I want to make one of each class and from a thematic standpoint have always planned to use a variety of different races for them. But when I started PvP I noticed the large number of asura everywhere; someone told me it’s because it makes it harder to see their “tells”. It does make sense and now I find myself always wondering if I should make an asura for each new character.
I do like asura but I have a lot of them already. I’m thinking about a necro now which was going to be a charr (since I’ve never made one before) but I keep wondering if an asura be more effective.
How important do you see this issue being – either for a necro in particular, or in general?
Because Asuras are small.
That means that animations are small and they vanish in the clutter of the fight, making it harder to even target them.
Take an Asura minion master, for instance. Most the time you can’t to see it because it is among all of those big minions, so you can’t really tell when a fear mark or a dagger immobilize is coming.
The more clutter there is in a fight, the bigger is the Asura advantage.
They have an unfair and obvious advantage and anyone denying it has no clue whatsoever.
Because Asuras are small.
That means that animations are small and they vanish in the clutter of the fight, making it harder to even target them.
Take an Asura minion master, for instance. Most the time you can’t to see it because it is among all of those big minions, so you can’t really tell when a fear mark or a dagger immobilize is coming.
The more clutter there is in a fight, the bigger is the Asura advantage.
They have an unfair and obvious advantage and anyone denying it has no clue whatsoever.
True. If it was for me I would give them an hp debuff.
to be honest: the only animations I realize are those of Norn Guardians and Norn Hambow warriors.
The Problem in sPvP is, that its way to crowded to notice ANY animation withouth casttimers. Asura is no exception
solution: give us freaking casttimers with noticeable cast Icons, increase the casttime of some of the spells for better risk / reward gameplay
“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2.” – Well, I guess you really failed, ANet!
Update 5.9.2013: getting better ANet, still way to go! A Lannister always pays his debts – For everyone else, there’s Mastercard.
My first character was an asura, just because I love the asura race’s look. But, After playing Charr and Human i find it difficult to go back to asura because the camera on asura characters are much more lower to the ground and zoomed in. This is epecially frustrating in certain areas like Henge and Clocktower.
Well it does seem that the more clutter, the more likely an asura is to get lost in the crowd. That said, I don’t want every char I build to be asura, cute as I find them. Consensus seems to be that the difference isn’t huge so maybe I’ll give a charr a try.
Well think about it this way… in a 3v3+ maybe even 5v5 if bunker is huge, your tanky guys small humans and GC or squishiest are small asura it makes it rather more difficult to see where they are at all times, slightly harder to target them, and therefore makes their positioning slightly easier. In competition every advantage is good right?
How much its better is hard to test.
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It’s funny that so many people are saying that this isn’t that big of a deal, but a Google search turned up a thread from the summer with tons of people complaining about watching a tourney where the vast majority of players were using exclusively asura.
So is the advantage real? Or is everyone just doing what everyone else does?
The other class I was considering was ranger as I want to try that out too. Am I right in thinking the small size issue is far less significant for a class oriented around pets? Or does the spirit build make asura better there too?
The advantage is real, even if you are running with an asura and stop it flails around a bit looking like a cast animation. The size helps obscure actual animations. Playing an asuran is like drinking a potion that increases your ability to land attacks. Its not limited to pet classes, in a team fight and anywhere with large particle effects you will notice an ease of playing and hitting when you use an asura.
So many asuras died because I accidently killed them in the crowd :-P
“We just don’t want players to grind in GW2.” – Well, I guess you really failed, ANet!
Update 5.9.2013: getting better ANet, still way to go! A Lannister always pays his debts – For everyone else, there’s Mastercard.
I play a Human, I’ve never had issues playing against an Asura. Ever.
I can’t recall having issues myself either. Maybe because I use the keyboard for targeting?
But there does seem to be something at play here. And really, none of us has any way of knowing if we wouldn’t pick up a tell or something more easily on a larger character even if it doesn’t seem that playing against the asura is a problem.
The advantage is real, even if you are running with an asura and stop it flails around a bit looking like a cast animation. The size helps obscure actual animations. Playing an asuran is like drinking a potion that increases your ability to land attacks. Its not limited to pet classes, in a team fight and anywhere with large particle effects you will notice an ease of playing and hitting when you use an asura.
Definately that.
I’m playing a Lock-Down Mesmer. There’s little to no chance of seeing when an Asura casts and what he’s casting in the middle of a fight.
If it isn’t a 1v1 i simply won’t target Asura, which is really bad.
Means they get away with it just because they’re small and my build is made for interrupts.
