Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsNew racial abilities for Wrath
by Zach Yonzon 
Sep 6th 2008 at 7:00PM
Kalgan responds by saying that Hardiness was being changed into exactly that -- an effect duration reduction of 15%. He also goes over all the other racials, some of which were changed, others of which were buffed, and yet a few others of which were inevitably nerfed. The changes should make it into the next Beta push. Check after the break to see the complete list. [CLARIFICATION: This isn't the complete list of racial abilities. Abilities not listed here are unchanged or, if they will be changed, will be mentioned in the future.]
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%
- 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.
- 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).
- 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%
- 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%
- Escape Artist: the freeing effect can no longer be resisted
- Arcane Resistance: reduces the chance to be hit by Arcane spells by 2%
- 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%
- 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)
It's also good to see resistances to magic by percentages rather than flat points of 5 or 10, which is an effective buff. Some abilities now also scale, which is a significant change -- Gift of the Naaru scales with either attack or spell power, while Endurance scales with gear. The better your gear, the better those abilities get... it sounds almost too good to be true. We're likely to see the full changes in the next build, and it'll be pretty exciting to see all these abilities at work.
Filed under: Human, Night Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Orcs, Tauren, Undead, Trolls, Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Draenei, Blood Elves, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 7)
Thor Sep 6th 2008 7:30PM
Liking more/better Troll racials
About time they nerfed Tauren health... jeesh talk about 2 flasks extra worth of health on main tanks
Liking the BE buff and all the other changes, overall i approve... but the human faint death is just plain weird
Pemberton Sep 6th 2008 7:34PM
Do they SAY they're removing Diplomacy? Or are we just assuming because it's not listed?
Taytayflan Sep 6th 2008 7:31PM
Now I wish my 70 rogue was a Troll instead of a Forsaken.
Palladiamors Sep 6th 2008 7:40PM
Its NOT being removed. It has been stated several times here in the comment section, as well as by Kalgan over on the beta forums.
Arkeband Sep 6th 2008 7:40PM
1% chance to resist shadow spells?
I might as well have a 0% chance, seriously. The once-in-a-blue-moon proc of that would probably pass by unnoticed on a random tick of a shadow spell.
And I don't know why WOTF needed to be nerfed, it's generally used to break the effect once it's already on you anyway. :|
Buff undead! >:(
Palladiamors Sep 6th 2008 7:43PM
You don't know..... you play undead heavily, don't you? It was one of if not the most over powered PvP and arena racial, not only allowing a 'get out of CC free' card, but also granting immunity to said crowd control for a time, with the same cooldown as other, less powerful racials.
Arkeband Sep 6th 2008 8:05PM
Yeah, but it isn't like we Undead have any dps (orc, troll) or utility (draenei) racials. The least they could do is give us a racial that is useful in arena and pvp, which let's face it, aren't as important as end game PVE.
I await your reasoning for our shadow resistance being sub-par to draenei.
Preston Sep 6th 2008 8:50PM
@Palladiamors
No more overpowered than breaking out of snares, becoming poison-immune, stealthing as any class, healing as any class, or seeing through everybody else's stealth.
Undead being able to break the ability of two classes in the game every two minutes doesn't seem any more powerful than what the Alliance gets. The Alliance likes to blame all its PvP problems on Horde racials, yet it's generally known that the Alliance has some of the best PvP racials in the game, especially for the Arena.
Palladiamors Sep 6th 2008 9:01PM
Arkeband, I don't have an answer to that one, and considering the more or less across the board 2% resists, it doesn't make much sense to me either.
Preston, since when is becoming poison immune overpowered? It increases the effectiveness of dwarves against rogues, so that particular argument, based on your own incorrect two class statement, doesn't hold water. Undead can currently break out of CC from no less then four classes ((Priests, warlocks, retribution paladins, survival hunters to name the sleep, fear, and charming classes that I can remember)) and one class, the warlock, rely heavily on fear in PvP. Gnomes can escape from snares and roots, its true, but can't become immune to them, so again, it doesn't hold up. Its being put on par with those two. For that matter though, undead DO have a self heal every two minutes in the form of canibalize, which on live scales better then gift of the naaru, healing for 35% of your total health. Admittedly gift can be used on other targets, but canabalize still helps with self survivability.
Night elves get a standing stealth, can't move, or an increased stealth level. Not to mention that doing anything aside from eating in shadow meld breaks shadow meld. Believe me, it used to be a lot better. As for perception, I'd be willing to give you more credit for that one, but now everyone can see everyone elses buffs. Unless your right on top of and in a cone of sight in front of the human, chances are your not going to get caught.
Xarook Sep 6th 2008 7:56PM
"Racial Passive "Mace Specialization": Expertise with Maces and Two-Handed Maces increased by 5."
^Weren't racials similar to this one changed to be a passive 1% crit chance a while ago? Why is this racial the old way? (Unless I'm wrong about something =/)
As for the Undead, they get a 1% resist to shadow spells - lower I assume as its made up for WOTF - but then the blood elves with their fairly decent arcane torrent get a passive 2% resist to all spells?
You'd think the Blood elves would have there one changed to be at 1% as it effects all spells (unlike say, the Dwarves enjoying fights against Frost DKs and Frost mages, etc.) or made an active effect with a higher resist chance (like 5-15% resist for like 10-15 seconds on a 2-3 minute cooldown?)
