Racials impacting end-game too much

Community General Discussion
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So the last time in-game racial abilities or passives impacted the game too heavily, blizzard. You out-right reworked them, I know its not like it was in MDI Or arena during Legion with triple belf being a rampant problem, but please. Just get rid of the dwarf cleanses and meld already, rework it. Its shamelessly strong and is well above 90% of racials ingame.

That or disable them entirely <3 put an end to my suffering of having to perma harass a night elf healer cause they can meld drink, meld rake, meld stun. Meld M+skip trash or boss mechanics entirely.

Its that time again to tune and neuter some racials, much love~

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spits Fanta

You are joking, right? I never have seen a game with more meaningless racials than WoW. A game like Elder Scrolls Online has “strong racials”. But WoW? Not at all. Aside of active skills in functionality, almost every other racial is quite useless or too situational to be useful.

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Vulpera racials are amazing for Collectors.

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Meanwhile racials like for Lightforged Draenei suck quite much.

Take the “dying” racial Light’s Reckoning of Lightforged Draenei for example. That one is literally useless. It wouldn’t be useless if it would heal/damage 0.5x the amount your own HP have when you die, with the damage/healing decreasing on distance and such.

If WoWhead is to believed with the (dated) article about Light’s Reckoning, you damage/heal ONLY 5666HP on your death as lvl 50 char.

That’s not “mighty powerful”, that’s “mighty :poop:”.

The 20% bonus XP from killing Demons? Useless outside of every Expansion/Patch with Demons.

Light’s Forge? Useless because it doesn’t allow you to repair your gear even. You can only blacksmith with it. Only useful for Blacksmithing… But how often do you need to Blacksmith gear OUTSIDE a city anyways?

Light’s Judgement? Niche at best, if the following calculation is to be believed from the article.

Call down a strike of Holy energy, dealing [Attack power * 3 * 1 * (1 + Versatility)] Holy damage to enemies within 5 yards after 3 sec.

And reduced Holy Damage incoming by 1%? Excuse me? How many enemies even use Holy school magic anyways these days, aside of Paladins in PvP? Might be more useful in upcoming The War Within with the Arathi… But aside of that, useless almost.

Those elemental/magic damage resistances should be 3-5%, not 1% in general too!

If we take earlier mentioned Light’s Reckoning on lvl 50 char with 5666 damage dealt as reference and subtract that 1%, it deals 56,66 damage less. That’s literally ignorable.

On 240k Holy damage in current DDs damage (at least with my Paladin at times in a M+) that would be 2.400 damage less, that’s 1/283 of my entire health (679k HP). So little damage protection that isn’t even needed because a healing spell will easily just outheal it by 30x with a single spell (55k HP healing with Flash of Light for me).

Now let’s recalculate that with 3% instead:

  • 5666 -3% = 5666 * 0,97 = 5496,02 (better, but still useless)
  • 240.000 -3% = 240.000 * 0,97 = 232.800 (7.200 difference) (looks much better than 2.400 with just 1% mitigation)
  • 679.000 / 7.200 = 1/95 of entire HP
  • 55k Heal / 7.200 = 1/8 of the healing done (compared to roughly 30x with just the 2.400 mitigated damage from the 240k attack)
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I will once again refer you to the engrossing number of night elves in the top 1000 in the arena ladder. Of any ladder where they can play that class . As for pve its not as important, but its still devastatingly better to just have than idk lets say goblin cause why not.

Making a mechanic randomly end early cause you can meld it or meld it for somebody else, or just death skip with it. Or cancel a cast, it has infinite value if you’re willing to be respectively creative and or destructive whilst using it.

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No, he isn’t. If you look at the M+ leaderboards, nearly all top players are night elves or dwarves, at least the classes that can be one of these two races. Apparently the situation is similar for high-end PvP (with NEs).

Blizzard nerfed/changed the Blood Elf racial (Arcane Torrent) in or after Legion for the same reasons (everyone was a BE for the competitive advantage).

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Mate, stop for a moment and start thinking. Even IF Nightelves didn’t had such racials, most of those top 1000 players would still be up there, no matter what class or race. In the end, they aren’t playing Night Elves because it is a fundamental balance difference (something that would be visible by lower ranks too) but because in that range of player brackets people optimize every last % out of the options, squeezing every last drop of advantage out of the fruit.

Imagine for a moment the racials would be changed. What do you think would happen? Let me tell you. Those Top 1000 players would be playing and squeezing out something else from a different race as much as possible and you would still be here, complaining that the Top 1000 players all play the same race for the racials.

If you take away a step from a ladder, there is still the step below that one. And constantly nerfing things because “people play a meta” results in the end only with a ladder without steps, a game where everything is irrelevantly weak.

