Race Question

[araisbeck]

Hi everyone,

I played WoW back in the days of vanilla/BC, but quit right before the Black Temple patch came out. I had a high-level Warrior, Rogue, and Priest. I've decided that I will be starting up again, and would like to give the Warrior a try again.

I'm having trouble deciding which race to start out as, however. I have always been a part of the Horde, and my previous Warrior was an Orc. While I have heard that Orc is quite possibly the best race for a Warrior, I am considering going Human for the 10% boost to reputation gains. My Rogue was my main back in the day, and I still remember having to grind reputations such as the Scryers to Exalted, and how long that took. I am unsure, however, about switching to the Alliance. I love the Horde, but that 10% rep gain is just so tempting...

tl;dr
Better Warrior race, not only for combat, but overall: Orc or Human?

[Griff]

There aren't as many reputation grinds in LK and they are easier as most have a tabard that you can wear for rep while running heroics.

What sort of warrior do you want to play and what is your focus going to be? PvP PvE? Tauren tanks get a bit of bonus health but not as much as they used to. Humans get a free pvp trinket ability which is pretty handy

[araisbeck]

I plan on playing PvE mostly. With my Rogue, I was never in any of the fast-progression raiding guilds because of the overpopulation of Rogues. I'd like to actually get to see a lot of the end-game material in Cataclysm (I'm looking into the future here, as I would just be starting to level... it will take a while). As far as I know, tanks are sparse right now, so I should be able to get into a decent end-game raiding guild fairly quick after hitting 80 and running some dungeons/heroics, correct?

So my focus is on PvE. The 10% reputation bonus for Humans seemed promising as I know for a fact there are a lot of rep grinds in end-game.

Edit: 30 views and I've only got the 1 reply?

In response to your comment on Taurens, Griff: I love the look of Taurens, but I hear there is a terrible positioning problem going on right now having to do with the Tauren hitbox being reduced?

[Kurtosis]

The 10% reputation bonus for Humans seemed promising as I know for a fact there are a lot of rep grinds in end-game.

Forget that racial, the Wrath rep grind is cake, you hit exalted with all 5 factions in a few weeks and then that racial is useless.

Ebon Blade, Argent Crusade, Kirin Tor, and Wyrmrest Accord give rep when you wear their tabbard in 5mans and Heroic 5mans, which you'll be doing alot of once you hit 80. Iirc each H 5man gives somewhere around 2000-2500 rep per run. To go from Revered to Exalted requires 21,000 rep, so that's about 10 runs for hardest part of the grind. It took me under a week each to go from neutral to exalted.

Sons of Hodir is harder since they have no tabbard, only a bunch of daily quests (which will take something like 21days to go from neutral to exalted just from dailies iirc) but you can buy your way to exalted with Relics of Ulduar. 10 Relics per 250 rep iirc. Those drop from world mobs in Storm Peaks region, trash and bosses in Halls of Lightning (5man), Halls of Stone (5man), and Ulduar (raid), and since most everyone who wants Hodir Exalted has it now, they auction those relics en masse. Pretty cheap now too since not many people are buying them.

Additionally, if you choose Inscription for a profession, you won't need to grind Hodir rep at all, since the Inscription BoP shoulder enchants are much better than the Sons of Hodir exalted ones, and the shoulder enchants are the primary reason for grinding Hodir rep.

If you go human, do it for the sword/mace expertise and perhaps Every Man For Himself. Or NE for the -2% to be hit and Shadowmeld (now breaks combat and stealths, nice for avoiding death on a wipe, if you're not a tank at least). Or dwarf for the Armor/debuff-clear trinket and weapon expertise. You'll probably already have at least one Dranaei in any raid you join, so their raid-wide +1% hit is likely already taken care of.

On the Horde side, I don't know about the Tauren hitbox issue, but if it's a flaw not a feature, Bliz will probably patch it at some point, so maybe not worth basing a race decision on. I'm an Orc DK tank and love it. I macro Blood Fury into Howling Blast and most other abilities so I'm getting the AP buff every 2m, great for threat gen. And there are a lot of axes in end-game Wrath right now, so that Axe specialization really makes it alot easier to hit the Expertise cap (along with a food buff, definitely don't skip leveling cooking on your new war, cooking in Wrath is extremely useful for pve end-game).

On a side note, Bliz has announced both Faction Changes (now implemented) and race changes (coming soon). So if you get to 80 and realize you should have picked a different race, you're not stuck w/ what you have, you'll be able to change for a fee. So not the end of the world if you pick the wrong race now.

[araisbeck]

Thanks a lot for all of the information Kurtosis! I will be choosing Orc thanks to your information. I'm glad that I will get to stick with Horde.