[Satrina]

It's confirmed by screenshot that Humans and Orcs will have their weapon skill racials changed to 1% crit in the 2.3 patch.

1% Crit. That's a pretty significant change, and not in a good way.

How could anyone even consider crit and expertise as equivalent? You can cry about Diplomacy all you want, but it's still an advantage that equalises out over time - we all stop at exalted. This change puts Humans in the bottom of the pile for combat racial abilities, with the trolls. Well, maybe slightly ahead of trolls. Poor trolls.

I have a novel idea: Instead of shafting people down to the lowest common denominator - selectively (hello thar Draenei, Tauren, and Blood Elves) - how about giving Humans and Orcs Expertise in trade for weapon skill. You know, like every damn weapon in the game that grants weapon skill is going to be converted to?

Not only that - 1% on one (Orc) or two (Human) weapon types. Good and fair compared to Draenei, yes?

You can help out - go sound off here:
Warrior forum: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...63741597&sid=1
Test Realm forum: (thread was deleted)

Other classes have shown that if you cry enough, you can get changes. Go forth and QQ! If nothing else, drown out the critlulz crowd who seem to have no grasp on grade 8 math.

(Hey Blizzard, while you're at it, take the races with utter crap racials and hook them up.)

[Ciderhelm]

did they delete your post?

[Kazeyonoma]

Apparently so, i hope this means they've seen it and will consider it =(

[Coriel]

3% hit is excessive for a racial. It's the equivalent of 3 talent points for most classes. 1% crit is much more reasonable.

Racials should be a small benefit, not an real impact change.

[Iowynn]

A lot of other racials could be considered far more excessive.

[Finelle]

>.> How so at the bottom? Wisp form (lol, no really, lol), Shadowmeld and 1% dodge...

[Narshe]

Source: Finelle >.> How so at the bottom? Wisp form (lol, no really, lol), Shadowmeld and 1% dodge...

Alizee dance!







PS.: No :S

[Ciderhelm]

Source: Finelle >.> How so at the bottom? Wisp form (lol, no really, lol), Shadowmeld and 1% dodge...

1% passive Dodge is better than 1% Crit for restrictive weapon types.

[Finelle]

Source: Ciderhelm 1% passive Dodge is better than 1% Crit for restrictive weapon types.

Fair enough, weapon restrictions are so WoW 1.0, making it apply across the board to spells and all weapons as well and calling it Seize the Moment that better?

[Satrina]

Excessive and overpowered are relative terms.

The human weaponskill gives about 3% hit against level 73 mobs, less against 72, and less again against 71. Nothing at all for 70 and under. For two weapon types.

Orcs are the same, for only one weapon type.

Both racials as they stand are useless for PVP. As I've said, I can see the rationale for changing this - making the racial useful for everyone*. I don't necessarily agree with that, because I hate homogenising the races. Let some races be better at certain jobs than others! Make some variation! The fear of making it possible for people to screw up their characters is what killed the allocation of stat points in beta. I really hate how WoW caters to the lowest common denominator in absolutely everything.

Anyway. Okay, so crit is useful for everyone. Except that it's much less useful than hit for warrior tanks and almost completely worthless for paladin tanks in general. Even PVP types tend to say that it's already easy enough to get crit. So, I've been campaigning for expertise instead of crit. It would give true benefit to everyone. And we're still weapon restricted, so go ahead and give Humans a little less expertise (3 in mace/sword) and Orcs more (5 in axe). That'd be fair.

Yes, we've all heard the argument regarding the change to weapon skill in 2.3 and "nobody knew". I made Satrina on opening day; I knew what weapon skill did from testing in Beta. When they changed weapon skill for 2.0, we didn't know what it did initially. Some say "only recently" did we know, but that's smokescreen. I could see on the beta servers using Recap that I was a hitting few percent more often with maces and swords against higher level mobs. You can see this while you're levelling up and fighting stuff higher level than you. Only the specific percentage numbers derived from a big dataset was missing and sure, that only came in the past few months. The basic knowledge that it made us hit more was pretty easy to spot. And yes, a lot of people have chosen Human or Orc based on the post-2.0 weaponskill.

Yes, we're getting Expertise in talents now. So what? How does this invalidate any discussion of a racial bonus? It doesn't. But then again, it would be horrible if the races each had something different that they excel at, wouldn't it? (And yes, the races with crap racials should be revisited with priority. It's simply absurd that racials were not done with the introduction of Draenei and Blood Elves.)

One of the best suggestions I've seen is an extra screen or frame at character creation where you're presented list of 6-8 racial traits, and you choose two of them. Now that would be great (and would lend itself to allowing all current characters to have a one-time selection to keep it fair).

* Yes, casters are shafted by this. I also feel that all races should have the Draenei racial model where the benefit you get is by class, or the model in the paragraph above.

[Alixander]

Source: Satrina One of the best suggestions I've seen is an extra screen or frame at character creation where you're presented list of 6-8 racial traits, and you choose two of them. Now that would be great (and would lend itself to allowing all current characters to have a one-time selection to keep it fair).

This could simultaniously be both awesome and horrible. While I agree that constantly playing to the lowest common denominator gets annoying, having 1 time decisions that you either fuck up due to lack of or incorrect knowledge or make a good solid decision at the time and either your decision of what to play or the game itself changes.

