Add back the priest ones, then add like nine paladin ones per pally race, then add race-specific abilities to every class please.
Actually, I thought of a new thing people would rage about. If Blizzard made all racials just cosmetic people would rant about it being a predatory money grab to sell more tokens or rake in money from "forcing" people to buy race changes now that they're not bound to performance racials.
The most difficult thing to do is accept that there is nothing wrong with things you don't like and accept that people can like things you don't.
Cry about it. So many people whinge about how they "don't get to play" because they don't like "the meta" that you'd think maybe they'd all get together and rage against the meta together. Except they don't, because no one likes spending 30 minutes to do something they could have done in 20, or 200 pulls on a 10 pull boss because everyone's going out of their way to play the least optimal shit possible.
"The meta" is literally just in-game democracy. Compared to real democracy though the best part is you can just start your own political party and do things with other members of your political party and totally ignore everyone else - or you can just get on the internet and complain about other people doing things they enjoy because you don't enjoy them yourself and make zero effort to improve your own situation.
I say no, because you're adding another (rather unnecessary) layer to the meta that players have to think about. It's already bad enough with players being Blood Elves because of the Silence.. and Trolls because of the Haste. Orcs for the Attack Power and Goblins having their own mobile bank, rocket boots, and a rocket launcher.
You either have to trivialize races to where they all play the same or at least minor enough where it doesn't matter which race you play outside of cosmetics...
OR... You go the FFXIV route and make every class available for people to swap freely without any money but they have to unlock those classes through training and "re-level" them.
The latter of which would require a huge upbringing into the whole system. It's not something that can be done within an expansion's development. Not to mention that certain classes like Death Knight, Demon Hunter, and (soon to be Evoker) will make it harder for that type of system to work. It's not like you can pick up a runeforged sword and be like "HEY LOOK, I'M A DEATH KNIGHT NOW!"
Edit: Also, because of how Legion is structured with the Order Halls it adds another hurdle. Imagine you're playing a priest, but suddenly you feel like swapping to a Shaman, are you just barred from Netherlight Temple but have access to the Shaman Order Hall? Does the same apply to the Priest mount if you swap to Shaman? Stuff like that make things a lot more complicated.
Last edited by Woggmer; 2022-06-27 at 12:04 AM.
"You see, there is balance in all things. Wisdom etched in our very fur: Black and white. Darkness and light. When the last emperor hid our land from the rest of the world, he also preserved...our ancient enemy, the mantid. So it is with your Alliance and your Horde. They are not strong despite one another; they are strong BECAUSE of one another. You mistake your greatest strength for weakness. Do you see this?"
People blame racials on one side or another for the faction inbalance. One side has good racials for a certain kind of content the people who do that content flock to that side, etc etc.
Blizz made a post back in MoP I think that if they knew in alpha what they knew then they'd have only cosmetic racials.
The most difficult thing to do is accept that there is nothing wrong with things you don't like and accept that people can like things you don't.
Yeah do it. Unless you're raiding with a hardcore guild in Classic no one really cares what race your priest is if you're just doing casual raiding. People greatly overestimate how much average players care about min/maxing and it ruins fun additions to the game like priest racial abilities.
I'd like them to come back, but in a different form. One based upon who or what they worship (you know, like in D&D, which Warcraft ripped off in every other way), rather than being weird expressions of racial traits.
Priest definitely needs this type of racial flavor. Troll Priest vs human vs void elf should all be different. The vanilla way was kinda a failure, dwarf priest was far superior with the importance on fear ward. I think class skins are necessary at this point but would be a massive undertaking.
Agreed that why it would be such a huge feature, they would wanna hit a lot of race class combos like Tauren Sunwalker. I just think priests have the most questionable status race wise thus why they had those racial spells in the first place. Void Elf Holy, Lightforged Shadow are major problems, things like Tauren Sage, Troll Loa priest are more secondary flavor things.
That with the "perks" system in MoP by choosing race x class combination you would get an enhanced version of that talent/trait or spell.
For example Anshe Sunwalker of the Tauren would gain x% benefit from holy fire or purge the wicked
Nightborne would gain benefit from Shadow apparitions.or Mindgames
Kultiran priest would gain benefit from using Mindbreaker
Trolls have rapid regeneration or voodoo magic having increase benefit from HoT or DoT
Human would have enhanced version of Twin Discipline
Etc
Maybe so, but it would certainly lead to turmoil and conflict. In addition, some of the players would definitely not like it.
So thinking about this more...
What if Priest Racials were merely cosmetic? Give every Race their own visual spell 'Transmogs'. Basically Racial Glyphs. No gameplay changes, so Blizz doesn't have to deal with balance. Just updated effects.
Sun-based Spell FX for Tauren Seers
Moon-based Spell FX for Night Elves. Could even incorporate magical bow-arrow spell FX, spirit owls and starfall FX for a complete POTM.
Tech-based healing for Goblins and Gnomes
Voodoo Loa FX for Troll Witchdoctors. Lightwell becomes a mini bubbling cauldron tossing out healing juju, Angelic symbols replaced with Loa.
And on top of that, Shadow gets its own Reskin options so that it isn't only themed around Old God voidy stuff. These could be general spell FX options that any race could pick.
Light-based FX skin, allowing 'Inquisitor' Holy themes for all specs. Ideal for Draenei and other races that avoid Shadow.
Necromancy-based Shadow. Instead of void tentacles, you summon shadowy grasping hands. Instead of Shadow Clones, you summon Banshees or Spectres.
Voodoo based Shadow. Tap into the powers of Bwonsamedi for Shadow magic, having abilties be Hex and Loa themed.
Spells are exactly the same as you have with a Priest, just some abilities get a different light-and-sparkle effect depending on your race or reskin choice.
Last edited by Triceron; 2022-07-05 at 06:49 PM.
The paladins used to have separate and complex questlines for obtaining specific abilities and mounts, most of those are obsolete, but they still retain separate varieties of mounts. The same goes for the druids' different forms. Perhaps the priests should have something special also.
"You see, there is balance in all things. Wisdom etched in our very fur: Black and white. Darkness and light. When the last emperor hid our land from the rest of the world, he also preserved...our ancient enemy, the mantid. So it is with your Alliance and your Horde. They are not strong despite one another; they are strong BECAUSE of one another. You mistake your greatest strength for weakness. Do you see this?"
I made night elf priestess back in vanilla solely because of Starshards, so I could play Priestess of the Moon.
It would be hard to balance different abilities based on race, but I can definitely imagine classes having option to chose different animations based on their race. Let's say you would have default class animations and then can unlock racial animations through heritage style quests. Class Trainers could work as "barbershop" for these racial animations.
Imagine quest in which you patrol Ashenvale and reclaim it Kaldorei, resulting in:
- Sentinel Owl animation for hunter's Flare
- Starshards animation for priest's Shadow Word: Pain
Advantage is that they can add more and more animations for all races over time, so they don't need to contribute a lot of resources to purely cosmetic stuff all at once.
Also, heritage quests seem to be really popular and well received.