A Guide To Choosing A Race In Guild Wars 2

GR writes: "Nothing is worse than making a character in an MMORPG and finding out 300 hours down the road that you regret your choice. While Guild Wars 2 only has one faction, it offers a barrage of compelling options that make your first trip to the character creation screen a nightmare. There are five races in total, each with their own capital city, starting area, voice actors, and racial abilities. In order to make your life easier, we’ve created a list of the races along with information that should help make the delay between you installing the game and actually beginning to play as quick and seamless as possible."

[doctorstrange]

Charr for me

[dbjj12088]

No way! Human or Sylvari!

[rdgneoz3]

Charr have some sweet racials, as well as nice racial armor. Gotta love a nice Charrzooka to mix things up a bit as well as their shout that gives fury and might. Being able to call in your warband is a nice touch as well.

The Sylvari have sick scholar racial armor (not so much the medium or heavy armor). As for their racials, the one always being complained about is the root, which isn't that tough to get out of but people that tunnel vision will be stuck for a while. The dogs are nice for solo while the Ancient Oakheart is very nice for groups (group regen and removing of conditions).

I wish the Norn racials were designed a bit better (as they have some of the best looking racial armor for all levels and professions). The worm is the only one that's really good for any ranged class (why would a squishy profession want to go melee a hard hitting mob / boss?) and each of the elites have a huge cooldown for such a small time usage.
Every other racial that's 4 min CD is like a 60 second usages, or they have 3 min cooldowns with 30 second usage... The Asura golem summons are 3 min CDs with 40 seconds of use and their powersuit is 3 min cd with 60 second usage...

Probably end up going Charr ranger and Sylvari Mesmer (if the Necro doesn't get tweaked a bit with pet survivability).

[Zha1tan]

humans are such boring typical races, why would I want to be a human? ugh disgusting creatures...oh wait.

Char for me to when i get the game if its good!

And Steve blum is our leader, suck that down petty humans.

[wollie]

5 slots = 1 of each!

but ya Norn for my main, i just love their spiritual viking culture.

[Basjohn]

You can't mess up GW2 race choice. No racial restrictions or real bonuses. Your choice about race is really one about which personal story you'd prefer and who you'd resonate better with.

The stories are VERY different (even within each race) and having tried them all I can say they all have some charm. Norn is probably the most lackluster however. Sylvari focus on the endgame/big picture right from the prologue, Charr have you feeling like a fantasy soldier to a T, and as Human you're trying to fit in to your own skin and usually make the world a slightly less shit place.

[rdgneoz3]

The races don't restrict your profession choices or anything really important, but they don't affect your racial skills and the racial armor sets you can get. Each race has 6 different racial skills and 3 sets of racial armor for heavy, medium, and light (lvl 35, 60, and 80 versions). As for Norn personal, try the "drunk at a party", funny as hell what you get for as a quest.