Gearing is changing in Dragonflight to ensure that the competition is always relatively fair.
I think it’s time to either make racial abilities cosmetic or consistent regardless of your chosen race.
For example, I main a Dwarf and I get Stoneform (removes debuffs and 10% damage reduction) Tauren would get an ability to pray to the earthmother which did the same thing and Dwarves would in turn have a hammer slam ability to give them war stomp.
Every Race would have it’s own variation of the racial abilities available across the board, however wouldn’t all of the classes in the game pick Shadowmeld? Yes, so there are some abilities which would have to either become PvE only or be tweaked.
What are your thoughts?
My thoughts are Racial abilities have to be either shared with all, regardless of race, or they have to be changed entirely. As a first idea towards changing them entirely I came up with this:
All races have a choice of one racial ability from the list below, which they change based on the situation (out of combat in a rested area). All of these abilities would have a 2 or 3 minute cooldown.
- “Dodge Ability” Shadowmeld Replacement - Dwarves would turn to stone and become unattackable for 1 second, this would not allow you to leave combat. Night Elves would become a wisp and all of other races would have an equivalent.
- “Courage Ability” - A Rallying Cry type ability similar effect to that of the Battlemaster PvP Trinket. Needless to say, Frenzied Regeneration for Druids and other abilities based on HP would need to be altered to make this balanced.
- “Buff Ability” - Damage increase can come in many forms, but regardless as to whether it’s primary stat or secondary stat it will always favour one class more than others. Therefore the buff would have to be a stacking increase, once activated the player would receive an increase to their primary stat or their versatility (any secondary stat that will be beneficial for everyone equally) by a small amount. Using today’s stat numbers i’d say the first stack would be 20 strength/40 versatility rating and it would increase every second for the next 10 seconds, once reaching 10 stacks the buff will remain for a further 8 seconds. Good players in pvE would activate their burst abilities once it reached 10 stacks, good pvP players would have an incentive to track their opponents buff rack
I found it most difficult to create something exciting to use which didn’t have so much of an impact that it would indefinitely be the one you picked regardless of situation.
Thanks for reading, if you have any ideas as to what you think racial abilities could be please post a reply!
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They aren’t racial abilities if every race can have them.
To me, either they balance the racials or they get rid of the ones that affect combat and make racials the equivalent of toy items.
It’s a problem on both retail and classic and I 100% agree the racial shouldn’t play such a big role in gameplay.
Just look at how many humans there are on Classic:
In TBC Classic, Undead was closer to 18%.
I know this is a thread about retail, but with less races on Classic, it’s easier to showcase the issue.
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Yeah having a different ability BECAUSE you’re that specific race, is an aspect of racial abilities which makes them interesting I agree. Balancing is the main issue, I’d prefer it if Racial Abilities had less of an impact and were primarily utility based abilities (stuns/knockbacks/movement altering) Stealthing via Shadowmeld and flat increases to Haste % via Troll Berserking or damage increases via the Orc Racial have always been too much of a game winning effect. Introducing Racial Events, or World Quests etc was an idea I had the other day which in combination with nerfing game winning racials could incentivise people to pick their race based on the fantasy.
As always ty for your reply 
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I’m still under the belief that combat racials should be outright removed, and reserve racials for utility. (Note, I think the 1% stat racials, mechangnome, etc. are fine). I’m mostly referring to things like Shadowmeld, Fireblood, Berserking, Regeneratin’, etc. Racials that can give a major advantage in combat to one race over another.
I know that’s not a popular opinion though. (Shadowmeld may be considered utility to some, but for Subtlety Rogue and Feral Druids, it’s also a Combat Racial.)
But since I know it’s not popular, that’s all I’ll say on the matter.
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I’d rather that, than carry on as we are for sure Maizou good to hear from you ty for the reply
For the same reason I am opposed to giving all races access to all classes, I am opposed to this. I understand that racials are not perfectly balanced, and I understand that some are outright broken in certain types of content, but giving everyone the same thing strictly for the reason of “X race has this so I should too” is a horrible idea IMO. No disrespect meant, just my opinion
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I feel like making everything the same is what ruins how special a character is to a player. I have been Orc since day 1 and only changed races when I got bored or thought another race would be better but have always switched back.
If race changes where free it would change alot of peoples issues with blizzard “tweaking” what they feel the problem is for people. Good example would be the new PvP set bonus that was 15% stun reduction for having two PvP trinkets along with stam and mainstat. This basically ruined a huge racial for Orcs and gave it to everyone making orcs way less valuable which im sure would drive people to spend money and race change.