And since you plainly said:

You are basically ASKING for even more RPG elements to be disabled… In an MMORPG which has its main audience focus not on PvP…

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Gerrof Stoneskin

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No you’re right, it wont change the top 1000 players but actually it might, if you’re a rogue or druid at minimum it might cause some disruption as most players at any MMR use it as a means of bypassing having to exchange a vanish in place of a racial or for a free get out of jail free card.

but the point is, there might be some racial variety on ladder (probably not knowing people prefer female anims anyway) but there could be more racial variety on the ladder if joe bloggs didn’t have to play a orc every time he wanted to play shaman in arena. 10% stun reduction > anything else idc what you say.

That enough warrants the idea alone, but no. Its too important to have the combo / option available. It hardly adds any flavor of RPG element, just adds meta at this stage of the game’s life cycle where its more damaging than anything.

Some games have racials which are just inferior or not even used in any form of end-game, despite there being blatant bias in casual aspects which have literally 0 impact at any end-game factor than maybe height, or like how the goblins, vulpera and LF draenei have a means of things like bank, anvil or extra bags readily avaliable.

Its an rpg element we don’t need or shouldn’t need to fall on. Why should I mechanically put myself at a disadvantage on a daily bases for playing the ‘wrong race’

You’re welcome to disagree, but as far as I am concerned. Its happened countless times, from atleast Legion+ now in the pve spectrum and has haunted the game since the dawn of time with pvp. Your race shouldn’t disrupt how you want to play the game or hinder performance / gate keep you from a potential you can’t unlock with your class cause you chose the wrong race at character select. Its just bad and doesn’t belong in a game endorsing esports / high end game.

I could keep going, theres plenty of examples like how in BFA troll warlocks were very good cause of the haste steroid the racial gave, or how people were playing specific races which translated to troll on the mythic jaina fight for the racial. Or how dwarf racial got pre-emptivley nerfed for Nathria after a russian guild FC’d to alliance. List goes on really.

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Because THAT is the definition of a Roleplaying Game (RPG).

Role-playing video games typically rely on a highly developed story and setting, which is divided into a number of quests or levels. Players typically control one or more characters by issuing commands, which are then performed by the player character based on their defined abilities and attributes. Throughout the game, these attributes increase or decrease, and set the personality of the character.

An RPG usually also has a complex and dynamic interaction mechanism, defined and developed between the player character and the world within which they are immersed. This includes interaction with the world environment, as well as other non-character players defined within the world. Due to these factors, there is usually more time allocated to designing and developing the codebase that deals with the behavior and artificial-intelligence (AI) handling such events throughout the game.

If you play a Rouge, you will have the handicaps of a Rouge, especially on a race that is designed around being a Rouge. If you play a Warrior, you will have the handicaps of a Warrior, especially on a race that is designed around being a Warrior. That’s the idea of playing an RPG. If it wouldn’t be like that, you wouldn’t be playing an RPG. You would be playing a Story game or an arena PvP game with Hero classes.

See it as following example. The Rouge is good at stealth, the Warrior isn’t. The Warrior is good at surviving attacks, the Rouge isn’t. The Rouge has stealth abilities, but the Warrior has better armor stats and abilities that heal better.

Even in Elder Scrolls Online, where every race can be every class, there are racials that give some class-race combos clear advantages.

  • Argonians for example can swim 50% faster than any race in the game. (Edit) They also heal from all sources 6% more.
  • Bretons need 7% less Magicka (Mana) for all their spells.
  • High Elves can regain resources every 6s when using spells and during cast take 5% less damage.
  • Imperials generally have 6% less costs on all abilities.
  • Khajiit have a 5% increased chance to pickpocket, a 3 meters reduced detection radius in Stealth AND deal 12% more critical Damage/Healing.
  • Wood Elves take 10% less Falldamage, move 5% faster generally and also 3m less detection range in Stealth.
  • Nord have higher resistances, can gain Ultimate faster every 5s by taking damage and their buff foods last 15 Minutes longer in general.
  • Orcs learn crafting stuff 10% faster/better than any other race, have default Leech for Healing with Damage, 12% reduced Sprint costs and 10% more effective Sprint speed.
  • Redguards also have 15 longer buff food timers, all weapon abilities take 8% less resources, CC effects affect them 15% less long/strong and they restore additional Stamina from dealing damage.
  • Dark Elves have general higher Fire Damage Resistance, increased Spell and Weapon Damage and (in case they ever need it), take entire 50% less damage from environmental Lava sources.

I am not saying the racials in ESO are more unique, but they are definitely stronger than Night Elves or Dwarfs having racials with Cooldowns that are at least 1-2 minutes long.

To edit this in here, there will be always a meta in MMORPGs. Always. Current WoW has one you don’t like to see, so you complain. But once the tide turns you will find yourself on the end of defending the meta you like, because it benefits your preferences.

It’s an eternal cat-dog game.

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He is suggesting that racials are disabled in competitive end game content. That would end the racial imbalances that have plagued PvP and PvE since forever.

This would be a clean solution for a recurring issue that Blizzard always addresses, but not before a probably good chunk of competitive players race change to a race that gives them a tangible advantage. This was already an issue in early vanilla when dwarven priests had Fear Ward and other priests didn’t.

