Toabo

I'm curious how they'll handle the Achievements, particularly the ones related to quests. Suppose I've done 2500 of the 3000 quests you need for the Seeker title, but then switch factions. Do I still have a 2500/3000 towards that achievement? Or does my status get wiped since a substantial number of those completed quests were faction-specific?

Also, what about the rep awards for faction-specific quests? It sounds like swapping faction would convert your existing reputations into their faction equivalents, e.g. if you were an Alliance who was Revered with Honor Hold, post-swap you'd be a Horde who was Revered with Thrallmar. But as Alliance, you never did any of those Horde-only quests that awarded Thrallmar rep. Could you go back to Hellfire Peninsula and complete those Horde-only quests and thereby grind your rep to Exalted?

 

Kyro

If you ask a non-Orc horde shaman what race he would pick in 3.2 if he could change race, I'd be willing to bet the most common answer, without any hesitation, would be "Orc".

If racials, as you and certain others suggest, aren't that powerful, there wouldn't be that much noise about Orcs. For a shaman, the Orc racials, when combined, can be the equivalent of nearly four (4) extra gem slots. Hardly trivial if you ask me. This should also be true of most melee DPS, especially Unholy DKs.

At this point in time, I see them having three choices:

1) Implement a paid race change service
2) Remove all racials (effectively making race a purely cosmetic choice)
3) Balance racials, the easiest way being to make all racials non-combat related.

11 million WoW subscribers, 99% of whom are retarded and should probably delete their accounts.

 

Vazu

Why go Alliance?

- If your tanks are NE, they gain 2% avoidance.
- Gnome casters gain 5% INT, which is actually quite good.
- The hit rating buff for Draenei allows for different gear and talent options.
- Humans can basically PVP trinket every 2 minutes.

Why go Horde?

- Orcs can Blood Fury to increase their DPS every 2 minutes.
- Orc Warlocks/Hunters gain increased pet damage.
- Tauren can War Stomp (hi Freya +3)
- Tauren have 5% more HP.
- Trolls can Berserk to increase their DPS every 3 minutes and is soon to be buffed further.
- Trolls gain a 5% damage bonus vs. Beasts.
- Trolls gain a 15% movement speed duration reduction bonus vs. impairing effects.
- Undead can remove Fear, Charm or Sleep every 2 minutes.
- Blood Elves can silence anything within 8yds for 2 seconds every 2 minutes, plus gain mana, energy or rage from it.
- Blood Elves have a passive 2% avoidance vs. spells.

--

So yeah, unless they make some major, major changes to Alliance racials, I can't see why any raiding guild would stay Alliance. Horde racials are superior basically across the board for every single class in the game. I know our Mages are salivating at the thought of re-rolling Troll. Warlocks want to go Orc, our DK's want to go Blood Elf, etc. There's just so many reasons to be Horde right now if you want a raiding advantage. Really the only noticable nice buff Alliance get is 1% party hit from Draenei. The rest of the bonuses I listed above are nice but they aren't as likely to change a fight like Orc or Troll racials can right now. All of those DPS checks in Ulduar where we've wiped at 2-3%? Never would have happened if our Mages were Troll, etc etc.

 

Jezz

I am fairly sure the 1% hit is superior, or at worst, on par with the racials you mentioned for sustained DPS and the other 20 people in the raid have their own racials too.

I would think the exact opposite, minmaxing guilds would be rerolling alliance, though I can't imagine Blizzard will let this service go live without a big overhaul of the racials, as some people mentioned, making them all non-combat would probably be the easiest way forward.

 

Vazu

I've been thinking about this more actually.

Does anyone have any math to back this up? The 1% hit is nice but it's limited to DPS classes. Where something like Orc and Troll racials can affect healers as well. I really can't argue with you here, but I'd be very interested to see some theorycrafting behind it. Assume something like:

2-3 Mages - Troll
2-3 Warlocks - Orc
1-2 Shaman (Ele/Enh) - Orc
1-2 Rogues - Orc/Troll
1-2 Warriors (DPS) - Orc/Troll
1-2 Priest (Shadow) - Troll
1-2 Death Knights (DPS) - Orc/Troll
1-2 Hunters - Orc/Troll

..and then compare that to what you COULD gain in theory with 1% more hit vs. Blood Fury and Berserking.

