You have a number of choices on that regard. Mostly utility racials are the ones that have more value in raids, and often in M+ as well.
Dwarf racial has good value both for the defensive portion of it and the utility it provides, as outside of Evokers only dwarves can remove bleed effects.
Night elf Shadowmeld is really good for skips and negating specific targetted abilities from hitting you. In some cases you can use it to make the boss “skip” that specific mechanic.
HM tauren Bull rush is a really nice, additional mobility tool in raids, especialky if you play a spec who has low mobility, like priests. While warriors have leap and charge the additional extra movement tool can be really handy. It is also a stun so it has that use as well if needed.
Goblin Rocket Boost is also a nice mobility tool to have.
Blood elf Arcane Torrent has its uses depending on the dungeon.
Void elf teleport ability, atleast for raids, can have some invaluable uses for warriors because the on-use is a displacement, so you can use it to ignore mechanics that need to be avoided. It is harder to use than a normal teleport and from experience 90% of the elf population do not know how to use it. Only pick it if you can plan ahead for mechanics.
Most other abilities are stat increases. These highlighted are outliers with really high skill potential. Hope it helps you make your choice based on it.
but the elites of mythic+ take it as an offense. although its farfetched it depends on players preference.
right… onto topic!
Theres barely minimal diference in dps there is no argument on which race you select.
while you on about defensive cooldowns draenei do have self heal racial which can be life saver or use on cooldown while leveling, tauren has aoe stun and belf has aoe dispell
but I think dwarf has the stoneform which is usefull against multiple mobs on you.
you can use murlok .io aswell and you can check what the top 30-40 players run as races in all content except raid you can use bloodmallet and warcraftlogs for that
Personally i would say go dwarf or nelf is you wanna stricly pve and if you wanna pvp aswell go gnome
its a useless racial
priest mage few other specs
viable + 10% stam but dwarf would stil lbe better to remove bleeds
If I were trying to make this decision now, I would look up information on the new dungeons and find out how many dispellable damage over time effects go out on the group. If there are more than one or two, dwarf is probably your best option. (As an example, I race changed my hunter to dwarf this season PURELY for the 3rd boss in Uldaman on high keys. Being able to dispel the bleed, and even dispel it twice if I was lucky and got it early and late in the fight, made the difference between living and dying, which in turn could make the difference between timing the key or not.)
I think there are several reasons why night elf is popular:
It’s been stacked in MDI so the group can cheese mechanics
It makes world content quicker because you can just run through mobs and drop aggro
Classes with a combat rez can use it to drop aggro before rezzing the tank
It can be used to cheese some mechanics (like the barrel in Freehold)
A lot of people find the nelf character model visually appealing
Personally, I like playing nelf for the reasons listed above, but I would probably pick dwarf for high M+ because the dispel has historically been more consistently useful when it comes to staying alive.
What range are you aiming for at playing in M+? I mean what Tyssera said is 100% accurate, but that information is pretty much useful for very high keys. You won’t find anyone taking into consideration your racial ability at least at the +22 and upwards range.
As it comes to min/maxing, from what I have experienced.
1-5- anything goes.
5-15- you need to have some ilvl at least.
15-20- score matters aka have experience, and have consumables.
The most I have done is a +22- pretty much it’s the same as the 15-20 range.
I still haven’t reached the levels where people start judging you based on class much less race.
i’ve never done any key higher than +17 because thats what i needed for ksm but now i want to reach at least 2500 which i assume has +20 average ? maybe i can go higher idk let’s reach that first
2500 is mostly with +18 (I think). I assume your long term goal will be portals (for now), so yeah you can be pretty much anything you want. If you want chill runs you could join the several communities a lot of people have mentioned over the years or you could play with me (I will tell you how to get in tough). Cheers.
Play what’s fun vs meta’ing the fun out of the game. Say human has the better racial but you prefer the appearance of dark iron would you enjoy the character of you playing a race you dislike for 1% extra dmg or ultility