r/classicwow • u/Open-Process8881 • 7h ago
Forever Why are the new racials so Alliance-biased?
This is not a bait post but a genuine question. Apparently it's been stated by a dev that they don't want to change the racials after the game launches, which would imply that the current racials are the ones that the game is going to stick with. Orcs just saw a massive nerf: shatter curse no longer grants immunity and only reduces magic damage taken by 5% (was 15%), blood fury is now on a 3 min cooldown (was 2 min). Undead's WOTF is giga-nerfed (even though all priests get fear ward, which already makes it much less valuable than it was in Classic): it no longer grants immunity and no longer breaks scatter shot, and their damage proc now has a 25-second internal cooldown (making it entirely worthless, like it is in Retail. Seriously don't understand the point of that one when it really wasn't very powerful to begin with). Tauren also lost 1% hit in exchange for 2% critical damage and healing. They received shorter War Stomp and Cultivation cooldowns and some mounted movement speed.
Meanwhile, Humans get 2% crit chance without a weapon restriction, while Orcs get 1%. Dwarves also lose their weapon restriction, Gnomes get a more flexible Eureka that now benefits shields, and Night Elves can stack their racial movement speed with other movement bonuses. That's not even to mention the ridiculous 3% haste passive that Skyborne now have, which now makes the Alliance exclusive Skyborne-mage combo one of the best in the game (Goblins in Retail literally have the exact same racial called "Time is Money", except the Skyborne one is three times better).
Why are the racial changes so heavily Alliance-favored? Several Horde races just had defining combat racials weakened, while Alliance races received broadly positive changes. What is the reasoning behind that direction, especially if the plan is to leave racials largely unchanged after launch?
I think that the devs should be constantly patching the racials until there is a satisfying point of balance, or they should just remove racials entirely at this point. The constantly fluctuating racial tier lists forced players to think less about temporary min-maxxing and instead about what race they'd actually like to play.
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u/Commercial-Ad-1328 5h ago
If racials were reversed between h and a as a horde player I'd take it in a heartbeat.
There are so many issues with horde racials it's funny. Playing into escape artist / stone form / perception / confounding flash is gonna be miserable. Playing into shatter / wotf / hardiness is so much more preferable
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u/webdevmike 7h ago
The only thing I can think of is that they saw most people were playing Horde so they gave Alliance better racials so more people would roll Alliance?
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u/korean_kracka 7h ago
This would be terrible bc a lot of people play things in a beta they wouldn’t normally play on launch, just to see what they’re like. Every class I made I picked a race I wouldn’t play on launch to see what I’d be missing out on.
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u/Jelkekw 7h ago
Exactly. They are pushing for faction balance and these changes make it more evident than ever. I don’t care if everyone I’ve ever known and loved goes horde, I’m not missing out on this insane version of gnome rogue.
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u/korean_kracka 7h ago
Gnome rogue does look bonkers. NE marksman hunters will be deleting people from meld from 45 yards away too.
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u/King0llie 7h ago
Fellow gnome rogue checking in.
Eureka + 5 additional energy going to make for some fun PvP combos. Plus no need to talent imp sprint so can even go mutilate / prep if it’s any good
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u/Jelkekw 7h ago
And our options only expand as we get nightslayer set bonus, tea, renataki
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u/King0llie 6h ago
Hell yeah.
If mutilate is strong then I’m feeling a build like this. 125 energy and 10% reduction cost on mutilate goes brrr.
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u/woody8229 4h ago
It's insane. I've been reporting the Alliance racial imbalance as a bug every day since the latest change. All the comments on here saying the opposite has been the case the last 20 years must have been playing a different game or are cherry picking. Both factions' dominance has fluctuated back and forth for both PvE and PvP over the years. To say it's been only Horde for that long? EMFH, Shadowmeld, and the last few years Stoneform in M+ sound familiar? Just naming a few.
