So I know that there will be no changes along these lines, but I think it might be a fun thread none the less.
Back before the launch of WoW Classic, I was listening to an interview with Kevin Jordan (original WoW class designer) and he answered a question about different races having specific weapon skills. He answered that it was there for aesthetic, and that he thought it would help reinforce a racial flavor. You would see more Orcs running around with axes and Humans running around with swords. I tend to agree with this design choice, but I don’t think they realized quite what a DPS difference it would make for classes that don’t have any +weapon skill.
So, with that in mind, I thought it would make for a fun forum thread to speculate what kind of weapon skills the other races should have.
For example:
Dwarves should also have axe skill as that seems to be the most common weapon the Ironforge guards / NPCs have.
Undead should also have sword skills (and maybe even mace skills) as they used to be just as human as Stormwind humans and would grow up using very similar weapons. Or maybe Swords & Daggers (for undead rogues to use)
So give the race + weapon skill and explain why you think they would have them lore wise =)
Dwarves should fit maces if you were to follow this line of thinking. The dwarves of Aerie Peak are known for their storm hammers. Each dwarf clan is aligned by 3 hammers, if i recall correctly.
I don’t necessarily agree that copying racials introduces more identity to each race, quite the opposite.
Told the guys I play with if they ever do end up redoing it in some way, just have the player pick their race, then pick their weapon specialization instead of having the specialization being tied to the race off the bat. Would def open up some variety in race/class combos you see.
If everyone was only picking races for +weapon skill in Vanilla the way they are now, Blizzard would’ve just removed all weapon skills from racials.
People just played what they thought was cool for the most part but with all this mix/max stuff going on now we’re overloaded with particular race/class combos.
Gnomes - daggers. They light weapons that benefit from dexterity, and don’t need to be large to be damaging.
Night Elves - Bows, naturally.
Tauren - Two-handed Maces and Two-handed swords.
Undead - Swords.
Undeads - Staves and Swords, outside of Sylvanas and her big bouncy bows, a lot of WoW art with Undeads are Warlock/Mage or 2h Warrior. Maybe daggers for the apoths
This would have been a great idea for vanilla wow in development, but alas we’re way past that. It’d be cool to have different races with distinct weapon advantages (which would also even out pve dps), but I don’t think they should change it now.
Another solution is eliminate weapon skill, implement expertise, and reduce the frequency of glancing blows down to 20% and the penalty down to -20% damage on glancing blow.
There is a reason for why blizzard change from weapon skill to expertise, not because they were being mean or spiteful, but because its a better system.
Better is subjective. The move to expertise meant parry/dodge was far more controllable. Frankly, IMO, it’s a better to have some RNG; to have your raid react when the tank’s first attack got parried instead of just blindly mash your buttons.
I could see spears (polearms) going to Trolls or Tauren, and maybe they could have put a few more polearms in the game.
Technically, Trolls already have a racial bonus to throwing weapons, but these are also under-utilized. It would have been cool to have Troll hunters throwing axes around for their abilities (Aimed Throw, Multi-throw) like the Axethrowers/Berserkers in WC2.
Bows would make sense for Night Elves, but it would have been cool to give them a Fist-Weapon bonus and have war-glaives classified under that category. Glaives are such an iconic Night Elf weapon, but even after the introduction of playable Demon Hunters, Blizzard has been really stingy with them.
Daggers would make sense for Gnomes, but I think wands would make sense there, too.
It would be cool if one race had a bonus to shields somehow, but I’m not sure how that would work, and it would only be relevant to warriors and paladins/shamans.
Or they might have just included more of them like I’m speculating at now. I like the idea of different races feeling more comfortable with different weapons (both culturally and physically).
I think that every race having a couple of weapons (like humans having both swords and maces) would allow people to just play what they thought was cool, and if they wanted to get all sweaty about it at some point, they could just use their racial weapons.
Again, the whole idea of adding this +weapon racial was to try to encourage players to reinforce the world aesthetic in Azeroth. And I know it’s never gonna happen, but I thought this would be a fun thread to speculate in.
In Classic there would not be enough expertise in game to negate a bosses dodge or parry chance.
Weapon skill in classic right now is basically expertise, hit, crit, and glancing blow reduction and glancing blow penalty reduction.
Expertise is just a lessor stat that does part of the same, so overall a melee PVE nerf, but they could reduce the glancing blow % and % penalty to compensate a little.
To preserve what you are talking about, simply making sure that there is not enough expertise in game by making the stat equal or lessor in value to weapon skill anti dodge / anti parry is all that would need to be done to prevent hard capping.