Bag of Tricks is a pretty mediocre ability and to my knowledge, the only performance racial active that is on the GCD [Legit forgot about LFD and Goblin til I logged into every single race so consider this a pre-post edit]. In fact, let’s take a quick look at all the other actives and see which are on the GCD and which aren’t, even the utility ones.
Alliance
- Human: Every Man For Himself - CC-removal; not on GCD
- Dwarf: Stoneform - DR+Dispel; not on GCD
- Night Elf: Shadowmeld - Combat drop/Stealth-activater; not on GCD
- Gnome: Escape Artist - CC-removal; not on GCD
- Draenei: Gift of the Naaru - 20% Heal/5s, usable on any friendly; not on GCD
- Worgen: Darkflight - Speed Boost; not on GCD
- Void Elf: Spatial Rift - Throw Void/Teleport to Void; Throw is on GCD, Teleport is not (equivalent to something like Blink which is on the GCD. Regardless, it’s not a performance racial and only used in specific scenarios, not 100% of the time)
- Lightforged Draenei: Light’s Judgment - Delayed AoE damage; on GCD (this one actually surprised me and I did forget about it. It is an AoE and can be vastly more useful than Bag of Tricks since it scales with # of targets, but I’d advocate this to be removed from GCD too)
- Dark Iron Dwarf: Fireblood - Dispel+Main stat increase; not on GCD
- Kul Tiran: Haymaker - Knockback+Stun; on GCD+cast time (doesn’t surprise me, CC is very powerful and it’d be odd if this didn’t cost a GCD. Also the only racial with a Cast Time. That said, this is not a performance racial and only used in specific scenarios)
- Mechagnome: I don’t actually have Mechagnomes unlocked yet, so I can’t test them myself. That said, it’s a CC racial and if it’s on the GCD, see Kul Tiran for why that’s okay.
Horde
- Orc: Blood Fury - Main stat increase; not on GCD (this is one of the reasons all other active performance racials should be off GCD)
- Undead: Will of the Forsaken - CC-removal; not on GCD
- Troll (Darkspear): Berserking - Haste increase; not on GCD (this is one of the reasons all other active performance racials should be off GCD)
- Blood Elf: Arcane Torrent - AoE Dispel+Resource-generator; on GCD (there was an entire blue post on why this was added to the GCD regarding the Dispel. The resource-generation for most classes is also negligible and only used if you have nothing else to spend the GCD on. One could argue that this is a performance racial, but it’s not really intended to be and definitely isn’t for the majority of specializations considering Blood Elves also have a passive performance racial)
- Goblin: Rocket Jump and Rocket Barrage (shared CD) - Jump forward/single-target damage; both on GCD (Rocket Barrage is an added bonus, given that Goblins also get a 1% Haste boost, unlike other races who have a performance racial (like Orcs, Trolls, and Dark Iron Dwarves). That said, most people save their racial CD for Rocket Jump to get out of mechanics anyway, which isn’t a performance racial)
- Nightborne: Arcane Pulse - AoE damage+Snare; on GCD (similar to Goblins, this is mostly a bonus performance racial as they get a 1% magic damage increase, plus it’s used more for the snare. I’d be fine with removing this from the GCD as well though as pure Physical specs like Outlaw, Arms, or Fury get 0 benefit out of the 1% magic damage)
- Highmountain Tauren: Bull Rush - Charge forward+AoE knockdown; on GCD (kinda like combining Goblin’s Rocket Jump with Kul Tiran’s Haymaker. The GCD is absolutely justified here as this isn’t a performance racial, plus your character is forcibly moved forward anyway)
- Mag’har: Ancestral Call - Secondary stat increase; off the GCD
- Zandalari: Regeneratin’ - Channeled 100% heal over 6s; on GCD (this would be weird if it wasn’t on the GCD since you’re casting for the next 6s anyway. Also not a performance racial anyway)
- Vulpera: Bag of Tricks - Single target damage or heal; on GCD (and here’s the reason this thread is being made. Not only is the damage and healing pitiful, and will get worse with higher gear levels, but unlike Goblin who has a passive performance racial, Vulpera get nothing else to benefit them in combat)
Pandas
- Pandaren: Quaking Palm - CC; On GCD (See Kul Tiran; this is not a performance racial and only used in specific scenarios)
As a sort of a TL;DR/conclusion: It makes absolutely no sense that Bag of Tricks (and by extension, Light’s Judgment) should be on the GCD when stronger (and much better scaling) actives like Blood Fury or Berserking are off the GCD. So why are they? It would go a long way to making the racial at least tolerable if you didn’t need to waste a global on it.
Edit: Added Mag’har, whoops. Somehow skipped over them.