 

Machinator

Its not so much 1% hit vs Bloodfury, its that you get it on top of your own racials. Orc and Troll racials can affect healers, but alliance racials can too so its a wash unless you think that horde/alliance racials are already unbalanced anyway.

Allowing faction change just puts more, not less, attention on racial balance, which is why they either need to allow race change with it or balance them better.

"Information is ammunition."

 

Kyro

Thing is, the Horde racials are only better if every class plays the race that benefits them. A BE hunter is basically garbage (from the point of view of this discussion), as is a Tauren shaman. So for the Horde racials to be that much better, all 25 people have to be min/maxing their race.

Alliance, on the other hand, benefits from the Dranei aura regardless of their race. You can be a gnome rogue, and while your racials won't do much for you, you still get the hit buff. A BE rogue gets nothing.

Therefore, unless your entire guild thought to pick a min/max race when they first started their character, Alliance will on average get more use of the racials.

That being said, I would think most min/max guilds would go Horde, not alliance. If your entire guild can choose their race, and you all min/max said race choice, the benefit will be greater than the Dranei aura. A NE DPS DK going Orc will probably see a net benefit, even though he's losing the 1% hit. Same with a Dranei enh/resto shaman going Orc.

Hit does nothing for healers (which is often 6-7 per raid), nor does it do a whole lot for melee DPS, since they can often cap (or come close to cap) with gear alone, and do not need to gem/enchant for hit. Therefore, I'd say you can often get 10 or so people per raid who won't really benefit from the Dranei hit aura. Compare this to having 25 people playing a race that gives their spec useful combat racials.

11 million WoW subscribers, 99% of whom are retarded and should probably delete their accounts.

 

MatsT

Orc racials doesn't benefit healers.

 

Shaewyn

I think you've got the strongest argument yet on this issue - and it's all related to the fact that very, very few guilds will have 25 people willing to min/max enough to specifically select a race for it's combat related racials.

What this really comes down to, in terms of racials for raiding, is that there are effectively only 3 racials with meaningful impact on how one raids: Heroic Presence, Blood Fury and Berserking. All of the other racials, while providing convenience (profession bonuses, reputation bonuses) or PvP abilities (Every man for himself, will of the forsaken), have minimal effect on raid effectiveness.

Are raiding related racials balanced? Perhaps not. However, I don't see the ability to change race (even if it was free and cooldown-free) majorly affecting raiding.

Are PvP related racials balanced? Cross faction? Perhaps. Race-to-race? No chance. Every man for himself is so far superior to Heroic Presence for PvP it's not even funny. If the ability to change race was availiable, even for a high cost, many, many people would change race for PvP purposes.

 

Cranberry

Blood Fury would like a word with you. It's not exactly powerful but it's certainly non-negligable.

 

Mordinm

Blood Fury does not affect healing power. Instead it boosts only spell damage.

 

Cranberry

Just checked on my lock and can confirm this is correct. My apologies.

 

Lanlaorn

There are more than that. The various expertise racials are quite good, the +5% pet damage for Orcs is nice, The Night Elf 2% miss is fairly ridiculous, Tauren HP is a non-trivial bonus, etc. An Orc DK is probably the most absurd example. They have (especially if Unholy) 3 racials that "align': +5 expertise (1.25% dodge/parry reduction) to axes, +5% pet damage works on the Ghoul, Gargoyle and Dancing Rune Weapon and Blood Fury of course.

It's easy to see Blood Fury and Berserking and think "oh, it's like a free trinket", but there are other passive racials that are like free talents. If those are relevant to your class they can be very absurd. That's another problem with racials, not just the quality of the racial (and many are completely non-combat oriented) but also the quantity that any given race has that apply to any one class.

Blizzard would need to not only make sure that each racial is balanced on its own, but also in combination with the other racials that race has. This is what makes Orcs in particular so crazy for min/maxing, all 4 racials are combat racials, 3 of them are useful in PvE and every single Orc class benefits from at least two racials (in 3.2 Rogues can use Axes and their expertise talent is gaining Fists so they'll 2 then).

I concur that the most likely solution would be to simply make all racials non-combat abilities, bonuses to tradeskills and "for fun' things like the Dwarven Treausre Hunting.