I'm fine with factions not being perfectly balanced and drawing the short end of the stick but this iteration is just egregious and will cause minmaxers to heavily shift Alliance (population controls can't help that). The Alliance Skyborne advantage vs Horde's is crazy once everyone has the movement speed enchant their secondary racial is basically a second combat racial for classes like arcane mage.
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u/MassiveLecture7373 7h ago
Yeah idk this team has no fucking clue what they're doing. Some of the changes are just plain stupid and unnecessary. I'm just going to play with friends and enjoy it for what it is though.
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u/Knight6254 7h ago
I called this lol when there were 20 posts a day whining about how OP Orc is I knew as soon as it was nerfed it would just devolve into a downward spiral of "well now that orc is nerfed this is op so we should nerf it" this is the exact over-balancing that turned retail into what it is today over a course of many many iterations.
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u/dendro 7h ago
No idea. Everyone is pretty baffled about it. They are in worse state than in the beginning of beta! More imbalance, all favored to alliance side (not Dwarfs).
I mean orc is pretty good still, but alliance racials are just way too good now. It feels bad not to roll an alliance because of it. Hopefully they'll have another look before release
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
It's honestly impressive that with all the new information and simming technology that is available, that somehow Blizzard is worse at balancing races than they were in Vanilla. At this point it would be better for them to revert the races to their Vanilla versions or something
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u/BeautifulNose2210 7h ago edited 7h ago
Combat racials are unbalanceable and shouldn’t exist. Racials should have only ever been non combat flavor and QoL.
Shoehorning players who want to get the most out of their class into a specific race was bad game design in 2004 and its bad game design now. Certain racials were just completely dead for half of the classes in the game.
Blizz had a chance to fix this with forever but absolutly missed.
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u/Jaggiboi 7h ago
Just like retail
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
I recently played Retail again for the first time since BfA and was pretty shocked about how pretty much everyone at a relatively competitive level swapped to Alliance because the racials on Horde were just that much worse.
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u/Hopszii 7h ago
95% of retail is horde because of historical racial advantages? What are you talking about.
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
I don't know when you've last played Retail, but literally look at any list of top M+ players or top raiding guilds (or even top PvPers) and you will see that they're all Alliance.
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u/Jaggiboi 7h ago
In PvP and M+ Alliance has far superior racials. Like almost everybody who does serious M+ is a Night elf or Dwarf.
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u/FreeSpeechIsDeadge 7h ago
Dwarf is literally the most OP race in retail for M+. Stoneform is absolutely broken. Night elf is a close second with shadowmeld. Horde doesn’t come close.
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u/Noxm 7h ago
Imagine horde people crying after over 20 years having the better racials.
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u/FreeSpeechIsDeadge 7h ago
Well horde hasn’t had a racial advantage in forever because the game isn’t even out yet. What the fuck do other iterations of wow have to do with it? This is a new game. In retail, alliance obliterates horde in racials. Should Forever be adjusted based on that as well?
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u/Noxm 7h ago
I talk about classic/vanilla so over 20 years
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
PvE was extremely Alliance biased in Classic/Vanilla, you're either a giga casual or are lying about having ever played it
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u/Noxm 6h ago
Bro I still have corrupted ashbringer on my retail account, I guess I know what I’m talking about.
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u/Open-Process8881 6h ago
Is that supposed to prove something?
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u/Noxm 6h ago
You said I don’t know what I’m talking about I cleared that shit 20 years ago, what do you bring to the table.
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u/Open-Process8881 6h ago
Okay? And it's 2026, not 2006, and you're saying things that are incorrect about the game. Clearly you haven't played in 20 years and have forgotten in that span of time that the PvE racials were extremely alliance-favored
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u/BigBootyBiachez 7h ago
Alliance racials were better in classic already lol
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u/Noxm 7h ago
That’s why all the world first guilds rolled horde since vanilla 🤣
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u/BigBootyBiachez 7h ago
What does post vanilla have to do with anything when people are discussing vanilla era?
