Warlords of Draenor Racial Traits

We’re planning some changes to racial traits for Warlords of Draenor. We recently posted a Dev Watercooler (Pruning the Garden of War) that dives deeper into the philosophy behind these changes, and now we wanted to give you the full details of what’s coming.

In order to keep racials more in line with one another, we’ve decided to bring down a couple of high outliers, then establish a fair baseline and bring the other racials up to that. We’re accomplishing this by improving old passives, replacing obsolete ones, and adding a few new ones where necessary. Ultimately, our goal is to achieve much better parity among races.

There aren’t any current plans to change Pandaren or Worgen racials.

Blood Elf

• Arcane Acuity is a new racial passive ability that increases Critical Strike chance by 1%.
• Arcane Torrent now restores 20 Runic Power for Death Knights (up from 15 Runic Power), 1 Holy Power for Paladins, or 3% of Mana for Mage, Priest, Warlocks (up from 2% of Mana). Other aspects of the ability remain unchanged.

Draenei

• Heroic Presence has been redesigned. It no longer increases Hit by 1%, and instead increases Strength, Agility, and Intellect, scaling with character level.
• Gift of the Naaru now heals for the same amount over 5 seconds (down from 15 seconds).

Dwarf

• Crack Shot has been removed (was 1% Expertise with ranged weapons).
• Mace Specialization (was 1% Expertise with maces) has been replaced with Might of the Mountain.
  • Might of the Mountain is a new racial passive ability that increases Critical Strike bonus damage and healing dealt by 2%.
  
  
• Stoneform now also removes magic and curse effects in addition to poison, disease, and bleed effects, along with reducing damage taken by 10% for 8 seconds. It remains unusable while CC'd.

Gnome

• Expansive Mind now increases maximum Mana, Energy, Rage, and Runic Power by 5% instead of only increasing maximum Mana.
• Escape Artist’s cooldown has been reduced to 1 minute (down from 1.5 minutes).
• Shortblade Specialization (was 1% Expertise with one-handed swords and daggers) has been replaced with Nimble Fingers.
  • Nimble Fingers is a new racial passive ability that increases Haste by 1%.

Goblin

• Time is Money now grants a 1% increase to Haste (up from only attack speed and spell haste).

Human

• Mace Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with maces).
• Sword Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with swords).
• The Human Spirit has been redesigned. It no longer increases Spirit by 3%, and instead now increases two secondary stats by an amount scaling with character level. You can choose which two secondary stats it increases. This has not yet been implemented.

Night Elf

• Quickness now also increases movement speed by 2% in addition to increasing Dodge chance by 2%.
• Touch of Elune is a new passive ability which increases Haste by 1% at night, and Critical Strike Chance by 1% during the day.

Orc

• Axe Specialization has been removed (was 1% Expertise with axes).
• Hardiness now reduces the duration of Stun effects by 10% (down from 15%).

Tauren

• Brawn is a new racial passive ability that increases Critical Strike bonus damage and healing done by 2%.
• Endurance now increases Stamina by an amount scaling with character level, instead of increasing Base Health by 5%.

Troll

• Berserking now increases Haste by 15% (down from 20%).
• Beast Slaying now increases XP earned from killing Beasts by 20% instead of increasing damage dealt versus Beasts by 5%.
• Dead Eye has been removed (was 1% Expertise with ranged weapons).

Undead

• Will of the Forsaken’s cooldown has been increased to 3 minutes (up from 2 minutes).

Keep in mind these are directly from notes kept for the internal build. Any "Not yet implemented" callouts are referring to the internal build undergoing testing, and obviously not the currently live game you're playing. :)

So the logic of EMFH remaining unchanged but Will of the Forsaken getting bumped to 3 minutes?

Unlike the other racials that provide some type of CC-dispel, Every Man For Himself actually replaces a CC-Break PvP trinket; it isn’t in addition to it. So what you gain with EMFH is actually a trinket slot. Thus its power is very much related to what trinkets there are available. We're still determining our plan for PvP trinket itemization, so haven't decided on what to do with EMFH quite yet. It’s quite strong, and we agree that it looks unfair from those patch notes; we just haven't decided what to do with it yet. So, don't take that list as a statement that EMFH won't be changing somehow.

Regarding Berserking and Blood Fury, also remember that we’re reducing the amount of cooldown stacking in the game, and more importantly, removing DoT snapshotting. That is effectively a significant nerf to Berserking and Blood Fury, since you'll no longer be able to extend their benefit long past their intended duration. We expect that these changes will bring Trolls and Orcs in line with other races (but not underpowered, either).

Regarding Touch of Elune, we're making all secondary stats useful to everyone (aside from Spirit for non-healers and Bonus Armor for non-tanks), and more closely balancing their value. As others have pointed out, there are no more haste breakpoints, so this doesn’t imply any gear changes should be made based on time of day.

Additionally, we do still want there to be some difference and choice between the racial abilities, which does mean that players who want to min/max to that degree may still find more value in another race. We don’t feel the difference, even in a worst case scenario, is going to be large enough that someone who wants to play a Night Elf should feel like they're making the wrong choice, but players who are only interested in what they feel are the best racials for their class or spec will have other race options available.