Should I care about racials?

[Undertanker]

Time it after an auto attack if you can as I think it resets your swing timer.

[CecilJohn]

Thanks, my tauren warrior has just dinged lvl 10 after almost 5 hours of hard questing *wipes sweaty brow* I'm looking forward to the rest!

[Undertanker]

It is unforgiving and can be brutal as warrior. Gun/bow pull most of the time as charge may give you another add. Also fight/grind on humanoid - caster types more than beast, as beast have much higher armor at lower levels than other counterparts.

[Aethelwulf]

Nightelf is not viable.

OP, play what you want. There are so many raiding guilds active at the moment that you don't have to worry about the racials.

Bad advice. Aside from that fact that racial priest spells make race even more important for priests, racials in general have large effects on your build, particularly with regards to PvP. If you roll an Orc Shaman, for instance, you're eventually going to realize you can't exactly compensate for the lack of a War Stomp. Anything you can do, so can the Tauren, but he still has War Stomp on top of that. The one thing you do get is stun resistance, but you're playing the class that can just break a stun with its trinket instead of hoping that 25% chance works. (You also get Bloodfury but uh, the bonus is only to your base AP and the heal penalty is borderline suicidal.) You're simply playing a handicapped Shaman.

But at the end of the day, skill trumps gear (to a reasonable extent) and gear (mostly) trumps racials

I'm not sure how exactly you imagine gear trumps racials. You seem to seriously underrate the power of racials. When it comes to the Warlock class, for instance, there is a consensus that it is better to be a Horde Warlock than an Alliance Warlock. And the biggest reason why is so that you don't have to PvP against Undead with their Will of the Forsaken, which is a racial that breaks all of the Warlock's crowd control and leaves them immune for 5 seconds while leaving the PvP trinket up to break a Warlock's CC a second time. It's a very bad matchup and some 40%+ of the Horde are playing undead. That one racial is the #1 reason why you shouldn't play an Alliance Warlock.

because somehow Horde survives without fear wards at all, funny thing.

...That's because they have Undead Will of the Forsaken racials and Shaman Tremor Totems to negate fear.

[Garfunkel]

I was talking more about priest class, since Rhook was claiming that a nelf priest "is not viable" at all, which is of course nonsense.

Thought about writing a serious reply to you, but since you write such gems of clarity and vision like:

That one racial is the #1 reason why you shouldn't play an Alliance Warlock.

and

The one thing you do get is stun resistance, but you're playing the class that can just break a stun with its trinket instead of hoping that 25% chance works.

so I don't think there's any point.

[Aethelwulf]

Night elf priests are objectively terrible for raiding. Your racials (including spell racials) are completely useless for raids. The Night Elf only gets advantages in PvP where the Shadowmeld, +11% dodge, and ability to cast starshards when locked out of your school are valuable. (It's worth noting the nelf priest gets a lot better in Burning Crusade where Elune's Grace is +20% dodge and Starshards has a much stronger spelldmg/sec coefficient and on patch 2.3 it becomes an instant DoT. Still not raid-relevant though.) Dwarf priests are hands down the best for raids (because Fear Ward), and they are good at PvP too (because Fear Ward, Desperate Prayer, and racial Stone Form which can break a Rogue's blind). There are guilds that will make you reroll into a Dwarf if you show up with that shit. You do have a harder time getting into raids while Dwarf Priests are all but guaranteed slots. It's nice that you have a guild accepting of your choice to play an elf but lets not pretend that makes elves a good choice.

As for "I thought about writing an intelligent reply, but I settled for acting smug and dismissive" -> is there even a point to this dreck? Like you wanted the kudos of being intelligent except without the burden of actually using your brain?

[stimz]

I thought we as a society have moved past this. Disappointing.

[Garfunkel]

As for "I thought about writing an intelligent reply, but I settled for acting smug and dismissive" -> is there even a point to this dreck? Like you wanted the kudos of being intelligent except without the burden of actually using your brain?

Whoa dude, nice burn. I'm crying in the corner. Oh wait - did you actually realize what you posted?

That one racial is the #1 reason why you shouldn't play an Alliance Warlock

Because UD have a racial that breaks one fear, Alliance warlocks are useless?
http://forum.nostalrius.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3641&start=160#p141736
Tell that to all those Alliance warlocks at 60. I'm sure they will all reroll to Horde or switch classes once you explain that their class is rendered pointless because of UD racial.

