Best Race?

[kaikoraimi]

An aside about food:
In terms of grocery ingredients, 10-man feasts and +300 food are equal in materials/serving; a 25-man feast is 20% less expensive. Comparing Ironpaw tokens, however: a feast for a raid 'costs' 1/5th an Ironpaw token, but feeding everybody +300 food 'costs' either 2 tokens (10 man) or 5 tokens (25 man). Cost-benefit analysis suggests that, for most raiding guilds, on most bosses, feasts make more sense than +300 food, as they require a smaller investment.

Sub-1% wipes happen, regardless of whether or not everyone has the best food buff. A near-1% wipe means that your group almost has the encounter beat, and an additional +25 stat for everybody will almost never matter as much as improving execution. Under the premise that an increase of +25 stat corresponds to an increase of 100 dps from every raider, then 10*100 dps = 1000 dps, 25*100 dps = 2500 dps. Per minute, that's an increase of 60k damage or 150k damage. If the average boss fight is 7 minutes long, that's 420k damage or 1050k damage. Compared to Feng's health (presuming he's an average boss from this tier, being the only true single-target fight without a significant movement/mind control gimmick), that is at best 0.28% of his health. Improved execution is massively more likely to make a difference in downing a boss than the best food taking out even 1% of their health.

+300 food is indeed worth mentioning, and it merits consideration here in a comparison of racial abilities. BUT, in a comparison of racial abilities, it is critical to keep the big picture in mind: the dps gain from racials will be at most ~0.5% of a raider's output (and generally decreases as gear levels increase).

[Socialhealer]

+300 food is indeed worth mentioning, and it merits consideration here in a comparison of racial abilities. BUT, in a comparison of racial abilities, it is critical to keep the big picture in mind: the dps gain from racials will be at most ~0.5% of a raider's output (and generally decreases as gear levels increase).

wiped 25 hc empress 0.7% 1.8% wednesday, going back sunday to finish the job, you can be assured we will be using every damn tiny benefit we can!

[Deleted]

I start to hate the racial more and more for every time is trying to pick the "best" one instead of the the one they would enyoy most, be it for looks, animations, lore or racial that match their playstyle most :/

[kaikoraimi]

wiped 25 hc empress 0.7% 1.8% wednesday, going back sunday to finish the job, you can be assured we will be using every damn tiny benefit we can!

And that, in my opinion, is a completely valid, and probably ideal, time to break out the +300 food.

[Deleted]

And that, in my opinion, is a completely valid, and probably ideal, time to break out the +300 food.

We had a 19k hp wipe on Garajal back when we were progressing on him. Rogue and Warlock did not eat their 300 food buffs that try. Guess how much flak they had coming their way.

[Principe]

Orc female dood or go home.

[Tiberria]

1) If you are working on heroic progression (of the normal, "our guild finally got that boss down on heroic" sort, or of the "we're world/realm first" sort) at all, you clearly aren't terrible.
2) If you are working on heroic progression, your guild has probably wiped enough that battle-rezzes are important considerations. Paragon wiped 500+ times on heroic Ragnaros (source) before they got the kill. It's fairly safe to say that most current-content heroic progression bosses will take a few dozen wipes to down, at least.
3) Being generous, say a relative +25 Int = a relative +100 dps. On a 10-minute fight, that's 60,000 extra damage. A single "lucky" (that is: one more than the expected long-term average) overload proc on a lava burst will eclipse that. Failing to get as many lava burst overloads as expected (the long-term average) will have more effect than choosing to eat a lesser food. RNG has a greater impact on DPS than the difference between +275 and +300 food. On shorter fights, the effect is more pronounced -- there's less time for RNG to smooth out, so a very lucky or very unlucky pull is more likely to occur.


At level 90, 300 Int gives about 0.16% crit. If you had 300 spellpower and ~100 crit (just a bit under), you'd have the same gain as 300 Int.
Comparing orcs to pandas, though, you have to consider when Blood Fury is being used -- it's a lot stronger than the theoretical average of 282 sp when it's up while Ascendance is (sitting on it for every Ascendance might be worth more than using it on CD). Also, there's orc's +2% pet damage, which applies to elementals (but not searing or magma totems).

In sum: RNG has a bigger effect than the difference between reasonable food and the best food. Provided that you are making use of them, the difference between racials is small -- generally smaller than RNG and human error account for.

Of course, execution is going to be more important than racials or food buffs or gear in most cases. However, you can carry that same argument and say that the fact that execution is more important means there's no point flasking or enchanting your gear, or properly reforging, etc, etc. If you aren't willing to put in the effort to min max to the point where you use 300 food appropriately, things like racials are irrelevant. By appropriately, I don't mean on every pull or even on every progression pull. However, on progression pulls where you have a legitimate chance of killing the boss and the enrage timer or burst DPS is a key factor determining whether you can do so or not, not having and using 300 food is lazy and terrible.

As far as battle rezzes, sure you use them, and sure ankhs are used. My point is that you should not be the one needing a battle rez or ankh so often that taking a racial with a double food buff or not becomes an important consideration. The majority of battle rezzes that are needed during progression are either tank deaths or someone that screws up and dies. If you're screwing up and dying that often, you have more important things to worry about than what race to choose.

[kaikoraimi]

As was rightly established in this post from another recent thread, as long as you are selecting a reasonable option for gemming (likewise with enchanting, food buffs, etc.), you aren't doing anything wrong.

Breaking out the +300 food when you know you are damn close to downing a boss and have been missing it by a few percent and/or a small number of seconds (i.e., being just shy of pushing a phase) is a smart thing to do. If you have the time and interest in investing in having the best food available all the time, there is no reason to not eat it all the time. However, it is neither lazy nor terrible for a progression-oriented raider (or raiding guild) to decide that a sub-100 dps gain (per person) simply isn't worth investing in -- that their time and effort (and possibly gold) is better spent on other things -- especially when working with rather limited play time.

[Deleted]

I always choose my race for cosmetic appearance rather than stats, though racials are always nice. I'm a tauren resto shammy, and I find war stomp has saved my life when the tank loses aggro numerous times