this post is about racials that affect PVP

i do not care about racials in PVE. as long as races are within 2% difference i think PVE racials are balanced well enough

as it is currently i think alliance racials as a whole are objectively stronger by a fair margin. this affects all skill levels of players not just the top end.

what i think needs to happen for balance (or better balance) :

gnome :

remove immunity from escape artist. this racial is absurdly strong in pvp. every class in pvp apart from lock/pal relies on slows/snares and some classes are balanced around roots for dmg (mage shatters). no compensation needed because gnome’s budget is already very powerful

engi spec rework. even though this is minor this is a pvp advantage. i think races should only have 3 combat racials and 1 flavor (more on this in other races). compensation ; engi teleporters and non combat devices get -20% cd and -20% chance to backfire

orc :

command replace. orc have 3 combat abilities already. zug zug ; orc craft 10% faster.

shatter curse rework. no longer removes curses/banes. gives 10% magic DR for 8 sec. this also has the effect to make lock more appealing to ally as a whole

troll :

regeneration replace. regeneration seems like a counter intuitive racial because it scales off spirit. voodoo shuffle ; slows are 20% less effective vs trolls

beast slaying should be replaced with some non combat flavor to keep inline with 3 combat / 1 non combat

tauren :

i think 60% plainsrunning is a recipe for disaster. 30% with 3% mountspeed is fine( maybe 5 stack drop rather than 10 in combat is good)

dwarf :

remove immunity from stoneform. stoneform is the strongest single racial in pvp imo. it just does too much. split stoneform into 2 different defensives that can be used independently. 10% phy DR. remove bleeds/poisons/diseases. remove beast slaying

priest racials are another contentious point for imbalance especially because ally have 4 priest races compare to horde only 2

2 options :

go sod mode : at level 30 (or whatever) priests do a quest to choose 1 racial from all combined priest racials

remove priest racials. why do they get extra racials anyway haha?

this is the last im going to post about racials. if the PVP racials aren’t addressed before launch im going to expect sod levels of PVP balancing(abysmal) for WoWF. it would be a shame if they neglect PVP like they did in SoD because many of us enjoy this part of the game

I am pretty excited with being able to run the dungeon and get lots of amazing loot for my character without levelling out of the bracket.

for context i play 90% support classes, tanks and healers, (shaman / druid ) so questing can be a slog, especially without gear. so i’ve balanced that with good gear from dungeons.

Questing is fun, but the minute i start with dungeons i level out of the range of the quests, and then never finish the zone properly and spend more time with breadcrumbs than playing the zone.

I am a big fan of levelling and getting strong at that level, including professions, cooking, gear; i want to be the best lvl 20 I can be before it’s time to move on. I’ll send the greens to my DE alt, i’ll get loads of practice tanking/healing and still be able to quest and enjoy the game!

if you agree with me let me know :)

I don’t know what the devs are smoking, but a 60% movement speed increase completely breaks the balance. Just imagine a Hunter with Aspect of the Cheetah they’ll hit max speed way faster. Or a Shaman with Water Walking. Not to mention that it’s just a massive mobility advantage overall compared to other races/classes that have absolutely nothing. On certain classes, this literally forces you to pick Tauren because the advantage is just too noticeable. In my opinion, the old version was well balanced, not useless, but not too impactful either

Edit:

Everyone keeps saying it takes a whole 2 minutes. First of all, that’s not even that long. Second of all, you guys talk as if you only get the speed boost after 2 minutes, but it actually scales up constantly. Now you reach the old 30% twice as fast, and all of this is available right from level 1. Most of Classic WoW consists of running long distances, so I don't understand why you're downplaying this ability. It feels like you just want it for yourselves and don't care about balance at all

