snaff’s golem, perhaps use the mr. sparkles model? Duration = Cooldown, but reduces energy regen (does not completely stop it) while active.

Maintainence(New heal) – Operates similarly to ranger’s heal as one. Heals both the revnant and the golem. Lowered energy cost if the revnant is close to the golem.

Revnant skill bar brainstorming

Jora
Had to invent more skills here. I liked the idea of Jora being largely about powerful energy drain defensive toggles as a more selfish tank than Jalis. Jora’s Legendary stance is much more about being able to dump energy quickly in extreme ways than camping it.

Call Owl – Cooldown removed. Costs energy. Can summon owls quickly this way, stacking lots of bleeds.

Call Wurm – Cooldown removed. Costs Energy. Can summon multiple wurms this way.

“I am Unstoppable” (new Utility) – Energy drain toggle. While active, gain 1 stack of stability and 1 second of protection once a second.

Become the Bear – Energy Drain Toggle. Ability 2-5 cooldowns removed. Abilities 2-5 all cost energy in stead.

Feel no Pain (New Heal) – Heavy Energy Drain Toggle – Heal and gain Aegis once per second. Unlike the similar guardian heal, this isn’t a channel. It’s designed to cover you with aegis while healing, but leave you in the fight.