Hello fellow players,
As we all know, the racial traits in World of Warcraft add a unique flavor to each race, offering various passive bonuses and niche active abilities that give personality to our characters. The balance of these traits has often been a topic of discussion within our community. With the upcoming changes to human racials and the eventual adjustment of Dractyr’s racial traits in The War Within, I believe now would be a good time for an overall refresh on racial traits for most races. I’d like to open up a discussion on how Blizzard could improve the feeling while keeping things balanced.
Current State of Racial Traits
Racial traits are mostly done with the same recipe for every race.
- A combat-utility racial
- A damage-output racial
- A sprinkle of flavor racials which come in various form
Let’s take dwarf as an example:
- Stoneform is the combat-utility racial
- Might of the mountain is the damage-increase racial (2% crit damage)
- Frost resistance and explorer are flavor racials
Sometimes the combat-utility is passive, like for Orc:
- Blood Fury is the damage-output racial
- Hardiness is combat-utility
- Command is flavor (and niche output, but 1% only on pet damage is minuscule)
If you want to see for yourselves, here are all the racial traits in the current game, I invite you to look for the racial trait page on wowpedia.
Outliers and suggestions
First of all, I would like to note that the damage-output part of racial traits is very minor and irrelevant to your performance as a player. In my opinion, they are balanced enough as is. In this post I am mostly concerned about making every combat-utility racial traits feel good.
Now it is well known that some utility racials are just superior in end-game content. For example, Stoneform and Shadowmeld are very useful abilities in many situations and they feel very good when used at the right time. In comparison, Regeneratin’ (ZTroll) and Arcane Pulse (Nightborne) are mostly unimpactful
I think combat-utility racials are at their best when they can occasionally provide some unique, powerful utility.
So here is a short list of racial abilies which are, in my opinion, not good enough:
Gift of the naaru (Draenei)
- Heals the target (any friendly) for 20% of their total health over 5 sec.
- Instant and does not trigger the global cooldown
- 3 min cooldown
The healing could be cranked up a bit, maybe 30% would make it more competitive. It is not a bad ability but the cooldown is high and not justified.
Darkflight (Worgen)
- Activates your true form, increasing movement speed by 40% for 10 sec.
- 2 min cooldown
This is just a normal speed boost and lack flavor. Maybe adjust it so it gives a stronger movement speed boost but for a shorter period of time (150% for 3s) and use the running wild animation while we’re at it to give it some needed flavor?
Spatial Rift (Void elf)
- Tear a rift in space. Reactivate this ability to teleport through the rift.
- The rift lasts 6s
- 3 min cooldown
Situational but useful in PvP and for some mechanics in PvE. The rift moves quite slowly and only last 6s. I think making the rift last 8s or putting the ability off the global cooldown would make it much more usable. I also think the cooldown could be 2 min
Light’s Judgment (Lightforged Draenei)
- Call down a strike of Holy energy on a target, dealing (Attack power * 6.25) Holy damage to enemies within 5 yards after 3 sec.
- 2.5 min cooldown
Lightforged lack any combat-utility racials. Their only active is Light’s Judgment which actually deal good damage but on a long-ish cooldown. What would you add to this race to make them more competitive?
Arcane Pulse (Nightborne)
- Deals (Attack power * 0.5) Arcane damage to nearby enemies and reduces their movement speed by 50%. Lasts 12 sec.
- Only triggers half a global cooldown
- 3 min cooldown
In a world where almost every class has access to slows, and where even AoE slows are also pretty common, this ability is kind of superfluous. The damage is negligible, which is fine because nightborne has another damage-output racial, but the utility is not good enough to justify a 3 min cooldown. Either lower the cooldown a lot, or add a short knockup so it can be used to interrupt enemies?
Mag’har Orc
This allied race has no real combat-utility racial. Savage blood, which reduce the duration of Poisons, Diseases and Curses by 10%, does nothing in 99% scenarios, PvP and PvE. It’s just flavor at this point. They also have a 10% bonus to pet health which I also consider to be flavor only.
Regeneratin’ (Zandalari Troll)
- Regenerate 100% of your maximum health over 6 sec, interrupted by damage.
- 2.5 min cooldown
This ability is unusable in its current state. The moments you need healing are also the moments you are taking damage. Unless you can reliably get away from attackers, get rid of every damage over time effects on you and avoid any AoE damage while you sit there channeling for 6s, you will NEVER get good value out of this. I think DoT damage should not break the channel. Hell I think it should just not break on damage at all. Personnally, I would reduce the channel time back to 4s, and make it heal less when taking damage instead of breaking.
Not combat-utility racials, but I believe those should be looked at too
Embrace the Loa (Zandalari Troll)
- Choose your Loa by making an offering to Loa Shrines around the world.
Each Loa offers unique powers. Guards in Dazar’alor will tell you where Shrines can be found.
I think this passive should be looked at. Some Loa buffs are very undertuned and pretty much unusable (Embrace of Akunda, Embrace of Kimbul, Embrace of Krag’wa).
Also, I think there should be an animation for the different effects. Right now there are none at all. Embrace of Pa’ku proc could do some cool effect like a roaring pterrordax sound or something.
The flavor of this racial is amazing, but I think the effects could be more interesting.
Pterrordax swoop (Zandalari Troll)
- Reduces your falling speed for 2 min.
- 15 min cooldown
This acts like a Goblin glider but on its own cooldown. It’s pretty cool and flavorful, but the cooldown is waaay too long for what it does! Reduce this to 2 min please! Or even better, reduce it to like 5 min and make it usable in instanced content as a way to avoid knockbacks and fall damage!
Epicurean (Pandaren)
- Increases the stat benefits from food by 100%
This is the damage-output racial for Pandaren. To enhance its usefulness and uniqueness, I suggest that it also allows the Well Fed food buff to persist through death. This change would make the trait more interesting and practical, eliminating the need to constantly reapply food buffs after each death to fully benefit from the Pandaren racial.
Conclusion
I’d love to hear YOUR thoughts and suggestions on this topic. How do you feel about the current state of racial traits? What changes would you like to see if any?
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