While i have managed to squeeze in quite a bit of reading, I was wondering if anyone has found a full list of racial traits to help the choice of race with professions. I am leaning heavily towards a Sylvari thief and am aware that said race will not be available for the beta coming up. But nonetheless believe i saw something somewhere lol that eluded to Sylvari have a root ability. Any help or links would be appreciated.
If you go to wiki.guildwars2.com you can search for racial traits. Unfortunately, there isn't much known about the asura and sylvari racials, but the wiki at least lists a couple names that you can make an educated guess about.
"He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire" --Winston Churchill
The devs have said that your race won't really effect how powerful your character is. You do get a few racial skills, but they are usually weaker versions of already existing skills, for example that root ability is a weaker version of a ranger skill. I suggest you just play the race you like the most instead of trying to pick the optimal one, it's not going to make a huge difference. Or you could do as I do and play all the races
Are you a guardian? Let me introduce you to my Flesh Golem, he's getting a bit hungry.
The racial skills are generally decent, and can allow you use different (usually weaker) versions of skills used by other professions in some cases. I used a couple of them during the last beta event, but didn't get to test them all out as I'd have liked. Aka, you can't slot them for PvP, so you weren't able to do the whole "try before you buy" thing in the Mists like you can with all other skills in the game.
In terms of overall impact on your build, the racial skills will factor in less than most other skills for PvE, and then not at all for PvP.
Also your going to be staring at that character for hundreds of hours so pick something you like looking at.
With the way that the racial skills are designed, there's very little reason to pick them for the purpose of synergy with your profession. In all likelihood, you may not even use them at all. They take up the same Utility/Elite slots that your profession ones do, so in most cases you will likely have a better skill from your profession for that slot, particularly in the case of Elite skills. There's that, and the fact that to absolutely ensure racial balance, they are unusable in PvP.
Actually, they could be used in WvW at least during the first BWE. However, they are weaker than professions skills so there's usually no reason to pick one unless you really want to have an asuran golem suit etc.
Are you a guardian? Let me introduce you to my Flesh Golem, he's getting a bit hungry.
Do you think racial skills will stay in WvW? Or will it be that no racial skills can be used in any form of PvP?
Well, they might stay since WvW isn't really supposed to be that balanced anyway. If there is no balance to break, why not let people use inferior skills for looks?
Are you a guardian? Let me introduce you to my Flesh Golem, he's getting a bit hungry.
Very true. WvW is more PvX rather than pure PvP, so I guess racial skills wouldn't have that much of an effect.