Guild Wars 2

Alright, this is basically going to be a huge wall of text, so forgive me for that.

First off I’d like to say job well done on most of the human racial skills. Dwayna makes sense, as does Lyssa. Hounds of Balthazar are awesome, and Reaper of Grenth really gives you that “Shadowy Death God” feel.

Two of the racials though, are strange and mostly not useful. Kormir and Melandru. Kormir doesn’t really make a lot of sense, or provide any cool sense of “Yeah, this is the God I am blessed by!”. Kormir is the Justice god, previous leader of the Sunspears, and you guys have her.. Removing conditions? I’d like to pause on this and move to Melandru. Firstly, this skill is nigh useless, the cast times only allow you to get off one or two of the useless skills (If you don’t get interrupted). Plenty of classes have skills equal to or greater than Melandru’s in their weapon skills, let alone their utilities, and those skills don’t have 20 second CD’s and 5 second cast times! Melandru is the “Ranger God” and no ranger in their right mind would ever be caught dead using this skill, EVER. Now don’t get me wrong, the skill is cool, it’s just pathetic and useless as a skill. Hounds of Balthazar and Reaper of Grenth not only out shine it in usefulness, but also in coolness and the ability for their classes (Warrior/Necromancer) to use them effectively.

Solution #1: Switch them. Not many people actually like Melandru, except Ranger’s. So making an Elite based around probably one of the least favored gods is just not a good thing to do. Kormir is fairly popular, being the new and awesome god, ex-mortal, etc. A Kormir Elite would be awesome and I think many players would love to see this. Imagine the wings as seen in the attachment, except on the player, and possibly giving us a golden glow and some other neat effects. It would look something like the Paladin’s Avenging Wrath from WoW. Obviously the greatest thing about this skill is that it would be a shout out (Get it? Shouts!) to the Paragon of GW1, and I’m sure people would LOVE that (I know I would). So there are two options for this skill, you can make it a short lived Avatar state, that has group buffing shouts (We retain the supportive qualities of Melandru’s elite) or a slightly longer stat buffing skill, giving bonuses to supportive qualities (Toughness, Vitality, Healing), and maybe even radiating boons (Like a reverse RoG). Either one of these would be praised by the community, and I am positive that no one will care if you shove Melandru into the Utility category, removing three conditions or snaring an enemy like the Sylvari Racial. I can let you know right now that if you made a short lived avatar state, sort of like a Guardian Tome Elite, where I got several powerful shouts (That activated shout traits) I would never turn back. Then this skill would be AS COOL as the Hounds and RoG, and more importantly AS USEFUL.

Solution #2: Make the Kormir Elite, and keep the Melandru one around too, except buff it some. I figure you guys worked a decent amount to make that racial, and Norn’s have four Racial Elites, so why not us Humans too?

Please Anet, I’m almost positive I speak for 95% of the community when I tell you that Avatar of Melandru is a worthless skill that is clearly not intended for “it’s profession” (Ranger). I am also quite certain that many people wanted a Paragon Class in GW2, and were sad to not get one. This would DEFINITELY make it up to all those people, I know it would for me. A Racial Elite that brings back your memories of the Paragon, supporting the group and being a Sunspear. Not to mention if this Elite would use Shouts, and the shouts in it were affected by traits, it would be an AWESOME edition to Warrior and Guardian Shout Support builds.

I’m no expert on balancing things, but I know that an elite that throws out group buffs and works with traits and all this other stuff would be fairly OP. So I’m going to try to help out with that.

I’m thinking the Cooldown should be 180 seconds and the duration as 20 seconds, the same as Melandru. Obviously making the shouts it has be affected by traits is an awesome but dangerous slope. However, we should keep in mind that you can Buff the Hounds of Balthazar, give them quickness and everything, and I would assume condition duration and other things affect the RoG, not to mention Thief traits for chilled/poisoned targets greatly boost its usefulness. I am unsure what the skills would be, maybe popular shouts or other paragon skills that you haven’t already put in GW2 (Looks at SY!).
Again, I just think this is an awesome idea, and I’m sure many will agree with me. If not about the Kormir Elite they will almost definetly agree that the Melandru elite is pathetic, and does not work at all for it’s class.

Before bed Bump

I agree the cast times of the Melandru elite make it worthless to use even as a bit of fun. Not sure if other classes racial transformations are like that or not haven’t tried them out yet but it needs to change.

In terms of actual gameplay and not lore, Prayer to Kormir is much better then prayer to Dwayna, that mostly might be because its my Rangers best/only reliable condition remover. Whereas Dwayna is just a basic heal with no flavour (like they said was the point of racial skills) and all classes have a better one. That said they both lack flavour and are pretty tame and underpowered compared to the racials of other races.

As for Kormir being more favoured then Melandru? No. Kormir is one of the most hated characters in the franchise. While people who joined with GW2 probably won’t care or know enough about the Gods to hate her, Nightfall players remember her as the annoying whiny one who started Nightfall, planned a failed invasion that got everybody killed then proceeded to do nothing but mope around until the player defeated Abbadon where she immediately claimed all the rewards and recognition that you deserved.

Also Quaggens worship Melandru so quite clearly she is the best God.

agreed, melandru is only useful for transform pop roots end
that is literally it.
even then the bleeds applied by the root are’nt effected by condit-dmg and are pretty darn weak.

i’d prefer something like:

“Scythe of Dhuum”
Ground target AoE (1200 range)
unleash a Scythe of Dhuum on the target area, The scythe will spin around dealing X damage to all foes in the area per second.
2 second cast, 5-10 second duration, 60 second recharge.

or change Melandru to:
Take on the Aspect of Melandru removing all conditions and becoming immune to conditions for the duration.
Instant cast, 10 second duration, 90 second recharge.
does’nt change your model.

Human elites absolutely sucks hounds of balthazar seem to be the most useful one.

I’d love to have Aura of Kormir, as a reverse Reaper of Grenth, granting maybe Retaliation , Regeneration and 3 stacks of Might for 3s every 3s with the same, or around, duration and cooldown as RoG.

Melandru is such a joke. I think I only used it once to see the skills, but that was before I start using the wiki. There is no situation I can think of using this skill, not even just for the “effect”, it’s ugly as hell! I hope this get replaced by something else. I’d like a skill related to Mad King. :P

Edit: It would be nice if we could use RoG while moving too…

I think the point to racial skills is to make them less powerful and more situational than class skills. You rarely see other races use their racial skills as well – though the norn wurm seems to pop up more than usual.

I personally would have looooved something along the lines of GW1 avatar of X skills, particularly for form skills like grenth & melandru. While I do think Lyssa desperately needs a more reliable effect, dwayna can use the slightest health bonus and melandru could do with shorter cast times, the idea of all these skills is to give you something your class normally would not have.

- Dwayna gives direct heals to professions that have low or no direct healing skills
- Kormir gives 3 condition removals, which is rare on any skill
- Grenth allows you to get poison & chill, great for guardian/warrior in melee
- Balthazar is quite alright for quick allies
- Melandru is supposed to heal/support, but is just not worth the slot..
- Lyssa is only good if you want to play around

So most of them have a point, and some professions have no use for certain ones. Personally I’d love it if reaper/melandru were actual avatars, and I definitely see why melandru & Lyssa need a boost!