Just a few minor adjustments and suggestions for WoW Retail.
Same Color Icons
Reusing the same icon for different abilities in various parts of the game isn’t inherently problematic. However, some abilities could benefit from a distinction in background color, especially to aid colorblind players in identification. For instance, when playing as a gnome hunter, both Wing Clip and Escape Artist share the same icon and background color, as evidenced in the image below, suggesting the potential for differentiation.
A similar situation arises when playing as undead and choosing to be death knights, sharing the same icon for two abilities with cooldowns.
In the following image, the repetition of the Unholy Assault ability icon may lead to confusion when identifying it in the active buffs bar, located at the top of the player’s screen, especially when the effect of the Primal Rage hunter pet ability is also active nearby the minimap. It would be beneficial to have a visual distinction to avoid such confusion.
Although priests also share the same icon for the ability depicted above (Mind Blast), the absence of this icon’s repetition in buffs or racial effects of other classes does not hinder the identification of each one.
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Racial Abilities
Throughout the expansions, some racial abilities have been redesigned and adapted due to the changes the game has undergone, and I believe that some of them deserve special attention.
Dwarf Racial
Since the Battle for Azeroth expansion, the archaeology profession has not seen its exploration effects on expansion maps evolve to the point of remaining as useful as other racial abilities throughout the game.
In the past, this ability had its effect nullified by the use of addons that showed the location of treasures on the map. In Cataclysm, it was redesigned to interact with the archaeology profession, but currently, archaeology functions differently and independently from how the profession was in the past. I believe that this ability needs to be redesigned again to align with how archaeology is being applied in the game today.
Racial Pandaren
A small improvement that pandarens could receive in their effect after consuming food would be to not lose the food effect upon death. In PvP environments such as battlegrounds, open-world PvP, or even in PvE situations like mythic dungeons, this race ends up being penalized for needing to spend a certain amount of time sitting while consuming the reagent again. This contrasts with other racial effects that provide more consistent benefits, such as those of worgen, night elfs, draenei, dwarfs which offer permanent bonuses.
Two additional alternatives would be to reduce the time the race needs to sit to receive the food effect, which by default is 15 seconds, or, in the event of death, reduce the remaining time of the food effect without losing it completely.
I believe that a small change in this effect would encourage more frequent use of food by this race in such situations.
Racial Orc and Human
When comparing the quantity of racial effects between the night elf and goblin races with those of orcs and humans, it’s evident that the latter two are at a disadvantage.
I believe that a race should have a minimum of four racial abilities, with five being ideal and six being the maximum. However, the orcs and humans races lack sufficient racial abilities. For example, when playing as an orc and not using a specialization that benefits from the passive effects of increased pet damage, only two racial effects remain useful throughout the game. Therefore, it would be prudent to add more racial abilities for these two races, without necessarily focusing on combat enhancements, in order to avoid disrupting game balance.
Racial Kul Tiran
The racial ability of the kul tiran causes some confusion among players because its description promises a 2-point increase in all professions, but in the game, this increase is only applied to crafting professions, not to gathering professions or primary crafting professions like cooking and fishing.
It would be beneficial to make the description of this racial ability more specific to avoid misunderstandings about its scope.
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Hunter Survival - Initial Abilities
When starting the game as a hunter and opting for the survival specialization, the absence of initial abilities for melee combat is notable. By the time they reach level 10, players of this specialization have only the Kill Command at their disposal, with a 6-second cooldown becoming the sole effective attack option until they obtain the first truly useful ability at level 11 of their specialization.
Looking at the image below, where the priest class already has a full arsenal of abilities available at level 10, hunters survival are far behind in terms of options at the beginning compared to other classes.
Hunters, even if not specializing in survival, should have access to a melee ability equivalent to Steady Shot at level 1 so they don’t have to wait until level 11 to obtain a suitable damage ability for their specialization or wait for the 6-second cooldown of Kill Command.