As for the orc racial against stuns being worthless because there's a trinket against it - you do realize that not every player will have that trinket? Do you? Or that players might be using different trinkets that are more valuable? Or do you wear your pvp trinket at all times? I kinda doubt it.

Good luck with your guild only recruiting dwarf priests by the way. Maybe having to reroll was a concern on some shitty other private server where there was 1-2 raiding guilds and the total player base was less than a thousand - but it's definitely not a concern on Nostalrius at this point in time. There were over TWO THOUSAND level 60s on the server last Sunday when Noxm did the census count, meaning that there are actually even more than that.

Maybe this is too difficult for you to understand but WoW isn't a binary 1/0 solution game, where either you play min/maxed 101% 24/7 or you don't play at all. As I said before, it's good to know the racials, as it is good to know game mechanics in general, but at the end of the day a player has to feel motivated to play. Maybe for you the motivation is to theorycraft the absolute peak performance character ever - but it certainly isn't for everyone and claiming that nelf priest or orc shaman or whatever race/class combo is worthless is just bullshit.

[riq and snog]

You all are racists:-)
@ op play what race you like best in terms of looks and cast animation.
You wont be a bad player because of wrong racials, but because you are bad. Same goes for being good!
If u prefer min/max your class and race more then looks and fun go for it, it wont change your gaming experience tough:-)

[Aethelwulf]

Garafunkel, while there are a number of self-apparent reasons to reflexively dismiss your post and its respective (lack of) analytical merit, ranging from the seething tone, to your use of min/max as a pejorative in a mechanics discussion, to your condemnation of absolutist reasoning despite the fact that I didn't even engage in absolutism, I suppose I may as well for the reader's benefit contribute my piece. Truth be told, I don't know where this impassioned defense of mediocrity comes from, but nowhere good, that much is certain.

Because UD have a racial that breaks one fear, Alliance warlocks are useless?

I did not say "useless." "Handicapped" would be more appropriate. When someone can pop out of not 1 but 2 fears/etc., they have a strong advantage against the Warlock. CCs can decide fights. When I looked through the census, it seems that over 70% of the horde's rogues, mages, priests, and warlocks are all playing Undead. That's a lot of people with Will of the Forsaken.

Tell that to all those Alliance warlocks at 60. I'm sure they will all reroll to Horde or switch classes once you explain that their class is rendered pointless because of UD racial.

Setting aside the fallacious nature of the "argumentum ad populum" you are employing, afaict those are not even Warlock statistics but generic level 60 statistics. Although my own Census+ reference pool is more limited, so far it appears that the Horde has some 50% more Warlocks than alliance. Horde Warlocks are 4th most popular class. Alliance Warlocks are tied with Druids for least popular class.

As for the orc racial against stuns being worthless because there's a trinket against it - you do realize that not every player will have that trinket? Do you? Or that players might be using different trinkets that are more valuable? Or do you wear your pvp trinket at all times? I kinda doubt it.

...

I find your defense of Hardiness's PvP merit on the basis of PvPing without your PvP trinket to be rather impressive, and not in a good way. Sure, I guess Hardiness can be more helpful if you are PvPing while bad at PvP, but the answer is yes you should have your PvP trinket (which is not that hard to obtain) when you PvP, and that it is probably a good idea to carry that trinket when you are in a place where you might get world PvP'd (especially since the Shaman trinket is good against Rogues, but if dying is more your taste in trinkets, that's your prerogative). I'd also put having a stun of your own higher than a 25% chance of dodging someone else's stuns, and lets not forget the +5% health Tauren get either.

Good luck with your guild only recruiting dwarf priests by the way. Maybe having to reroll was a concern on some shitty other private server where there was 1-2 raiding guilds and the total player base was less than a thousand - but it's definitely not a concern on Nostalrius at this point in time. There were over TWO THOUSAND level 60s on the server last Sunday when Noxm did the census count, meaning that there are actually even more than that.

I think Nostalrius is the only private server I have played on. I was referring to vanilla.

Maybe this is too difficult for you to understand but WoW isn't a binary 1/0 solution game, where either you play min/maxed 101% 24/7 or you don't play at all. As I said before, it's good to know the racials, as it is good to know game mechanics in general, but at the end of the day a player has to feel motivated to play. Maybe for you the motivation is to theorycraft the absolute peak performance character ever - but it certainly isn't for everyone and claiming that nelf priest or orc shaman or whatever race/class combo is worthless is just bullshit.

You are being ridiculously defensive here. No one is denying that it is possible to play a disadvantaged race/class combination. We are denying that it is good advice.