Should I care about racials?

[Setup]

Priests with fear ward are about 30% more useful.
Rogues that get +5 to swords do much, much more damage than those without.
WOTF is unbelievably good in PvP.

The rest don't matter all that much, they're just sweet little extras. Those three are the huge ones.

[Rhook]

But only for dwarfs\human >> nightelf.

While the dwarfs fearward is only needed in a very few boss encounters or some pvp situations the human +5% spirit is absolutely awesome in every single fight and becomes much more important in the endgame raids than fear word. 1-2 dwarf priests in the raidgrp for fearward when needed and the rest is human only. Nightelf is not viable.

[Garfunkel]

Nightelf is not viable.

Hahahahaha... ha.

I must have imagined being a successful nelf priest and raiding for these last few months! Such a vivid dream and lasting so long!

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. Obviously if you want to min/max your build, it's good to know them. But at the end of the day, skill trumps gear (to a reasonable extent) and gear (mostly) trumps racials - because somehow Horde survives without fear wards at all, funny thing. A decent guild is not going going to kick non-min/maxed characters out unless they are already full in that class, as long as the player behind the monitor has a functioning brain.

Sadly you will encounter a number of players who think that the only reason to play WoW is hardcore raiding and that being 100% min/maxed at all times is the only viable approach. As if.

My vanilla raiding guild back in 2005/2006 had a gnome warrior as the MT. We had a shadowpriest and a ret pally as well - I was an arc/fire mage. Somehow we managed to raid well into AQ40.

[Ektelion]

if you wanna min/max dps you should care. Weapon skill/ berserking/blood fury are a significat dps boost.
for healing it aint much of a hussle,everyone is same except dwarves with fear ward.
for tanking you should only care if you are horde ( nothing beats that tauren extra hp which scales )
for pvp as alliance i think gnomes have the upper hand while dwarves are good with stoneform aswell, you could mention night elves for shadowmeld also ( guarding flags in ab )
for pvp as horde it always depends on your class, they have the most op racials in the game.

5% hp 25% stun resist Will of the Forsaken, warstomp , blood fury , axe specialization.
25% stun resist alone is freaking op, specially in PvP.

can you imagine being a rogue and trying to cheap shot or kidney an orc? 1 out of 4 will be resist.

[Undertanker]

Black lives matter...

[The Shortest Path]

The only racials that matter more than a 1% difference at absolute most are the human and orc weapon skill racials for DPS warriors for glancing blow reduction. Rogues get it for free so it doesn't matter as much for them, and nothing else comes even close for PvE.

Well, except Fear Ward.

Orc Bloodfury, Troll Berserking are very powerful racials too.

Not really. Blood Fury only increases your base ap which is a pretty tiny amount, and cooldowns in general don't add more than a couple percent to your overall dps except for short fights.

[Rhook]

Troll berserking is bugged for casters. Only grants 5% at all.

[zmandude24]

You will want to pick Tauren for horde and Night Elf for alliance if you want to tank.

[CecilJohn]

Thanks guys. What would be the best race to pick for pve tanking, iyo?

[Undertanker]

Cow or Elf.

If cow, use thunderclap a lot on pulls and as an inturrupt on casters/healers.