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u/Bright-Raspberry2737 7h ago
what racials? this is just not true which is why undead rogues were always the best pvp race/class the mace spec era was brutal
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u/BigBootyBiachez 4h ago
Let’s just pretend sword spec didn’t exist then I guess
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u/Bright-Raspberry2737 2h ago
right but that wasn't anywhere near the strongest , rogues were beating locks with lvl 1 weapons and sword skill didn't help in pvp dumbass
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
Even if what you're saying is true (it's not), it's dumb to play this teeter totter game of giving one faction deliberately better racials than another for the purpose of... vengeance?
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u/Noxm 7h ago edited 6h ago
It was like that, that’s why world first guilds rolled horde since 2005.
Nihilum/Ensidia, Method (they switched), Serenity, and so on all Horde all along the way.
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
No? <APES> (world first Rag and Ony) was Alliance, <Progress> and <Calamity> (world first BWL clear) were both Alliance, <SALAD BAKERS> (world first ZG clear) was Alliance, <Progress> (world first Naxx clear) was Alliance. The only world-first clear from a Horde guild during Classic was <ONSLAUGHT> being the world-first AQ40, but that was only because of gate opening timing.
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u/Noxm 6h ago
Bro where did you get your information from:
Molten Core: Cleared by the guild Ascent (US) on April 25, 2005.
Blackwing Lair: Cleared by Drama (US) on September 26, 2005.
Temple of Ahn'Qiraj: Cleared by Nihilum (EU) on April 25, 2006.
Naxxramas: Cleared by Nihilum (EU) on September 7, 2006.Only Drama was Alliance the Rest was horde. Please look up your temu informations.
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u/Open-Process8881 6h ago
You said Classic, now you're bringing up Vanilla world-firsts from 2006 when nobody knew anything about the game and were all playing on dial-up internet...
You're also wrong about this too, the only Horde guild was Nihilum, Ascent was also Alliance and another Alliance guild <Ruined> cleared world-first Ony. So the only competing Horde guild in PvE during Vanilla, even back when people didn't know shit about the game, was <Nihilum>
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u/Noxm 6h ago
I’m talking about vanilla 20 years ago, who cares about reclearing shit 15 years later.
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u/Open-Process8881 6h ago
The only difference between the clears in Vanilla and now are the amount of player knowledge and better internet connection, the racials were the same and the world-firsts reflected how Alliance-favored they were.
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u/Scragly 7h ago
ok but are you sure about that?
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
Yeah.
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u/Scragly 7h ago
ok bud, pretty much common knowledge that horde racials have been superior in many iterations of the game. Lying doesn't strengthen your argument.
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
>horde racials have been superior in many iterations of the game
Sure? Maybe that's so? But the commenter said that they had 20 continuous years of having the better racials, which just isn't true. Have you ever played WoW? Vanilla PvE is dominated by Alliance players because of weapon skill racials, and Retail PvE is dominated by Alliance races right now because of dwarves and nelves in M+ and mechagnomes and pandas in raid.
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u/Shrekert 7h ago
Horde had better racials. They closed the gap so people don’t pick the race for parse.
Dwarf Hunter could even use their racial lol.
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u/RagstarGG 7h ago
Can you link your post from before the changes when the racials were heavily biased towards Horde?
Btw, Horde still has better racials.
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u/HeWhoFearsNoSpider 7h ago
Idk about better racials on horde. We'll see. That's the point though so, well done blizzard! Gnome mage is gonna pump. Human warrior is gonna pump. Will they out pump orc warriors and mages? Not sure, but it'll be close!
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
I literally said the same thing about Orcs when Alliance Andies were overpopulating the Horde faction by switching over to play Orc. The reason it matters now is because launch is approaching and that the dev said they plan to keep the racials after launch.
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u/Grizmoore_ 7h ago
So. I am of the opinion that everything that isn't flavor just power, should be nuked outta the game. It has no place, I said it about powerful legacy talents like talented, thrill of adventure, and high alert. If all it is offering is passive power, get rid of it.
