The comment was "Anyone can use great racials and be like everyone else; it takes a great player to dominate even without super-powerful racial abilities," and it simply isn't true.

Racials are not going to cause a bad play to become good, they are going to make good players better. If you are in a situation where you are struggling with your DPS simply because you do not know your rotation, are not properly geared, are not specced properly, and other factors of skill/research, then racials are not going to matter for you. However, if we are talking about comparing the two best players in the world with equal gear, then it is the racials that are going to be the defining factor over who produces higher DPS without exception.

The game is about DPS when you are a DPS. I am a balance druid, I write for balance druid, balance druids are a DPS spec. Period. That is your point and purpose for existing. Do you have additional utility abilities? Yes. Are you capable of off-healing in a pinch? Yes. That is not the reason that a balance druid is brought into a raid.

I have done this argument many times and in many forms, I have been fighting for balance druid's damage since vanilla, and I have been doing it for this reason. I will never tell a balance druid to ignore their healing abilities, I will never tell a balance druid to ignore their survivability and utility tools, and I will never say that a player should become tunnel visioned on their meter, but I will always say thing; balance druids are for DPS, DPSing is your primary goal, if our DPS is not high enough for whatever reason, then we have no reason to exist. That is the truth of the matter.

Racials are not a "significant" impact in the sense that they will not make up for your mistakes, they are not, however, useless nor can they be ignored. There is a very good reason that you see massive numbers of people race change when racials get rebalanced, there is a very good reason that you see very specific race/class set-ups on the tournament realms -- it's because, all things being equal, racials are what is going to make the difference between a win and a loss.

Unlike other classes that have a wide variety of race options to choose from, druids only have two per faction, and there is absolutely no balance between those options at this point in time in terms of racials. Trolls balance druids are the better choice over tauren bar none if you are horde. For alliance, you can make a case for the utility of a night elf over the raw DPS of a worgen, but in a straight DPS comparison a worgen is going to win.

DPS may not be the only thing in this game, and I of all people understand that, but it is a very important factor for some players; and I also happen to be one of those. I am a progression raider, I do hard mode content, and DPS is very important in that area of the game. Many hard mode encounters have very strict DPS requirements, and if your guild cannot met them, then you fail. Again, if our DPS is not high enough then we are going to be replaced. On an individual level, racials may seem minor, but they are a very huge deal. As an example, Every Man for Himself was grossly overpowered for the heroic Northrend Beasts encounter because you could use it to completely mitigate Icehowl's Frost Breath for everyone. Raiding as alliance at the time, we had every one group up and had a set rotation for EMfH to break every single Frost Breath. That's a big deal -- it meant more DPS time, it meant having our tanks never being frozen for threat generation, it meant none of our healers ever being frozen to do their job; in a time where this encounter was difficult and has a tight DPS timer, that was a very big deal.

Other racials behave similarly. In a straight Patchwerk style fight, they might not be that significant of a difference, but you cannot always place a specific DPS tag on them. Blowing Berserking to get a portal or ooze down faster on heroic Jaraxxus or PP is a very big deal that's worth more that an equalized DPS gain; and the DPS gains themselves are not equalized for every encounter. Again for Berserking, using it while Icehowl is stunned is going to result in significantly more DPS than it would be parsed at for a Patchwerk encounter. These things matter and racials do make a difference.

I have never said that every racial needs to be a straight 1% gain as Heroic Presence or Viciousness is; Berserking and Blood Fury are actually excellent racials design wise because of this factor. I have said that every race should have some form of DPS racial options in order to create better balance. Balance does not mean perfect equality, balance does not mean that everything is the same; balance is everything being within an acceptable range of other options available. There is no balance between tauren and troll racials -- and from a PvE DPS perspective, there isn't a balance between night elf and worgen racials either -- and the same is true for other races as well. All races do not have to be equal, all racials don't have to be the same, but there at least needs to be some attempt at equality.