Ok I've been following the racial changes all along the beta and I honestly can't keep up anymore.
First Tauren get 1% hit. Then it's 2% crit damage. Then that's gone too and now they sit dead last on the warrior sim. Meanwhile everyone is arguing whether a 2% gap is "within margin of error" (it's not, the sims say ±1.3 dps and the gap is 19, but whatever). Then out of nowhere they hand Tauren 60% move speed with Plainsrunning. Someone posted the clown makeup meme earlier and yeah, that's pretty much the whole timeline.
And I get the "you guys will complain no matter what" take. Fair. But it really feels like Blizzard is throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, not like there's any actual plan for how races should stack up.
Now don't get me wrong. I love Plainsrunning. It's flavorful, it fits Tauren perfectly, and running around Mulgore at that speed feels great. I want it to stay.
But I'm calling it right now. It gets nerfed before launch or in the first week after. 100%. Just think about BGs for a second. AB: everyone stacks Tauren in the starting area, gates open, and they're at Blacksmith and Lumber Mill before the other side even crosses the bridge. Free precaps every single game. AV: same thing, a wall of cows bursting out of the cave and capping Snowfall and Stonehearth before the Alliance gets there. Whoever brings more Tauren just wins the opening. The forums will be on fire within a day and Blizzard will cave like always.

Blizzard said "At the same time, we’re doing a tuning pass on some of the remaining passive bonuses to help ensure that they aren’t skewing outcomes in a way that limits player preferences."

What about the 5% damage? All the sweaty players are going to go skyborne. You showed us elemental mobs in the raid preview. We know elemental bosses will exist in Molten Core. Will skyborne end up being pay to win?

Simple solution, remove it and give them something else.

If it works on pets and minions why not your trusty mount as well. Also gives a small bonus to classes that can’t use the racial.

What race will you play for PvP? I'm thinking about a Human Rogue, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea.

What do you think?

I was looking through the house sigils for the different races, and I was really impressed by how unique and detailed they all are. Each one feels distinctive and gives its respective race a sense of identity.

Maybe I’m missing something, but the only sigil I could find for the Skyborne was the one pictured below. If the Skyborne are going to be part of the game, I’d love to see them receive a proper house sigil that matches the level of creativity and detail found in the existing ones. The older designs feel much more distinctive and visually interesting, and I think the Skyborne deserve that same level of care and attention.

Hello all!

Trying to decide between the two right now for Forever. Seeing if you guys can give me your experience on both.

I plan on doing both PVE and pvp
And i really like pressing buttons even though I know it’s not a high APM game I’d prefer the one that has more options (I like the challenge). I also do really care about what my characters gear looks like end game. I’ve never played wow before so don’t know what to expect

Please let me know your thoughts!

For pvp alliance is absolutely broken but thats a different issue entirely

look at pmuch any era log

For example, warriors on patchwerk

https://vanilla.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/2006?boss=51118&class=Warrior

The dps difference just WITHIN the 99 parse is 2381 vs 2276 from highest 99 parse to lowest

Which is more than a 4% difference

Even if youre a tauren with 0 dmg racials vs something like nelf or human which is ~1% dmg overall you can hit 99 just fine

Now ofc if fights end up lasting 30 seconds then itll be a bigger gap, but hopefully that wont happen

So if you dont care about pvp, genuinely just pick the race you like

The amount of whining I’ve seen over racials has been ridiculous, especially horde players claiming alliance is too OP. I’m hoping this post will help people realize how little racials actually matter.

Every single race is currently within ~1% DPS across all sims. The amount of people who will actually notice the benefit from picking the “strongest race” is probably in the dozens, literally only if you are going for a 100 parse, and even then, RNG will play a more significant factor than racials, by a wide margin.

Today’s update gave each race more flavor and something unique, frankly I think it is a complete success.

But since I know you guys will still like to complain about horde racials, here is my preemptive response:

Undead

Touch of the Grave is quite a bit better than a generic 1% crit, even after the nerf. 1% crit is worth ~0.8% DPS for melee and only ~0.45% for casters, while Touch of the Grave comes out to roughly 1% DPS for casters and ~1.4% for melee. And it heals you in addition to the damage.

Before the nerf it was ridiculously overpowered: a 1 second internal cooldown made it worth ~1.6% for casters and close to 4% DPS for melee, which is about 5x more DPS than 1% crit.

Even after the 25 second cooldown, it's still the best passive racial in the game.

