Guild Wars 2

It is mostly cosmetic. Racial and Elite are not even worth of reading the tool tip.

Every Racial skill sucks, except Bear Form in PvE which is still not worth picking Norn for.

If you want to play PvP, it depends on your class. Asura is nice for classes with animations which are easy to evade for example warrior earthshaker.
Big races like norn are good for bunkerguards to get attention and humans fit well with thiefs animations

dominik.9721:

If you want to play PvP, it depends on your class. Asura is nice for classes with animations which are easy to evade for example warrior earthshaker.
Big races like norn are good for bunkerguards to get attention and humans fit well with thiefs animations

Norn or Charr in large armor attract all the attention.
And I hate it on my charr

That’s why i wrote it’s good if you are playing a bunkerguard

Race only matters as far as size, nothing else. Even then I feel the advantage is tiny at best.

While it is true certain skills will be more difficult to see coming, you can still predict them just as easily and honestly you’re only a tiny bit harder to target. For example, that asura warrior who just switched to axe, he’s probably gonna try and eviscerate you soon.

I tested a max height norn guard and asura guard the other day, same build just to see (medi burst) and I felt no significant different…….other then the asura feeling quicker, though that’s just a perception thing.

In short, go with what you like visually. I personally would play asura if not for the tiny as weapons and meh armor choices for heavy. Female charr is what I currently plan to make.

i dunno, some skills could be pretty handy,

sylvari and humans get long duration immobilze
sylvari: Grasping Vines
human: Binding Roots

norn and human get elites with nice damage
Norn: Charge
Human: Hounds of Balthazar

as a pvper its mostly asuras for the size and harder to spot telegraphs.

They intentionally made it so that racial elites don’t give anyone a noticeable combat leverage to avoid this issue. They’re all for the most part pretty bad. Bear Form is the only one that has its uses.

Dont know warriors so probably everyone above me is correct that is makes no difference, but for rangers there is a slight bias towards Asura and Norn simply by the way their skills interact with the rangers traits and other skills.

The biggest example being the Asura skill “Technobabble” being effected by the ranger trait which increases daze duration by 100%.. making the skill a rather amusing 6s 1200 range daze.

Somewhat niche and not a big deal, but it is used in WvW by some and its worth noting if you really want to go all in min/maxing.

But like I said.. no idea if warriors have any such setups

Body size is important for camera position, animation spotting, and blocking vision. If you’re a little guy you can’t see past the big guys when stacking. If a group all play big guys they obscure stuff, like enemy animations.

I like Reaper of Grenth (human) for stacking some conditions that warriors normally can’t like poison and chilled, but the duration is too short (15 sec) and/or the cooldown is too long (180 sec). Otherwise it would be a great addition for a DeathKnight type of toon.

I sometimes use it in wvw for zerg busting but Signet of Rage is the go-to elite for warriors. Hounds of Balthazaar (human) would also be nice if the cooldown was shorter.

Mazdan.2071:

I like Reaper of Grenth (human) for stacking some conditions that warriors normally can’t like poison and chilled, but the duration is too short (15 sec) and/or the cooldown is too long (180 sec). Otherwise it would be a great addition for a DeathKnight type of toon.

I sometimes use it in wvw for zerg busting but Signet of Rage is the go-to elite for warriors. Hounds of Balthazaar (human) would also be nice if the cooldown was shorter.

Seconding the reaper. In zerg fights it’s a great way to tag everyone just by standing in their space, and if you’re trying to draw attention away from your zergmates the visual death cloud is a nice touch. With max Strength traited and +40% duration food the poison / chill triggers are 5sec apiece.