Guild Wars 2

I know Roy said we aren’t getting racial skills. But shape shifting is part of actual Norn physiology. It’s seems weird lore wise that this one class will be completely deprived of their “Nornhood”

there uh, ‘nornhood’ gets cut off, its uh part of the ritual to become a revenant….

If it’s going to bother you, you might want to pick a different race.

…. No, shape-shifting is not a part of their basic biology. It’s a magical gift granted on them by animal spirits, who are either really racist snobs about it, or the other races simply don’t buy into that religion enough to earn the perks… either way… it’s snobby.

Does this mean that Revenants are anti-religious? No Prayers, No Guns, No Spirits, no Science and No Tree-hugging hippy powers….

I think I just fell in love more with Revenant….

All kidding aside though, the racial elites were removed from the Revenant due to how the Rev cycles utility skills and the Racials were not balanced with that in mind. So to avoid a large balance issue, they simply cut it out.

No part of your Norn or any other part and anyone elses character was cut off int he making of your Revenant.

… That we know of.

[In whiney voice] But I want to be able to become the snow leopard and have revenant with steeeaaalth. [Storms off in a huff over ludicrously OP suggestion being shot down]

Sarif.1827:

…. No, shape-shifting is not a part of their basic biology. It’s a magical gift granted on them by animal spirits, who are either really racist snobs about it, or the other races simply don’t buy into that religion enough to earn the perks… either way… it’s snobby.

Does this mean that Revenants are anti-religious? No Prayers, No Guns, No Spirits, no Science and No Tree-hugging hippy powers….

I think I just fell in love more with Revenant….

All kidding aside though, the racial elites were removed from the Revenant due to how the Rev cycles utility skills and the Racials were not balanced with that in mind. So to avoid a large balance issue, they simply cut it out.

No part of your Norn or any other part and anyone elses character was cut off int he making of your Revenant.

… That we know of.

If you look on the wiki page about Norn it says that shape shifting is part of their biology

Yes but how do you explain how the Spirit of Bear was able to “cut off” Jora’s ability to shift then?

“The Bear Spirit is the most favored and strongest deity of the Norn. She offers the Norn power in their hunts and grants them the Bear Form.” – Gw Wiki

The ability to shift is a granted ability that can be taken away.

I don’t see why the racials wouldn’t work on Revenant if they just retained the Cooldowns, i think it’d be alright surely? The vast majority of the Elites & Utilities are all now widely useful and pretty kitten decent and worth using.

I mean if you swap EtD or Shiro’s Stun for an elite on a 180 second cooldown, I’d say you’re gimping yourself quite a bit, no? Would be nice to at least have the option.

Honestly if you gave Revenant access to Racials there’d be huge imbalances and honestly create a very real “Best race” for Rev. Right off bat I can think of Human’s access to Prayer of Kormir a huge issue cause of the condi management it provides. It also bypasses the limitations and balance done for Legend Utilities. While some, such as Shiro or Glint, might not see replacements legends like Jalis might suddenly become incredibly powerful with the ability to swap out the “bad” utilities for potentially amazing racial ones. This might not seem incredibly OP at first but you gotta consider we get 2 utility bars and that’s where things start to get out of hand.
Personally I’m okay with this. I’d rather race really only play a factor in terms of what you care for animation and looks wise than having to consider picking “best race” for my class.

Instead of balancing for both utility bars, just make racial skills static across both bars, recharge and all.

That doesn’t address the issue of the legends being balanced around not having those. Adding Asura’s radioactive field isn’t terrible on Malyx, but when you add it to Jalis and use it with Malyx that’s where situations arise.

Let it go, LET IT GOOOOOO

Your concerns are invalid; Do you even understand what it would take to balance all racials across all Revenant legends??

Get over it, this might help you:
https://youtu.be/R0H7EsWFbtc

this might help too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uty2zd7qizA

Star.8401:

Your concerns are invalid; Do you even understand what it would take to balance all racials across all Revenant legends??

Get over it, this might help you:
https://youtu.be/R0H7EsWFbtc

Why would you need to balance any differently on Revenant than any other class. Legends are just utilities. It’s not like they needed to “balance” racials around a warrior with all signet utilities, or a thief running venoms. Plus racial skills are underpowered to begin with so it’s not like it would matter. It’s annoyingly inconsistent that one class randomly doesn’t get something that all other classes do. It should be an all or nothing thing.

Chaos.5072:

Why would you need to balance any differently on Revenant than any other class.

I mean in every way the Revenant’s Utilities are different from every other class in the game. They come in sets that you can’t change. You get access to multiple sets of utilities with Legend Swap. Why do they need to be balanced differently? Because they are different from every other class.

Kodiak.3281:

Chaos.5072:

Why would you need to balance any differently on Revenant than any other class.

I mean in every way the Revenant’s Utilities are different from every other class in the game. They come in sets that you can’t change. You get access to multiple sets of utilities with Legend Swap. Why do they need to be balanced differently? Because they are different from every other class.

And Engineers get utilities that give them 5 new weapon skills – a mechanic different from every other class – yet they can use racial skills too. AND they get 2 skills for every utility skill but they even got special toolbelt racial skills some time ago.

Kodiak.3281:

Chaos.5072:

Why would you need to balance any differently on Revenant than any other class.

I mean in every way the Revenant’s Utilities are different from every other class in the game. They come in sets that you can’t change. You get access to multiple sets of utilities with Legend Swap. Why do they need to be balanced differently? Because they are different from every other class.

