Racial elite skills and elite skills that need a reduce cooldown time.

• Warband support, make this elite 80 second CD instead of the LONG 240 sec.
• Hounds of baltazar, make this elite 180 sec CD instead of 240 sec.
• Artillery barrage, this is the definition of useless! At 450 range and with a CD of 240 and an AOE of 360, this elite skill is an April fools joke that lasted for too long.
• All norn transformations should be reduced from 240 sec to 180 sec.
• Summon druid spirit 240 sec to 180 sec CD.

Those elite skills are literally never used because of the long CD.Rework their CD times and their effects so that these elite skills become effective and competitive over other elite skills. For example:

• Artillery barrage, increase range from 450 to 2000 and reduce CD from 240 to 180 sec. (Why is this skill called artillery barrage when its range is 450?)
• Warband support, this elite skill has 2 useless NPCs with low health and slow attack reactions. Reduce CD from 240 sec to 80 sec.

It's been so long since I even thought of some of those elites, much less used them (I go for Mis-fire Wolf when possible cause he's my bud). But yes, considering the Elite Elites have seen decreases over the years, I'm suprised some core elites are still that high.

I made a thread in the past regarding the quality of life for racial elites/skills even just for open world PvE. It would be nice to have those CDs lowered.

not gonna happen because anet doesn't want them to be usefull

You think racism is bad now, wait till you attach actual gameplay mechanics to them. No, they're just fine the way they are. Thanks.

Yeah, however much I'd love to see the Norn racial elites (wow that sounded both racist and elitist!) actually become useful or have their cooldowns reduced to 60 secs or something, since they're largely a nerf on a decent build to activate anyways, not going to happen.

ANet said they specifically don't want racial skills to be good enough to compete with class skills in any ways, because there should never be a reason to pick one race over another for a specific class. So I've given up ever getting any use of the cool Norn Elites.

@joneirikb.7506 said:ANet said they specifically don't want racial skills to be good enough to compete with class skills in any ways, because there should never be a reason to pick one race over another for a specific class.Yep. This is the thread answer.

I've often wondered why racial skills exist at all if Anet doesn't want them to be useful.

Either get rid of them or make them actually somewhat useful, even for just open world PvE.

@kharmin.7683 said:

@joneirikb.7506 said:ANet said they specifically don't want racial skills to be good enough to compete with class skills in any ways, because there should never be a reason to pick one race over another for a specific class.Yep. This is the thread answer.

Mhem. So, people don't care that much about a certain profession dealing 5-10% more DPS than another one when selecting which one they'll play, choosing mostly by which has way to play suiting them most, and partly based on bundled aesthetics - and they suddenly will start to choose race (which affects aesthetics a great deal) just because its elite skill is 5% better than profession's elite skill? Doesn't make much sense. Some will do, ok, but it will be meager percentage, especially taking into account that balance changes over time (the skill can be nerfed later on), but you can't change your race.

Well, it was ANet's concern not mine.

@derd.6413 said:not gonna happen because anet doesn't want them to be Useful

This pretty much. Much as the races and the genders are skins, so is the racial skills. They are a cosmetic that you pop and say that it’s cute. It is never going to match normal class skills in power.

@kharmin.7683 said:Well, it was ANet's concern not mine.

Well, even if it's the case, they could choose to make them slightly less efficient than majority of similar elite skills, so they wouldn't affect choice of race, but still would be a viable alternative for those players who don't mind to trade a bit of efficiency to get playstile which more suites them. Instead they decided to just make them inefficient. As somebody already asked above - why even bother? Remove them then.

@MoriMoriMori.5349 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:Well, it was ANet's concern not mine.

they've gotten themselves into the meta occasionally

As somebody already asked above - why even bother? Remove them then.that'd be to much work

@Emberstone.2904 said:I've often wondered why racial skills exist at all if Anet doesn't want them to be useful.

Either get rid of them or make them actually somewhat useful, even for just open world PvE.

In their current form, racial skills are there to help you deal with that level gap when you have skill slots available, but still don't have enough skills unlocked.Anyway, they are somewhat useful. There's no need for overdramatizing things.

They do need a pass to make them a little more sensible. I get that Artillery Barrage shouldn't be competing with an actual Elementalist, but it doesn't need to be quite that awful.

As an anecdote, ANet specifically had to restrict hounds of Balthazar so that human chronomancers cannot summon them twice (for a total of four fiery beasts). That could be oppressive in small-scale WvW.

I still think that a viable and relatively low-cost solution to this would be to add a Mastery or achievement called "Cultural Connoisseur" where you visit all the racial capitals and significant locations to learn about the 5 playable races/species, and at the end of it you unlock the ability to use other races/species elite skills. Then they could buff them.

When you make a new character you would still get that initial "flavour" for that race/species that the racial elite skills provide, but the ability to unlock other race/species skills later on wouldn't make any playable race/species more meta than the other.

