Guild Wars 2

So I’m the kind of person who tends to obsess about the small things. Mostly things that aren’t that important. Wish it wasn’t that way but it is.

Basically, I can’t seem to decide what race seems to look the best in heavy armor.. and I know this is purely opinion based, but I was hoping some input might help me decide. I’ve looked through galleries and it seems like many races have access to a lot of the same armors which is neat.. means the decision should be easier. The cultural armors are a nice bonus, would be neat if those looked good too. I guess one big question to be asked is… Besides the cultural armors, are there really any differences in the style of armors available to each race? Sylvari seem to have leafy stuff and asura have gears and floating stuff.. is that normal armor or is that cultural stuff?

One other small side note, I like to stray away from picking the obvious or most popular choices. I’ve already strayed from this by picking guardian, would be nice if I could at least be a less common race.

For each race:

Charr: Seem to look generally kitten. Seen lots of screenshots where it was a massive charr in spikey armor .. looks beastly (guess that’s the point!). But I really don’t like the head region. The way the neck and head poke out from the body and the way the head looks.. can cover it with a helmet but it doesn’t really help. I feel like they only look good from the front. Looks like texture stretching is still an issue. Also.. Charr just don’t feel like a guardian. No one expects support from a beast. On the plus side.. there really aren’t many charr guardians.

Norn: Seems like the most obvious choice for a guardian. A giant hulking along in heavy armor. Seems to fit the role pretty well.. everyone expects the “tanky” (yes yes, I know, there’s no tanks) guy to be big. Plus the armor looks great on him. Downsides.. exactly what I said to begin with. Most norns are guardians (well, rangers, aparently, but…close second). I realize this shouldn’t matter to me much but it does. Also, they’re so big that the movement animation is slow and it actually feels like I’m going slower. I know I’m not but it feels weird.

Human: Obvious favorite race for all professions. All armor looks great. Feels normal. Problem, most popular race.

Asura: It’s kinda hard to show off any armor or equipment when it’s 10% of the size of everyone else. Pros are that it’s kinda neat, being a tanky guy (yes, again, I know) in a mini form. The armors do look good.. when you zoom in and can actually see. Movement is fine, always feels like you’re moving fast. The attack animations are just so-so though. You hit someone with a hammer as a norn and you can feel the impact. As as asura .. you see their health go down but it doesn’t feel like a big hit.

Sylvari: I had really high hopes for sylvari. Frame similar to the humans but slightly smaller, good animations, and a fairly uncommon choice for heavy armor. I didn’t even think about making this post until I looked up some of the armor though. Lots of heavy armor just didn’t look quite right on them.. and the cultural armor didn’t look right either. It just didn’t look … HEAVY, ya know?

Anyways, please feel free to share any and all thoughts about this. I encourage people to attach screenshots to support points.

Thanks for reading

<Demographics Source>

Mongo.2490:

Asura: It’s kinda hard to show off any armor or equipment when it’s 10% of the size of everyone else. Pros are that it’s kinda neat, being a tanky guy (yes, again, I know) in a mini form. The armors do look good.. when you zoom in and can actually see. Movement is fine, always feels like you’re moving fast. The attack animations are just so-so though. You hit someone with a hammer as a norn and you can feel the impact. As as asura .. you see their health go down but it doesn’t feel like a big hit.

I actually feel the exact opposite. My 2nd Warrior is an asura with a Hammer. That thing is so big that she has to throw her weight from side to side during the opening swings of Hammer #1 and then she has to do a mightly leap into the air for the final swing. Though I’m not physically large, I’ve always felt as if using a Hammer has projected a large presence. Each attack is forcing the asura to throw their entire body into the blow, which is just so satisfying to me.

My only real objection is their armor. Some many nice armor sets that look good on a human don’t really look that nice on an asura. I finally found a set that I like, but even the Dark karma armor series looks different on me. Some of the racial armors are interesting, but I take issue with the exposed flesh around the shoulder joints on the T1 & T2 heavy armors. To actually be completely protected by armor, you’d have to use the T3 racial set (which I don’t visually like).

I also just found this which gives even more statistics on choices. It seems sylvari guardians are pretty uncommon.. adds to the appeal. Can anyone speak to how heavy armor looks on them?

My current guardian is a female charr. I’ve started a guardian several times but it took me a long time to actually like the profession, so I’ve gone through character creation a few times.