Xarook Sep 6th 2008 7:59PM
No, wait, my bad. Unless the wow website is outdated, I must just be thinking of like the Gun Specialization/Bow Specialization?
(In response to my first point)
gary Sep 6th 2008 7:56PM
how about throwing a bone to night elves eh?
John Sep 6th 2008 7:58PM
Some thoughts:
Nice changes for Trolls.
Poor Undead.
Congrats to Nelfs on being the new horde shaman killers. And getting that extra resistance the Undead lost.
You read the change to Endurance wrong. It no longer scales with gear. Nerf. Meanwhile, Nelf warriors now have an ability that reduces damage in a scaling way.
Blizz just sent a clear message to Belf Paladins. Say goodbye to that single target ranged pull ability. You now need a glyph like all the other pallies. On the other hand, a flat 2% spell miss is nice. Almost, dare I say, useful.
Oh, finally, thanks to Blizz for giving human DPSers an imba aggro panic button. Human warlocks with Soul Shatter on cooldown can actually survive overtaking the tank (giving him time to catch up). The rest of you races can go f yourselves.
The human racials better get nerfed before release.
magicswordking Sep 7th 2008 12:47PM
You guys do realize that racial abilities aren't anywhere near as important in any situation than talents or baseline abilities, right?
The best racial in the game has always been, and always will be Diplomacy. The idea of Fall of Humanity is kind of stupid as it just doesn't do anything, its not an aggro dump, its an aggro delay, at the best it nerfs your DPS to allow a tank to catch up, or maybe breaks a spell cast. Nothing's been confirmed on that front.
Point is, racials aren't important enough to get worked up over. And its BETA. I think everyone agreed that racial abilities needed a second look, no doubt they will gauge the community reaction and the performance of these abilities. Also, since humans are getting an extra racial, I suspect Orcs might get the same sort of treatment later on. They've said they aren't done here.
Thush Sep 6th 2008 8:04PM
Dang, this is really upsetting. Seriously, if you bought a car and then a year later the car company came back and said "we've gotta take back those power windows" would you be a happy customer?
For my tauren, it's not that big of a deal because I'm not tanking like I hoped and dreamed to be. But for my orc hunter...it's extremely annoying. I rolled an orc with the racials as the prime motivating factor. I knew I wanted to PvP, the 15% stun resistance was perfect. I knew I wanted to go beastmaster spec, the 5% pet damage was perfect. Now they just want to pull the rug out. I can understand classes having to be tweaked a little bit for balance, but racials??? You know what you are getting into up front. I don't pitty anyone that cries about their racials being underpowered after they selected them at the character creation screen!
I'm sorry, this change makes my "base character" into something totally different than the character I rolled and put time and effort into. There's really nothing any subscriber can do about it either. I'm a software developer myself. If someone purchased something from me and they weren't happy I would do what I could to make them happy - even if it meant a refund. Do you think Blizzard will do anything to make us happy customers after this? It would be nice if they would take responsibility for the negative reactions their customers will have and swap out races on existing character, but they don't do that. It's too much effort for them and is much easier to just "ignore the riff raff" customer. They constantly mess with everything and then tell their customers to just deal with it...and why not, it was part of the TOS agreement right?!?! What do they care - they are like McDonalds, over 1 billion served and a huge empire.
It's a shame too, it really is. It's sad to see such smart, creative people in a successful company take this approach to subscription-based gaming. EA will do the same thing with warhammer I'm sure. Like a bull in a china shop.
Yeah, I know I should have just stuck with console games. This kind of thing is just super annoying and I'm really bumbed out about it.
Palladiamors Sep 6th 2008 8:12PM
What.... the heck are you whining about? Its a readustment of several racials that were over all a bit much ((And in the case of taurens only gotten that much worse in wrath)) and updating racials with the new system. Orcs still have that five percent to pet and minion damage, and now taurens don't get 10.5 hit points per stamina. The change to stun resist is over all a very good thing, and more in line with the systems new direction of reducing the time on CCs and snares. Honestly when all is said and done you'll find yourself getting a lot more use out of getting out of stuns 15% faster then you will having resisted them every one in ten times. Its not make or break. Its not the end of the world. And you have next to nothing to complain about with these changes when compared to undead and blood elves. Or heck, even humans, who had their one real arena or PvP trick yanked out from under them.
Chris Anthony Sep 6th 2008 11:36PM
Palladiamors, I'm going to have to stop commenting if you keep saying all the stuff I was going to. :)
Discograndpa Sep 7th 2008 12:27AM
When you used to cancel your account, they had "Will of the Forsaken Nerf" as a reason.
Wonder if they're gonna put it back :P
Eric Sep 6th 2008 8:14PM
It's astonishing to me that they would bother changing the racials without making them even close to balanced.
It's probably impossible to balance them since they would have to be balanced for every class the race can choose. With this in mind I'd favor making all of them more or less irrelevant to PvP or PvE gameplay, or only have extremely minor effects. The bonuses to tradeskills are a good example of what I'd like to see. If races each got 1, 2 or 3% to avoiding a single school of magic, melee or ranged attacks that might be acceptable as well. WoTF and endurance have always been problematic, and mana-tap/arcane torrent is overly powerful as well.
Eric Sep 6th 2008 8:16PM
I picked my character when I was new with out know what a racial was as a newbie. I think racials are getting out of hand, people QQ'ing so much about em be glad they don't just get flat out removed.