Guild Wars 2

So I thought about how much I use my racial skills on all of my characters…

I don’t.

Not because they’re not fun or unique skills to use, but they’re not as powerful, as was intended. I think doing something to make them used more often would help to give identity to your characters. As it is now, nothing really sets the races apart during normal play aside from when you’re leveling up your story.

So why not have a racial skill slot? Any of the racial utility skills can go in this slot. Think about how now in large encounters we could have a commander going “we need charrs over here to do [insert skill]” and it won’t interfere with how they play their profession. Because really, did I forget how to Charr just because I learned how to carry a banner?

Forgive the bias of the Charr talk, that’s my main. Seriously though, thoughts?

I do like the idea of setting up a racial skill as an “extra.” It would add flavor and immersion. I see some cons, however, and would love to see how you would address them:

UI clutter — Right now all the skills fit in 1 – 0 and F1 – F4 (soon there will be F5). They are in an evenly split hotbar. Where would you put this 11th skill?

Balance — You’re asking to add in another utility which, while designed to be weaker than profession skills, still has an effect on combat. Do you change the racial skills to be cosmetic to compensate? Or if they retain combat effectiveness, how do you set them so they don’t add in any overpowering synergies?

Required race — If you need a certain race to do some certain skill in a place, you are altering a paradigm of this game. The philosophy here is to play the race and profession you want and not be ruled out of parties because you aren’t playing the desired mix. Sure players are human and will set up their own cliques (like kicking necros and rangers out of dungeon pugs), but it’s not intended that a particular mix be better for gameplay than any other. How do you prevent that, if you want special racial skills to make a difference?

I like the idea, if they balanced it decently would surely be fun

Thumbs-up to the idea! I have always considered it a monumental error on part of the game designers for side-lining Racial skills. The Asuran power suit and golem summons have so much potential!!

Why take all the trouble of making races if you are going to reduce their unique racial skills to nothing!! It reduces races to mere skins with no other impact on gaming…..

I strongly believe game designers must explore how the racial skills could be developed further.

If racial skills are supposed to be used at least a bit, make them free of charge for every character. Example: as soon as you hit 31 as a human, you get hounds of balthazar. The same goes for utility skills. It wouldn’t change the end game use, but I actually don’t think that they are supposed to be used a lot. Anet always advertised them to be just fun skills.

BTW, summon mistfire wolf is the best skill anyway :P I remember how I once did pretty hard achievement in Queen’s Gauntlet just thanks to him

Racial skills exist for flavour. They’re purposely underpowered because ANet didn’t want players feeling like they had to select a specific race

Ankushp.7245:

It reduces races to mere skins with no other impact on gaming…..

And that’s exactly what races should be.

Really like this idea, as it brings racial selection & racial skills back into the the skills & trait system.

I agree with you, OP. I’d like to see a slot; I’d also like to see race mater more.

In ESO, there’s racial skill lines that you can level up. We could add some racial trait lines in this game to make things matter more.

I concurr. The racial skills doesn’t have to be that powerful, but they should be used. It doesn’t make sense to have “weak” skills to maintain an illusory sense of balance, just because Anet doesn’t feel capable of making skills truly balanced in the first place. (If that way of thinking were legitimate, then proffessions should also be cosmetic only).

OP’s idea is a good middle point: racial skills get used more often (at least more than never) and the general balance of the proffessions is kept.

Not sure how people are going to like Humans getting and extra 3 condi removal skill for free.

I agree though that racial skills need to stay in some way. Maybe their Elite skill (Since I’m sure Norns and Charr would rather have their forms/charrzookas).

Glad to see the positive comments for this idea! cocowoushi makes a good point, some races’ racial skills may be more powerful than others, but that’s not something that can’t be balanced. (Though it should already be “balanced”)

I like what Mortifer said about them being free of charge, I would think that being your own race, you naturally know how to do these things, whereas the professions are learned.

Donari, for the UI, as someone who only uses hotkeys half the time, I’m probably not the best person to answer that as it’d most likely end up being a skill that I would click. If I would have to guess, I’d say the plus or minus key?

I can say that none of the racials seem like they’d be a huge benefit over other races’. The cds can increase/decrease accordingly as well as their affects if they need to. But much more visual indications of races using their skills would be great.

For UI I meant visually on the screen. One can hotkey anything on the keyboard, pretty much. Me, I use – to auto-run and = to toggle walk/run and I wouldn’t change that as that is the same in every game for me.

Right now there is quite a bit of symmetry to the hotbar, with boons/conditions balancing the F1-F4 skills/bars and 5 skill boxes on each side of the HP circle. I’m wondering where an 11th skill would go (ditto on the consumables/toys bar that many have requested, nice though it would be to have that).