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A Charr, A Tank: Illusions of a Slow Running Speed

I’ve decided to make my main character a Charr Warrior; what can I say, I’m a cat guy (quiet you dog lovers!). The class is fun, stands up to some damage, and now that I can swap weapons on the fly, dishes out a fair deal too. And what better race for a warrior than a big, hulking Charr! Like the Norn, they just look like warriors. To the point, even, where it feels slightly wrong to play them as any other profession. They are, in short, tanks — especially when you put a rifle in their hands.

That said, they both share a downside with a tank: They’re slow. Well, not really, but they sure do feel slow and that’s a problem. And let’s cut Norn out now, I’m a Charr. While ANet has already made clear that all races run at exactly the same speed, the size and animations just make them feel lumbering. While running on all fours certainly looks cool, it doesn’t actually feel like running at all. It’s more like one of those dreams where you’re trying to run but the door at the end of the hallway just keeps getting further away. It drives me crazy. I even re-rolled a human thief to feel a little relief from these issues. Anecdotally, it’s helped me to discover that I want to play each class; they really are plain fun to experiment with.

I’ve narrowed the problem down to the all-fours animation simply being too slow. We need more bounds  across dem dere hills! It’s counter-intuitive, really, because naturally youwould need less bounds to cover the same distance… if this were real life. But then again, if this were real life Asura wouldn’t jump as high as a Norn either (and they probably would have learned to tie their ears back too, all that flapping has got to be annoying). But we extend our disbelief because sometimes games shouldn’t be logical; they should feel natural and fun. There is no reason a Charr or Norn should feel slower than a Human, if anything they should be faster. But again, we sacrifice in the name of game play.

Until the moment comes when bounding feels natural, I’ll be running on two legs instead of four. It solves the problem — at least for Charr, sorry Norn. As it happens, unsheathing your weapon forces your character to run like a humanoid instead of a direwolf. If you’re interested, there’s an option to bind sheathing towards the bottom of your keybind list. There are also speed buffs available to certain classes (warriors get one with their war horn), so keeping a one-hander and a horn in your swap slots might also be a good idea, meat shields.

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