BUT for the sake or argument, 95% of the people playing are not effected by these passives. The 2% crit chance/damage will only be valuable to people who will be raiding, and beyond that, people who will be parsing in the top 95th percentile and higher in the logs.
For those people. They don't even know what's going to be the best class/race combos yet, because they need to hit 60 and find all the gear combos. MY BET, is on the crit damage racials being valued a bit more than the crit chance. If you are unaware why, look up how white critical hits are calculated. Because your cap is going to be about 40% crit, and then you'll want crit damage/ap after that.
Again though, this only matters to people that actually parse in that range. I've parsed in that range, and you really shouldn't care too much as an average player. In pvp, it won't make a difference the actives are the game deciders and always have been.
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u/korean_kracka 6h ago
2% crit 1-60 is massive and should be taken into account if this game is about the “journey”. Permanent 40% cruelty for all classes ffs. 5% spirit is also good for leveling
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u/Grizmoore_ 6h ago
I'm gonna level with you. I'm tired boss. I've given my feedback, and it's sucked me dry. I see everyone complains about this and that. so, I'll just relent, you're completely right, I'm wrong, and I'm sorry.
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u/FatmanSlim93 7h ago edited 7h ago
Horde had better facials for most of the beta and now that it flipped it’s an issue?
Edit: I am not in favor of one side having an advantage that pulls more to one side. I’m making both horde and alliance characters so I’d like there to be balance. Not saying alliance should have better racials.
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u/Saerdna76 7h ago
Not that there was any clear cut bias for horde earlier but you cannot seriously ask this? Who gives a fuck about what happened in the beta, this is the state we are going live with.
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u/FatmanSlim93 7h ago
I want balance for both, as someone who plays both I’d like for racials to be flavorful and not a reason for people to hard choose one side or another
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u/Bid_Unable 7h ago
Yes, because all of them should be roughly balanced, which they have continued to fail with.
what kind of idiotic comment is this?
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
Is that really true, though? Orc was pretty overpowered, but gnomes were definitely better for most of the beta until they both were nerfed. The rest of the Horde races have pretty much dwarfed in comparison to the Orcs.
Either way, that's not really the point, I would prefer the racials to be balanced, not to play this petty game of begging Blizzard to deliberately favor one faction over another
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u/Ok_Patience_5130 7h ago
Horde where the better faction for 20+ years. It's a great change
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u/FreeSpeechIsDeadge 7h ago
Forever has been out for 20 years? Here I thought we were playing a new game.
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u/Training-Garden3626 7h ago
They need to get rid of damage centric racials. Flavor, utility and minor stat increases are fine. It’s haste, crit, hit, and damage cooldowns that will either be homogeneous or unbalanced.
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u/Intelligent-Shop189 6h ago
horde players have had broken racials since launch and all of a sudden it's an issue when they might not have their pvp training wheels
joke faction that cannot function without having their hands held
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u/ExasperatedEngineer 7h ago
Horde still have superior pvp racials. Who gives a crap about 1-2% extra parses in classic inspired raids...
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u/Open-Process8881 7h ago
Do they really, though? Gnomes get an instant FAP and humans get a stun breaker on top of their damage increase passives...
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u/link_defender 7h ago
The only thing to do in Classic style (re: difficulty not found) raid IS parsing. And having a permanent 1 or 2% headwind will absolutely punish those players in that respect. Will it make it impossible to get orange and pink? No, probably not, but it might put a pretty big finger on the scale against you.
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u/DeviousLight 7h ago edited 4h ago
Cause horde has always been better for the past 20 years and now that alliance is slightly better, all the losers come out and cry about it.
Edit: Idiot deleted his comment cause he knew he was wrong
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u/LordArgonite 4h ago
I didn't know wowf released 20 years ago. Or are we just dragging up greviences from other versions of the game that have nothing to do with a fresh launch of a new game?
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u/Fit-Government9903 7h ago
'dwarves also lose their weapon restriction' but get a racial that's effectively worse than 1% crit chance until you get to unreachable crit levels