There's now 21 playable races in WOW, but only 5 viable for Arena

PVP Arenas
1

I realize you can be any race and still get 2400. But if you want to push 3k or R1, you usually choose the best race.

Despite there being 11 playable races for each faction, the choices for rated pvp are invariably:

Orc, Belf, Undead, Human, Night Elf.

You’ll see other odd races make a token appearance on the ladder, sometimes, but those 5 right there account for damn nearly all of the ladder above 2400.

It’s an old complaint, but doesn’t blizzard see anything wrong with this?

When was the last time you saw a 3k rated worgen in arena? how bout a panda or a nightborne?

3 Likes
2

Considering how dead pvp is and there’s less than 1000 people playing at rank1, no I don’t think blizz cares one bit. Why would they.

It’s insignificant in the large scale of things.

2 Likes
3

when has there ever been over 1000 r1 spots??? prideful only had 331 and it was one of, if not the, most active seasons ever

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4

When did i ever imply there was? I just threw a random number, to illustrate how meaningless this complaint is. I know it’s a lot lower but didn’t care enough to browse ladder and get a specific number atm.

5

I’d include dwarf, its pretty strong right now.

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6

dont worry they just havent tuned the races yet

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7

dwarf and goblin is viable, I see rank 1 spriests play panda because of the extra cc. and almost all of the rank 1 horde hpals are belfs and then there are gnome warriors which are pretty good. The only races i never see are lightforges and vulperians.

3 Likes
8

Maghar and nightborne are also races you never see, while velf and kul tiran and ztroll are almost as rare

9

honestly forgot that was a playable race and I have a nightborne alt lol.
also worgen, the only worgens i ever seen are raganos warlocks.

oh and add tauren druids to viable list, every rank horde druid is a tauren.

10

kultiran and velf are actually decent

haymaker into hex/poly

velf port into fear bomb/cc or port away to safety

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11

stop it benny

yeah we’ve all queued into those 1-2 velf locks that have been playing double destro between 2100 and 2400 6hrs a day every day for 3 months
at least one of them on whisperwind

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12

benny is gonna make the comeback of the century in shadowlands if ele is decent and gearing is a thing, just u wait

oddly specific, never qd into them

13

dwarf/dark iron dwarf is also viable

still though idk the solution to this. could make it so you have to get exalted with the city of the race whose racial you want and then you can select that way. then races at that point are just cosmetic.

14

i sure hope so. just now on chan’s stream i was told “you will not have to do anything but pvp for gear unless you’re a weenie who cares about getting vers on one extra slot” or something like that

outing myself as playing 1400 duelist games in 1 season for no payoff…ow

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15

And with the new Spriest and Affliction Warlock it’s going to be a lot better.

16

it’s not just r1 though, the diversity of races shrinks and shrinks the higher the brackets get. by the time you reach 2400, it’s almost exclusively the 5 races i listed.

17

I mean you’re totally missing dark iron dwarf having insane viability in 8.3 with the ability to just auto dispel claws on them.

Personally I think racials in the arena are way too busted to be in play; like shadowmeld has so much utility its actually insane that something like that is even allowed in arena.

1 Like
18

Meta races have been Orc or Human for non druids for a long time now.
Druids have been NElf or Tauren for the same amount of time.
This xpac saw Dark Iron pull out ahead for a little bit for non-Rogue/Mage/Paladin Alliance players because of the magic dispel for claw/Maledict.
Stuff like this really makes me miss Tmorph being around.

19

With the changes to gearing in SL, with conquest gear vendors and PvP bonus a thing again plus Mythic+ gear nerfed, I think we’ll see a lot more people participating in PvP again.

The BFA system turned people off PvP.

20

Not sure why you bothered to include Blood Elves they’re only represented because of lack of options, they’re no stronger than any of their class/race/choice counterparts on Horde. Taurens and Z-Trolls don’t offer many advantages either, so most people land on Belf aesthetically Paladin wise. (DH’s just don’t have a choice)

Rank 1 players would be able to compete as any race, but no reason to put themselves at any type of disadvantage given the choice.