Guild Wars 2

It’s time to roll a guardian. I’ve narrowed it down to either female Human or female Norn. Humans seem to have better armor choices but Norns might have better animations… Show me yours and tell me why you love/hate your choice!

go norns, animations > armor over time

better armors will come with time but animations don’t change.

From personal experience (got norn guard and human warr), norns have better looking GS animations, and the models themselves seem more fitting for heavy armor fighters. If you want, you can always make your norn girl really short, then she will be about the size of a max height human male and blend in nicely.

This said, armor issues with norn may be more severe than you think: the real problem is not armor style (just 3 cultural armors for each race), but “stretching”. Basically, skins made for human proportions are adjusted to norn frame, and issues arise. Many sets that look good on human get stupidly overlage shoulder pieces on norn, skirts start looking like a family tent, and in some cases stretching causes visible texture quality loss. So if you’re style sensitve, dressing up norn is going to be more difficult.

I’d say try making one of each race and use wardrobe armor preview funcion.

Tristavel.9218:

skirts start looking like a family tent

I’ve noticed this and it does bug me. I also have issues with the Norn female voice, it grates on me at times, and if we’re going to be hearing our characters speak a lot more in HoT it might get annoying… I think I’m leaning towards Human. The animations are still decent (I do like the GS chain-end uppercut) and they hold a staff nicely with a good empower animation.

Human master race… Anet always cater armour skins to human’s body design and everything just looks better on human and you have a lot more customisation options that fit the body design. I love my Norn but customisation is hard and stuff just looks weird. I also think Norn have really stumpy arms so stuff just looks meh… Human op.

Human guards look really sweet… until you look at their arms, and they’re total twigs! Sometimes I wonder how my barbie doll can carry her GS / hammer. Pics will tell the rest of the story.

Charr are the only good choice Female charr in culturel tier 3 armor…..so much kitten

Norns have bigger…

Personal opinion: go with human! The majority the armour are designed for human frame. Meaning they look the best on humans and generally, Sylvari. Charr and Asura get the short end of the stick. While Norns are just human enough to be able to look good in most armour, their big frames does distort a lot of armour. I myself had huge, huge, huge issues dressing my one and only Norn. But then again, she’s a necro. Plate might be easier to dress Norns in.

I personally like the Norn women more, than the human woman, since they look more “massive”, which fits heavy armor classes in my opinion. i also like that you can make them look more muscular and so more like “real-life women”. I’m not small myself and i prefer the female character in the taller and more muscular side.
I also like the animations of the norn women.
My guardian is a human guy though. He looks so tiny and delicate next to some norn. Always wondering how his stixi-thin arms can even hold these massive hammers. ^^"

Easy..Norn due to bigger and easier to see character armor/weapons.

When creating a new character, there’s one choice, every player has to make.
This choice is, whether he plays as an Asura or as a lesser race.

You don’t want to make the wrong choice, so go with the master race!

Norn don’t have better animations and both races have pretty nice heavy armor. So pick whatever, just don’t pick plant, rat or catbull.