I think you forgot to mention "Charrzooka."

It has poor damage, bad skill set, and a fucking obnoxious cooldown time. Not to mention you can only use it for 15 effin' seconds. I think for the low amount of damage it does, it should function just like an Engineer Kit.

I’d love to use my norn elites if the cooldown wasn’t so long in comparison to how long you stay transformed.

@MoriMoriMori.5349 said:

@kharmin.7683 said:

@"joneirikb.7506" said:ANet said they specifically don't want racial skills to be good enough to compete with class skills in any ways, because there should never be a reason to pick one race over another for a specific class.Yep. This is the thread answer.

While I do agree, there are also other considerations.

For example if they greatly reduced the cooldowns on bear/snow-leopard forms, then you could use their rush attack skills to run past and bypass more mobs in dungeons, so speedrunner "meta" becomes norn. There are unfortunately a lot of people that would polarize on this, until we start having people auto kicking non-norn from dungeons/fractals whatever.

And if a racial skill suddenly finds a way to do lots of damage, suddenly it will be required in some raid groups etc. People are pretty darn nutty about min/max. And there are too many "sheep" that just flat out follow whatever it says on Snowcrows or something. It's not really a design problem it's a human problem :p

I guess the only way I can imagine this to work is to disable all racial skills outside of open-world. Including blocking them from all isntances (dungeons, fractals, raids), and WvW as well. Heck I still remember when Bear form was excellent for running away from zergs with in WvW sigh Glory days! My guardian could escape stuff in wvw!

@"joneirikb.7506" said:While I do agree, there are also other considerations.

For example if they greatly reduced the cooldowns on bear/snow-leopard forms, then you could use their rush attack skills to run past and bypass more mobs in dungeons, so speedrunner "meta" becomes norn. There are unfortunately a lot of people that would polarize on this, until we start having people auto kicking non-norn from dungeons/fractals whatever.

And if a racial skill suddenly finds a way to do lots of damage, suddenly it will be required in some raid groups etc. People are pretty darn nutty about min/max. And there are too many "sheep" that just flat out follow whatever it says on Snowcrows or something. It's not really a design problem it's a human problem :p

The solution is in your own words. "If they greatly reduced the cooldowns", "if a racial skill suddenly finds a way to do lots of damage"... It's not a matter of a racial skill being useless for all builds or it suddently becoming a requirement for raids. ArenaNet could simply make them slightly less useless - so they have slightly reduced cooldowns or do slightly more damage - and they would still be worse than profession skills. Just not as bad as they are right now.

@Erasculio.2914 said:

@"joneirikb.7506" said:While I do agree, there are also other considerations.

For example if they greatly reduced the cooldowns on bear/snow-leopard forms, then you could use their rush attack skills to run past and bypass more mobs in dungeons, so speedrunner "meta" becomes norn. There are unfortunately a lot of people that would polarize on this, until we start having people auto kicking non-norn from dungeons/fractals whatever.

And if a racial skill suddenly finds a way to do lots of damage, suddenly it will be required in some raid groups etc. People are pretty darn nutty about min/max. And there are too many "sheep" that just flat out follow whatever it says on Snowcrows or something. It's not really a design problem it's a human problem :p

The problem is that it's not always the damage, or durations, or cooldowns, and often a mix of many things. It would be just as hard to balance them properly as it would be to balance them to be "weak enough in everything to be useful but just NOT hit meta!".

Norn transformations are already weak as all heck, but reduce cooldown to 60sec, and suddenly they're good for something, since you can trigger it rush 2x, and fire it up again and rush x2 to rush past just about anything (like dungeon mobs). Even if the actual transformation and all other skills are a direct heavy nerf to your build and play.

Players are very creative when it comes to finding and abusing stuff, I mean the Bear transformation was considered utterly back then, until someone found you could use it just to run away in WvW with, and then it got nerfed hard again ! (I had finally found an elite skill I wanted to use on Guardian !)

It's very difficult to say what "little boost" is going to make one of those skills actually too good. And I'm guessing ANet is just going to say no to that, and since nothing is META right now, just leave it at that until for some reason someone finds a new use for one.

@"DietPepsi.4371" said:I still think that a viable and relatively low-cost solution to this would be to add a Mastery or achievement called "Cultural Connoisseur" where you visit all the racial capitals and significant locations to learn about the 5 playable races/species, and at the end of it you unlock the ability to use other races/species elite skills. Then they could buff them.

that'd just beat the point of them being racial skills

We do not need elites with shorter cooldowns. We need elites with longer cooldowns and stronger effects to make them a more important tide-turner element. 40s-60s is way too short for anything but a summon meant to stay up at all times like the flesh golem.

@MoriMoriMori.5349 said:As somebody already asked above - why even bother? Remove them then.Don't touch my golem!!!

If you don't like the skills, don't use them.