Play some Skyhammer matches. Get a Charr/Norn hammer Gaurdian and go to the cannon. Now try to use Banish on people there and see how often it will get dodged or otherwise avoided. Now try the same with Asura Guardian. You will notice the difference. I know I did.
if you’re pvp only then maybe an asura is the way to go. but if you also want to pve with them, MAKE SURE to create ONE OF EACH RACE, as the personal story is different for each race as is the achievements based on those 5 races. creating all of the same race will cause you to lose out on roughly 200 easy APs (not positive just a guess off the dome). but yes asura do have several pvp advantages: harder to predict/judge from lack of obvious animations as well as dodging/evade animations, hiding behind bigger players so it is impossible to directly target you, getting mixed up with minions/pets/summons/etc, and also others left out that asura can hide behind many objects that other classes can’t as they would have their name sticking out the side etc. a small wall for instance will allow an asura to hide and pan the camera to observe the entire battlefield w/o anyong ever knowing they’re their. hope this helps
Lately I just run around in hot join and solo q with a super large norn guardian in condi gear. That way when I win or down someone I know its skill>build. Those who fear a challenge can keep their minimum sized asura.
Edit: forgot to mention some mesmers actually prefer to use large norn/char to obscure view with giant clones.
Scaling all asuras to the max size asura you can make can alleviate some of the problems. The tech for this already exists as it was used in the Super Adventure Box.
In general the higher the skill level of the enemy the less it matters. It used to be a big deal, but by now most experienced players have gotten used to asura. I played asura, norn and charr with the same specs and i haven’t noticed being targeted less.
In teamfights it’s mostly about calling targets and aoe. If you get focused it won’t matter much if you are asura or charr.
In general the higher the skill level of the enemy the less it matters. It used to be a big deal, but by now most experienced players have gotten used to asura. I played asura, norn and charr with the same specs and i haven’t noticed being targeted less.
In teamfights it’s mostly about calling targets and aoe. If you get focused it won’t matter much if you are asura or charr.
You’ve mistaken the benefit of playing Asura. Its not chosen because you are hard to target, its chosen because they cant see your attacks – not a defensive model choice but offensive.
You’ve mistaken the benefit of playing Asura. Its not chosen because you are hard to target, its chosen because they cant see your attacks – not a defensive model choice but offensive.
Okay, but again, does that really matter for something like a ranger given that they mostly use a bow, which is fairly large, as opposed to hand gestures? I could be wrong as I haven’t played one before.
It used to be a big deal, but by now most experienced players have gotten used to asura.
By “have gotten used to asura” you mean that everyone has rolled asura already and nobody give a kitten about animations anymore?
When i’m not concentrating i get hit by earthshakers from charrs as well. From my experience most players dodge “randomly”, meaning they use it for positional changes or dodge after they’ve been hit by a big attack. If you only dodge the most telegraphed atttacks (es, churning, bob etc.), it doesn’t really matter if you fight an asura.
Since the game is so fast, there is a lot of muscle memory involved with dodging. To me it matters more to have an idea of the enemies spec and know when to dodge to break their rotation. Also, i don’t see that many asura around anymore.
I agree that asura have an advantage, but it’s not a big one.
Simple solution:
enable an pvp only setting to display all enemies as humans.
If this game wants to be somewhere near esport, you should not have an adventage for picking a certain race (even though we could argue about how big the adventage is).
There’s an advantage. But, for real, someone who rolls with Asura Necromancer has no taste…. Seriously, a rat necromancer? What theme is it supposed to be?
Better chase them down with a big cat
Charrs have obvious advantage if it comes to voice, look, theme and look in Death Shroud. They also have a good evade utility as a racial with low cd, which can really help in PvE encounters since Necromancers lack any type of hard defense aside from default two dodges.
In general the higher the skill level of the enemy the less it matters. It used to be a big deal, but by now most experienced players have gotten used to asura. I played asura, norn and charr with the same specs and i haven’t noticed being targeted less.
In teamfights it’s mostly about calling targets and aoe. If you get focused it won’t matter much if you are asura or charr.
I believe, that being able to pick out a specific cast animation on an Asura to interrupt it, in the middle of a fight, has nothing to do with skills.
Asura dissapear behind spell effects, minions, turrets and other pieces of fluff…
Things other races simply stand out from.
If you have a build that relies on interrupting the enemies heal etc. you’re gonna have a bad time.
You’ve mistaken the benefit of playing Asura. Its not chosen because you are hard to target, its chosen because they cant see your attacks – not a defensive model choice but offensive.
Okay, but again, does that really matter for something like a ranger given that they mostly use a bow, which is fairly large, as opposed to hand gestures? I could be wrong as I haven’t played one before.
The weapon size gets scaled with the character. Greatswords and war hammers look like toothpicks and tiny spoons, and not only are the animations on asura hard to read because of size/shape, but some animations look similar to animations of skills of another class on a different race.