Tauren
Plainsrunning is now the most flavorful racial in the game, stacking up to +60% speed on foot, and you still have War Stomp, which is the only racial with CC, and 5% more HP. Anyone crying about missing a DPS racial that contributes less than 1% DPS while taurens have such awesome, unique, and frankly strong racials is insane.

Orc
Orcs still have Blood Fury, one of the strongest active buffs in the game, plus Hardiness and Shatter Curse, two of the most broken PvP racials, and now a buff to pets by 5%, which is way cooler than 1% crit, which once again gives about ~0.45–0.8% DPS. (Also, the way it’s written makes it seem like all pets get 5% damage, including item summons, which is honestly awesome makes this racial useful for classes other than Hunter and warlock)

Troll
Trolls have some of the most thematic racials in the game. Berserking is worth about the same as Blood Fury on long fights, and the healing is cool and flavorful. Trolls are insane in PvP, and in PvE their DPS sits right next to every other race.

Alliance races are literally no better than horde. Human has less DPS than pretty much all of the horde races despite having the coveted 1% crit racial that Reddit is so obsessed with despite it not even being that good, and even so, every race is within about 1% DPS across the board, so it doesn’t even matter anyway.

TL;DR:

Pick what you like, these racials will make no difference for 99% of people, and if it would make a difference for you, you already know this.

Hope your mudhuts can handle the tears.

I sincerely mean that. Now the races feel more distinguished, and I am more hyped than ever! I'm gonna make a dwarf rogue but the tauren looks so damn cool Im a little bit of jelly of them.

Maybe this will make the class distribution a bit more even.

I think it’s only fair, take cultivation away, half the plainsrunning again. All I ask is that every 2-3 min you let me drink my own milk and get “Strong Bones” buff which reduces damage taken by 10% or so. Thank you.

A 4chan comment that "happened" to know racial changes coming an entire day before they were announced.

https://boards.4chan.org/vg/thread/585636230?utm_source=chatgpt.com#p585641094

The night elf HD bear form model, I believe, is from legion, while Tauren bear is from WOTLK. Since we already have the option to change between classic forms and HD, the taurens should have the option of the legion models and night elf’s WOTLK.

Seems strange to give night elf bear the more recent model and animations.

I ran a little experiment recently because I noticed there is an exp drop off of about 15-20% for each level lower the mob is relative to the player. It felt way worse than regular classic, so I looked into it and there is a huge hidden nerf going on.

I am not going into the exact math, but basically here is what is happening:

• in regular classic: your base exp for a kill was calculated using your lvl.
• in WoW forever: they quietly changed the formula to calculate base exp using the mob's lvl, and then they apply the low-level penalty fraction on top of that.

It's basically a double penalty.

To put it in perspective, if you kill a mob 4 lvls lower than you (green mobs):

• in classic, you'd lose maybe a third of your exp.
• in forever, you are losing like 40-45% of your potential exp.

You are practically cutting your exp in half the second a mob turns green. And this starts applying from mobs 1 lvl lower than you.

How this ties to the dungeon exp nerfs:

This also perfectly explains what people have been noting about the dungeon exp changes. If you go into a dungeon where the mobs are even just a couple lvls lower than your group, the exp feels like absolute trash now. (on top of it being bad since the dungeon exp nerfs)

It's because this exact same "double discount" formula is gutting the dungeon mob exp too. It totally kills running slightly lower lvl dungeons for smooth exp or getting boosted, because the math violently punishes you if the mob isn't your level or higher.

Overall this is a huge nerf to melee classes who rely on fighting lower lvl mobs to avoid hit penalties and downtime. you're basically forced into fighting yellow mobs now or your exp per hour falls off a cliff. It's also a big additional nerf to anyone who is farming dungeons and is even 1 level higher than them.

Could even attach a rep grind to it that allows you to have that backgrounds banner attached to your back once your exalted plus other things. Ideas are endless and gives people more flavour and agency in controlling their races power.

Eureka doesn't work on dots and it's a mistake

It worked on them in the start but had 3 charges and dots don't snapshot so you lost the boost midway so they just disabled it

Now the buff is constantly up during the time

Yet you still don't allow it to affect dots? Why? It just makes aff lock, spriest, rogue much worse as gnomes