Racials in WoW are a fun and interesting way of making your character creation choices really matter. Stuff like goblin jump, warstomp, stoneform, arcane torrent, mole machines and most other species abilities are fun, helpful, and interesting ways to make player choice matter. However, abilities like 2% increased crit damage, 2% increased secondaries from all sources, flat haste/ap on a 2 minute CD that you just macro into a dps cooldown, and similar abilities are not fun or interesting, they are simply numerical boosts to throughput that actively reduce player choice for those that are concerned with it, and punish those that are not.
I think the flavour of play that comes from the different species in Azeroth is awesome, and I wish more players did not feel like they are forced to be one or another due to it affecting dps/hps numbers to such a significant degree. From what I have been reading, there have been talks in SoD regarding this topic and ways/suggestions to allow more players to make their characters based on what they like and not simple “highest number good” choice. So much work has allready been done to allow meaningful choices by players from the easy of swapping talents to allowing us to raid with friends that play different factions. I would love for the same energy and philosophy to be applied to this aspect of the game.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, hope y’all have a lovely day.
Good afternoon nerf Shadowmeld.
If you let the insignificant amount of DPS gain that racials gives dictate your racial choices…you are only hurting yourself.
However, there are multiple utility abilities that do give significant advantages and regularly influence race choice especially at higher levels of play
This is a perfect example along with stone skin, fail safe protocal, and others
If it is an “insignificant amount” of dps, then why have it at all? What is the upside that we are gaining from having something that only affects players that care about the gain negatively and does not positively affect the players that don’t care about it?
**Cough cough, Kultiran Knockback Stun, if racials like this are in the game they should go back and rethink some of the others.
The vast majority of players are not effected by this. Nearly all WoW players are not in the world first race, nor are they even truly progressing through mythic content. People just like to pretend that this effects their gameplay.
Because it creates racial uniqueness beyond cosmetic appearances and is a staple of the RPG genre, both video games and tabletop.
Sure, Blizz can get rid of them…but I doubt its worth the player outrage that it would generate.
Reducing races down to pure cosmetic choices likely won’t attract any new players, but it sure will drive some current players away.
Hard no, I want my human racial back for pvp. But it’s been nerfed to the ground. I am tired of people complaining and getting racials and profession bonuses nerfed. Removing all the things that allow me to min/max my character is supremely annoying. Hello? Where is my reforging. People complained because “math is hard”. And now it’s removed. Stop sucking the fun out the game.
Would you peeps be open to choosing your racial as a one-off at the character creation screen?
Absolutely. They can add in some kind of monthly cooldown for changing it.
I hate that I have to decide between a race I like and the racials I like.
I think that exactly is my problem. The vast majority of people are not affected by the small dps increase provided by racials right now. But the people that are affected by them, are only negatively affected. Why have something like this in the game?
I think it is a lot less impactful than people make it out to be.
Yes maybe my current racial is basically not worth pressing as any 70 DPS because it does 1/3 of a blackout kick.
At the same time, what do I lose for not pressing it? Apparently I am only 1.321585903% worse off than the best race by using my current race. I think something like using the best embellishment is going to be far more impactful toward reaching that goal.
But ye having a choice can let ppl have those race options, especially one both sides. Maybe there is a human who learned how to make camp like a vulpera.
People don’t grasp how stupid racials are for people that want to push endgame content. For almost every spec in the game Dwarf / Tauren are just much better than everything else purely because of that 2% crit damage passive and that doesn’t even include how insanely good Stoneform is.
Like I play Outlaw and the next race under Dwarf / Tauren is I believe a 2k dps loss on ST which drops all the way to 5k if you compare it to Vulpera. That’s absolutely ridiculous because it’s basically like you equipped an extra piece of gear and it and the difference scales extremely hard in AOE.
Racials are fun, but then you get stuff like troll racial which got destroyed over the years.
Whenever you think that your racial got too much nerfed… remember that pve was built on trolls sweat 
I just think that if we truly care about balance they should have gone further, but they do not need to eliminate them all.
Dwarfs defensive ability right now is miles ahead of other options unless it’s night elves which is also more op depending of situation.
Isn’t that the point?
But if you’re feeling “forced”, how about we stop calling them racial, rename them bonus, and get to choose from all of them.
Being serious btw, but it would be a permanent decision.
You might as well remove then them at all. The point of racials is to add flavor, never really was about the bonus. While for sure people will min/max them, that is true about everything.
Great idea!
This, 210% agree!
The Gnome racials don’t get much focus these days, unlike Humans with their Human Spirit (+2% to all secondaries) and Diplomacy (+10% reputation) which stacks multiplicatively with all other reputation gains (so R3 Contracts will give 16.5 rep each)…
Cannibalism for everyone!
In all seriousness though I think it’s a minority of people who choose their race solely based on racials and not always about the numbers, because if that was the case Shadowmeld wouldn’t be so popular.
I think this also works great. Its very much what has been echoed on the thread allready: I want to play a race because I like the looks or the lore, not because i /feel/ forced to due to throughput increases.