Please Nerf the Sylvari Racial Ultimate

I am a Sylvari. So is almost every single one of my characters. I chose it because I like their backstory and how they look/glow. I think all players should have this same opportunity I have to play the race I love the most because of their story, not because of their racial abilities.

I am not sure if this is the case for PvE or sPvP as I am a WvW player, but I consistently see Summon Druid Spirit as both a viable and sometimes even a preferred ult. I don't think the ability is overpowered in any way, but I do think it should be nerfed so that in a game where fashion is so important, people can choose the race they want to look like, not the ult they want to play with.

In case you're wondering why it's seen as good (at least in wvw). Some classes either don't have great ultimates or their ultimates don't fit the role the meta has dictated for their class. Summon Druid Spirit is decent AOE damage along with crowd control, making it fairly strong in group WvW play.

Thanks for your time!

Alatar made some good points

@Alatar.7364 said:So your argument for Nerfing Sylvari Racial Elite is that other Racial Elites are Bad? Wouldn't much more logical conclusion be Buff the other Racial Elites?With this Thread, Instead of helping Everyone you chose to punish Many...

Unfortunately I realized I can't make a poll retroactively, so I am just including the idea of Buffing the other races instead of nerfing Sylvari.

@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:

@Oglaf.1074 said:The thing is, Anet has gone on record saying that they don't want the races to matter that much. The racial skills are just supposed to be fun fluff, really.

They're not going to buff the others (as much as I'd love the Norn shapeshift ones to be useable) so the only logical outcome is to bring the Sylvari racial skills down to the same levels of uselessness.

Shoutout to Major Domo who had an interesting alternative

@"Major Domo.9250" said:

1. Add a Core Tyria Mastery track, let's say "Local Color", for each geographic region.
2. Perform region-specific tasks ala GW1's Eye of the North reputation system to unlock the racial skills of the region. (Drink with the Norn in the Shiverpeaks, tag along with a Charr warband in Ascalon, mindlessly slay baddies for XP, etc.)
3. Remove racial skills from the utility slot but add a single F-skill that can hold any of the racial skills you've acquired.
4. ???
5. GROFIT!

This would eliminate the problem of any race edging into meta-ness while giving us something nifty and new to do in the old maps.

...yes, I've been wanting this for a while now. :grin:

So you want to nerf a racial elite skill because it's unfair to others that don't want to play sylvari?

Should they also nerf the human racial elite hounds of balthazar because a Norn can't use them?

@Loosifah.4738 said:So you want to nerf a racial elite skill because it's unfair to others that don't want to play sylvari?

I think it's unfair that only one race has a competitively viable ultimate.

The reasoning here is obvious: Anet wants all racial skills to be utter garbage because... reasons.

Sylvari ones are notoriously less garbage than other races.

So for consistency's sake then yes, Sylvari ones need the nerf hammer.

Hey, I like my hounds of balthy on my "Menagerie Ranger" build. Ogre runes, HoB, hyena pet and warhorn.

Effective? Meh, maybe not. Fun seeing a zoo appear and bite your foe? Priceless.

So your argument for Nerfing Sylvari Racial Elite is that other Racial Elites are Bad? Wouldn't much more logical conclusion be Buff the other Racial Elites?With this Thread, Instead of helping Everyone you chose to punish Many...

@Alatar.7364 said:So your argument for Nerfing Sylvari Racial Elite is that other Racial Elites are Bad? Wouldn't much more logical conclusion be Buff the other Racial Elites?With this Thread, Instead of helping Everyone you chose to punish Many...

I agree with this. I've always been for "little nerfs, lots of buffs to put everyone on the same playing field." Nerfing things into the ground isn't fun for anyone. PvE people seem to suffer the worst from it because there is no competitive nature in that mode.

The thing is, Anet has gone on record saying that they don't want the races to matter that much. The racial skills are just supposed to be fun fluff, really.

They're not going to buff the others (as much as I'd love the Norn shapeshift ones to be useable) so the only logical outcome is to bring the Sylvari racial skills down to the same levels of uselessness.

@Alatar.7364 said:So your argument for Nerfing Sylvari Racial Elite is that other Racial Elites are Bad? Wouldn't much more logical conclusion be Buff the other Racial Elites?With this Thread, Instead of helping Everyone you chose to punish Many...

You do make a fair point, although I feel it'd be difficult for A Net to balance them all. I am going to add a poll for the two options though, thanks

Another thing to consider is that Revenant is not allowed any racial skills whatsoever.

Really, there's just no way Anet could make racial skills viable without messing things up horribly.

