I play a Norn myself. As for the jumping puzzles, it's part of the reason I play the race I do. I hate making them simple.

The only reason the Asura have an easier time that their camera viewpoint in down about 3-4 feet off the ground while the Norn's camera viewpoint in 8-10 feet off the ground.

The other race I know that has some difficulty with jumping puzzles are the Charr since they run on all fours. Biggest thing here is to remember that you can actually have your front two paws hanging off since jumping and landing happens based on the back paws.


Overall though I really don't notice the races having much of a difference in PvP. I will usually tab target through till I find the enemy closest to me to kill (works great in finding Asura, on top of the fact that many abilities make the Asura somewhat float).


As for classes... I could seriously write a wall of text here about the pros and cons about each but I'm going to restrain myself, if you want to known more, send me a PM or find me in Mumble sometime.
- Scholars (Necromancer, Mesmer, Elementalist) > The Necromancer has the highest health pool of the Scholars due to their profession mechanic (Death Shroud). The Mesmer relies a lot on their clones for survivability but once they have that mastered they can be quite hard to kill. The Elementalist has a huge number of AoE abilities available to them and from this they can cause massive amounts of damage in one area very quickly..

- Adventurers (Ranger, Engineer, Thief) > Rangers, Engineer, and Thieves are have relatively the same health pool. The Thief seems the squishiest however since he has to get up close into melee range to Steal something (his profession mechanic), the upside is that when in melee range Thieves can do a lot of damage. The Engineer is one of the most versatile professions and can adapt to basically any combat situation that the game throws at them due to the various kits they have at their disposal. The Ranger is somewhat the same way, they rely a lot on their pet for mitigating damage or dealing more damage but are able to swap back and forth between ranged and melee quite well and feel comfortable in both situations.

- Soldiers (Guardian, Warrior) > The Guardian actually has a lower overall health poll than the Warrior due to the fact that many of the Guardian abilities are geared towards mitigating damage or absorbing it. The Warrior on the other hand has a higher health pool since many of their abilities are about locking down an opponent and dealing as much damage as possible before the lockdown breaks.