Another thing is asura appear to “move faster”. I think this is because their skill animations/ general animations move them the same distance as other races, but because of their size they move relatively further/faster. Its much harder to target or again pick out animations in this case. Ranger asura with sword is very interesting to watch in this regard.
Most of the time asura just look like little blobs to me, with their little legs and arms a blur; its hard to tell what they are doing or even to visually identify what class they are.
Playing asura gives you a distinct advantage on many levels, but I’m not sure if other factors, like say lag, have a bigger impact. A combination of high lag and playing against asura (especially scaled-down asura) is pretty annoying though.
I believe, that being able to pick out a specific cast animation on an Asura to interrupt it, in the middle of a fight, has nothing to do with skills.
Asura dissapear behind spell effects, minions, turrets and other pieces of fluff…
Things other races simply stand out from.
If you have a build that relies on interrupting the enemies heal etc. you’re gonna have a bad time.
I don’t think anyone actually picks out specific animations with any reliability. It reminds me of high level PvP from WoW. On the forums, no one ever fell for fake casts. But sure enough, play a top 10 player and fake casts would work about 50% of the time.
I do believe skill is enough to let you distinguish between actual ability casts and autoattacks. But anything beyond that I just don’t believe. I think it’s more like “oh hey, my random evade dodged that warr’s stun… err I mean I was totally watching for the stun animation all along”.
It’s just confirmation bias. If you always dodge abilities, which is feasible, a lot of the time you’ll dodge something you really wanted to. Then you convince yourself you did it on purpose, ignoring the dozens of times you dodged something you didn’t care about.
As said here, asura have 2 clear advantages.
1. Targeting. You running into teamfight, you need to pick up target. Have fun to click on tiniest asura between pets/minions/players/turrets/clones, or waste 1-3 sec on tab targeting. This is significant advantage in team fights.
2. Counterplay. When I fight against norn or charr hammer warrior, I can see and dodge a lot of hammer abilities. When I fight against asura (especially in clutter) – I usually don’t even bother. I really don’t understand how Anet allows to have such advantage (legal!) in the game where you supposed to build your tactic on reading enemy animations.
I believe, that being able to pick out a specific cast animation on an Asura to interrupt it, in the middle of a fight, has nothing to do with skills.
Asura dissapear behind spell effects, minions, turrets and other pieces of fluff…
Things other races simply stand out from.
If you have a build that relies on interrupting the enemies heal etc. you’re gonna have a bad time.
I don’t think anyone actually picks out specific animations with any reliability. It reminds me of high level PvP from WoW. On the forums, no one ever fell for fake casts. But sure enough, play a top 10 player and fake casts would work about 50% of the time.
I do believe skill is enough to let you distinguish between actual ability casts and autoattacks. But anything beyond that I just don’t believe. I think it’s more like “oh hey, my random evade dodged that warr’s stun… err I mean I was totally watching for the stun animation all along”.
It’s just confirmation bias. If you always dodge abilities, which is feasible, a lot of the time you’ll dodge something you really wanted to. Then you convince yourself you did it on purpose, ignoring the dozens of times you dodged something you didn’t care about.
Well, mostly you are supposed to dodge out of Earthshaker. Doesn’t work 100% of the time, but it’s one of the most telegraphed skills.
Mess with the animation, and it becomes OP. Norn Eartshakers are easily dodged (not 100%, so dodging is not enough), Asuran ones not that well.
Other than that, when bigger races hit something with a weapon, touching the target is not enough: the reach of the weapon is actually superior to melee range. Pretty awkward.
Other skills from war must be predicted. Example: Pin Down. You have to expect the warrior to use that first and dodge as soon as you hear the sound of the arrow. Even then, this isn’t perfect.
I actually see dodge more used for repositioning.
You will never be able to know what an engineer is going to do next…
The advantage of having smaller bodies and therefore smaller animations is completely overwritten by the significant disadvantage of having a significantly worse camera angle. Most people in Solo Arena don’t play Asura but instead play human because they have the advantage of having a relatively small body, but at the same time they don’t share the camera quirks.
My asura has gotten to the point of being unplayable due to the terrible camera.
As a related question, which classes do you think benefits the most from the Asuran size and telegraph? I guess the posts so far more or less established that the advantage is greatest on warriors and guardians.
I actually wish this weren’t an issue because as much as I love asura I don’t want to play one for every char. :/ In fact for my ranger I may just leave this bit of “optimization” on the table and play a sylvari anyway.
It’s funny how people are different. I nearly always target with the keyboard so asura have no impact on my targeting. And I don’t find the low camera angle an issue either. Go figure.
I’m thinking about a necro now which was going to be a charr (since I’ve never made one before) but I keep wondering if an asura be more effective.