I read this as, Op wants to be a special snowflake sylvari and does not want everyone else to roll sylvari and thinks people are doing so because of one of their elites... such delusion.

While they seem fun at first, if racial skills are buffed to be useful then you will need Chrono/'race with best racial skills' for the next meta raid.Maybe those skills should be removed from the game. (And yeah Revenant cannot use them)

@Oglaf.1074 said:The thing is, Anet has gone on record saying that they don't want the races to matter that much. The racial skills are just supposed to be fun fluff, really.

They're not going to buff the others (as much as I'd love the Norn shapeshift ones to be useable) so the only logical outcome is to bring the Sylvari racial skills down to the same levels of uselessness.

Sadly thats another big mistake on their part. The choice of race SHOULD be meaningful outside of aesthetics and those elites SHOULD be on par with profession elites. I should feel that any skill I have access to can be useful in the right build. If not, then remove those skills completely from the game. Why bother with fluff? Its wasted energy. Part of what made GW1 so great was its build diversity. This stance by Anet literally screams "we don't care about diversity, we just want meta" and its sad and lazy on their part.

A better solution would be to buff the class elites to the point where you don't want to use a racial elite outside of a gimmick build (and in that case I can't justify the OP, as that's a personal choice to be running such a build).

Racial elites are a little joke put in order to give differences which actually don't exist.They are fine the way they are and there's no need to use resources to work on em.

I think the main problem isn't that the Sylvari elite is too strong (it really isn't), but that many classes only have crap elite skills. If we were allowed to slot any support skill instead of an elite skill I'm sure many people would do just that.

Weren't elite skills supposed to be game-changers? Able to turn a tricky situation around? Instead we have glorified speed-boosts or plain stat-boosts as elite skills. If there is no real competition, then it's no wonder an undertuned racial skill is better than the completely useless class skills.

@BunjiKugashira.9754 said:I think the main problem isn't that the Sylvari elite is too strong (it really isn't), but that many classes only have crap elite skills. If we were allowed to slot any support skill instead of an elite skill I'm sure many people would do just that.

Weren't elite skills supposed to be game-changers? Able to turn a tricky situation around? Instead we have glorified speed-boosts or plain stat-boosts as elite skills. If there is no real competition, then it's no wonder an undertuned racial skill is better than the completely useless class skills.

Very True, one of the classes I play a lot is elementalist and in WvW you literally just chuck down your conjured fire sword so that your staff 5 meteor shower on staff does more damage due to the power boost....

For what it's worth, I like my Asura defense golem skill just fine.

Racial skills shouldn't even exist. You should to play whatever race you want without fearing to be less effective than another race. People bashing OP for asking for healthy game decisions, Incredible.

This all sounds like technobabble to me.

1. Add a Core Tyria Mastery track, let's say "Local Color", for each geographic region.
2. Perform region-specific tasks ala GW1's Eye of the North reputation system to unlock the racial skills of the region. (Drink with the Norn in the Shiverpeaks, tag along with a Charr warband in Ascalon, mindlessly slay baddies for XP, etc.)
3. Remove racial skills from the utility slot but add a single F-skill that can hold any of the racial skills you've acquired.
4. ???
5. GROFIT!

This would eliminate the problem of any race edging into meta-ness while giving us something nifty and new to do in the old maps.

...yes, I've been wanting this for a while now. :grin:

@Velran.1052 said:Racial skills shouldn't even exist. You should to play whatever race you want without fearing to be less effective than another race. People bashing OP for asking for healthy game decisions, Incredible.

I agree that they probably shouldn't exist as of now, or at least now ultimates. Back when you needed to do hero points for any skills, they served as a good filler between unlocking the slot and getting enough points to buy an ult. But now since the hero points are given for free when you level up, there is no true need for them.

@"Major Domo.9250" said:

1. Add a Core Tyria Mastery track, let's say "Local Color", for each geographic region.
2. Perform region-specific tasks ala GW1's Eye of the North reputation system to unlock the racial skills of the region. (Drink with the Norn in the Shiverpeaks, tag along with a Charr warband in Ascalon, mindlessly slay baddies for XP, etc.)
3. Remove racial skills from the utility slot but add a single F-skill that can hold any of the racial skills you've acquired.
4. ???
5. GROFIT!

This would eliminate the problem of any race edging into meta-ness while giving us something nifty and new to do in the old maps.

...yes, I've been wanting this for a while now. :grin:

That's actually a really cool idea

In GW2 most people see Norn as oversized humans, but in GW1 and in the lore they are so much more. This is what Norn should be all about! Racial skills shouldn't be overpowered, but there is no reason they should be as bad as they currently are in PvE.