That’s currently Shadow Meld… Which is why Night Elf is the top represented race in PvP… Especially after they nerfed Orc Hardiness.
Arcane Torrent isn’t it really going to help you against a melee class… An interrupt doesn’t mean much against them.
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i am? i have multiple spriests and nelf is my main for pvp because it’s disgusting
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It was reworked because the silence was very strong. Is NELF shadowmeld that strong that it needs to be reworked or nerfed? I do not agree.
Truthfully when you put defensive racials in the same bucket as offensive racials or a silence that is a bridge too far.
I disagree in regard to the importance of defensive or offensive classification for racials. Human racial was nerfed because it was dominant offensive racial.
Being able to use a racial defensively isn’t OP and if it is then the game design has shifted drastically in the wrong direction.
Case in point was the Orc racials for stuns reduction. It wasn’t the problem with the Orc racial the problem was many stuns did not DR with one another and too many micro stuns. Peopled gravitated to play Orcs as a byproduct of not addressing the elephant in the room.
Fast forward to the year 2024 and they finally started to nerf stuns and DR more of them. But micro CC and micro stuns still exist and it is still a problem. And the problem hasn’t been solved by nerfing Orc stun racial either.
Is Escape artist now OP because it has existed for years. Same with stoneform so at some point it is not the racials that are OP but the content has shifted and become harder where defensive utility is coveted more than pure DPS racials.
That doesn’t happen often with racials but when it does I believe it is not a problem with racials but a problem with the game design and difficulty.
In PVP offensive racials do not overshadow defensive racials as much as shadowmeld, escape artist, and stoneform were strong alternatives to human racials. Which is 100% fine. But for PVE it was a big problem to have strong offensive racials.
PVE side is shifting to difficulty content so people are looking for defensive racials now. But that means the game design has shifted in a bad direction and not the defensive racials all of sudden are OP.
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If the silence was strong, they could’ve just removed the silence and kept the interrupt. It didn’t warrant a rework.
Yes, it’s the top represented race in PvP because of its racial. Ive already went over the reasons why it needs nerfed. A defensive racial is fine, but it needs to stick to that one thing. Here’s what this one racial is able to accomplish:
Night Elf racial allows healers in PvP to drop combat instantly and start drinking, where as other healers would need to wait to get out of combat, and they might not even get that. Very important in a battle of attrition.
Shadow melding before a damaging ability such as Chaos Bolt, Stormbolt, and other abilities that have travel time will completely negate the effect. (pseudo immunity)
It also allows for another restealth on rogues and druids (allowing Garrote silence / Cheap Shot / Rake stun, as well as being another vanish if they didn’t have DoTs on themselves.)
And of course, it’s most obvious function which isn’t that big of a problem, allows a Night Elf player to be stealthed so long as they’re stationary. (allows any class to sit a base in stealth for BGs, that isn’t that bad though)
So, this one racial is able to be used in multiple functions. Asking for a nerf or a possible redesign isn’t unreasonable. And the redesign I’ve proposed isn’t unreasonable either:
It still allows it to be used for it’s original function, which was just staying stealthed while stationary. It also keeps the “skill shot” aspect of it, where if you time it right, it’ll make the next spell within a short window miss.
And people are currently gravitating towards Night Elves. That’s a moot point… If you’re gonna justify one racial as being overpowered because people are gravitating towards it, why not do the same to Night Elf which is doing the same thing?
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Did something change about it recently, or does it still work the same as it has worked since WotLK?
It has absolutely changed since wotlk. There have been expansions where it stealthed you but didn’t drop combat, there have been expansions where it didn’t have its immunity frame. Then there is also relative power to other races. Dwarf racial got a lot better at one point. Humans had a crazy good racial until they nerfed it. Orcs stun resist was even better until they nerfed it.
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I suppose I’m not that familiar, but it seems to me that it was more or less the same from Wrath through Legion, at least.
But anyway, I’m mostly curious as to whether something has suddenly changed with the racial that people are saying it needs to be nerfed for PVP, yet people currently playing Cata Classic often seem to value the human CC break racial over shadowmeld for arenas.
That is correct.
That is why the current iteration of Shadowmeld isn’t OP as it was a lot better before IMO. People notice shadowmeld being a good racial now, because of human racial being nerfed along with other Horde racials (Orce, Blood Elf, etc).
Add the Dwarf too. Please take me out of this Race. 
Im pretty sure current Shadowmeld is the best version. It has the instant combat drop and the immunity frame. But while it may be one of the top tier racials in the game, it’s not as crazy as some are making it out to be. It’s not on a tier of its own. It’s just one of the best in the game along with orc, dwarf/DI dwarf.
One issue that is unique to Shadowmeld I think is how it interacts with the rogue and feral Druid kit in ways that it hasn’t in the past. As you know, the over reliance on stealth based mechanics especially for rogues is more of a recent design decision, and Shadowmeld is unique in the sense that it allows you to gain these tools more often than other races, which just makes it so much better for most forms of competitive content.
