I think we should somehow allow all races to have the +5 in a weapon skill for melee users, It’s irritating to pretty much only have the viable option of rolling either a Human or Orc because of the +5 skill.
Keeping all of the other respected racials for that race only, as normal (such as, Stoneform, Shadowmeld, Warstomp.) but making it viable for people to choose a race for a melee class based more purely on aesthetics, rather than the “meta”.
Even in SoD. I got to see more of a variety in those who rolled a Warrior, or Rogue as nelfs and dwarfs, for example. Fulfilling their class fantasy and enjoying the game more (which if you aren’t doing, then what’s the point)
FYI for those who may not know, they solved this issue with weapon skills in SoD with finger ring runes.
Ideally, if the next iteration of classic (+) aims for a balance, you’d have some sort of choice tree of racials, RP themed of course, but numerically equal. Maybe in tiers, like Major, Minor and Flavour, or PvP, PvE and convenience.
Major ones would be weapon skill, enrage, self heal, stun resist, fear resist and the like, minor ones like 1% dodge, hit, crit, 10% bonus stat, removal of poison/disease/root and cosmetic like bonus rep, bonus XP, faster movement out of combat, more gold gain…
And you could respecc it, but for some moderate to hard effort, like aldor/scryer or profession respec.
Yes there would be cookie cutter choice for raid, dungeon, levelling, pvp, but you literally can’t avoid that already at race choice so
That’s all you need to mix things up and make it even. If you want to spice it up even more, which I think might be over the top, you add the two-handed versions of all the weapon skills to Edgemaster’s Handguards and add Polearm weapon skill.
Forcing a race to use a single weapon is not good design, especially when there are also class based weapon skill specializations.
Getting rid of hit entirely and replacing it with TBC expertise would make the game more enjoyable and less RNG dependent. Glancing blows & level based resistances are a very very bad way of trying to balance dps in raids.
Just let people pick whatever race appeals to them, it shouldn’t determine how useful your character is. Right now if you meet a warrior that isn’t human you can just assume he is completely ignorant and be right more often than not, same story with healers that are not dwarves or casters that are not gnome.
Honestly its not only + weapon skills that would have to change.
For exampel as a warrior if you skip the fact about weapon skills and just pick edgies then you have dwarves with their “stoneform” which is pretty “good” as a tank esp in aq, and can be useful in pvp aswell.
Then you have gnomes which is the best pvp rqce thanks to escape artist☺️
If everyone can get + weapon skill then there is no point having it at all and just remove it. Sounds fa,milier? Yes thats retail physolophie on game desing.
Yes, but somewhere you have to make the decision if you want to change, rework, enhance or update the game design. My suggestion just enhance it while keeping the original weapon skill system. You could also add a new enchant to back; where you can add any +5 weapon skill you want in the game.
There are only two problematic racials in Classic.
Dwarf priests. Because let’s get it out: nobody likes to play dwarf priest. Every single dwarf priest plays it for fear ward. They dream of being night elven priestesses, but their dreams can’t come true. So they should just move fear ward from dwarfs to night elves.
Orcs. Stun resist. Disgusting.
Weapon skills are not an issue. You can just play humans and then it’s not a problem.
Dwarf priest is still the strongest priest race even without fear ward.
Desperate Prayer & Stoneform, the best priest racial & the best pvp racial.
Orc stun resist is good, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that alliance is much better. The retail mechanic where it reduces duration instead of adding RNG is a much better form too.
I wouldn’t add compensation to them in terms of weapon skills. I would just spread out the weapon skills between the races. I know it might not be popular for orc and human players but axe/mace is already good weapon skill. Does human really need mace AND sword? I don’t think so. You can add compensation in other ways.
Sorry I try again.
If you give every other race weapon bonuses, you should then give Human and Orc another racial not extra weapon bonuses, but some other useful racial.
I don’t know, didn’t think that far ahead, just to spread out weapon skills is a good start, I think. But Orc is already strong with stun resistance and Blood Fury. Only human needs compensation I think.
The difference of 5% int is absolutely negligible, less then 1% crit and one fireball of mana in BiS Naxx gear. 10% rep though, especially going into TBC with endless rep grinds? Not getting dismounted in CoT BM water? Not looking like a Chucky doll? Priceless.
I do agree with you on non-human warriors and rogues and especially non-dwarf priests. Just why? I mean, it was horrible dev choice to massively gimp your character on race selection screen without telling you. It’s like if you rolled a shaman and nobody told you if you pick Orc or Tauren, you don’t get Tremor totem in a game where fear is a core mechanic in all raids. Just what? Why? I can sort of see how they couldn’t predict the impact of weapon skill in end game minmax, but the fear ward is just unforgivable. What complete idiot came up with that.