 

Tinwhisker

While I agree with your point, go ask a Dwarf how much "fun" that racial is. Since the removal of all chests and the upcoming addition of quest objectives to the map, Blizzard has effectively removed it from Dwarves and given it to everyone.

You're a lot of DPS, you know that? You wanna' earn 14 achievement points the hard way?

 

snape

I agree wholeheartedly with this. Treasure Tracking is completely useless in Wrath - I've had it up the entire time I've leveled from 70-80 on my Dwarf Priest all (she has no other tracking skill, so it's my default) and it hasn't popped up one single item in that time. Even in Outland, it would show the odd quest objective [and of course chests]. So don't go thinking Treasure Tracking is great - it is, in fact, terrible.

 

Pegasux

I personally feel that Horde's Racial's bring's more advantage to raiding enviroment's then Aliance. That i think everyone can easily understand, due the fact almost every player with higher gear hit caps him self, wish makes the talent form draenai useless. Altough Blizzard always takes in consideration all the aspects of the game, PVE,PVP,RP and also the Solo playing. For PVP Aliance has some good advantage agaisnt horde with the human's racials and the gnomes Scape artist talent for example. So i do think Blizz made things balanced in overall, but when it comes to raiding, yes horde does take the advantage.

I'm afraid this is just another monopoly scheme to win profit, cuz this will neva work properly.
1- If im in a high lvl guild on aliance side and i play with players for so many years, i won't change just because horde has more talents that can benefit me, unless ofc the whole guild changes to the other side.
2- I think this will unbalance the game alot, due the fact horde's guild's can now try to "steal" the good player from the aliance side to join them and promise spot's in raids, this will make aliance even weaker.
3- I really don't know what will happen after this, but seems that soon enough will we be doing instances with horde and aliance on the same group?? and talk with em on trade???

 

Lord Loom

Pegasux, while players are indeed responsible for capping their own hit chance, a lot of alliance raiders can do so taking the bonus 1% hit from draenei mates into account, which means they have more options in getting gear without hit rating or gemming for other DPS stats, so I don't think calling the draenei racial useless is an accurate statement.

As stated by others in this thread it's not as easy as saying a +1% hit aura is better or worse than horde racials because it's well possible that a horde raid contains a lot of race-class-spec combinations without PvE synergy in their racials, while you can bring alliance players with equally useless racials for PvE and still give them an advantage by grouping them with a draenei.

Without rebalancing racials (or letting players pick from a pool of them) the biggest issue I see is that without a race change option, they're still opening races to be min-maxed - but only once, for people willing to do a faction change, ie. the average horde raid isn't going to be noticeably better than the average (draenei-boosted) alliance one because there's still going to be enough people with suboptimal racials, but an alliance guild transferring over will be able to stack min-maxed races for a much greater advantage.

Everyone always coming to Zathras with problems. Great responsibilities. But Zathras does not mind. Zathras trained in crisis management.

 

Liar

No, if you want to compare a Horde raid rerolling Alliance so they can get the Draenei hit aura then you have to assume a fully min-max'd Horde raid as well. Why? Because in your example a full Horde guild is willing to reroll Alliance so they get to pick the race for every player. But an Alliance guild that rerolls also gets to pick their Horde racials that are the best for their class.

With that in mind, it shouldn't be too hard to compare the racials in terms of item budget since you can express most racials in form of ratings (i.e. Heroic Presence is worth 33 rating in the best case (melee hit, needs exactly 1% to cap - it get's worse the closer you are to the cap and if you are a caster). Blood Fury can be averaged out as a +AP/SP buff that can be tied with CDs, expertise racials work the same and so on. Anyone feel like making such a list? :P

Unexpected TankPoints error Clearly someone doesn't understand how EH works. That, or upgrading from T8 to T9 is optional in beating Arthas. Clearly.

 

Lord Loom

I don't disagree, but my second paragraph about the "unfair" comparison strictly applies to the status quo and was in reply to complaints that horde racials are better than Heroic Presence. They can be if stacked, but on average they're not right now. They do get universally better when alliance->horde transfers allow full guilds to re-min-max their race choices (while being unfair to current horde raiders) which is why I said I consider them - or Blizzard's "no race change" rule - the biggest issue in regards to game balance.

