Racial Changes.

[Holyssa]

By Kalgan (it's a list of changes, so anything NOT listed didn't get touched...at least not yet):

Changes that should be in the next beta push. Bear in mind that some of these may change somewhat or entirely, and there may also be other changes coming in subsequent pushes:

Orc

- Hardiness now reduces the duration of stun effects by 15%

Troll

- Racial Passive "The Voodoo Shuffle": Reduces the duration of all movement impairing effects by 15%. Trolls be flippin' out mon!

- Berserking: no longer has an activation cost of energy/rage/etc

Draenei

- Gift of the Naaru: now scales based on the higher of either the caster's Attack Power or Spell Power

- Shadow Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Shadow spells by 2%

Dwarf

- Frost Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Frost spells by 2%

- Racial Passive "Mace Specialization": Expertise with Maces and Two-Handed Maces increased by 5.

Undead

- Shadow Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Shadow spells by 1% (yes, this is lower than the other resistance racials)

- Will of the Forsaken: removes any fear, sleep, or charm effect (no longer has a lasting immunity).

Night Elf

- Quickness: reduces the chance to be hit by melee or ranged attacks by 2%

- Nature Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Nature spells by 3%

Tauren

- Endurance: now scales based on base health, to be tuned to approximately a 5% heath increase if the player were wearing green quality gear

- Nature Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Nature spells by 2%

Gnome

- Escape Artist: the freeing effect can no longer be resisted

- Arcane Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Arcane spells by 2%

Blood Elf

- Mana Tap: ability removed (partially integrated into Arcane Torrent)

- Arcane Torrent: restores 15 energy, 15 runic power, or 6% of mana to the Blood Elf (along with the current 2s silence effect)

- Magic Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by spells by 2%

Human

- Perception: changed to a passive, now grants one character level of passive stealth detection

- Racial "The Fall of Humanity": Feign death which may trick enemies into ignoring you. Any threat is restored versus enemies still in combat upon cancellation of this effect. 5min cooldown

- Racial Passive "Human Supremacy": The dominance of Humanity is evidenced by having one more racial bonus than normal. Actually, make that two counting this one. (just a tooltip, no actual functionality)

- The Human Spirit: spirit bonus lowered to 5%

WTF...humans get Feign Death? I guess this will stop them from whining about not being able to roll hunters (and the human males are funny as hell when they die, I gotta admit), but it looks very silly. If I'm reading it correctly, it's just a very fancy aggro "pause" button.

I can live without Mana Tap, since the mana drained isn't anything to squirm & shout about.

They need to get their percentages correct. Night Elves get 3% Nature Resist, yet other classes get a flat 2%? I truly hope this is Kalgan having a case of the stupids (what else is new?) & it's a simple typo.

[Scryll]

He clarified later in the thread, it's not a typo. Night Elves have 3 percent, and Forsaken have only 1%, because of their other racials.

I'm meh about most of the changes, but that human one just has me shaking my head. I don't think a combat-break ability has any place as a racial. Humans would/will be the kings of PvE, they get that wonderful rep boost and now they get to cheat death and rezzing.

[Waldonnis]

Here's my breakdown of what I think are the most troublesome/significant to me, although I've yet to put feedback in the official thread:

Forsaken:

The race that took the biggest hit were the Forsaken. On the obvious front, we are getting the lowest resistance percentage (1%?? COME ON) and getting our "can be proactive" WotF racial changed to a reactive-only ability. What hasn't been mentioned is that we also are getting an indirect nerf to the usability of Underwater Breathing, due to the increased underwater survival times being introduced in Wrath. What good is the extra time when any other race can stay underwater for five minutes already? I'm a bit miffed at the combination of changes, personally, that leaves us with nothing to be excited about....all of our racials are basically diminished, some to the point of "awful".

Trolls:

FINALLY something that looks interesting. I never minded berzerking, but the costs associated with it made it relatively worthless in the past. The snare duration reduction should make it more interesting in PvP, but has limited value for some classes (mages in particular). I'd still like to see trolls get something else or they'll continue to wear the "if you want to see bad racials, look at trolls" target.

Tauren:

Big hit on health boosts for the poor Tauren. I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it does even the playing field a bit when it comes to tank selection. I buy the nature resist thing, but not sure how "useful" this is in the grand scheme.

Orcs:

Stun resists are going away, so the duration reduction was expected. Orcs continue to have good, well-rounded racials for both PvE and PvP.

Blood Elf:

Arcane Torrent makes more sense now and at least it will be useful for something other than a silence. Overall, it's a very strong racial when used properly (if it's not resisted like it usually is). Mana tap was a waste of a GCD anyway, in my opinion, so good riddance. I'm still not sure how I feel about the 2%, though...omni-school resistances (especially 2%) make it a favourable race choice from a number of perspectives, and also severely diminishes the resists given to the other races that only get one school's worth.

Humans:

Humans are crying about the loss of the old Perception and the joke that is "Fall of Humanity". They continue to play the "Hey look, it's Elvis" distraction game about the reputation gain bonus, though. I can't say that I blame them about Fall or their age-old "spirit boost", but Perception was pretty game-breaking in PvP (useless in PvE). Honestly, humans seem to get a relative TON of racial boosts and I just can't understand why outside of the lore angle...and yet, they continue to clamour for more.

Draenei:

Draenei, with their "single-most powerful racial in the game PvE-wise", continue to baffle me. They keep asking for more and getting it. With Gift scaling now, I have to wonder why anyone would choose another race if they want to PvE as Alliance. All of this, plus they get an extra 1% shadow resist over Forsaken...while having a scaling heal AND party-wide hit benefit? Seriously, who in their right mind thought that was a good idea from a balance perspective?

Night Elf:

2% passive avoidance? Well, we all know which race will be tanking in Wrath for Alliance raids. Again, I have to ask "WTF were you thinking?", especially after intentionally eliminating the Horde-side tanking racial gap between Tauren and the other Horde races. I'm less concerned with the 3% resist, but when combined with a significant passive avoidance boost, the combo in some nature-heavy instances is just too good to be glazed over.

Gnomes and Dwarves:

I'm indifferent...none of the changes listed was bad or anything really significant (although I'm pleased the dwarves got a bone tossed to them with some melee weapon expertise).