Even though it was later nerfed to 10% it still makes one racials worth way less and one racial worth way more. If the race changes were free lets say once a year. No problem with tuning them because you can switch, but because its not free they can cash in on tweaking them causing people to switch. Really unfair if you ask people to trust dev tuning but also make money off punishing people who are making one choice and leading them to make another.
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Yes, I agree and I would also prefer to simply remove the racials or make them cosmetic so no offense taken 
I was trying to find the middle ground hehe!
My idea of making every race have access to each racial ability, also included reworking racial abilities, giving them new names, appearances and so forth but ultimately a dwarf using his racial to stun, would be doing the same spell as a tauren for example.
The problem is, it takes away the identity of the spell, it’s not a racial spell anymore as others said in their reply. Can you think of a way to solve that? I see no way to solve it, other than making racials cosmetic or nonexistant.
Thanks for your reply!
Well the idea would be that you’d be able to actively change your racial ability, by speaking to your racial leader. Any race would be able to pick any of the abilities and their appearance and name would differ just not the outcome of the spell.
I still think Troll Racial is by far the most PvE friendly and that it and the orc racial are responsible for the imbalanced situation between the Horde and Alliance. Do you not see this as a problem that needs to be solved? I know you do PvP mainly but yea what’s the solution hmm!
Thanks for your reply
I guess what I don’t understand is that aside from throughput balancing, what even is the problem with racials?
From your inital post:
In theory cool, but unnecessary just the same. Some people play a certain race for cosmetic reasons, others will choose to play it for throughput reasons, and still others will play for a specific racial (Shadowmeld is a great example of this). All of these are perfectly valid and reasons to switch the race of your character in WoW.
Taking one of these away just makes no sense.
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The primary issue is that the racial abilities are NOT balanced, and the purpose of the post is to find a solution. If you think this is not a problem and unnecessary as you say, fair enough. I don’t, and I’m aiming to try to find the middle ground really where Racial Abilities are enjoyable and impactful but not to an extent to which it vastly encourages players who play the game seriously to reroll to the faction with the best racials. World First Raiding events are a good example of this behaviour, but it’s also happening even within players who are new to the game; naturally you start a game and you’d like to win so you ask your friends how to do it and as long as racials remain as strong a factor as they are it’s not encouraging people to pick their race or faction based on aesthetic/fantasty it’s infact encouraging them to pick based on how it will impact their performance. It’s World of Warcraft, we should be able to pick a fantasy we prefer, and it should not have an influence on whether or not we’re able to participate in activities (most serious PvE Guilds are Horde view the Halls of Fame).
Thanks for your reply, it’s good that we view thing differently and I can 100% see how this could appear as not problematic for someone without the knowledge/experience.
Okay, but you can.
Because until youre at the very top, a difference in racial abilities which is 100 dps at the most does not matter to you. 100 DPS is almost never the difference in a boss kill or not, even at the highest level.
To be blunt I’m a little put off by the fact you assume based on my opinion that I don’t have knowledge or experience on the subject. As someone who mains Night Elf strictly for aesthetic reasons, I am fully aware that I could race change to increase my DPS marginally. However, the desire to play as a night elf outweighs the desire for that extra 100 dps.
As someone who mythic raids, not at a CE level, but well above AOTC, the race I and my guild play, and the DPS “loss” from not playing Troll (as an example) might be the difference in a kill once in a thousand pulls.
No, we are not a HoF or World First guild which will race change for that, and if those guilds want to min/max to that level, by all means let them, but I dont see this as a good change for the 98% of the playerbase not at that level.
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Letholas, I think you should re-read the post and consider whether you think my intention was to paint the picture that you’re inexperienced or whether it was to try to understand why racial abilities are not a problem in your opinion.
I disagree strongly as I firmly believe racial abilities are too important a factor for most players before they pick a race or faction.
I’d also like to apologize if you’re offended, from my point of view if you’re unaware a large portion of players pick their race based on racial abilities, you’re simply not very interested as it’s not a topic you’d need to ask about otherwise. “Why did you pick Dwarf Thomusus?” is not a question people ask especially in pvP as the majority of players you meet are on human females (pre cross faction) for the racial and the good looks. Perhaps you can relate to this example? Am I basing my entire argument for it being important to balance racials upon this? No, I have many other experiences but hopefully you can now see that my only conclusion when you said this was not an issue was that you must lack experience.
Thanks for your reply, the purpose of my post is to find a solution and balance racial abilities in a way that remains fun.
I thought of a new one today,
Imagine if racial abilities were relative to your chosen profession and for example allowed you to craft a specific item via world quests that only dwarves or your chosen race has access to. Dwarves are renown for their mining expertise and I think if we were to alter racial abilities and make them less impact on gameplay it could be a great way to fill the hole! Haha sorry coudn’t resist.