You can make the comparison now, like how many orcs (eg.) do you need to overtake a raid with an average amount of draenei, and then compare it to a fully min-maxed raid assuming no racial changes, to see how much more of an advantage a raid full of tauren warriors, orc deathknight etc. gains over one with 4-5 draenei covering all groups. I don't know how hard averaging "trinket" racials would be if one assumes they're correctly used together with other cooldowns, though, because I assume the bonus you get varies a lot depending on class and spec, and probably encounters.

Everyone always coming to Zathras with problems. Great responsibilities. But Zathras does not mind. Zathras trained in crisis management.

 

Beliandra

Bear in mind that prior to hit and spell hit being merged into the generic "hit rating", the Draenei aura provided either +1% melee hit or +1% spell hit depending on the Draenei's class. So the precedent is there for racial bonuses to be class-dependent. If Blizzard were to rebalance racials, it might make sense to considerably broaden this idea, making at least some of each race's abilities depend on class, so we don't have dwarf paladins with gun specialization and suchlike.

Of course it's easy to get wrong with hybrid classes: I recall that Draenei enhancement shamans were peeved that shamans got the +1% spell hit aura, not the melee hit one. But at least abilities that are by-definition useless for some classes could be filtered out.

 

Mordinm

The weapon expertise racials remain difficult to quantify over the long term because they are dependent on the itemizing developers whim. For all of the 3.0 raids, for instance, the orc axe racial was completely useless because there just weren't any viable axes for the enhance shaman to pick up. Sword expaertise might risk falling into the same hole if developers begen to prefer axes and fist weapons over swords to give items with broader appeal.

 

Lucinde

This is not entirely true, as the Dranei racial is not a raidwide buff, but a group buff with a rather limited range.

While it is certainly possible to gear for the "alliance hitcap" and add a Dranei to the group to get "really hitcapped", group and raid composition changes enough between raids that this is not really feasible. Also, as soon as fights get more hectic and mobile, the 30 yards range becomes an annoying limitation. And, on top of that, the Dranei can die :-)

In practice, the only guy being able to lose some hitgear to benefit of the racial is the Dranei himself as he's guaranteed to have the bonus from his own racial. Everyone else generally just caps himself for the above reasons and because it isn't exactly hard to do in the first place.

What we end up doing is stick a Dranei with the rogues to add an extra 1% hit on their white attacks, as it's not realistically feasible to get hitcapped for dual wield, and not bother with it otherwise.

 

Lujaar

I don't see raid guilds switching factions because of racials.

In the last four pages people have predicted a mass exodus out of horde and a mass exodus out of alliance. We've got people debating which racials are better without an obvious answer, which means they're pretty close. The top horde guilds in the world still slot blood elf hunters, undead mages, and tauren shamans. Very few people care enough about racials to go through a guild transfer. Transferring means losing all your contacts with other guilds in your faction and leaving behind at least a couple members, and gaining 100 or 200 raid DPS isn't worth it. Your raid leaders could find a single good new recruit and get the same gain for a lot less headache.

Guilds will switch factions, but mostly for the reasons guilds switch servers now. Better recruiting, to leave bad players behind, whatever.

I also expect a lot of high-end PvPers to switch factions. I'm surprised that hasn't been mentioned much. People care a lot more about racials in PvP and transferring three people is easier than transferring 30.

 

Machinator

Raid guilds perhaps not, unless they were already going to switch servers anyway. Raiders looking for a guild or arena enthusiasts however, will obviously take the best racials. There are obvious answers as to which racials are better at certain times, but those time don't always overlap especially when you take into account people who PVE and PVP on the same character.
Either way, more people will be choosing the racials that will benefit them the most more than now, magnifying balance issues, real or percieved (see wow forums ).

"Information is ammunition."

 

Tinwhisker

I agree that PvP faction transfers are much more likely than PvE faction transfers if only because the logistics of moving 2-5 people is much less problematic than 30-35.

Still though, that doesn't negate what was put forth earlier. This is going to put a very, very harsh light on racials. Not that there isn't one already (you can look at real stats to see races like Dwarves falling in numbers). The ability to faction transfer though is merely going to accelerate any processes we already see.

You're a lot of DPS, you know that? You wanna' earn 14 achievement points the hard way?