But even for rogues, I don’t think Shadowmeld is on a tier of its own. I think dwarf and orc are still very good.
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It’s just a combination of other racials getting nerfed and cross-faction content making it easier to pick up Alliance races with powerful racials.
Thus, last I saw, at 1800 rating, people playing Night Elves are more than double the next most popular Alliance race and about equal to the entirety of Horde races combined.
I didn’t find a good way of looking at numbers for M+, but looking at the highest rated players, the list was largely a mixture of Night Elf, Dwarf, and Dracthyr. You’ll also notice the M+ rating cut-offs for Alliance are slightly higher than Horde specifically because most high-level players have switched to Night Elf or Dwarf.
It is what it is. Competitive players will always aim for whatever gives them the best advantage. I wouldn’t mind seeing some adjustments to outlier racials like Shadowmeld, but I at least appreciate Blizzard trying to bring up underperforming ones first.
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I guess my question is more whether something has changed that causes an advantage or if people are just saying “look at the numbers, Nelf must be OP.” Has Shadowmeld always been OP, and people are just now realizing?
Is that what’s happening?
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I don’t think this is true. People have been saying Shadowmeld is op ever since BfA, maybe even Legion after Arcane Torrent got changed. Shadowmeld is absolutely overpowered for a racial ability and so are Stoneform and Fireblood. You know, Mechagnome is also kinda busted as it has 3 very strong racials, but even that is overshadowed by the ones mentioned previously.
No, people have been asking for it to be nerfed for a long time. It’s just that now with Blizzard announcing racial tuning combined with the debacle that it was nerfing Dracthyr racials for non-Evokers, it has put it in the spotlight more than ever.
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Agreed, nerf it, seriously!
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I agree. An increase in CD isn’t that drastic of a change.
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No CD increase pls, just make it unable to be used in combat. Way too powerful in combat.
Honestly if people think defensive racials are OP the problem is that the core base kits of classes and specs need to be re-evaluated.
No one thought these defensive racials were OP in Mists of Pandaria for example before the pruning started in WoD and Legion respectively.
When MoP classic arrives people will fully understand what I am talking about.
In fact with Cata classic people are seeing that classes felt better to play compared to live and that will be driven home with MoP classic release.
Once the young generation of players have tasted what Cata/MoP class design fully is capable of there will not be a chance to go back. Going back to the horrible class design of the Legion/BFA/Systemlands era will be no more.
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Class design was absolutely at its peak in MoP.
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Why do you think nerfing Shadowmeld is necessary? You think it’s overpowered, right? But instead of being a Night Elf, you chose to play a Tauren — no one forced you into that, right? Look, my friend, there’s something really wrong with your behavior, and let me try to help you understand what’s wrong with it.
You want to look like a Tauren, you want to use War Stomp on people, and you even want to have a special transmog from the Trading Post, but you don’t want to give up anything you have while asking others to give up theirs. This isn’t fair — can’t you see that? People invest time in their characters just like you do. Asking favors from others should be done fairly.
Personally, I love the Undead, but I play Night Elf. You have to make a choice at the beginning — do you want to play a character because you love its animations, or because it suits your playstyle? You can’t have both.
It’s like when people go to their boss and say, “If person X stays here, I’m quitting.” But in the end, they get themselves fired, right? That’s the kind of attitude you remind me of.
Stop being disrespectful to others while not making any sacrifices yourself, but expecting others to do so. You want to stomp on us non-stop, and then you cry when I use Shadowmeld? Come on. If you think the Night Elf racial is so overpowered, go play Night Elf. But I guess being big and Horde is more important to you. In that case, you have no right to ask for a nerf to my racial, bro. So stop annoying people with the same topic over and over again.
Figure out your own problems and don’t ask for help here.
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Because it’s the most represented race in PvP and is a very strong racial. It does way too much for one button lol. I’d agree with what you’re saying had they not nerfed the Blood Elf racial in the same sense.
And it’s funny, people who use the kind of argument you’re using will defend the hell out of Shadow Meld, but whenever someone else mentions a previous racial like Blood Elf Arcane Torrent, they’ll suddenly backpedal and be like “well actually no, that was justified, it was indeed broken 
”
Doesn’t really matter if it’s an offensive or defense racial, if it’s busted, it’s busted. 
That’s because we had racials that were on a similar level or better. No one complained about Shadow Meld because people ran Human racial which freed up a PvP trinket spot.
Blood Elf racial was also goated because it was an interrupt/silence. It wasn’t until these other racials that were on par with it, or better, got nerfed into the ground that made Shadow Meld stand out.
Orc Hardiness got nerfed by 50% in PvP combat as well, which made lots of players faction change.
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