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I played the game since BC? I don’t recall the last time I defended a meta which wasn’t the chaos called mists of pandaria, I pay sub for a game I expect to receive balancing every 2-4 weeks until servers close.

I mean if they refuse to balance something so minor but clearly something which is required then they could just disable it in select brackets of content then :smiley: . I’ve never liked racials after abandoning my casual strides for a more pursuit of doing actual end game. and seeing the difference is gross and boring and should not exist.

Its a “meta”/consideration which doesn’t need to exist by any means, its something which shouldn’t even be something you’re subconsciously thinking about. The fact there was (probably still is) websites like bloodmallet which sim race / class combos shouldn’t even exist.

Also ESO is a different beast and I don’t even think it has the same kind of end-game last time I checked to any degree, so I don’t think comparing it is even worth considering for racials and even then.

Doubling back briefly to ESO racials, You say definitely stronger? Are you sure the absolute milage you can get out of shadowmeld alone is 100x anything you listed above in my opinion.

The only time shadowmeld is redundant is when its redundant to the main point of the topic. Sure its not swag money racial and doesn’t give you a visual glow or increased prog on a profession or a ogre to access your bank, but its defacto one of the most competitive ways of giving yourself an edge right now on retail from character select.

It effects the whole game when it comes to combat, its not something you can just gloss over if you’re looking to min-max to any amount, but if you do then its on you cause thats undervaluing it immensely.

The meta can “shift” as many times as it wants, its an overloaded active effect, same for both dwarf effects. If you have to actively balance a raid cause a raid decided to use a racial to negate the full effect of a raid mechanic, then thats an oversight which needs addressing, not an rpg element.

Game will be for the better when your race stops impacting your performance to any % in content which people consider progression.

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Disable them in instanced content, is as simple as that.
It’s stupid that meld can completely negate mechanics like the dot in FALL third boss but the dot goes through AMS, like what? :joy:

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The amount of debuffs you can clear with dwarf and the amount of skips/cheeses you can use meld for would beg to differ.

Let’s not forget that most high end guilds had a large part of their roster swap to dwarf for mythic Fyrakk prog because it made the entire fight so much easier on healers.

I wouldn’t do it in all instanced content, just instanced PvP, mythic plus and mythic raid. Everything else is casual enough that the racials don’t really matter besides flavour.

Racials are nice to have to make the character race more than just a purely cosmetic choice, but imo don’t have a place in content where player power is paramount.

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Who make up for 0.01% of the playerbase. Stop making the game for them.

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There was one time, which was Kil’Jaedan mythic initially requiring you to be a goblin. That was pretty bad.

Other than that, nothing.

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Then why even have them in first place? What comes next? “Buhu, classes are too broken to balance, remove them Blizzard”?

Removing RPG elements is ALWAYS a bad idea and disabling racials in content where they SHOULD matter is just that. Removing player characters choices as impact.

Why pick a race when nothing makes it special? Why pick a race when you gain no benefits from your choice?

Let me be very plain with this, that’s a stupid AF expectation. You are basically expecting them to re-invent the wheel every few weeks for you. That’s how self-delusional you are.

Yes, because Shadowmeld is a cooldown of 2 Minutes. No racial in ESO is on a longer cooldown than 6-9s. Some racial abilities in ESO don’t even have a cooldown, like the increased movement speeds and such (in comparison to the running from Worgen for example, which has also a cooldown).

Again, if you can’t handle RPG elements in an MMORPG which doesn’t have its focus on being perfectly balanced in the first place, then that’s the wrong game you play.

Oh yeah sure! Good idea, let us devalue World of Warcraft even further than it already is by making race choices IRRELEVANT. Why not just have all players play WoW Endgame as a human then, eh?

God, do you even look at what you type? It is quite rare to read so much hot air with no value to it.

And probably the only time it was a clear necessity that was due to bad balancing on the devs side.

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I’d rather it be irrelevant beyond the cosmetics of it than have 1-2 races be better than any other. I’m soft-locked into dwarf because the racial is stupidly strong compared to anything else.

What’s wrong with being a night elf simply because I like night elves?

The definition of RPG is whatever RPG “purists” need it to be to make a point.

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You already can. It’s called “not caring”.

As same as I don’t play the relevant classes for legendary items. Otherwise I would have to play each season a different class to get it. I just don’t try to even get the legendary. Simple as that.

Look at a game like Baldur’s Gate 3 (btw. Game of the Year which WoW will never be). It has TONS of stuff that make each class, character and race unique. It is THE definition of a good RPG with good RPG-systems.

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I have never gone for the bis race for my class because it simply doesn’t have a big enough impact for the content I do. I think unless you play at that insanely high 1% level of PvE then it’s not relevant. So no need to punish the entire playerbase for it.

I barely touch PvP so I don’t really have that much of an insight to how things work for the average Joe vs the top players.

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