I chose the charr precisely because it’s a little off the beaten path, as you already said. I like the generally beastly look you can create for them. While my guardian can support, I don’t necessarily look at her as “protective”. I can be a fierce guardian. I look at my guardian as someone who boosts their team in a tactical fashion while leading the charge. I understand your issues with the head/neck region. I found that there are a few body types where the neck is less pronounced and not as high, so it doesn’t look so odd.

Before this I had a sylvari guardian, as a totally different character. For the same reason that it’s not something you initially would expect. On the sylvari, I don’t necessarily look at the guardian as being a heavy profession, I figured that the theme of sylvari as “wardens” fits really nicely with the concept of a guardian and contrary to my charr, I didn’t feel that my sylvari guardian had to look heavy. I don’t really like “regular” armor on sylvari in general, but with this in mind I like the leafy cultural armor.

After about 10 rerolls (I’m not even kidding) I settled on a human female for my guardian. I had wanted to try norn female because I was inspired by a few different amazing norn female guardians but I had an issue with the proportions on norn bodies. So I went with what I identify with most (human female, just like me) and I love her

Just posted a screenshot of her last night in the Guardian forum thread. If you haven’t yet checked it out, you can look through a lot of different screenshots there.

Thanks for the replies guys. Nice to know I’m not the only one who goes a little crazy about this. I’ll take some more looks at the screenshots in the guardian forum and hopefully be inspired.

Love the way my giant Norn looks in full plate. None of the sissy draconic stuff…transmuted all that back to a karma look I found in the Timberline falls / Lornar’s Pass areas.

That said, giant norns can be a real pita in jumping puzzles…plus they make dandy targets in WvW.

PvE, he looks good though.

I recall spending a few hours during the headstart weekend and around then making characters, going to the mists, and playing around at 80 in the mists tutorial area to get a feel for looks, animations, and the like.

I have re-made characters in every MMO I’ve played just for appearance changes (until character makeover options became available).

I stuck with female charr for my guardian, thinking it would be pretty fun to play as a heavily-armored warrior who supported her warband on the frontlines. kitten what anyone in charr society might say, I felt it works.

It helped that I really like Almorra as a character, so aiming for vigil armor on my female charr helped solidify that decision.

That said, I’ve come across many cool-looking human and sylvari guardians and have considered making another in one of those races.

I went with a norn female guardian and used the smallest body size and shape the creation sliders would allow. She is not that much larger than my human female ranger.

What was more important to me was the animations of the race. You are going to be looking at the backside of the character for a very long time. For this reason I could never play a charr or asura, I really dislike the animations for these 2 races.

In one of the Fractals, you are forced into playing a charr. It is so disorienting for me, I am always downed before I get close to the first gate. The toon’s movements look so clumsy, I miss-time dodges and the like.

http://argos-soft.net/GW2ArmorGallery/index.php?sex=0&weight=3&color=10&race=4

This is a good site to preview how the armors look on the different races. Another way is to make a new char, head for the hearts of the mysts (PvP) as soon as you finish your tutorial, do the three events there, and then go to the PvP locker to preview armor pieces on it. Personally I do have a sylvari guardian and like how it looks (might add screenshots later when I’m back home), right now using a mix of vigil and heritage sets on him, and working on what will be his new look which will also include the guild commendation weapons, and pieces of the HotW and CoE heavy armors.

Personally I don’t see guardians as having to be big hulking characters (I’d leave that to warriors) since they do use magic to compensate, but then again lots of times I go for anti-typecast char-prof combos, two of my other chars I’m playing the most are a male norn mesmer (using the most “fat” body type) and an asura warrior.

For armor gallery I prefer this site: http://www.gw2armorgallery.com/

As for lore, I’ve always felt human fits the best. Norn are big & hulking so they look good in the heavy armor, but this selfless warrior protector just doesn’t fit. Norn are out for glory. And the Charr are pure warriors. Sylvari I could see lorewise as Guardian…they’re a pretty altruistic race. My 1st Guardian was Sylvari but I rerolled human cuz I like the armor look better.

Good luck.

Norn or Human, most of the heavy armor graphics are awful for the other races. Asura could be cool maybe if you could even see what they were wearing or looked like, but they are so small 9 times out of 10 I can’t even tell what they are wearing.