Engineers get toolbelt skills from their utilities, that is different from every other class and they still made it work. Not putting racials on Revenant just seems like a lazy cop-out in my opinion.

just..let…it…go…. who cares, racials are bad, out of everything in this game, this is the one thing you want to complain about so consistently? there are actual issues that the devs are working on.

Star.8401:

just..let…it…go…. who cares, racials are bad, out of everything in this game, this is the one thing you want to complain about so consistently? there are actual issues that the devs are working on.

This shouldn’t even be an issue in the fist place. There’s no reason arbitrarily remove something all classes have.

Chaos.5072:

Star.8401:

just..let…it…go…. who cares, racials are bad, out of everything in this game, this is the one thing you want to complain about so consistently? there are actual issues that the devs are working on.

This shouldn’t even be an issue in the fist place. There’s no reason arbitrarily remove something all classes have.

ORLLY
How long have you been developing games? Made any we’d know? Clearly you know how all this works behind the scenes right…?

Cause I’m sure the devs who have years of coding and game dev experience just wake up one day and spin a wheel for arbitrary decisions to make that day.

Mightybird.6034:

Chaos.5072:

Star.8401:

just..let…it…go…. who cares, racials are bad, out of everything in this game, this is the one thing you want to complain about so consistently? there are actual issues that the devs are working on.

This shouldn’t even be an issue in the fist place. There’s no reason arbitrarily remove something all classes have.

ORLLY
How long have you been developing games? Made any we’d know? Clearly you know how all this works behind the scenes right…?

Cause I’m sure the devs who have years of coding and game dev experience just wake up one day and spin a wheel for arbitrary decisions to make that day.

+1

Chaos.5072:

Engineers get toolbelt skills from their utilities, that is different from every other class and they still made it work. Not putting racials on Revenant just seems like a lazy cop-out in my opinion.

There’s a number of issues with the Engineer argument. For example you are cherry picking an apple (main weapon skills) and comparing it to an orange (utilities). While they are both fruit (skills) they aren’t the same thing (weapon vs utility).

More over you also don’t consider the fact that there’s no racial weapons which thus has no impact on an Engineer’s accessibility. Furthermore you also fail to consider the fact that you can’t swap weapon skills nor choose which ones you get, you get them as a set. In addition to this you also fail to account for the fact that in order to get so many utilities that add additional utility bar in addition to utilities that change their weapon bar they’re forced to forgo weapon swap entirely.

While you may think it’s a lazy option, the more likely scenario is in the current controlled environment they are capable of balancing against a known environment. There’s 5 legends that can be mixed and matched all with known utilities that can’t be changed. Now lets say in addition to this you add in 15 potential racial utilities and 15 potential ultimate abilities as well. This creates pure chaos in terms of balancing, but more importantly it drives racial balancing. What if adding in the extra Condi clear of Humans (Prayer to Kormir) is out of scope and creates too much Condi clear on the Revenant? Are you willing to see something like Soothing Stone lose it’s condition clear to compensate? If you’re a Norn player is that fair to balance the class around a Human only Utility?

Given the tightly controlled nature of our Utilities it makes not having racial utilities the logical choice in the matter.

Kodiak.3281:

Given the tightly controlled nature of our Utilities it makes not having racial utilities the logical choice in the matter.

So, you’re saying it’s really a problem with the class, and not with the racial skills themselves?

Personally, I want the racial skills. I really do. But I’d accept them being attached to a “null” legend, basically not channeling a legend at all. That way you can access them, but you can’t channel a legend while you do so, and you have to set that as one of your two legends before you go into battle.

Palador.2170:

So, you’re saying it’s really a problem with the class, and not with the racial skills themselves?

Personally, I want the racial skills. I really do. But I’d accept them being attached to a “null” legend, basically not channeling a legend at all. That way you can access them, but you can’t channel a legend while you do so, and you have to set that as one of your two legends before you go into battle.

Correct. The class is balanced the way it is because we are unable to swap utilities out for alternatives. If you choose Shiro, you are stuck with the abilities Shiro has.

Your idea is probably one of the more reasonable solutions but I’d question the return of investment on the amount of work it’d take to implement. For example Racials only work in 2/3rds of the game (WvW and PvE) and are excluded from PvP entirely for every class. In addition to adding a new legend that changes race to race, effectively 5 new “null” legends (one for each race) there’s also the hurdle of it allowing for and remembering an Elite choice (there’s 3 elites per race). At this point, less than 2 weeks from HOT release, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.

At the end of the day it comes down to what you can live with. You can either live without Racials, or there’s other classes that offer that if it’s that much of a deal breaker.

I understand that some people really want the racial skills. I had hoped for Norn to be true shapeshifters in battle but that dream was quickly shattered by a 3 (or longer?) minute cooldown.

However from a non roleplaying perspective, you will 99.99% of the time not use a Norn racial elite over class elites. I do remember using the bear charge to run away from enemies in WVW a year ago though, that was hilarious as it was a massive charge :P.

Even from a RP perspective you can say that the Revenants chose not to be able to transform or never use their transforms because they can channel frigging Legends from the mists and use their power. They may have a closer connection than the connection with the animal spirits. Also there was a thing in the lore that the animal spirits could deny or take away the power of a Norn to shift shapes.

What I would like to see for revenants is that on legend channel they would get a more obvious tell in which Legend they are. For like Shiro maybe longer hair or his mark on the chest / shoulders / floating around him. For Glint perhaps get some parts crystalised?

Think about how Bioshock shows you which plasmid you have activated, something like that would be epic for Revenant legend tells. I also think it makes channeling a legend more awesome.