I'll use two examples to illustrate my point:

First example is my current main, Alixander, a Protection Paladin. I originally rolled him to be a healer, but lets just say for the sake of this example I rolled him to be a tank. I could pick 2 of the 4 current human racials, so with tanking in mind I picked the +weapon skill for hammers and swords talent. I also picked up Diplomacy just because I like rep grinding so being able to do it faster is better IMO. Now, with the recent change to the +weapon skill talent, as you already said, it's all but completely useless to me. While crits aren't bad, they don't help my ability as a Paladin tank in the slightest. Now a solid decision I made a while ago is changed for the worse due to mechanics. The impact of changes like this can be minimized by giving the player a chance to change their racials when the new patch comes out.

The second example is my mage. When WoW first started off, my mage Kaziel was my main. He began as my main and remained such until quite recently when I changed to Alixander. For much of the duration of my playtime with Kaziel he was purely PvE. With this in mind, had I picked 2 of the four talents available to humans, I would have chosen Human Spirit and Diplomacy. Anyone who's played a PvE mage knows that Mages are one of the few classes that can actually get some decent milage out of spirit, through both the talent Arcane Meditation and the spell Mage Armor. Recently I've changed Kaziel's focus to PvP to help out a friend in getting some Arena armor. Now having human spirit is pretty much a total waste since I rarely, if ever use Mage Armor due to the power of other talents. Spirit for a PvPing mage is mostly, if not completely, worthless. Now, my earlier decision to take Human Spirit over Perception leaves me at a disadvantage. I can either keep on going, and hope for the best, or I can reroll and start over entirely.

Now, in general I like the idea of being able to custom tailor your racial abilities to your class, but considering the strong variance in what is and isn't useful in a single class, depending on player intent and spec, picking 2-4 out of 4-8 racial abilities would probably be a bad idea. On the other hand, having the racials be based upon your class, like how the Draenei and Blood Elves work, only more in-depth sounds like an awesome approach.

[veneretio]

The Human Racial was ridiculous and now its useless. It averages out over time.

...signed one disgruntled orc that never got itemization to even enjoy his racial...

(ironically they are adding a strong tanking axe when they are nerfing us)

[Premed]

im going to miss all my rage gen

[Andenthal]

Source: Coriel 3% hit is excessive for a racial. It's the equivalent of 3 talent points for most classes. 1% crit is much more reasonable. Racials should be a small benefit, not an real impact change.

The Tauren HP racial is equal to placing 5 points into a 35 point talent in the Warrior Protection tree.

The Blood Elf Silence racial is as good as a 20 point talent in the Priest Shadow Tree.

The Draenei +Hit aura can be argued to be better than placing 3 points into a 30 point talent in the Warrior Fury tree. You can stack the group to give an effective +5% Hit to the group.

Stoneform is easily worth 1 talent point. Yes, it's not extremely noteworthy every encounter, but neither are some talents, or core abilities.

I could go on and on. You're right, racials should be a small benefit. But unfortunately they are not. Compared to some of the above mentioned talents, a 3% hit increase against a handful of mobs in the game is by no means excessive.

They have nerfed the Orc and Human weapon racials to being just below a level 55 quest reward from Blackrock Spire. [item]Blackhand's Breadth[/item]

[Norrath]

Source: Andenthal The Tauren HP racial is equal to placing 5 points into a 35 point talent in the Warrior Protection tree.

Better. Health > Stamina.

Though that's an aside.

[Shorty]

I think as pointed out before racials are kinda tricky anyhow. I play a gnome (whos escape artist cd has been nerfed), but I play a gnome for one reason and one reason only - cos they're cute [and cos I like the way they run - probably even more important for the first 40 levels]

My husband introduced my to WoW, suggested I play a warrior and the only race who I liked the look of on the "choose character" screen was a gnome and so shorty was born. Now I'm probably one of the few people who's main is their first character they ever rolled and if I knew then what I knew now would I have rolled a different race? Well, probably tauren (cos they look cute in full plate) but on the ally side - nope I wouldn't. Anyway I quite like not having the least intellect out of the lvl 70's - dumb rogues

I think all in all racials should be small differences and probably at the moment they are not, but I would never reroll shorty out of a gnome - I'm addicted - I've got a lvl 70 gnome mage (complete with pink pigtails) too.

[Narshe]

I also had all my toons gnomes prior TBC, now I have 3 gnomes and 3 draenei females (coz they are hot and they loook so damn good in robes).
For horde I like tauren aswell. For plate I would choose male and for anything else female. With one exception: A shaman must always be Troll Female (<3 Mek)

[Lacunata]

Why do things become always worth? But what me strucks more is, there is no uprising from Human Player, this change really ruins my current gear setup and need new gear to compensate for that. I´m pissed, and as an europe player, you can`t even post in the US-Forum, and the non US Forum, well no comment, they don`t care.

[Aeritides]

Is it the consensus then that the draenei racial will be the most preferred for tanking warriors? the +hit.

I will say that on the plus side, if one of your tanks is a draenei, then the other tanks in the group can get the same benefit, while still having their +1% crit to swords, maces, etc..

Our guild lost a couple prot tanks and i rerolled draenei mainly because i liked them, but once I heard of this change, I was glad for my choice.

[Kazeyonoma]

they are changing us back to weapon expertise, woot!